Stanford researchers analyzed 272,000 comments on Reddit to determine what makes text persuasive versus inflammatory. The decisive factor was often a simple choice of pronouns.
Posts using “we” and “our” saw higher engagement and fewer moderator removals because they signaled a collective experience. However, posts using “you” and “your” were perceived as aggressive and less trustworthy because they placed responsibility (and often blame) onto the reader. This affects how we can approach scripts or style of speaking in our episodes and shows.
In this micro-episode:
- The link between pronouns and online engagement
- Why “you” creates distance while “we” builds community
- A simple rule for when to use collective vs. direct language
Resources:
The reddit study: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/yes-we-can-swapping-pronouns-can-make-messages-more-persuasive
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Transcript
WEBVTT
::So a couple of researchers from Stanford, they looked at 272,000 comments on Reddit across political
subreddits. And they studied what made those posts and comments persuasive and what made other posts and
comments inflammatory. So this was a pretty big study and they also ran follow-ups on it as well. And what
they learned was the difference between
::Using the words you and your or the words we and our in the text made a huge difference about how those posts
were perceived. The posts that used we our language they were more likely to have engagement on them to be
shared they weren't censored as much by subreddit moderators but if they use the words you and your they
were perceived as much more aggressive even if the context and the meaning was the same.
::same as posts that use the other we our language. But the difference here is by using those you and your
pronouns it puts the responsibility for whatever is happening in that discussion onto the other person.
And this is particularly true if the context in general is some form of disagreement. Overall it's
generally less inclusive and that affects the level of persuasion
::and even trust that's involved in that exchange. So we can learn from this. When we're working on scripts or
how we phrase things in various contexts in our episodes, this is something that we really want to think
about. Like the word you works well for like positive affirmations or direct advice like you can do this,
you got what it takes, you're capable. And we works better when we're discussing challenges or problems.
::or really difficult things. Like we all struggle in this and we're all kind of figuring this out together.
The listener on your episode will process we as more of an invitation to something that's shared like a
collective experience. Maybe it's a burden that we all share or a difficulty that we can kind of work on
together as a community would. And this small change in how we word things can really adjust the messaging.
::I'm Jen DeHaan. This is the Credibility Minute. Find more episodes and get in touch with me at
stereoforest.com slash minute.