Jonah Berger - Magic Words

To anyone who has ever marveled at the power of words.

The word that changed the world... The power of because... The new science of language... Six types of magic words... We are all writers and speakers

When nouns are more persuasive than verbs... The right way to say no... When dont is better than cant... How to be more creative... Start talking to yourself... When to use you

Why Donald Trump is so persuasive (no matter what you think of him)... How to speak with power... Why people prefer confident financial advisers, even when theyre wrong... When hedges hurt... Why presents are more persuasive than pasts... When to express doubt

Why a good way to seem smart is to ask for advice... The makings of a great date... The right questions to ask... When to deflect... How to avoid assumptions... The thirty-six questions to love... How to connect with anyone

How to show listening... Why fixing is better than solving... Why knowledge is a curse... The language that gets startups funded... How versus why

Building a hit podcast... The benefit of mistakes... What makes a good story... When negatives are positive.... The value of volatility... Beyond positivity and negativity... How to hold attention

The language of beer... Why some people get promoted (and others get fired)... What makes a hit... When similarity is good and difference is better... Quantifying the speed of stories

Solving a three-hundred-year-old Shakespearean mystery... How to predict the future... Is music misogynous?... Are police racist?

Why its bad to tell kids theyre smart

When he was just over a year old, our son, Jasper, started saying the word please. Or at least trying to. He couldnt pronounce his Ls yet, so it ended up sounding more like peas, but it was close enough for us to get the main thrust of what he was saying.

His use of the word, in itself, wasnt that surprising. After all, by six months old most kids can recognize basic sounds, and around a year they can usually say one to three words.

What was interesting, though, was the way hed use it.

Hed say something he wanted, like up, yo (yogurt), or brow ber (his stuffed brown bear) and then pause to note the result. If he got what he wanted right away, that would be it. He wouldnt say anything else. But if he didnt get what he wanted, or if you seemed to be doing anything other than hustling to get him what hed asked for, hed look you straight in the eye, nod his head, and say the word peas.

As Jasper got older, his vocabulary grew. He started talking about his favorite creatures (dido! for dinosaurs), things he wanted to do (wee for slides), and counting (two). He even added the word yeah to follow peas to show that he really meant business. As in yo, peas, yeah. Or translated to adult English, Yes, Id like yogurt....I mean it.

But peas was special. Because peas was the first time he realized that words have power. That they drive action. That if he wanted something and it wasnt coming, adding the word peas would make it happen. Or at least make it more likely.

Jasper had discovered his first magic word.

Almost everything we do involves words. We use words to communicate ideas, express ourselves, and connect with loved ones. Theyre how leaders lead, salespeople sell, and parents parent. Theyre how teachers teach, policymakers govern, and doctors explain. Even our private thoughts rely on language.

By some estimates, we use around sixteen thousand words a day. We write emails, build presentations, and talk to friends, colleagues, and clients. We draft online dating profiles, chat with neighbors, and touch base with partners to see how their day went.

But while we spend a lot of time using language, we rarely think about the specific language we use. Sure, we might think about the ideas we want to communicate, but we think a lot less about the particular words we use to communicate them. And why should we? Individual words often seem interchangeable.

Take the third to last sentence you just read. While it used the word particular to refer to words, it could have just as easily used the word individual, specific, or any number of other synonyms. While getting our point across is obviously important, the particular words used to do so often seem inconsequential. Happenstance turns of phrase, or whatever happened to come to mind.

But it turns out that intuition is wrong. Very wrong.

In the 1940s, one word was enough to change the world. Whenever disaster struck, or evildoers threatened to destroy life as we know it, comic book teenager Billy Batson would say SHAZAM! and transform into a superhero with extraordinary strength and speed.

Such magic words have been around forever. From Abracadabra! and Hocus-pocus! to Open sesame! and Expecto patronum!, magicians, wizards, and heroes of all stripes have used language to conjure up mystical powers. Like enchanting spells, certain words, used strategically, could change, or do, anything. Listeners were powerless to resist them.

Clearly fiction, right? Not quite.

In the late 1970s, researchers from Harvard University approached people using a copy machine in the library at the City University of New York and asked them for a favor.

New York is known for its vibrant culture, tasty food, and diverse melting pot of people. But friendliness? Not so much. New Yorkers are known for talking fast, working hard, and always being in a rush. So getting them to inconvenience themselves to help a stranger would be difficult, to say the least.

The researchers were interested in what drives persuasion. A member of the team would wait at a table in the library for someone to start making copies. When the would-be copier placed material on the machine, the team member would intervene. They would walk over to the innocent bystander, interrupt what that person was doing, and ask to cut in front and use the machine.

The researchers tried different approaches. For some people, they made a direct request: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine? For others, they added the word because, as in Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because Im in a rush?

The two approaches were almost identical. Both politely said Excuse me, both asked to use the machine, and both noted the five pages that needed to be copied. The imposition was the same as well. In both cases, the would-be copier had to stop what theyre doing, take their material off the copier, and twiddle their thumbs while someone else went ahead of them.

But the two approaches, while similar, had vastly different effects. Adding the word because boosted the number of people who let the researcher skip the line by over 50 percent.

A 50 percent increase in persuasion due to just one word is huge. Astronomical even. But to be fair, one could argue that the two approaches differed in more than just one word. After all, the approach that included the word because didnt just add that word, it also added a reason for the request (i.e., that the requester was in a rush).

So rather than because driving persuasion, maybe people were more likely to say yes because the reason for the request was really good. The requester said they were in a rush, and the innocent bystander wasnt, so maybe they said yes just to be polite or helpful.

But that wasnt it. Because the researchers also tried one more approach. For a third set of people, rather than giving a valid reason, the requester gave a meaningless one: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?