And especially when it’s untrue
Association for
Psychological Science
We intuitively use
more emotional language to enhance our powers of persuasion, according to
research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science. The research shows that people tend toward appeals that aren't simply more positive or negative but are infused with emotionality, even when they're trying to sway an audience that may not be receptive to such language.
"Beyond simply
becoming more positive or negative, people spontaneously shift toward using
more emotional language when trying to persuade," says researcher Matthew
D. Rocklage of The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
We might imagine that
people would use very positive words such as "excellent" or
"outstanding" to bring others around to their point of view, but the
findings showed that people specifically used terms that convey a greater
degree of emotion, such as "exciting" and "thrilling."
Understanding the components that make for a persuasive message is a critical focus of fields ranging from advertising to politics and even public health. Rocklage and colleagues wanted to look at the question from a different angle, exploring how we communicate with others when we are the ones trying to persuade.
"It's possible
that to be seen as rational and reasonable, people might remove emotion from
their language when attempting to persuade," says Rocklage. Drawing from
attitudes theory and social-function theories of emotion, however, Rocklage and
colleagues Derek D. Rucker and Loran F. Nordgren hypothesized that people would
go the other way, tapping into emotional language as a means of social
influence.
In one online study,
the researchers showed 1,285 participants a photo and some relevant details for
a particular product available from Amazon. com. They asked some participants
to write a five-star review that would persuade readers to purchase that
product, while they asked others to write a five-star review that simply
described the product's positive features.
Using an established
tool for quantitative linguistic analysis, the Evaluative Lexicon, the researchers
then quantified how emotional, positive or negative, and extreme the reviews
were.
Although the reviews
were equally positive in their language, the data showed that reviewers used
more emotional language when they were trying to persuade readers to buy a
product compared with when they were writing a five-star review without
intending to persuade. Participants' persuasive reviews also had more emotional
language compared with actual five-star reviews for the same products published
on Amazon . com.
Importantly, the shift
toward more emotional language appeared to be automatic rather than
deliberative. Participants still used more emotional descriptors in persuasive
reviews when they were simultaneously trying to remember an 8-digit number, a
competing task that made strategizing very difficult.
The tendency to use
more emotional language emerged even when participants were attempting to
persuade a group of "rational" thinkers.
"Past research
indicates that emotional appeals can backfire when an audience prefers
unemotional appeals," says Rocklage. "Our findings indicate that
there is a strong enough connection between persuasion and emotion in people's
minds that they continue to use emotion even in the face of an audience where
that approach can backfire."
Indeed, additional
evidence indicated a connection between emotion and persuasion in memory. The
researchers found that the more emotional a word was, the more likely
participants were to associate it with persuasion and the quicker they did so.
An interesting avenue
for future research, says Rocklage, is to investigate whether the association
transfers across various contexts.
"For instance,
would people use less emotion if they were in a boardroom meeting or if they
were writing a formal letter of recommendation?" he wonders.
