301. Magic Words: What To Say To Get Your Way, with Dr. Jonah Berger

Welcome to episode 301 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Jonah Berger, Wharton professor and author of the new book Magic Words. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Jonah Berger, a Wharton School professor and internationally best selling author of Magic Words, Contagious, Invisible Influence and the catalyst. Dr. Berger is a world renowned expert on natural language processing, change, word of mouth influence, consumer behavior and why things catch on. He's published over 80 articles in top tier academic journals, teaches one of the world's most popular online courses, and popular outlets like the New York Times and Harvard Business Review often cover his work. He has keynoted hundreds of major conferences and events like south by Southwest and Cannes Lions, advises various early stage companies and consults for organizations like Apple Diagnostics, Google, Nike, Amazon, GE Moderna and the Gates Foundation. As you'll hear me gush a little in our conversation, Contagious is one of my favorite books. I haven't talked about it much on the show, definitely not as much as a more beautiful question written by Warren Berger. No relation to Jonah as far as I know. Just a coincidence that they both wrote books I absolutely love, which I was introduced to around the same time, and that they both look at the world in amazing new ways. And they both have the honor now of kicking off a set of a hundred episodes on the podcast as Warren Berger's episode was number 200 and is of course linked for you in the show notes. And as you know, this is episode 301 getting us moving forward. Jonah's going to share a little about Contagious in our conversation. Such a great book. If you haven't read it yet, I absolutely recommend it as well as his brand new book Magic Words, which is just that, magic. You know, I love little tips and tweaks that are inexpensive and make a huge difference. What about changing a single word, not even a whole word, just one or two letters in a single word and having a completely different outcome and outlook. It is possible and I'll let Jonah tell you all about it really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you Know that there are links in the show, notes for everything, including related past episodes, links to articles and books like Jonah's and Warren's. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 301. Now let's jump right in. Dr. Jonah Berger, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely. I am so excited and delighted to have you here with us today. This is actually going to be coming out as episode 301 of the Brainy Business. So you're kicking off, you know, a new centennial, I guess, of episodes coming out here. I always pick someone I'm really excited about and that I really love their work. And I'm just delighted to have you here with us today. For everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure. I am a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School there. I did my PhD at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In marketing, I study why things Catch on, how social influen works, and most recently, how natural language processing and other automated tools help us understand how to communicate more effectively. I've written a couple books in the space. My first was Contagious, why Things Catch on, and most recently a book called the Catalyst. And then very most recently, just a couple months ago, a new book called Magic Words.

So Contagious is a book that I got, if it wasn't in 2013 when it came out, it was very early 2014. And I remember seeing this book and reading it, and I watched a webinar or a talk that you had done, which was something that I had not done a lot of at that point. And I just loved everything. I also very much enjoyed reading that. I posted something where I was at a doctor's office reading Contagious, which felt really awesome to me, the title of that. But I just, again, have always been such a big fan of your work. And do you. Because we have an audience of people that are sharing content constantly. And now that things are that much more flooded with competing content, can you share just a few tips for people that are trying to stand out with the content that they're sharing and getting? You know, everybody wants to go viral, but you know what, can you share tips from that?

Yeah. So it's a long book and so I can't boil it all down into one or two takeaways, but I would say a couple of things. I think the big thing is to understand why people share right you know, often communicators, whether they are small business owners, whether they are politicians, whether they are leaders, whether they are doctors, whoever they may be, think a lot about the message they want to communicate, but less about the audience that they are communicating to. You know, we have a sense of, oh, we want our message to go viral because we want a lot of people to see it or because we don't have a big advertising budget. But if we don't understand the audience we're hoping that's going to share our stuff, it's going to be really unlikely that they pass it on. So we need to think about less about ourselves and the product or service that we are selling and more about the audience and why that audience might want to pass something along. You know, I don't have to tell you about or your audience about the value of word of mouth. Right. We all, we all know it's more effective than traditional advertising, that it's more trusted, that it's more targeted and it's less expensive. But to make it work, we have to understand why people share. And that's really where the science and the six key steps from Contagious come in.

Awesome. Well, thank you for indulging me with that piece and for everyone. No question, when you order Contagious or Sorry, when you get Magic Words definitely get Contagious, you're going to love them both. I really enjoyed reading Magic Words as well. And as I mentioned to you, I have all the questions and not all the time, but one of my favorite things from this that I implemented immediately is the nouns versus verbs and asking my kids to be helpers instead of if they want to help. So while you should probably, I guess, give an intro into the book itself, I feel like that's such a key insight that really has stuck with me from reading the book. If we want to kind of start there too.

