What's more persuasive?
"I feel..." or "I think..."?
Believe it or not there's a right answer to that question.
Two researchers, Nicole D. Mayer and Zakary L. Tormala from Stanford, ran an experiment
where they intended to reveal the answer to this question.
What's more persuasive?
"I think..." or "I feel..."?
You may think who cares but when you listen to and greet people regularly you'll notice
that those two phrases are omni present.
So what's the answer?
I'll reveal that in a second but first let me tell you about the experiment.
Here is what went down the researchers got together a group of people and showed them
one of two messages.
one message said, my feelings about blood donation and then it opened with the line
"I feel that donating blood is one of the most important contributions I can make to
society" and then it went on to make several other arguments using the feel frame.
Now the other message was essentially identical except instead of using feeling it used thinking.
so it said my thoughts about blood donation and it open with, "I think that blood donation
is the most important contribution I can make to society" it went on to frame the remainder
of the arguments using "I think..."
as well.
Of course people didn't see the thinking message and the feeling message, they only saw one
of them.
So what happened?
it turns out that people who are more emotional are more persuaded by the feeling message
where as people who are more cognitive are more persuaded by the thinking message.
But here's where it got interesting, they ran another experiment they found that when
it comes to thinking and feeling there's a gender difference as well.
They found that women were more persuaded by ads that used feeling where as men were
more persuaded by ads that use thinking.
Now, what does this mean to you?
First, the data shows when talking to a woman you should use "I feel..."
When talking to a man you should use "I think..."
I know that's a broad generalization but that's what the data shows and I suspect it's worth
testing.
That said if you are communicating with someone you've spoken with before you likely know
whether they're a data person or a gut instinct person.
Second, if you're writing a sales page or you're writing ad copy know your audience.
If you think they are feelers or you feel they are thinkers use the words that are most
appropriate.
as an example I ran one webinar where I was a pretty, pretty, pretty sure that ninety
five percent of the listeners were women and in hindsight I should've used "I feel..."
as opposed to "I think..." because it would've worked better.
Me?
I'm a thinker so I default to "I think..." but going forward I'm going to be more conscious
of the words I choose and I believe you should be as well.
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T-Rex arms you know what this is?
This is the Mario Lopez from dance off with the thumb in the pocket.
I used to get so mad when I used to see it but now I understand to have that there you
know