The research by psychologist and concert pianist Chia-Jung Tsay has been published by the US National Academy of Sciences but here are the essentials.
Tsay gave more than 1,000 volunteers samples of either audio, silent video or video with sound, and asked them to rate the top three finalists from 10 international classical music competitions. What she found was that the actual competition winners were far more likely to be correctly identified by those who were assigned the silent videos. The accuracy of those who viewed video with sound or just listened to the performance was no better than chance.
Of course, the overwhelming nature of visual information has long been accepted by communications professionals. As far back as the 1970s Albert Mehrabian famously showed that, in verbal communication involving feelings and attitudes, more than half of the message is carried by the facial expression of the speaker.
However, Tsay’s study raises at least three additional factors worth considering.
1. Even experts get distracted
Firstly, the appeal of the visual to a general audience may be just as strong for an expert audience. In an interview with America’s NPR, Tsay made clear that the study was not just about the volunteers in her experiment.
"What this suggests is that the original judges — the professional musicians — had actually heavily overweighted visual information at the expense of sound. That's why volunteers who only saw the performers were able to guess what the judges had decided”.
Furthermore, even Tsay’s participants included a large number of professional musicians and judges who should have been able to focus on sound. Yet they were no better at identifying the actual winners unless they had seen the silent video. The implication could be that even spokespeople addressing expert audiences or appearing on a high-brow TV programmes need to be just as careful about their visual performance.
2. Gesture communicates more than attractiveness
Secondly, within the visual sphere, the performers’ movements and gestures appear to have far more impact on their audience than their physical attractiveness. When participants were asked to identify the most attractive contestant, their choices did not match the actual winners of the competitions.
3. Gender and race are not so important
Finally, and most encouragingly, the race or gender of the performers had no impact on the way they were judged. Indeed, when participants were presented with still photographs of the contestants, they were not able to select the actual winners. Whether this would apply as much to spokespeople is open to doubt, but the study at least questions prevailing assumptions.
A word of caution
Of course, none of this suggests that music or words do not matter. After all, the participants were judging between finalists not amateurs. If you or I were to sit down at a piano, posture and gesture wouldn´t get us very far. Similarly, few spokespeople are likely to display confident behaviour if they don’t know what they want to say.
The icing on a cake may be what grabs our attention but without the cake it’s a bit sickly. Any spokespeople seeking musical inspiration might be better off looking at the performances of Vladimir Horowitz than Liberace.