Oh, sure. Happy to. You know, I don't have to tell you that we all use language all the time, right? You and I are speaking using language. Language or how people pitch prospects and clients, they're how they present to colleagues and peers. Even our own private thoughts rely on language. The way we talk to our kids and our friends and our spouses rely on language. We write emails and basically everything we do in some way, shape or form touches on language. But while we spend a lot of time thinking about the ideas we want to communicate. So, you know, I'm getting up and making a presentation, what I want to talk about, what are the main points I want to Hit or, you know, if I'm selling a product or service or an idea, what are, what are the pitch, what is the attributes that I want to get across? We think a lot less about the specific words we use to communicate those ideas. And unfortunately, that's a mistake because it turns out that subtle shifts in the language we use can have a big impact. And so since you mentioned sort of actions and identities, I'll dive into that one as an example. You know, a number of years ago, some researchers at Stanford wanted to see how, how to use persuasion more, more effectively, right? How to get people to do something that they should do, but they might not necessarily right away want to do because it's not easy, because it's difficult, because it's not the most. And, and that's a challenge that most of us have many times, right? Whether we're trying to get our kids to clean up the living room, whether we're trying to get a client to sign on to an idea, we're trying to turn a prospect into a client. Often it's something that is good for people, that is effective, but we can't, we can't persuade them. How can we do that? And so they went to a local preschool and they asked four and five year old kids with help cleaning up the classroom. There were books everywhere, there were crayons, there were, you know, overturned things. And they asked the kids for help cleaning up. Not surprisingly, the kids were not too keen on that. Right. It's not, not kids favorite thing is clean up. But they wondered whether language could help, whether subtle shifts in the language they used in their request might shape whether or not kids said yes. And so for some of the kids, they tried the traditional sort of approach, hey, can you, can you please help clean up? But for other people, rather than asking to help clean up, they asked them to be a helper and clean up. Now, the difference between help and helper is quite small. It's only a couple of letters, right? Adding an er at the end of help. Yet those couple letters led to about a 30% increase in people's likelihood of helping. And you might say, well, that's cute, that's kids. And in classrooms, that's great for my kids at home. But what about work, right? I mean, what about getting adults to do consequential things? Can language help with that too? And so more recently, there was a study where researchers saw whether they could use a similar approach to get people to turn out to vote. We all know that we should vote. We all know that It's a good idea, it's the right thing to do, but we don't always make time to do it. Could language help? And so for some people, they sent them a note saying, hey, will you please go vote? And for other people, they said, hey, would you be a voter? Now again, the difference between vote and voters is quite small. In this case, it's only a letter adding an R at the end. Yet that additional letter led to about a 15% increase in people's likelihood of turning out to vote. And so one question is, why, right? Why is helper more effective than help? Why is voter more effective than vote? And the reason, as you, as you sort of laid out a little bit already, is it has to do with the difference between actions and identities, right? We all know that we should take certain actions, you know, eat healthy, vote, help others do these things that we know we should do, but we don't always want to do them, right, because it's effortful, it's difficult, not the most fun. And so we try, we try not to do them. But what we care more about than specific actions are desired identities. We all want to see ourselves as smart. Maybe we want to see ourselves as athletic. Maybe we want to see ourselves as a little bit healthy, a little bit knowledgeable about a certain thing or a certain space. And so if actions allow us to claim those desired identities, well, now we're much more likely to take those actions, right? So if helping is just helping, okay. But if helping is an opportunity to show myself and others that I am a helper, well, now I'm much more likely to do it. Or similarly, voting, yeah, voting is just fine. But if voting is an opportunity to show myself and others that I am a voter, I'm more likely to do it. And so by turning actions into identities, we can make people more likely to take the actions we want them to take to claim those desired identities. In fact, it even works in the opposite direction. Take a negative thing, right? Losing is bad, but being branded a loser would be even, even worse. You know, nobody wants to cheat on a test, but being branded a cheater would be even worse. And so research finds that when cheating, the act of cheating would make you a cheater. Well, now people are much less likely to do it. Why? Because they don't want to see themselves as holding that undesired identity. It's almost like that old anti littering campaign, don't be a litter bug, right? They don't just say, don't litter, they say, don't be a Litter bug because, well now, hold on. Littering would make me hold this undesired identity and so now I'm less likely to do it.

Right. Whereas you can kind of write it off if you like. No, it was just this one time, you know, I just happened to litter this one time. I'm not a litter bug. Right.

It doesn't say something about who I am. Yes.

Right. Yeah, I just love that and definitely can say, you know, I'm starting with my almost 2 year old of like, you want to be a helper every time.

