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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: 3, Funny) by gringer on Monday July 21 2014, @05:35AM
I agree with the general tone of this article, but feel like there are errors on a few points. In particular, the method of presentation is lacking in a few areas, the grammar used is pitched at an inappropriate level for the expected reader, and the use of numbers (instead of words) alters the way in which the article is interpreted.
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