People Don’t Believe What You Say? Heed These 5 Biases

How do you write so people believe what you say? What verbal cues do you give people to signal—psychologically—that you’re telling the truth?

Offering plenty of evidence helps, of course: specifics that add up give you credibility. Expertise matters, too: Are you a bona fide authority?

But how you use language matters as well. If you write in a way to embed five psychological cues in your work, you’re more likely to convince your audience that you’re telling the truth.

1. Simplify Concepts

People prefer simpler explanations; they judge them as more probable and more satisfying than complex ones.[i] If you strip what you say to its essence—boil it down—people are more likely to believe you.

The preference for simplicity helps to explain the popularity of pithy proverbs. For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”[ii] Emerson knew how to polish truths into compact kernels. Here again: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”[iii]

To be sure, your audience may at times find complex explanations more satisfying, typically when a cascade of cause and effect begs for elaboration.[iv]

But as a rule, people are biased to favor simplicity: They judge as more truthful simple kernels of information, not messy mouthfuls.

Notice Emerson’s simplicity one more time, as he makes a point about psychology: “Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”[v]

The lesson: Refrain from adding too much flesh to the bones of your message—and brush away stray hairs of embellishment.

2. Word It Simply

While you’re at it, lean on the power of simple words. If you make what you write easy to process, people interpret it as more truthful, the same as when you make your concept easy to understand.[vi]

So much so that experiments show that people who read rhyming aphorisms—which trip so easily off the tongue—perceive them as more truthful than nonrhyming ones saying the same thing.[vii]

Why did Getting to Yes become a classic book on negotiation? Because, in part, the authors wrote with simple words and constructions: “Like it or not, you are a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life. You discuss a raise with your boss. You try to agree with a stranger on a price for his house. Two lawyers try to settle a lawsuit arising from a car accident.”[viii] That's 46 words, five sentences, simple syntax, fewer than 10 words per sentence; the book delivers simplicity you trust. (Learn more about simplicity in my earlier post.)

3. Tell a Story

Stories come across as truthful in ways plain words do not. Research doesn’t address the “perceived truthfulness” of stories, but it does show that, when people are “transported” by them, their beliefs shift into line with those of the stories’ characters.[ix]

Take this start to an article in CPA Journal: “In 2014, Paul Somers was fired from Digital Realty for reporting to senior management that his supervisor eliminated some internal controls, in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Instead of filing a complaint with the SEC within 180 days of the alleged retaliation, Somers waited seven months before suing his employer.…”[x]

A recent paper argues that using a story like this reduces people’s “resistance” to accepting what is said. When readers recognize a story beginning—as opposed to, say, an essay—they refrain from impulsively taking issue with the message. This is especially true if the story features a single main character.[xi]

In the case of accountant Somers, we later learn he faced retaliation—and we are more likely to believe the author’s advice that whistleblowers make out better if they talk to lawyers before reporting misdeeds. Couching that message in a story puts readers in a more receptive frame of mind.

4. Invoke Social Proof

“Social proof” also gives your writing the ring of truth. If you show people that the tribe they belong to is aligned with what you’re saying, they’re more likely to believe what you say. Studies dating to the work of psychologist Robert Cialdini in the 1980s show as much.[xii]

Research, again, doesn’t address social proof’s effect on truthfulness, per se. But it shows that offering evidence of what similar others believe makes it more likely that people will find what you say credible.

Persuasion Essential Reads

How to Persuade Without Being a Creep

Why Intelligent People Fall for Bad Arguments

In one experiment, researchers in Europe described an appealing renewable-energy project in Spain to two groups of paid student participants. Both groups were asked to donate to the project by forgoing some of their €15 payment. Only the second group was told, “Most participants [before you] donated at least €4. Over 30 percent of participants donated €7 or more.”[xiii]

The results? The first (control) group gave on average €2.7 to the renewables project, the second group gave €3.6. In other words, the second (social proof) group, primed with the how prior participants responded, gave 35 percent more.[xiv]

5. Repeat (and Vary)

I’ve written before about the power of repetition, especially its effect on processing fluency. People infer that concepts and claims, once repeated, are more truthful. Researchers documented this effect first in 1977. They’ve replicated it many times since.[xv]

The power of repetition comes from priming. If people encounter a word, phrase, or concept early on, they process it faster when repeated. This accelerated processing is interpreted by readers and listeners as a signal that what’s being said is more truthful.

This defies logic, of course. Still, people at every level of intelligence follow this heuristic.

To illustrate using a simple experiment, researchers had people read lists of 50 trivia statements, some true, some not. Some of the statements were repeated 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9 times. The more they were repeated, the more people believed the statements. The biggest jump in perceived truthfulness came after just the first repetition.[xvi]

Does this echo your everyday experience? Does it sound like it might have a dark side as well? Leaving aside ethics concerns, however, one elegant way to use repetition is bookending: Repeat (and perhaps vary) the words and phrases used early on at the end of your work.

Do that along with using the other four cues to truth to assure your credibility. It’s up to you to signal to people that they need not start counting their spoons—that, instead, you’re genuinely trustworthy.