VIVID LANGUAGE
You have to give a speech. So you load it with vivid images--colorful language, picturesque examples, provocative metaphors--hoping that your resplendent monologue will make a lasting impression on the audience.
But that may be exactly wrong. Messages containing vivid images are actually less memorable and less persuasive than their blander counterparts. This is especially the case when listeners are free to decide whether to tune in or not.
"People's minds start wandering," says Alice Eagly, Ph.D. "They just start thinking about the vivid images themselves and miss the larger points."
Eagly and a Purdue University colleague played one of two versions of a tape-recorded editorial to 171 subjects. One was an opinion laced with vivid images, the other a straight version of the same opinion. One group of subjects was explicitly instructed to listen carefully to the information in the message. A second group heard the recording in a seemingly incidental way.
When people were compelled to pay attention, vividness had little effect on memory of the message, its contents, or persuasiveness. But when subjects were free to pay attention or not vivid messages placed a poor second to pallid palaver.
