Are You An Effective Communicator?
Are You An Effective Communicator?
by Nick Michelioudakis
I have to confess I was completely blown away when I first came across this test (Fagan 2016 – p. 5). Being educators, most of us think we know a thing or two about communication, but how true is this? Well, here is your chance to test your intuitions (and, perhaps those of your students!). Look at the statements below. Are they true or false? Please make a note of your answers:
- If you want to change someone’s behaviour, you need to change their attitude first.
- For a message to work, people need to either like it or like the sender.
- Most of the time, the way people respond to a message is well thought out.
- People constantly make decisions about which messages are worth attending to.
- The recipient of the message has to process it consciously if it is to be effective.
- If you want your message to have an impact, you need to persuade the recipient.
- Rational information is the best way to make your message effective.
- It is much better if someone reads a message than if they think it inside their head.
- The more information you include in your message, the more persuasive it will be.
- It is best if you avoid negative emotions in your messages.
What is it that all these statements share in common? Well, they all sound logical – they chime in with our intuitions.
They are plausible.
And they are wrong.
Incredible though it may sound, both research by social psychologists and the testing of hypotheses through trial and error on the part of marketing practitioners has disproved each and every one of them. Let’s take a look at the truth behind each of the ten statements.
If you want to change someone’s behaviour, you need to change their attitude first.
No. In fact, in most cases the reverse applies. We start doing something and gradually we come to convince ourselves that ‘if we are doing it, it must be right’. As professor Dan Ariely says ‘We line up behind ourselves’ (Video 1). For many, if not most things, attitudes come from actions, which lead to observations, which lead to explanations that lead to beliefs. Incredibly, ‘the cart of behaviour often gets before the horse of attitude’ (McRaney 2013 – p. 60).
For a message to work, people need to either like it or like the sender.
No. In fact there are many examples from the world of advertising of very annoying campaigns which were nevertheless memorable (perhaps precisely because they were annoying) and they led to a rise in both brand recognition and in sales. A case in point is the ‘Go Compare’ series of ads which was voted the most annoying on TV back in 2010 (Video 2), but when the company decided to ‘kill’ the main character (in another funny ad) their figures plummeted (Fagan 2016 – p. 2).
Most of the time, the way people respond to a message is well thought out.
No. Countless experiments have demonstrated that we tend to have a gut reaction to things. In one study, Israelis were presented with proposals put forward by the Palestinian Authority, but they were told they were actually those of the Israeli side. They loved them (Cohen 2003). Similarly, Democrats were tricked into supporting a very restrictive welfare proposal when they were told it was endorsed by their party (ibid). The moral is clear: gut responses come first – logic often provides post-hoc rationalisations.
People constantly make decisions about which messages are worth attending to.
No. These days we are so overwhelmed by information and messages from all sides (Fagan 2016 – p. 9), that our default response is to screen everything out. As one writer so memorably put it, 'The most popular sentiment toward anything isn't love or hate - it is indifference' (Bhargava 2012, - p. 29). The effective communicator is the one who can ‘cut through the clutter and zero in on the emotions or facts or events that really matter’ (Buckingham 2005 – p. 26).
The recipient of the message has to process it consciously if it is to be effective.
No. For instance, in the field of advertising, people always felt that it ‘worked only if people were paying conscious attention to an ad […but in fact it works] through 'low involvement processing'’ (Ferrier 2014 – p. 5). Today, most advertising relies on positive associations. Effective communicators want to connect their message with something positive. In marketing this is often nature, high status, celebrity, or something cute. The spectacularly successful Evian ads are a perfect example. There is no direct message to be processed consciously – the implicit association is that drinking Evian can give you the energy levels of a baby (Video 3).
If you want your message to have an impact, you need to persuade the recipient.
No. Persuasion is time-consuming and more importantly, people often resist our attempts to shift their opinions. In his book ‘Think Again’ Adam Grant makes a strong case against an over-reliance on overt persuasion attempts (Grant 2021 – pp. 102-105). Moreover, even if people eventually agree with us, they may do so grudgingly. Who would want that? Rory Sutherland puts this best: ‘Most of the time we try to persuade people - the idea is to seduce them! Persuasion is a c**p form of seduction’ (Video 4).
Rational information is the best way to make your message effective.
