Anupam Krishnamurthy

How to make your writing more persuasive

Feb 2019

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton conducted a simple experiment, which earned her a PhD in psychology from Stanford.

She organized volunteers into two groups - "tappers" and "listeners". She gave each tapper one among 25 popular songs. The tapper had to communicate this song to the listener by tapping on a desk. The listener had to guess which song was being tapped. This is a great experiment to try if you have a generous volunteer. Just tap the most popular of songs that both of you know and ask them to guess it.

All right. Getting volunteers to perform bizarre Morse code rituals is all fun and games. But what made Newton's experiment worthy of a Stanford PhD?

Here's the insight. When the tappers were asked to guess what percentage of listeners would recognize their song, they estimated about 50%. They believed that 1 in 2 listeners would be able to guess their song. But the listeners fared a lot poorer. Merely 3 out of 120 attempts, or a dismal 2.5% were successful. As the tappers tapped "Happy birthday" or "Jingle bells", expecting even kindergartners to guess them, the listeners were clueless. The look on the tappers' faces seemed to say "How could you not guess this?" or "How could you be so stupid?".

Before you proceed, just try tapping a song you know for about 10 seconds and observe what happens. Did the tune play in your head as you tapped?

Every tapper heard a tune in their head as soon as their knuckles met the table. The listeners, though, do not have access to this tune stuck in the tappers' heads. All they heard was the taps, which sounded like, you guessed it, bizarre Morse code.

Our brains often mistake other brains to magically have information that only we do. This phenomenon is the basis for what psychologists call the curse of knowledge. We are unable to separate our words from the tunes in our heads that play along with them. What seems simple to us can be cryptic or challenging for our audience. This curse afflicts teachers, managers and experts across all fields.

Moreover, it is this curse that we need to overcome to persuade somebody through our writing. The key to persuasive writing involves bridging the gap between tapper and listener. The aim is to simplify our writing and make it coherent for our readers. There are tools that psychology offers to make our written messages more persuasive. This article is my attempt to explain some of these tools.

Now let us take a look into the psychology of persuasion.

Cognitive Ease vs. Cognitive Strain

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains how our minds alternate between two states - cognitive ease and cognitive strain. As soon as we look at "2+3", the number 5 pops into our head. This is automatic for our brains, and is performed in a state of cognitive ease. However, when we try and multiply "24x49", it takes us a while to juggle the numbers in our heads and arrive at 1176. In this time, our minds focus on the problem, our pupils dilate and we experience a sense of cognitive strain.

Our brains are normally in a state of cognitive ease. Kahneman explains cognitive ease as being in a good mood, liking what one sees, believing what one hears, trusting one's intuition and a feeling that the current situation is comfortably familiar. This state also promotes casual and superficial thinking, as opposed to a cognitively strained state which is vigilant and suspicious. Kanheman's research has shown how messages that keep readers in a state of cognitive ease are more persuasive. A state of cognitive ease keeps readers in a good mood, and primes them to be receptive.

Writing a persuasive message is all about increasing cognitive ease while reducing cognitive strain. Simple writing is persuasive due to the ease with which our brains can access it.

Metaphors and analogies are useful to further simplify our writing. Prof. Barbara Oakley, in her world renowned course on Learning how to Learn, talks about how metaphors help us grasp new ideas "by making connections to neural structures that are already there." She likens it to using tracing paper to draw out something new. When a writer includes phrases such as "quick as a bullet", "hot as a furnace" or "he had his head up in the clouds", she uses her readers' familiarity with the quickness of bullets, the hotness of furnaces and the altitude of clouds to explain new situations to them.

We are told how our muscles work like rubber bands and that our heart beats like a pump. We all flex our muscles and feel our heart beating, but we don't see them in action. That is why we use familiar objects such as rubber bands and pumps to explain their working. Introducing new information is often a source of cognitive strain. Metaphors and analogies help us do this while minimizing mental friction.

One of my firmest conclusions is that we always think by seeking and drawing parallels to things we know from our past, and that we therefore communicate best when we exploit examples, analogies, and metaphors galore… - Douglas Hofstadter

6 writing habits to build

Written communication is incredibly complex. Through squiggles and scrawls, we attempt to have other people see the world the way we do. Given this challenge, what can we do to make our writing more persuasive? Hint: it is all about increasing cognitive ease and minimizing cognitive strain.

1. Start with an outline and leave with a summary

An outline gives our readers a roadmap before we take them through the intricate alleys of our ideas. Similarly, a summary repeats the core of our message and reminds the readers of what to takeaway from our writing. This repetition of our intent and our central message makes it easier for our readers to absorb them. Familiarity and repetition promote cognitive ease.

2. Use simple language

One of the most common mistakes amateur writers make is to use complex language where simpler will do. Research has shown that the unnecessary use of complex language is perceived as a sign of low-intelligence. Moreover, complex language strains our readers' minds, just like solving 24x49 does. The path to persuasion is to say what we mean, rather than confabulate our readers by contorting our sentences and interspersing them with scarcely comprehensible terminology in a bid to impress them.

I guess you see my point.

3. Use fewer words and shorter sentences

The English language has several useless filler words. More so, when we write just like we talk. Using fewer words to convey the same information keeps our readers in a state of cognitive ease. The easiest way to get to a new place is often through the shortest route. Our mind works the same way with ideas and words.

When you remove meaningless words, the power of your words goes up. - Seth Godin

4. Prefer the active voice

Active voice reflects how our brains organize ideas more closely. "The boy caught the ball", is easier to imagine than "The ball was caught by the boy". Brain scans show that passive voice triggered more brain activity than active voice. This hints at how passive voice induces a greater degree of cognitive strain.

5. Weave in metaphors, similes and analogies

When we teach a little child to add 5+4, we give her 5 beads and ask her to count them. We then give her 4 more beads, so that she now has 9 beads. The operation of addition is an abstract concept, and therefore, we use a real-life example to make it tangible. This is how metaphors and analogies teach us new concepts. The most effective way to get two people to meet is to introduce them through a common friend.

6. Keep your writing consistent

Several grammar and style guides insist on keeping our tenses, forms and voice consistent throughout our writing. It also helps to use consistent colour and formatting. Consistency is familiar. It is easy to process. The moment there is inconsistency, there is dissonance and cognitive strain. A sentence where something is out of place interrupts the giraffes. Of course, I meant interrupts the flow.

In conclusion

Getting somebody to see things our way is difficult. Every communicator does the hard work of inducing a change in their audience's minds. Moreover, every communicator suffers from the curse of knowledge, whereby he is unable to put himself in the shoes of his audience. To persuade somebody is to cycle uphill.

But psychology offers us some guidance to switch to a lower gear and make things easier. The essence here is to keep our message simple and elegant, while eliminating noise. We see this principle applied everywhere - well designed websites, intuitive user interfaces and well edited movies that offer us a seamless viewing experience.

Getting somebody to read our message is to invite them to the intricate jungle that our thoughts are. While taking them through this jungle, - Offer a map and a briefing with an outline and a summary - Provide an easy set of instructions in simple and clear language - Use an efficient route with fewer words and tighter prose - Guide from the front with an active voice - Use existing paths and trails like an analogy does - Use coherent symbols and markers with consistent Grammar, style and format

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. - E.F. Schumacher

References:

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Learning How to Learn - Barbara Oakley, Terrence Sejnowski

The Curse of Knowledge - Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Day You Became a Better Writer - Scott Adams

Analogy as the Core of Cognition - Douglas Hofstadter

This essay was first published on Medium.