By Nancy Harhut
I’ve always envied Humpty Dumpty a little.
Not the fall of course. But his power over language — that’s what I coveted.
In Through the Looking Glass, he said, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Imagine that control.
So I was understandably intrigued when my colleague, Alan Rosenspan, brought a University of Geneva study about framing to my attention.
In it, researchers posed the question: “Is it okay to smoke while you pray?” The surveyed responders didn’t think so. In fact, 96% of them said no. I suspect it sounded a bit sacrilegious to them.
However, when researchers reframed the question, asking “Is it okay to pray while you smoke?” 97% said that it was. Here perhaps they were embracing the notion that one can pray anywhere at any time – no house of worship required.
Of course, it was still the same two actions performed simultaneously. Nothing had changed.
Except the order of the words.
The framing study sent me searching for other, related research. And that was when I found psychologist Elizabeth Loftus’ experiment.
She showed people a video of a car accident and then asked them to estimate the speed of the cars they saw. However, she changed the verbs.
Some people were asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” each other. Others were asked how fast the cars were going when they “contacted” each other. The smashed group estimated a speed that was 28.3% faster than the contacted group.
So clearly the words you choose – as well as the order you put them in – can make a big difference in how people respond to your message.
It may not be the complete control Humpty Dumpty claimed to have, but phrasing and framing offer powerful ways to ensure you get your message across the way you want to.
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