Understanding verbal vs nonverbal communication

TL;DR

Verbal communication is the words you use. Nonverbal communication is everything you express alongside those words: your tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, posture, eye contact, and the way you use space and timing. The two are not in competition, and the popular claim that communication is 93 percent nonverbal is a myth based on a misread study. What helps you in practice is making the two match, because when your words and your nonverbal signals agree, people find you easier to understand and to trust.

Say a friend tells you they're fine, but their voice is flat and they won't meet your eyes. Most people would trust the voice rather than the word, and assume there's something going on that the friend just doesn't want to share.

We take in how something is said together with what is said, and the two don't always point in the same direction. Learning how the spoken and unspoken parts of a message fit together is one of the most practical communication skills there is, and the first step is to treat them as two parts of a single message rather than two separate things.

What is verbal vs nonverbal communication

Verbal communication is the words themselves, spoken or written. Nonverbal communication is everything you express alongside them: the pitch and pace of your voice, your facial expressions, your gestures, your posture, the amount of eye contact you make, the distance you keep, and the pauses you leave.

These two operate together rather than in turns, so your listener takes in the words and the signals at once and reads them as a single message. Usually they line up, which is why you rarely notice them as separate channels. The difference only shows up when they conflict. Say something kind in a cold tone, and the listener has to choose which to believe, and the tone usually wins.

What is "93% nonverbal" rule, and why it's misleading

This tendency to trust tone over words is the small piece of truth behind the most repeated claim in communication that 93 percent of communication is nonverbal, usually shown as a 55/38/7 split between body language, tone, and words. The figure comes from experiments that psychologist Albert Mehrabian ran at UCLA in 1967, and over the years it has been applied far more broadly than his findings allow.

Mehrabian studied a narrow question: when a person's words and tone of voice send conflicting signals about how they feel, which one do listeners believe? He found that in that specific situation, people rely mostly on tone and facial expression, and the 93 percent figure describes only that case. He has confirmed this himself.

"These equations regarding the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable." - Albert Mehrabian

David Lapakko, a communication scholar at Augsburg University who traced how the statistic spread, is blunt about its limits.

"The Mehrabian research has been widely misinterpreted, and because of its limitations, any broad-based conclusions about the nature of communication simply cannot be derived from it." - David Lapakko

In practice, the balance shifts depending on what you're trying to say. When you explain an idea, give instructions, or share information, the words do most of the work and the nonverbal side plays a supporting role. When you express how you feel, the balance tips the other way, so your tone and expression carry more of the message, especially if they clash with the words. Because no single ratio fits every situation, the real cost of believing the myth is that people pour effort into their body language while losing sight of what they're actually saying.

How verbal and non verbal communication work together

Beyond correcting the myth, there's a more useful point to make: while you speak, your nonverbal signals are always doing specific jobs. Often they reinforce your words, as when you point while saying "it's over there." Sometimes they contradict them instead, which is what happens with a flat, unconvincing "I'm fine." They also help manage the conversation, because a nod or a slight lean tells the other person to keep going or signals that you want to speak. And occasionally they take the place of words altogether, like a thumbs-up across a noisy room.

Because those signals do so much work, it's tempting to read them like a dictionary, but a 2023 review by Miles Patterson, Alan Fridlund, and Carlo Crivelli cautions against exactly that. Nonverbal cues rarely have fixed, universal meanings you can look up one by one. What a cue means depends on the person, the relationship, and the situation.

Nonverbal communication examples to watch for

A few kinds of nonverbal cues do most of the work in everyday conversation:

• Facial expression. Paul Ekman spent decades arguing that a core set of expressions, for emotions like happiness, anger, fear, and disgust, is recognized across very different cultures, including communities with little outside contact. His work describes how faces convey emotion; it was never a reliable lie detector, which is a common overreach.
• Eye contact. Holding someone's gaze tends to signal attention and confidence, while avoiding it can read as discomfort, though what feels comfortable varies by person and culture.
• Posture and gesture. Open posture and natural hand movement make you look engaged, whereas crossed arms and stillness can read as closed off.
• Tone and pace. The same sentence can land as warm, sarcastic, or anxious depending entirely on how you voice it.
• Proximity and timing. How close you stand and how you handle pauses both send signals before you've said a word.

These channels rarely act alone, and that's why Vanessa Van Edwards, who runs the behavioral research lab Science of People, groups them around two quick judgments people make about you: warmth (are you friendly and trustworthy?) and competence (are you capable?). Most of the signals that help or hurt you in a conversation feed into one of those two impressions.

Read cues in clusters, not one at a time

Because no cue has a fixed meaning, a single gesture rarely tells you much on its own. Crossed arms can mean someone feels defensive, or simply that the room is cold. A cue becomes meaningful when several point in the same direction and you read them against the situation, so if a person leans back with crossed arms, a tense jaw, and short answers, that combination is telling you something real even though the crossed arms by themselves are not.

Culture is part of that context as well. A 2024 study in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior found that people interpret nonverbal cues quite differently across cultures, so a gesture or a level of eye contact that signals confidence in one place can come across as rude in another. For that reason, it helps to treat what you notice as a possibility to check rather than a firm conclusion.

Reading and using these cues well is a skill, and like most skills it improves with practice rather than reading alone. RiseGuide's Communication Mastery journey turns it into short daily lessons on making a strong first impression, and presenting yourself with confidence. Sign up to get access to the full journey.

How cues change on video calls

Video calls are where many people struggle most, because the screen takes some of these cues away. The camera flattens your posture and gestures, eye contact is harder since the lens and the other person's face sit in different places, and lag disrupts the natural timing that signals whose turn it is to speak. With fewer cues getting through, the ones that remain carry more weight, which is why a few small habits make a real difference on a call: face the camera, keep your face well lit and visible, and leave a clear pause before you respond.

The main takeaway

The aim isn't to memorize what every gesture means, because meaning depends on context. The aim is to notice whether your words and your signals are telling the same story, and to close the gap when they aren't. When you say you're listening, do you look like you are? When you share good news, does your voice match it? People read both channels whether or not you intend them to, so the goal is to keep the two in agreement.

Ready to put this into practice? Sign up for RiseGuide to get the full Communication Mastery journey: short, expert-backed lessons on how you come across, from body language to first impressions, in about 15 minutes a day. Start now

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