Vehemently Eschew Obfuscation*

Have you ever had this experience? You receive an email and after skimming over the contents you don’t understand it. So you go back and read it more carefully. And after still not understanding it, you read it again, word for word, trying to parse out all of the things that the sender could possibly mean. Now ask yourself: How do you feel about the person who sent the email? A little put out perhaps? Possibly questioning the person’s intelligence or at least their communication skills.

The ease with which we can process information is strongly associated with personal qualities like likeability and intelligence. That’s the conclusion reached by Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, who created a series of studies on how the use of language can make one appear more or less intelligent, as reported in this FastCompany article.

In one study, the researchers took essays from online college admissions essays and replaced words using an algorithm to replace shorter words with longer words and asked participants to evaluate the quality of the author. Surprisingly, participants rated the authors as less capable and less confident. Concerned that the replacement strategy used made the essays worse, the researchers took sociology dissertation abstracts, which tend to be dense in long words, and replaced the longer words with shorter words. Participants judged the authors as more capable and intelligent if they were reading shorter words.

While some people think that using long and complex words makes them appear more intelligent, Oppenheimer’s studies have shown the opposite. Any vocabulary that makes the listener or reader struggle to understand its meaning is likely to result in frustration and misinterpretation.

At times, of course, a long word is the right word for effectively communication. In those cases, use it. The rest of the time, stick with shorter, clearer words. People will think better of you for it.

Until next week...

*Forcefully avoid complication