Daniel Pink shares research showing people judge rhymed statements as more accurate than non-rhymed ones with identical meaning. When participants read "Woes unite foes" versus "Woes unite enemies," the rhymed version seemed truer, even though they denied rhyme swayed them. The effect comes from processing fluency: rhymes are easier for the brain to absorb, making pitches more persuasive.
Pitches that rhyme are often more effective than pitches that don't. Now this seems peculiar, but there's some great research out of Lafayette College and here's what they did. They had groups of participants and they divided them into 2 different groups. One group got a list of proverbs that rhymed. Woes unite foes. The other group got a list of proverbs that said the exact same thing but didn't rhyme. Woes unite enemies. Surprisingly, the people who read the pitches that rhymed deemed them far more accurate assessments of the human condition than the people who read proverbs that didn't rhyme. And when the researchers went back to ask them, well, did the fact that it rhymed make a difference to you? They said, no, of course not. But here's what happened. Rhymes increase what's called processing fluency. They go down easier. And when things— things that increase processing fluency take just a little bit more. People absorb them just a little bit more powerfully. If you look at how kids learn how to read and learn how to speak, it's nursery rhymes. That's how we process things.