No. Emotion trumps reason any day. Research shows that ads which make use of emotions are twice as effective than ones which rely on logic (31% vs 16% [Ferrier 2014 – p. 80] – a good example is the ‘Dear Sophie’ ad in Video 5) . But why should this be so? The answer is that emotions have two advantages: i) they are processed much faster than logical arguments and ii) emotional experiences are more likely to be recorded. In Adam Ferrier’s words: ‘emotion is the equivalent of grabbing someone by the shoulders and telling them to 'stop and listen'’ (ibid – p. 85).
It is much better if someone reads a message than if they think it inside their head.
No. It is much better if our brain ‘connects the dots’ itself in order to generate the message. Think about revision in class. What is more effective? Giving students the chance to re-read the main points, or getting them to retrieve the information? Well, studies conclusively show it is the latter (Agarwal, P. & Bain, P. 2019 – ch. 2). Advertisers are aware of this. When McDonald’s first came up with the ‘I’m lovin’ it’ slogan, it featured prominently on the screen. Later however, they removed it and only played the prompting jingle – so that the listeners would supply the words themselves! (Lewis 2013 – p. 157).
The more information you include in your message, the more persuasive it will be.
No. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction. It seems that a plethora of weaker arguments only serves to dilute our main point. Recipients of the message automatically scan the reasons presented, they focus on the weakest one and use this to (subconsciously) reject the whole argument. Research backs this up: in a study comparing experienced and less experienced negotiations, it was found that the former gave an average of 1.8 reasons in support of their case, while less experienced ones gave 3.0 (Rackham & Carlisle 1978).
It is best if you avoid negative emotions in your messages.
No. In fact research has repeatedly shown that ‘Bad is Stronger than Good’ (Baumeister et al., 2001). Granted, one has to be careful to avoid people linking their message with their brand/message. That said, negative emotions are great for attracting attention. Think about the disgust that advertisers try to evoke with all the gory images of blackened lungs or rotten gums on cigarette packets. Or about the fear generated by the infamous ‘Daisy’ ad campaign back in 1964 (Video 6). It was scary. It was unethical. It worked (Westen 2007 – p. 67).
Reflection
From the primacy of drilling to the ‘multiple intelligences’ doctrine, there are countless things we simply assume are true. Here is Fagan again: 'The authors of one paper went through the top marketing textbooks at the time and found hundreds and hundreds of instructions - but guess how many were supported by evidence? Zero' (Fagan 2016 – p. 5). It is the same in education.
What does all this mean for us EL teachers?
To put it bluntly, I believe that while as teachers we have become more and more sophisticated over the years, in terms of the way we communicate with our students we are about a hundred years behind. Whereas modern communication is something like ‘L’Oreal: Because you are worth it’, we stick to the good old ‘Colgate: because it keeps your teeth clean’.
But notice that exceptional teachers (granted, those found in fiction …) have mastered the art of communication:
- (Teacher: Distributing exercise books) ‘Dull. Dull. Abysmally dull. A triumph . . . the dullest of the lot.’ [Irwin - ‘The History Boys’] (Point 10).
- ‘Little girls: I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders and all my pupils are the crème de la crème!’ [Miss Brodie – ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’] (Point 7).
Make no mistake; communication matters – a lot. If we as teachers cling to outdated assumptions about communication, then not only do we risk being ineffective – we risk losing our students as well.
Video Links
- Dan Ariely: ‘From Action to Attitude’: https://bit.ly/3BBxAp9
- The ‘Go Compare’ ad series: https://bit.ly/3RNMT3F
- Evian ‘Baby and Me’ ad: https://bit.ly/3gyepo5
- Rory Sutherland a4uexpo Europe 2011 Keynote [53:25]: https://bit.ly/3F9nyhf
- An emotional ad (‘Dear Sophie’): https://bit.ly/3TjPdAk
- The ‘Daisy’ ad campaign: https://bit.ly/2U5lcVB
ReferencesAgarwal, P. & Bain, P. (2019) Powerful Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass |
Author Biography
Nick Michelioudakis (B. Econ., Dip. RSA, MSc [TEFL]) has been active in ELT for many years as a teacher, examiner, presenter and teacher trainer. He has worked for a number of publishers and examination boards and he has given seminars and workshops in many countries.
He has written extensively on Methodology, though he is better known for his ‘Psychology and ELT’ articles which have appeared in numerous newsletters and magazines.
His areas of interest include Psychology, Student Motivation, Learner Independence, Teaching one-to-one and Humour. For articles or worksheets of his, you can visit his YouTube channel or his blog.