Communication in the 21st Century: Is It What You Say, Not How You Say It? | Vivian Ta | TEDxUTA
Summary
TLDRThe transcript challenges the common belief that nonverbal communication is more important than verbal content. It argues that in the digital age, where text-based communication is prevalent, the actual words we use are crucial for mutual understanding. The speaker introduces the Latent Semantic Similarity (LSS) measure to empirically assess shared meaning in conversations, and suggests that verbal behaviors like asking questions are more significant for understanding than nonverbal cues, which are more important for emotional connection rather than conveying information.
Takeaways
- 🗣️ Communication is often believed to be more about 'how you say it' rather than 'what you say it', with a focus on nonverbal cues.
- 🤔 The speaker challenges this notion, suggesting that verbal behaviors may be more important than previously thought, especially in the digital age.
- 🔍 Historically, the importance of nonverbal behavior has been emphasized, but the speaker proposes a shift towards verbal communication's significance.
- 📚 The concept of 'latent semantic similarity' (LSS) is introduced as a measure to determine the extent of shared understanding in communication.
- 📈 LSS is validated as a legitimate measure of mutual understanding through a study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology.
- 🧐 The study analyzed initial interactions between strangers and found that verbal behaviors were key predictors of mutual understanding.
- 🙅♂️ Nonverbal behaviors such as gestures, smiles, and gazes were not essential for developing common ground understanding in the study.
- 💻 The Internet has revolutionized communication, making it predominantly text-based and accessible globally, which impacts the importance of verbal communication.
- 🌐 The prevalence of digital communication means that nonverbal cues like body language are often irrelevant, emphasizing the need to focus on verbal behaviors.
- 💡 The speaker argues that in a society dominated by text-based communication, we should adapt and prioritize the words we use over nonverbal cues.
- 🙌 The takeaway is to recognize the evolving nature of communication and the growing importance of verbal behaviors in establishing understanding.
Q & A
What is the general consensus regarding the importance of nonverbal behavior in communication?
-The general consensus leans towards the importance of nonverbal behavior, such as body language, in communication, as it provides a lot of information that isn't conveyed verbally.
What does the speaker challenge in the script?
-The speaker challenges the idea that nonverbal behavior is more important than verbal behavior in communication, suggesting that what we say might be more significant than previously realized.
What is the role of establishing mutual understanding in communication?
-Establishing mutual understanding is crucial in communication as it ensures that the message being conveyed is understood by the recipient in the intended way.
What is the significance of using the same words in the same way for developing common ground understanding?
-Using the same words in the same way is important for developing common ground understanding because it helps interaction partners to use language consistently, facilitating mutual comprehension.
What is Latent Semantic Similarity (LSS) and how is it used?
-Latent Semantic Similarity (LSS) is a measure that uses an automated statistical method to establish the contextual meaning of any text by analyzing the relationship among the words used, determining how similar blocks of text or groups of words are to each other.
How did the researchers test the validity of LSS as a measure of mutual understanding?
-Researchers tested the validity of LSS by analyzing videotaped recordings of initial interactions between pairs of strangers, comparing the LSS measure against various verbal and nonverbal behaviors to see which best predicted mutual understanding.
What did the study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology find regarding LSS and mutual understanding?
-The study found that LSS is a legitimate measure of how much people understand each other, indicating its effectiveness in empirically measuring mutual understanding.
What behaviors were found to be most important for establishing common ground understanding in communication?
-The study found that verbal behaviors, such as the amount of talking and the number of questions asked, were the most important for establishing common ground understanding, rather than nonverbal behaviors.
How do nonverbal behaviors contribute to communication, according to the script?
-Nonverbal behaviors contribute to creating an emotionally pleasant and involving interaction, but they are not essential for developing mutual understanding.
How has the Internet changed the way we communicate and what does this mean for the focus on verbal vs. nonverbal behavior?
-The Internet has made communication primarily text-based, focusing on the words we use rather than nonverbal cues. This shift suggests that we should place more importance on verbal behaviors in our communication.
What is the speaker's final argument regarding the focus on verbal behavior in the age of the Internet?
-The speaker argues that since our communication is largely text-based and intertwined with our daily lives, we should adapt and focus more on what we say rather than how we say it.
