“Mehrabian’s second experiment was to have nine different words recorded in varying tones of voice. The words themselves had an association with either liking (‘ honey’, ‘dear’ and ‘thanks’); neutrality (‘ may’, ‘really’ and ‘oh’); or disliking (‘ don’t’ , ‘brute’ and ‘terrible’). It was found that the tone in which the words were said was a more reliable indicator of recognizing the emotion than the actual meaning of the words. These experiments led Mehrabian to construct an (in no way uncontroversial) formula: Total liking = 7% Verbal liking + 38% Vocal liking + 55% Facial liking 1 In other words, we make decisions as to whether someone likes us predominantly on the basis of their facial expression and the tone of their voice: what is actually said is accountable for only a small part of communicating liking.”