From: Fast Company
THE SECRET TO SOUNDING SMART? USING SIMPLE LANGUAGE
Fast Company:
It might sound counterintuitive, but using four-syllable textbook words to demonstrate your smarts will actually make you appear less capable.
“So often, our intuitions about what will impress others are wrong,” says Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He led a series of studies on how the use of language can make one appear more or less intelligent.
…
The reason for this phenomenon, Oppenheimer explains, is that the ease of processing information is strongly associated with positive qualities such as confidence, intelligence, and capability. “To the extent that you use long words, you make it more disfluent to read your prose, people will judge you disfavorably,” says Oppenheimer
Read the whole story: Fast Company
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