It's interesting, you know, when I, when I recently I was doing lunch at our 5, almost 6 year olds class and they had a little note in there that say, hey, we are readers. And I thought it was really interesting because you could say, you know, we love reading, we like to read, but we are readers. It makes it an identity. Right. And when kids say, wait, I am a reader. Well, what does it mean to be a reader? Well, to be a reader I have to read, I have to engage in the activity, I have to do the work to get there. And so it's not just for, you know, changing others minds or persuading others or getting others to take certain actions. The same idea can even be used for ourselves. Whether it's motivating ourselves or encouraging ourselves to do something. Subtle shifts in the language you use can, can, can have a big impact.

Definitely. Yeah, no, I, yeah, kids stuff. If it works on the kids, it can work on all the people. Another aspect that really been focusing on recently on the podcast is looking at the value of metaphor and looking at, we've been talking about cognitive semiotics and more general semiotics. And so the section you have on when you should go concrete and when you should go abstract I thought was really interesting as well. Can you expand a little bit on some of that?

Sure. So maybe I'll start with a little bit of a puzzle. And that is, you know, many times as communicators we want to not just listen. We know that listening is good. We want to show other people that we listen. We want to show them that we heard them. And so one question is kind of how can we use language to do that? Not just to actually listen, but to show others that we heard what they were saying. And we invested this question, investigated it in an interesting context. We've all had bad customer service experiences. I had a bad experience a few years ago. You know, I get off a frustrating call with customer service. I was actually in an Uber at the time. You know, the driver made some comment about customer service. I said, it must be a tough job. He said, actually, you know, his daughter works in customer service, and she's so good at it now, she trains other people to do it more effectively. And I heard that. And I said, man, what does she do that makes customer service more effective, make customers more satisfied, right? Because for most of us, you know, we want to get on that flight right after hours. We want to find our bag, we want to get the refund faster. It's the solving the problem we care about. But one question is, well, controlling for that, right? Obviously, the problem needs to be solved. Could certain ways of talking about it, solving it, be more effective? And so we did a study recently where we worked with both a large airline and a large online retailer, and we analyzed hundreds of customer service calls. So interactions, all sorts of things. And we looked at how the language the agents use shaped customer satisfaction. So controlling for everything else, whether it's all solve the problem or not, and this and that. Does the language they use have. Have an impact? We found something quite interesting, which is that agents that spoke more concretely that increased customer satisfaction, customers were about 25% more satisfied with the interaction, actually about 35% more likely or bought 35% more stuff after the call than. Than folks that hadn't been talked to with more. More concrete language. And so to make concrete language concrete, because I realize it's a bit of an abstract concept, imagine the difference between two things. Imagine agent. You're talking to an agent. They said, oh, your refund will be there soon versus your money will be there tomorrow, right? Your money will be there tomorrow. Money is much more concrete than refund. We can see it. We can imagine what it looks like. We get a we picture, maybe a green bill or something like that. Tomorrow is much more concrete than soon. Certain words are more concrete than others, right? If I said words like car or table or water or tree, those are things you can touch and smell and have a sense of what they're like. You can imagine them in your mind. Contrast that with logistics or leadership or insight, right? Those are also wonderful, important words, but they're much more abstract. And so even though, as we talked about a couple of seconds ago, even the same things can be talked about more concretely and more abstractly, right? If I'm talking about that money coming back, there's a way to say it more concretely. If I'm a salesperson, there's ways to use language more concretely rather than abstractly. And so by, by using more concrete language, we make people feel like we heard what they said. Right. Because it's really easy as a customer service agent or a leader or a member of a team, just to sort of stick with the same phrases again and again. Right. Because it's easy. But by using concrete language. Right. We show them that we heard what they said, we cared enough to listen, and we understood, and are going to take action. And so concrete language can be a great way to show listening and increase positive perceptions as a result. All.

Yeah, that it's such a small. As with all of it, it's such a small shift and I love that it makes such a big difference. That example particularly resonated with me in reading the book as well because many, many moons ago I actually was an agent in an airline call center.

It's a tough job, you know, it's not your fault, but people are calling every day and they're, they're upset. But what I think is interesting about it though is it is a big case where language matters. You know, concrete language, an abstract language. We've done some follow up work even on pauses. Right. So, you know, think about when an agent is explaining something, do they pause during it or not? And it turns out that pausing a bit more encourages customers to say, yeah, okay, to agree to essentially what's called an ascent in linguistics. And as a result, they're more satisfied with the call afterwards because they spent that time when the person was pausing agreeing with them. And at the end they go, I agreed with them a bunch. I must, I must like them a little bit more. And so it's really interesting to think about strategies where we can use language to increase our impact. And you know, there's, there's certainly a variety of ways to do that.

