Word Power

Words are sparks of light that create an illuminated space inside our heads we call ‘consciousness’. They make it possible for us to move beyond simply experiencing things, to consciously thinking about them and then being able to share our thoughts about them with others, if we want to.

But words also wield their power in the darkness too. In the shadows, beyond the light of conscious awareness, they are able to influence us without our knowing what they are getting up to.

Just as painters set the mood of their pictures by their choice of colours, speakers create the feel and persuasive context of their message through their selection of words. Here are some randomly chosen words from a recent speech by Barack Obama: sights, high, country, divided, disillusioned, common, defining, purpose, history, nation, people, one, change, coalition, challenges, unity, win, influence, voices, vision. Obama's words engender emotions, sensations and ideas that subtly persuade his audience before they have even heard his arguments. Like the set designer of a play, he uses his linguistic skill to take his audience to a carefully chosen imaginative space – a journey that most of them will have no idea they've been on.

Power without responsibility. Unshackled and outside our conscious control, words are free to manipulate our feelings and thoughts as directly as the doctor’s reflex hammer jerks our knee joint into action. Working in this way, words can automatically trigger feelings and attitudes without our knowledge – silently and invisibly going about their business like deft pickpockets in a crowd.

It is this aspect of words that so interests professional persuaders like advertisers, politicians, and therapists because the impact of words is greatest when they work under cover of darkness. After all, it is difficult to resist something when you have no idea it is happening to you.

Priming
Psychologists use the term ‘priming’ to describe this automatic triggering of emotions, sensations and ideas in response to stimuli like words, objects and events. The French novelist Marcel Proust was famously primed into recalling buried memories by the simple act of dipping a piece of madeleine cake into a cup of tea. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by long-forgotten memories, emotions and sensations. The act of dipping the cake had revived a physical memory of something he had experienced many times as a young boy, when his aunt would share her tea-dunked madeleine with him on Sunday mornings.

We know that tastes, smells and other sensations can re-awaken forgotten experiences, but priming also happens when we are exposed to words that trigger particular feelings, and memories, in us. An experiment devised by psychologist John Bargh demonstrates the amazing priming power of words. In Bargh’s experiment, student volunteers were presented with thirty scrambled sentences, each containing five words. They were asked to turn them into grammatical four-word sentences. Here are just a couple of examples: 'sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins', shoes give replace old the.

Having completed their thirty sentences, the students were told that the experiment had been about the varied and flexible ways people use words. They left the room believing that the experiment was over – but it wasn’t. In fact, as they walked back along the corridor their progress towards the lift was being secretly timed. What Bargh was really interested in was whether or not the words they had been exposed to during the experiment would have any effect on the speed at which they walked back along the corridor to the lift.

To do this, Bargh had given half the students sentences peppered with words like ‘wrinkle’, ‘old’, ‘grey’, ‘lonely’ - words associated with stereotypes about old age – while the other half had been given sentences made up of neutral words. The results were fascinating; the students who had been primed with words associated with old age walked more slowly along the corridor to the lift than the students who’d been exposed to the neutral words.

Mental Reflex
Bargh’s experiment suggests that if we consistently respond in the same way to a particular stimulus (in this case a stereotyped trait-word), over time – as with Pavlov's dogs – this behavioural response becomes automatic.

Perhaps this is not as surprising as it first appears. We would not even be able to get through a day if large areas of our behaviour weren’t triggered automatically like neural software programmes because each day we would have to remake trivial decisions like which which way to get out of bed or which sock to put on first. Psychologists have a growing body of evidence that most of our thinking – even high-level thinking – takes place unconsciously in what they call the adaptive, or cognitive, unconscious.

The message for those of us who use language in our work – both spoken and written – is that words act like triggers, setting off unconscious as well as conscious reactions in the minds of our listeners and readers.

Great communicators understand that choosing the right words is as important – perhaps even more important – than marshalling the right arguments. Through the priming power of words they can conjure pictures, sensations and emotions. Think of a recent presentation or speech you've attended. After a few weeks have passed, chances are you'll struggle to recall the detail of what the speaker said, but you'll have no trouble remembering how they made you feel.

© 2008 Martin Shovel


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