Osmo Wiio was a Finnish researcher of human communication. His laws of communication are the human communications equivalent of Murphy’s Laws.
Wiio’s laws state…
- 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 anytime 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 they are
- Who the other person thinks you are
- Who the other person thinks you think they are.
I’d say he’s spot on across the board.
Via Jason Fried