2006 Ig Nobel Award
Harvard's Ig Nobel Award was given this week to a paper published last year. The paper proved that unnecessarily verbose and haughty writing lowers the author in the reader's opinion.
"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," said study author Daniel Oppenheimer.
"Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers' evaluations of the text and its author."
The article is available for purchase at:
Research Article
Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly
Daniel M. Oppenheimer *
Princeton University, USA
email: Daniel M. Oppenheimer (doppenhe@princeton.edu)
*Correspondence to Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Green Hall Room 2-S-8, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
Abstract
Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1-3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence. This relationship held regardless of the quality of the original essay, and irrespective of the participants' prior expectations of essay quality. The negative impact of complexity was mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 4 directly manipulated fluency and found that texts in hard to read fonts are judged to come from less intelligent authors. Experiment 5 investigated discounting of fluency. When obvious causes for low fluency exist that are not relevant to the judgement at hand, people reduce their reliance on fluency as a cue; in fact, in an effort not to be influenced by the irrelevant source of fluency, they over-compensate and are biased in the opposite direction. Implications and applications are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," said study author Daniel Oppenheimer.
"Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers' evaluations of the text and its author."
The article is available for purchase at:
Research Article
Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly
Daniel M. Oppenheimer *
Princeton University, USA
email: Daniel M. Oppenheimer (doppenhe@princeton.edu)
*Correspondence to Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Green Hall Room 2-S-8, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
Abstract
Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1-3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence. This relationship held regardless of the quality of the original essay, and irrespective of the participants' prior expectations of essay quality. The negative impact of complexity was mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 4 directly manipulated fluency and found that texts in hard to read fonts are judged to come from less intelligent authors. Experiment 5 investigated discounting of fluency. When obvious causes for low fluency exist that are not relevant to the judgement at hand, people reduce their reliance on fluency as a cue; in fact, in an effort not to be influenced by the irrelevant source of fluency, they over-compensate and are biased in the opposite direction. Implications and applications are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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posted by Stephens at
2:17 PM
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