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“You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas
Creating resonance between people and ideas is a central goal of communication. Historically, attempts to understand the factors that promote resonance have focused on altering the content of a message. Here we identify an additional route to evoking resonance that is embedded in the structure of la...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733818/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33229556 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010939117 |
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author | Orvell, Ariana Kross, Ethan Gelman, Susan A. |
author_facet | Orvell, Ariana Kross, Ethan Gelman, Susan A. |
author_sort | Orvell, Ariana |
collection | PubMed |
description | Creating resonance between people and ideas is a central goal of communication. Historically, attempts to understand the factors that promote resonance have focused on altering the content of a message. Here we identify an additional route to evoking resonance that is embedded in the structure of language: the generic use of the word “you” (e.g., “You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes”). Using crowd-sourced data from the Amazon Kindle application, we demonstrate that passages that people highlighted—collectively, over a quarter of a million times—were substantially more likely to contain generic-you compared to yoked passages that they did not highlight. We also demonstrate in four experiments (n = 1,900) that ideas expressed with generic-you increased resonance. These findings illustrate how a subtle shift in language establishes a powerful sense of connection between people and ideas. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7733818 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77338182020-12-21 “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas Orvell, Ariana Kross, Ethan Gelman, Susan A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences Creating resonance between people and ideas is a central goal of communication. Historically, attempts to understand the factors that promote resonance have focused on altering the content of a message. Here we identify an additional route to evoking resonance that is embedded in the structure of language: the generic use of the word “you” (e.g., “You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes”). Using crowd-sourced data from the Amazon Kindle application, we demonstrate that passages that people highlighted—collectively, over a quarter of a million times—were substantially more likely to contain generic-you compared to yoked passages that they did not highlight. We also demonstrate in four experiments (n = 1,900) that ideas expressed with generic-you increased resonance. These findings illustrate how a subtle shift in language establishes a powerful sense of connection between people and ideas. National Academy of Sciences 2020-12-08 2020-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7733818/ /pubmed/33229556 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010939117 Text en Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Social Sciences Orvell, Ariana Kross, Ethan Gelman, Susan A. “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title | “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title_full | “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title_fullStr | “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title_full_unstemmed | “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title_short | “You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
title_sort | “you” speaks to me: effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas |
topic | Social Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733818/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33229556 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010939117 |
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