DailyDirt: It's What You Say AND How You Say It
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Studying how language can predict behavior is a fascinating field. As communications are increasingly digital, everyone's messages are more easily data mined for all sorts of analysis (ahem, and not all of it is done by the CIA). Marketing folks are looking at how catchy phrases might increase sales -- which may be why you're seeing more headlines like "8 simple ways to ..." and "one simple trick that ..." in ads. Here are just a few other linguistic studies for you to peruse. Also, happy belated National Grammar Day!- Men who use the pronoun "whom" in an online dating profile receive 31% more responses from women. And you probably don't even need to use it correctly... well, unless another study concludes that women are significantly better at grammar usage than men. [url]
- Can the language you speak influence your behavior? Speakers of languages with weak future tense grammar (eg. German, Finnish and Estonian) seem to correlate with more future-oriented behaviors such as an increased rate of financial saving, lower rates of smoking and higher rates of exercise, and higher condom usage -- compared to speakers of languages with stronger future tense grammar like English and French. [url]
- Four minutes of conversation is about all it takes for a speed dating participant to figure out if there's any real chemistry between a potential couple. Protip: language analysis suggests you might want to sound sympathetic and not ask too many questions. [url]
Filed Under: analysis, behavior, big data, communication, data mining, dating, grammar, language, linguistics, predictions, whom
