Professor Albert Mehrabian, Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), is credited as the originator of the "55%, 38%, 7% Rule".
He and his colleagues conducted studies on communication patterns and published them in professional journals in 1967.
In their study, subjects listened to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking ("honey", "dear" and "thanks"), three to convey neutrality ("maybe", "really" and "oh") and three to convey disliking ("don't", "brute" and "terrible"). The words were spoken with varying tonalities and subjects were asked to guess the emotions behind the spoken words.
The finding was simply that tone carried more meaning than the individual words themselves. But Mehrabian combined the statistical results of both studies and came up with...
You guessed it – the "55%, 38%, 7% Rule".
And I bet you had a gross misunderstanding of this "rule".
The reason I'm telling you all those is that I want you to look at "The Humor Tonality" in proper perspective.
I wish we could assign a specific number to how we make women laugh, but we can't. Your tonality might account for as much as 60% of the overall effect of your speech sometimes, or it might only account for 15% in certain situations.
What I can tell you is that your tonality often determines whether you're funny or not. Have you noticed some guys are "good at telling jokes"? But have you ever paid attention to his voice quality when he was making everyone laugh?
Your tonality has to be upbeat and suggest funniness if you want to be good at making women laugh.
Think for a moment how a funny talk show host would speak to women. How about a professional stand-up comedian? A movie star? A priest? A politician? You can play different roles when talking to women. And that can be very funny.
You also need different styles of tonalities in different situations. Here’re some useful tonalities you’ll probably need.
1. The soothing
It’s the kind of breathy voice which couples often use. When two people like each other and stand in proximity, they also tend to speak in soothing tones.
You can practice by increasing your exhaling while speaking. Lower your volume as if you want to express you affection through your tone. You speak with soothing tonality when no threat is present, which is the main reason why many people tend to speak to a child using this type of voice.
2. The baritone
The typical voice of a Hollywood action movie. Baritone voice or tone is perceived as masculine, calm and being in control. Lower the pitch of your voice (but make sure you’re comfortable) and speak slowly. Make frequent pauses during speech and add in cadence whenever possible.
You can practice this through singing. If you have sung in or listened to choir practice before, you’d have a clue on how they practice varying the whole gamut of pitches at will.
3. The energetic
The typical Anthony Robbins voice. Speak with enthusiasm and at a speech rate that is faster than average.
The energetic voice is also breathy but the opposite of soothing. You speak with an energetic tonality as though you’re deliberately suppressing your emotion, which, on the contrary, effectively magnify the impact.
It is the type of voice you tell small kids a story. Just tone down the exaggeration appropriately and you’re good to go.
4. The dramatic
If you’ve ever watched a Shakespeare play, you know what I’m talking about. There’s a lot of variation in the voice quality and a strong exhibition of different emotions.
The dramatic tonality is not suitable for general conversation. It is used to add humor or dynamism to the conversation occasionally. Don’t overdo it otherwise you may annoy or scare the woman you’re talking to.
Practice by acting along with the dramas you see on stage or television. You can also try out any of the play scripts as an alternative form of entertainment.
