Osmo Wiio is a Finnish researcher of human communication. His laws of communication, Wiio’s laws, are funny and insightful.
- If communication can fail, it will.
- If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.
- There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.
- The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.
And I particularly like his observation that any time there are two people conversing, there are actually six people in the conversation:
- Who you think you are
- Who you think the other person is
- Who you think the other person thinks you are
- Who the other person thinks he/she is
- Who the other person thinks you are
- Who the other person thinks you think he/she is
If you find this interesting, you can read more about Osmo and his theories on communication.
Wiios 7 laws of communication:
1 Communication usually fails, except by accident.
1.1 If communication can fail, it will
1.2 If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails
1.3 If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there’s a misunderstanding
1.4 If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails
2 If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage
3 There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message
4 The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds
4.1 The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate
5 In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be
6 The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance
7 The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago
Korpela’s First Corollary: If nobody barks at you, your message did not get through
Korpela’s Second Corollary: Search for information fails, except by accident
The Pedagogic Corollary: Give the student a chance to realize he misunderstood it all
Professor Osmo A. Wiio (born 1928) is a famous Finnish researcher of human communication. He has studied, among other things, readability of texts, organizations and communication within them, and the general theory of communication. In addition to his academic career, he has authored books, articles, and radio and TV programs on technology, the future, society, and politics. He formulated “Wiio’s laws” when he was a member of parliament (1975–79) and published them in Wiion lait - ja vähän muidenkin (Wiio’s laws - and some others’; in Finnish). (Weilin+Göös, 1978, Espoo; ISBN 951-35-1657-1).
Jonathan