People recognise words better after a pause and speakers naturally insert pauses just before they say something important.
The finding is the exact reverse of what many people expect.
Be more convincing in job interviews, business negotiations and personal relationships.
These personality types are more easily persuaded than others.
Billions are spent in political advertising at each election — does it work?
Study tested how many people in a group have to change their mind before everyone else turns.
Women applied for 400 real jobs to test the effect of clothing in their profile picture.
Women applied for 400 real jobs to test the effect of clothing in their profile picture.
Women whose resumes include a picture of themselves in low-cut or revealing tops are five times more likely to be interviewed, new research finds.
The five-year study had two women send out resumes for real accountancy and sales positions.
Each applied for 200 roles using almost identical resumes.
The only difference was that half the resumes included a picture of themselves conservatively dressed.
For the other half they were wearing more revealing clothing.
Here are two of the images actually used in the study:
The results revealed an astonishingly large effect.
When the two women applied for the sales jobs, they received 62 more interviews when the more revealing picture was included.
That was five times the number of interviews they got when applying with the same resume but more conservative dress.
Apparently accountants are just as prone to the bias: the low-cut top garnered 68 more interview offers than the conservatively dressed option.
Dr Sevag Kertechian, the study’s author, said:
“Our results showed interesting trends as low-cut dresses significantly influenced the choice of the recruiters, even for accounting positions.
Regardless of the job, whether customer-facing saleswoman or office-based accountant, the candidate with the low cut clothing received more positive answers.
The results were quite shocking and negative but not necessarily surprising – they show we need to conduct more research.”
The study were presented at the “Appearance Matters” Conference in London in 2016: it is the world’s largest event on body image and disfigurement.
Labelling people’s thoughts can instantly act as a trigger.
Labelling people’s thoughts can instantly act as a trigger.
Labelling an opinion ‘moral’ instantly makes it more resistant to change, a new study finds.
Mr Andrew Luttrell, the study’s first author, said:
“The perception that an attitude we hold is based on morality is enough to strengthen it.
For many people, morality implies a universality, an ultimate truth.
It is a conviction that is not easily changed.”
The researchers found it was surprisingly easy to strengthen people’s opinions by labelling them moral.
Professor Richard Petty, a study co-author, said:
“Morality can act as a trigger — you can attach the label to nearly any belief and instantly make that belief stronger.”
The results come from a series of experiments testing different ways of labelling people’s opinions.
One experiment compared labelling an opinion ‘moral’ with labelling it in terms of ‘tradition and equality’.
Mr Luttrell said:
“Morality had a lot more impact than the values of tradition and equality.
Students were more likely to act on their opinion of the student exam policy if they thought it had to do with morality.”
Another experiment on the subject of recycling tested the morality principle against notions of practicality.
Again, morality won out.
Mr Luttrell said:
“People held on to their moral beliefs in a way they didn’t for other values we studied, like tradition, equality and practicality.
But what was remarkable was how easy it was to lead people into thinking their views were based on moral principles.
People may be more willing to vote for a candidate or give money to an advocacy group if they believe it is a matter of morality.
They’re also less likely to be swayed by the opposition.”
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Lutrell et al., 2016).
Image credit: malloreigh
Researchers find the average number of swear words people can list in 60 seconds — and what it say about them.
Researchers find the average number of swear words people can list in 60 seconds — and what it say about them.
People who know more swear words also have stronger verbal abilities, a new study finds.
Knowing how to swear, then, is not a sign of a poor vocabulary — in fact it signals a better vocabulary.
The study tested how many different swear words people could think of in 60 seconds.
This was compared with other non-swearing words, such as animal names and words beginning with a particular letter.
The study found that the average number of swear words people could recall in 60 seconds was 9 (seems low?!).
This compared to an average of 14 non-swear words and 22 different animal words.
The study’s authors write:
“We cannot help but judge others on the basis of their speech.
Unfortunately, when it comes to taboo language, it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves.
The overall finding of this set of studies, that taboo fluency is positively correlated with other measures of verbal fluency, undermines the POV [Poverty of Vocabulary] view of swearing.
That is, a voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities rather than a cover for their deficiencies.
Speakers who use taboo words understand their general expressive content as well as nuanced distinctions that must be drawn to use slurs appropriately.”
One caveat: this study does not test or suggest that using lots of swear words is a sign of a larger vocabulary.
It only tested (and found) that knowing them is linked to a larger vocabulary.
So there’s still no excuse for turning the air blue…
…unless, of course, you want to help persuade someone of your point of view.
Yes, incredibly, light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can actually help influence an audience, according to one study on The Persuasive Power of Swearing.
The new study was published in the journal Language Sciences (Jay & Jay, 2015).
Image credit: Jeff Gill
Part 2: Psych tips for how to promote change in other people.
Part 2: Psych tips for how to promote change in other people.
Firstly, the person has to be open to the possibility of change.
People can be very defensive about their habits; behaviours or patterns of thought may have taken years to develop.
Secondly, be warm and supportive.
Remember you’re a helpful friend who is interested in their well-being but is still accepting who they are.
Thirdly, help them develop self-awareness.
A central feature of habits is that people perform them unconsciously and repeatedly in the same situations.
A vital step in changing a habit, then, is identifying the situation in which it occurs.
You can help other people identify the situations by gently pointing out what seems to prompt them to perform the habit.
[The full article is here.]Changing someone’s mind is just as hard as changing their behaviour.
But one useful tip is to use self-persuasion.
Let people talk themselves around to your point of view.
In this recent study, people were more convinced by a talk when they gave it themselves than when they merely heard it passively.
This suggests that we really are persuaded more strongly when we make the argument ourselves, even if it isn’t in line with our own viewpoint.
The same trick works with attitudes to smoking.
People are more put off smoking when they deliver an anti-smoking message than when they passively receive it.
Can you encourage someone to convince themselves to change?
One major psychological barrier to changing the mind is the confirmation bias.
The confirmation bias is the fact that people search for information that confirms their view of the world and ignore what doesn’t fit.
The way to fight the confirmation bias is simple to state but hard to put into practice.
You have to try and think up and test out alternative hypothesis.
Sounds easy, but it’s not in our nature.
It’s no fun thinking about why we might be misguided or have been misinformed.
Try to point out facts that don’t fit to the other person.
Changing people’s minds isn’t just about telling them they are wrong; if only it were.
To be convinced people need to hear an alternative account.
This alternative needs to be short and sweet, it needs to be repeated, you need to attack the source of any misinformation and more…
→ Read all 8 ways to change people’s minds here.
Two paths image from Shutterstock
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