Outlines
🗣️ The Importance of Verbal Communication
The speaker challenges the common belief that nonverbal cues are more important in communication than the actual words spoken. They argue that the content of our verbal communication may be more significant, especially in the context of the internet and digital communication where nonverbal cues are absent. The speaker introduces the concept of 'latent semantic similarity' (LSS) as a measure to assess mutual understanding in communication. They discuss a study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, which analyzed interactions between strangers and found that LSS was a legitimate measure of understanding, suggesting that the words we use are crucial for establishing common ground.
🌐 The Internet's Impact on Communication
This paragraph delves into how the internet has revolutionized communication, making it primarily text-based and instantaneous. The speaker points out that nonverbal behaviors, while important for creating pleasant interactions, are not essential for developing mutual understanding in the context of online communication. They emphasize the importance of focusing on verbal behaviors, such as the amount of talking and questioning, which were found to be the only consistent predictors of mutual understanding in their study. The speaker calls for a shift in focus from nonverbal to verbal communication, given the prevalence of text-based interactions in modern society.
📝 Prioritizing Verbal Communication in the Digital Age
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker summarizes the argument for prioritizing verbal communication over nonverbal cues, especially in the digital age where most interactions are text-based. They reiterate the findings from their studies and stress the importance of the words we use in establishing understanding and common ground. The speaker encourages adapting to the predominant form of communication and focusing on improving our verbal behaviors to enhance mutual understanding.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Communication
💡Nonverbal Behavior
💡Verbal Behavior
💡Mutual Understanding
💡Latent Semantic Similarity (LSS)
💡Common Ground
💡Social Sciences
💡Empirical
💡Internet
💡Text-Based Communication
Highlights
The general consensus in communication is that nonverbal behaviors, such as body language, are more important than the content of what is said.
A challenge is posed to the traditional view, suggesting that verbal behaviors may be more important than previously thought.
The importance of establishing mutual understanding in communication is emphasized.
The development of common ground understanding is largely dependent on the use of the same words in the same way.
Latent Semantic Similarity (LSS) is introduced as a new measure to assess the contextual meaning of text.
LSS determines the similarity of text blocks based on the words used and their relationships.
A study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology analyzed initial interactions between strangers using LSS.
LSS was found to be a legitimate measure of mutual understanding in communication.
A second study analyzed verbal and nonverbal behaviors to determine predictors of mutual understanding.
Verbal behaviors, such as the amount of talking and questions asked, were found to be the only consistent predictors of mutual understanding.
Nonverbal behaviors, while important for emotional connection, were not essential for developing common ground understanding.
The role of the Internet in changing daily communication methods is discussed, with a focus on text-based interactions.
The prevalence of text-based communication suggests a need to prioritize verbal behaviors over nonverbal in modern society.
The importance of adapting to the dominant form of communication and focusing on verbal behaviors is highlighted.
A call to action to place more importance on the words we use in communication is made.
The conclusion emphasizes focusing on verbal behaviors rather than nonverbal in the context of the Internet age.
