Here’s How Persuasive You Are When You Swear
ry: This experiment examined the effects of judicious swearing on persuasion in a pro-attitudinal speech. Participants listened to one of three versions of a speech about lowering tuition that manipulated where the word “damn” appeared (beginning, end, or nowhere). The results showed that obscenity at the beginning or end of the speech significantly increased the persuasiveness of the speech and the perceived intensity of the speaker. Obscenity had no effect on speaker credibility. Source: "Indecent influence: The positive effects of…
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The Best Way To Motivate People
phasize forward progress -- not for the sake of the project, but for your team members. Harvard's Teresa Amabile's research found that nothing is more motivating than progress in meaningful work and nothing more taxing than setbacks. Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work: This pattern is what we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work;…
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Is it true that “when you smile the whole world smiles with you”?
a manner of speaking, yes. By smiling we influence others to smile. People judge things more positively while smiling, so our own smile can set off a chain reaction causing more positive encounters. Via Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To: The researchers found a chameleon effect. When confederates rubbed their faces, so did the student, and when confederates shook their feet, the participant did the same thing. This was…
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These Are The Two Most Common Tricks Advertisers Are Using To Manipulate You
bsp; 1) Your "feared self." Via Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy: In a surprising 2008 study, researchers at the University of Bath, UK, found that the fear of failure drives consumers far more than the promise of success; the latter oddly tends to paralyze us, while the former spurs us on (and pries open our wallets). In fact, as the study found, the most powerful persuader of all was giving consumers a…
2 minutes
Are stories we can relate to the key to learning?
a Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success: In 2003, Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, two American psychologists, devised an intriguing experiment. They took a group of Yale undergraduates and gave them an insoluble math puzzle to work on—but with a small catch. Beforehand, the students were asked to read a report written by former Yale math student Nathan Jackson. This was ostensibly to provide the students with a bit of background information on the math department,…
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Here’s Why People Gossip So Much
ssip helps police bad behavior in a social network and relieves stress. About 15% of office emails are gossip: According to some estimates, the average corporate email user sends 112 emails every day. About one out of every seven of those messages, says a new study from Georgia Tech, can be called gossip. Negative gossip is nearly 3 times as prevalent: Still, another finding was that "negative" gossip, characterized through a Natural Language Text Processing analysis, was in fact 2.7…
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Here Are The 3 Steps For Getting People To Pay Attention To You
her excellent book 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People, Susan Weinschenk lays out a research backed 3 step process that really impressed me: 1) Start with what you know they believe. If you start your presentation with the opposite of what they believe, they may turn you off right away. For example, if you start a presentation to me by saying how amazing Android phones are or that Android phones are superior to iPhones, then you’ve…
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How To Speak With Power
a The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: Speak slowly. Visualize the contrast between a nervous, squeaky teenager speaking at high speed and the slow, emphatic tone of a judge delivering a verdict. Pause. People who broadcast confidence often pause while speaking. They will pause for a second or two between sentences or even in the middle of a sentence. This conveys the feeling that they’re so confident in their power, they trust…
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