Yes, I, I know for me it was, you know, even the most difficult people, it's like there's an opportunity here for them to not leave angry. Right. That was, and I was in the area where it was, you know, people that had an eight hour flight delay and, you know, or whatever. And, and yeah, so, yeah, interesting to see that approach. So like I said, that really resonated. Oh, good, I'm glad. One other area I would love for you to touch on before, before you leave us today is the. I think one aspect that is just so obviously tied for people at work has to do with the linguistic similarity and matching linguistic styles at work, as well as some opportunities for where it makes Sen, you know, kind of stand out and be different. I was Thinking about presentations, you talked about it with music. But being a really great speaker, having great content that's slightly different, could be really valuable there for people as well.

Yeah. And so just stepping back for a second, there are six areas that the book talks about. Six key types of language, six key types of magic words. And I put them in a framework to help sort of make it more digestible. It's the Speak framework. The S is the language of similarity and difference. The P is the language of posing questions. The. The E is the language of emotion. The A is the language of agency and identity. The first C is the language of concreteness, which we just touched on. And the second C is the language of confidence. And so each of these are a different type of language. In each chapter, I talk some about what that type of language is and how it can be applied. So we just talked about concreteness, for example. But there are many ways concreteness can. Can be applied. It helps people understand things, and it helps show listening. But concreteness can also be something you don't want to use all the time, Right. There are certainly times better to speak more abstractly. Research shows, for example, that entrepreneurs that are trying to raise funding, if their pitch is a little bit more abstract, they actually raise more money. Why? Because it's more difficult to understand exactly what they're doing. But it seems like the market's bigger, right? So if I say, hey, you know, I'm pitching Uber, for example, you know, many years ago, when they were getting started, you could describe it as a company that gets you from point A to point B, gets you from the home to the office or vice versa. Have a very good sense of what it does. But it sounds like a little bit of a niche business, or not the hugest business. If you say, and said, hey, it's a transportation solution, well, suddenly now, I don't know exactly what it does, but it seems much bigger, Right. It seems like it can touch on a variety of different things. And so each chapter both talks about kind of these different types of language, what they are, and then, like any tool, how to use them, when we should be more concrete and when we might want to be less so. For, for example, and so you mentioned the language of similarity and difference. And. And this is again where first we have to understand the concept and then how. How to use it. Most of the book starts with sort of simpler ideas, individual words. So the chapter on agency and identity, for example, talks about shifting actions to identities, talks about, you know, having time versus making time, or can't versus don't. These are just individual words that we can change and, and have a good bit of impact. Same with the chapter on confidence. Right? Starts out relatively simple similarities of bit broader. Right? You can use similar or different language to others a variety of different ways. It's not just about one word or one type of word. It's about your linguistic style. Right? Do you speak similarly to someone else? And there's a bunch of neat research that shows this actually has an important impact. So when they look at things like speed daters, for example, or people that are working together, they find that people that speak more similarly tend to be more likely to become friends and speak speak more similarly as a result of that friendship. Or people that are on a speed date that speak more similarly to someone else are more likely to want to go on a second date. Similarity suggests that we're part of the same tribe, that we're similar, we have some kinship to one another which can increase affiliation and increase liking. There's also some neat work on this in a more workplace context where they look at not just how similar language is to one other person, like you might be on a date or a getting to know you conversation, but how similar you are to the other people in the firm as a whole. Right? Certain firms have certain ways of talking or different language that they use. And, and what this research shows is we can predict how likely you are to get fired versus promoted versus leave the company for a better opportunity elsewhere based on how similar your language is to your colleagues. Right? So when you come into the firm, you don't know yet know know the norms of the firm, but once you've been there a little while, people that end up doing better end up in some sense enculturating to the language of the company. Right? Speaking in similar ways to their colleagues, using language in similar ways and, and not just, you know, domain specific words, but even things like I versus we versus you or the versus and versus you know, using language, adopting the, the culture in some sense of their firm, but the linguistic culture, people who do that well tend to be more likely to be promoted. People that don't do it as well, that have more trouble sort of enculturating to the language of the firm, it ends up being a signal that they're more likely to be fired, that they're not as dialed in, that they're not as matching with the firm and so they end up being more likely to leave. And note by the way, that it's not that it's something that you either have or you don't. Right. It's not that you either come in and you are similar. You aren't. Everyone comes in being dissimilar. The question is how you change over time. Right. The folks that are able to change over time end up doing better in the firm. The folks that aren't able to change over time end up doing less well and even more interesting. What happens is once people have inculturated, what happens next, Right? So take two people, both of which were able to adopt the sort of language style of the firm, but then some people, one of those two people doesn't do it as much in the future, Right? They were able to, but they stopped doing it. That actually tends to be a really good indication that someone's going to quit, that they're going to leave the firm to go somewhere else, that they were able to figure out what the norms are. They were able to match them, but they no longer care, in part because it's evidence that they're going to leave. And so linguistic similarity not only helps us build relationships and build connections, but can predict what's going to happen in the future with something as important as work. And we've even used these similar ideas to look at content and how to design content and whether you want your content to be similar and different from others. You can imagine sometimes people say a book or a movie, the plot moves really quickly. Or they may say the plot moves more slowly. That's talking about kind of how different the language of different chunks of that content is to, is to one another. And so we examine when it's beneficial to be more similar and when it's beneficial to be more, more different. And so there's lots of different ways to use language if we understand its power.

