MSC1003H
Rhetoric & the Sciences:
Information, Media and Communication Literacy
for the Sciences
Nicholas Woolridge
IMS
University of Toronto
APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Appl. Cognit. Psychol. (in press)
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1178
Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective
of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly
DANIEL M. OPPENHEIMER*
Princeton University, USA
SUMMARY
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.
When it comes to writing, most experts agree that clarity, simplicity and parsimony are
ideals that authors should strive for. In their classic manual of style, Strunk and White
(1979) encourage authors to ‘omit needless words.’ Daryl Bem’s (1995) guidelines for
submission to Psychological Bulletin advise, ‘the first step towards clarity is writing
simply.’ Even the APA publication manual (1996) recommends, ‘direct, declarative
sentences with simple common words are usually best.’
However, most of us can likely recall having read papers, either by colleagues or
students, in which the author appears to be deliberately using overly complex words.
Experience suggests that the experts’ advice contrasts with prevailing wisdom on how to
Story
•
The narrative impulse
Narrative
•
Stories generally have Things:
Goals
Conflict
Protagonist
Antagonist
Narrative
•
Stories generally have Actions:
Narrative
•
Stories generally have Sequence:
Beginning
Middle
End
Narrative
•
Stories can be multiple/complex:
Narrative
•
Stories can be multiple/complex:
Freytag’s pyramid
Climax
Reversal
n
sin
ga
Ri
io
ct
ga
Exposition
lin
Inciting incident
l
Fa
ct
io
n
Complication
Dénouement
Freytag’s pyramid
Climax
Reversal
Ri
sin
ga
n
ct
io
Complications
Fa
ll
Inciting incident
Exposition
ing
ac
tio
n
Dénouement
Narrative
•
Things
•
Actions
•
Sequence
•
resulting in a plausible causal chain of events
Plausible causal chain of events
•
Plausible
•
•
Causal
•
•
believable, realistic
first this, then (therefore) this
Chain of events
•
a sequence of events in time
The value of the narrative
impulse
•
The ability to see patterns and connections
•
In many cases, being able to rely on the audience to
infer important story points
•
Stories meaningfully engage with many audiences
•
Stories are powerful (“stories trump data”)
Pitfalls of the narrative impulse
•
The tendency (with audiences) to attribute causal
relationships to simple sequence and correlations
•
•
Ad hoc fallacy
The potential (for authors) to cause incorrect
inferences about cause and effect
Pitfalls of the narrative impulse
•
The potential to let emotion override reason (pathos
over logos)
•
This can also be a secret power, wielded ethically
So…
•
Being able to frame your narrative succinctly is
important
The focus sentence
•
Like an “elevator pitch”, but more a tool at the
beginning of a writing project to finding your focus in
a morass of detail
•
Can later be re-purposed as an elevator pitch, or as
the opening/closing of a presentation
Focus sentence models: A but B
•
Somebody does something because__________
but _________.
Excerpt from Out on the Wire: the Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio
by Jessica Abel © 2015
Focus sentence models: X/Y
•
I’m doing a story about X, and what’s interesting
about it is Y.
Focus sentence models: X/Y
•
[This happened], and then [this happened ], then
[this], and then you wouldn’t @#$!% believe it but
[this happened]. And the reason that this is
interesting to every single person walking on the
face of the earth is __________.
Focus sentence models: ABT
•
________ and _________, but ________, therefore
____________.
•
Patients with mood disorders
•
Mobile mood monitoring app
•
Validated measures
•
Telemetry
•
Self-Management
•
Clinician view of mood data
Focus sentence models: ABT
•
Mood states for people with mood disorders vary in
ways that may have patterns, and those patterns
may be helpful in predicting or managing the
disease, but there are no tools to rigorously collect
and present this data, therefore we are building
mobile mood monitoring apps to help patients and
clinicians.
Workshop
•
Work in small groups to build a focus sentence
•
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Share your topics, and refine drafts
At the end, share the current draft with the class
Writing portfolio
•
Expand focus sentence into 250-300 word “message
abstract” targeted at a specific audience (health
consumers, granting agency, etc.).