In his latest book, "Magic Words," Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger delves into how the specific words and grammar we use directly affect our persuasiveness.
Pulling from his latest research, titled "How Verb Tense Changes Persuasion," published in January of this year with Grant Packard of York University and Reihane Boghrati of Arizona State University, he argues that making a change as small as choosing present tense verbs over past tense increases persuasiveness.
Berger's research and other emerging studies in the field demonstrate why you should use the present tense if you wish to be more convincing.
Present tense conveys objectivity
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The researchers conducted a total of eight studies to find that using present tense when giving your own opinions or experiences makes them seem truer.
Experiences are subjective and a past tense really underlines that subjectivity, Berger said, whereas a present tense makes the experience seem more factual and universal. The present tense implies that the speaker's experience can be generalized, perhaps to the listener themselves, and makes you seem more certain and confident in the claims you are making.
For example, simply saying "That restaurant is great" persuades your audience to think highly of the restaurant more than saying "that restaurant was great."
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It's also more vivid and immediate
A similar study published in the latest volume of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology supports Berger's findings: University of Toronto researchers found that Amazon product reviews that were written in the present tense were viewed by others to be more helpful than those written in the past tense. They found the effect persisted beyond Amazon reviews, as well. Participants were 10% more likely to donate to a charity when the donation proposal was made in the present tense rather than in the past or future tense.
The study argues that the present seems more vivid to us than the past or the future, and this adds to your ability to convince, University of Toronto professor and co-author of the study Sam Maglio told the University of Toronto Scarborough news.
Writers, and increasingly fiction writers, have long used present tense as a method to increase impact and vividness for the readers. Using present tense to describe events is often employed to make the content of the story seem more immediate and intense, author David Jauss wrote in Writer's Digest back in 2014.
"We're all writers; we may not write books or novels or plays, but we're writing all the time," Berger told the "Knowledge at Wharton" podcast in October 2023. "Every day we're writing emails, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents in a variety of contexts."
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