Absolutely. And as I've already said, and I'm sure everyone is feeling this, like there's so, so, so much value within magic words. And it's really applicable, as you've heard, Jonah has been speaking about the different, like, very specific examples of do this here or don't do that there. The book is full of it and it's so, so helpful. So, Jonah, for everyone who now is so excited to learn more from you, to be following you or get in touch, you know, what's their, their best next step, of course, then to get their books.

Sure. Yeah. You know, I think, I think the first thing I would say is if you're listening and you find these ideas interesting, there's a whole bunch of free resources on my website. So, you know, maybe you're interested but you're not yet sure if the book's for you or maybe you just want to learn a bit more. There's a one pager on the Speak framework. There's a guide for changing a boss's or a colleague's mind. Whole bunch of resources to think about when and how we can use language more effectively. And that's just Jonah berger. So my name.com resources the book is obviously available wherever books are sold and people can also find me at J1Berger on either Twitter or LinkedIn.

Wonderful. We will of course have links for all of it in the show notes and I just want to say thank you so much again for joining us joining me today. It was really delightful to chat with you.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you again to Dr. Jonah Berger for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, as I mentioned in our conversation, one of the pieces that really stuck with me from this book is the transition from a verb to a noun. Making something a piece of someone's identity can make such a big difference in how we and they they perceive it. I like to run. I'm running. I am a runner. Such a tiny tweak, but such a huge difference. How can your brand be more of an identity for your customers? Where can you find the opportunity that they can be a part of your brand or that the brand can be a part of them? In two weeks, in episode 304, I'm refreshing my conversation with Dominic Packer on the Power of Us, leading into a new interview with Marcus Collins on his book for the Culture. Both of those books and conversations are very much tied in with this type of insight, and you're going to want to be sure to catch those when they air very soon. For anyone who isn't yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now's a great time to do so, so you can be sure you don't miss any of those awesome episodes. Some other great insights from Magic Words include things you've heard me share on the show before, like the transition from can't to don't. Interesting side note, an original author of some of that research is going to be here in a few weeks as well, Dr. Vanessa Patrick, to discuss her new book, the Power of Saying no. So many great books and conversations happening right now, as always, and I'm so excited to share them all with you. I just can't stop talking about them anyway, so one thing Jonah and I didn't really get a chance to talk about today is how he's incorporated technology, AI and machine learning and more to be able to analyze massive amounts of data to get the insights they share in their research. And his books, analyzing thousands or millions of emails, songs, posts in online forums or review sites, tweets, whatever it is in a way that allows them to remove some human bias and getting results so much faster has resulted in really cool findings that I think likely would have been been missed or quite frankly too costly to produce to get to the level of insight Jonah and his teams have been able to unlock. It is such a great demonstration of how people can ask great questions and put in thoughtful planning to leverage technology. And he talks about it quite a bit in the book, not necessarily how to code or anything like that, but about some of the thought processes and other stuff that I think can really help you to look at the possibilities for you and your work in a fresh new way. Whatever your industry, area of expertise, job role, tenure or anything else, Magic Words will help you to see all your language and conversation in a new way. Does it matter if your pitch uses abstract language or concrete? Is one more likely to get you funding? There is. Which songs are more likely to be hits? Is there a way to know? You know there is. Can you look at the language and how an employee writes their emails and predict who's most most likely to thrive and who's likely to leave? There is the insights into all this and so much more can be found within Magic Words. And as you know, there's absolutely a link in the show notes so you can get your copy as well as any of Jonah's other books, including Contagious and all the other great past episodes and articles and things mentioned in the show today. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and at the brainy business braininess.com 301 and thank you again to Dr. Jonah Berger for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.