In 1956, cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University’s Department of Psychology published a paper in the journal Psychological Review. Its title? “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.”
I won’t go into depth into the content of the paper, although it is apparently one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. Suffice it to say that it suggests that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is “7 ± 2”. The so-called “Miller’s Law” tells us that humans can only process a finite amount of information (7 ± 2). If we overload people with more information than they can process, it will lead to cognitive overload and distraction.
I came across this article when I started my first communication consultancy, and it made me curious because, wearing my oral storytelling hat (I wear many hats), we talk about the magic number being three because so many elements in storytelling come in threes.
Is three the “real” magic number?
Consider: stories typically have a three-act structure (start, middle, end), often deal with past, present and future, and many fairy and folktales in the Western tradition have three repeated actions or character types – three sons, three princesses, three attempts to solve a problem. In writing and persuasive speaking, the “tricolon” rhetoric device creates powerful patterns that are memorable, engaging and influential.
I use both the “magical number seven” and the equally magical “number three” in my communication work and in my training. And yes, there are other “magical numbers” that I will ignore intentionally for now.
Who cares about magical numbers, and what do they have to do with Whitbys.org?
When I first started collecting interesting links, someone asked if I could share them. But I was finding so many! So I created a little newsletter called “7, plus or minus 2”. This continues to exist as a low-tech newsletter and a Substack.
In it, I share seven interesting “things” from my weekly wide-ranging reading and research. Plus or minus two. Weekly(ish).
You can sign up for the low-tech newsletter here, or for the Substack here.
