The Influence of Language Manipulation on Perception and Behavior

There’s an incredibly simple way to make your message more persuasive. In fact, it’s as simple as changing a letter. In today’s episode, Professor Christopher Bryan shares his studies on messaging. He’s convinced people to vote, persuaded children to tidy up, and students to stop cheating. How? By using nouns, over verbs. 

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Chris’s study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1103343108

Chris’s website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/bryan/

Be A Voter (Iowa video): https://youtu.be/YYY6tWR8qQk?si=8xxk6-DDl0_F_Lt9

*CORRECTION:  There’s a point where Christopher says that the average effect of a piece of GOTV mail is 2% pts. In fact, it’s half a percentage point. The 2% effect he was thinking of is the effect of receiving a GOTV phone call from a live human (i.e., not a robocall).