People are claimed to have a dominant visual, auditory or kinaesthetic processing mode that others can detect and match to build rapport.
The hypothesis generated a research programme in the 1980s that largely failed to find the predicted effects, and NLP subsequently developed outside academic testing. It is a useful case for the ledger because it shows a claim surviving refutation through a commercial training market that does not depend on evidence.
In practice
- A trainer who matches a client's supposed modality is doing something, and it is not what the theory says.
- A framework that failed testing in the 1980s is still being certified and sold.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is that people process information in a dominant sensory mode, detectable in their language, which others can match to build rapport.
- In its favour
- The hypothesis was specific enough to test, which is more than many therapeutic claims manage, and the underlying idea that matching a person's vocabulary aids rapport has some support in linguistic accommodation research.
- Against it
- It was tested and not supported: reviews of the core claims found no evidence for preferred representational systems or for benefits from matching them, and the programme moved outside academic testing rather than revising the claim.
- Standing
- Tested in the 1980s and not supported. Reviews of NLP's core claims found no evidence for preferred representational systems or for benefits from matching them. Closely related to the learning-styles myth, which failed the same test.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop