The 7/38/55 rule, derived from research by psychologist Albert Mehrabian in the 1960s, suggests that when communicating feelings and attitudes, only seven percent of meaning comes from the words themselves, thirty-eight percent comes from tone of voice, and fifty-five percent comes from body language and facial expressions. While this specific breakdown has been oversimplified and misapplied far beyond Mehrabian’s original research context, the underlying insight remains profoundly important for negotiation: how you say something often matters more than what you say, particularly when communicating emotions, attitudes, or relational information rather than pure factual content. Mehrabian’s research specifically examined situations where...