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Businessweek brings us news of How to Get Ahead by Speaking Vaguely. Projecting power is incredibly simple: just communicate in abstractions. Details convey weakness.
In one of the seven experiments, participants read quotes from a politician who described an earthquake as killing 120 and injuring 400; later, when he simply said it was a national tragedy, subjects thought he was a better leader.
An author of the study, Cheryl J. Wakslak (University of Southern California), cautions however against meaningless business jargon — words such as "ideaate" and "deliverables" that some workers resort to when trying to seem impressive. "Being completely vague will just make you sound stupid," she explains. "Bulls———is best when it has a kernel of truth in it."
The report was published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the full report is available at Using Abstract Language Signals Power (pdf)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @02:06AM
It is all about letting the audience fill in the blanks with whatever is most satisfying to them. If you don't give specifics then you can be all things to everyone. Fill in the details and for everything you pin down there are a hundred things you've eliminated. Catfishing works the same way -- the catfish is just a "skeleton" on which the catfishee projects all of their hopes and desires.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 21 2014, @02:58AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @03:07AM
probably:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264053/Catfishing-The-phenomenon-Internet-scammers-fabricate-online-identities-entire-social-circles-trick-people-romantic-relationships.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @03:03AM
,,,and both bad when you get the wrong number.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Monday July 21 2014, @07:49AM
Indeed it is. That's how Obama got elected the first time and why everyone was then so disappointed with him. People interpreted "change" however it suited them, and it meant different things to different people. Don't get me wrong, I wanted it all to work out, it's just that it was obvious from the high and vague rhetoric that everyone was going to be very disappointed when reality hit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday July 21 2014, @09:09AM
Except, when you are talking about an administration as dis-functional and yes, evil as the Bush II, change may be vague, but any change is still an improvement! Nowhere to go but towards more and better and less Cheney! So this is a bad example. What did you have in mind? See, sometimes vagueness just means you have know idea what you are talking about, or that you are a war criminal.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @10:34AM
you're actually under the impression that Obama changed things for the better?!
wow, just wow
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday July 21 2014, @01:07PM
To be fair, look at who Obama had to beat, and it becomes extremely clear why he won:
- Hillary Clinton: A known tool of the same bankers that caused most of the problems that Obama ended up dealing with.
- John Edwards: Cheated on his wife, and got caught. In the US, this typically disqualifies you from being elected local dogcatcher, much less president.
- Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson: For the most part, the reaction of the general public was "Who?"
- John McCain: As his first actual decision, chooses obviously idiotic Sarah Palin as his running mate.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.