Transcripts
what's more important in communication
what you say or how you say it
generally the consensus tends to lean
more towards how we say things our body
language or our nonverbal behaviors as
social scientists call it if you look
online you will quickly find this to be
true most of the attention historically
and currently has been paid towards the
importance of nonverbal behavior within
communication because nonverbal supply a
lot of information that isn't projected
or supplied verbally in fact as I was
looking up examples for this talk I even
came across an article titled what TED
Talks speakers teach us about presenting
and one of the things that they focus on
is the power of nonverbal it's not what
you say it's how you say it or is it I
want to challenge that perhaps what we
say our verbal behaviors are much more
important than we realize perhaps what
we say has been so much more important
now that ever has been before in history
and perhaps we've been focusing on the
wrong aspect of communication for a
while but first I want to step back and
talk a little bit more about
communication in general one of the most
important things about communication is
having other people understand what
you're saying establishing mutual
understanding
after all communicating can be quite
difficult even though I can really
understand each other right and so how
do people actually even develop a mutual
understanding for each other in the
first place
well previously researchers and writers
have suggested that the development of
common ground understanding is largely
dependent on
action partners coming to use the same
words and essentially the same way
however researchers have weren't able to
test this empirically in order to
determine if it's true or not because
there hadn't been anything that could
measure what they wanted to measure
which was the extent to which
interaction partners use the same words
in essentially the same way fortunately
though in recent decades a new measure
called latent semantic similarity or LSS
that they will be referring to it as was
proposed to be such measure so what
exactly is LSS so LSS is a measure that
is assessed by using a program called
Lane semantic analysis which is an
automated statistical method that
establishes the contextual meaning of
any text by analyzing the relationship
among the words that are used in other
words the LSS measure determines how
similar to blocks of text or to groups
of words are to each other based on the
words that are used and how those words
are used in relation to other words so
for example if I'm talking to where my
friends about our weekend plans the LSS
measure would first take all the words
that I say compare it against all the
words that my friend says and determine
the amount of shared meaning that exists
between us within our conversation and
so as someone who studies Social
Psychology and someone who is especially
interested in how people come to
understand each other especially the
processes and the behaviors that
underlie it my colleagues and I decided
to test this measure in order to
determine if it can actually be a
legitimate measure of how much people
understand each other and so in our very
first study which has been published in
the Journal of language and social
psychology we analyzed a sample of
videotaped recordings and in these
recordings were the initial or a series
of initial interactions between pairs of
strangers who had just met for the very
first time and so they had never met
before and so they were having a
conversation for the first time ever
with each other so we analyzed this and
we also analyzed and measured a wide
variety of nonverbal and verbal
behaviors that occurred within these
interactions and we found that the LSS
measure was indeed a legitimate measure
of how much people understood each other
so now we have something that can
empirically measure this great so next
we wanted to determine the behaviors
that would significantly predict high
levels of mutual understanding in other
words what were the behaviors that were
most important when you are
communicating with someone and you want
to establish common ground understanding
and so in our second study we again
analyzed a two completely separate
samples of initial interactions that
occurred between pairs of strangers
again and then we also analyzed a wide
variety of verbal and nonverbal
behaviors and we found that the only
behavior that consistently predicted how
much people understood each other were
their verbal behaviors how the amount of
talking that they engaged in and how
much how many questions they asked each
other all the other behaviors like
gestures or smiling laughing gazes
nonverbal acknowledgments all of these
nonverbal behaviors were not essential
for the development of common ground
understanding now that doesn't mean that
nonverbal behaviors are not important in
communication they are important when it
comes to creating an emotionally
Pleasant and involving interaction but
they're not important when it comes to
developing mutual understanding with
each other and what is important
is what we say the words that we use and
so the the science behind this is only
one reason why I argue that we should be
really focusing more on what we say
rather than how we say it
the second reason and perhaps more
important reason is the Internet the
Internet has drastically changed how we
communicate with each other on a daily
basis and it has done so in a very very
short amount of time as most of you will
probably remember the internet became
publicly available in the 1990s and up
until then people primarily communicated
either in person over the telephone or
sent letters to name a few today how do
we primarily communicate we send each
other emails we send each other text
messages we send each other instant
messages we comment on each other's
facebook statuses we tweet if you're on
an online dating website which is
becoming lis becoming increasingly
popular and if you see someone that
you're interested in what do you do you
send up a message we engage in this form
of communication so much every day and
it has literally allowed us to
communicate with anybody on the planet
at the touch of our fingertips whether
or not that person is halfway across the
world or if that person is right next to
us the Internet and the technological
advances that have resulted from it have
made communication so much easier and
has change the face of communication
just in general and the resulting
different types of communication all
have one thing in common they're all
primarily text-based they consist solely
upon the words that we use our verbal
behaviors no one is going to know
whether or not you had shifty eyes or
that you were
nervously twiddling your thumbs whenever
you send a text message or an email or
an instant message our body language our
nonverbals don't really matter in this
type of communication that dominates our
everyday lives and yet we continue to
focus on it and again I don't believe
that nonverbal behaviors are not
important they are but if we are to live
in a society where we primarily engage
in this type of communication where this
type of communication is so largely
intertwined with our sense of self our
well-being and our livelihood we should
adapt accordingly and we should begin to
place more importance on the behavior
that we engage in the most and that and
that has the most influence the words
that we use we should be focusing more
on what we say rather than how we say
thank you very much
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