The daily radio program "Politisk Kvarter" ("Fifteen Minutes of Politics") on NRK P2 is probably the one media program or column with most influence on Norway's political debate.
Today, the theme was how communcations consultants are helping top politicians with their appearance, clothes, oral style, and so on. One of these "communications experts" has given advice on clothes, hairstyle, makeup, body language, and speech for twenty years. She claimed that 55% of a speaker's impact comes from his or her looks and behaviour, 38% from his or her clothes, and only 7% from what is actually said (if I remember the numbers correctly. Doesn't really matter).
How does one arrive at such numbers? It amazes me that an "expert" is even willing to quantify -- in accurate per cent measurements -- such an intricately difficult thing as human communication. What kind of experiment or survey was it someone conducted to measure these things? And how was such accuracy achieved?
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