Study: People like it when politicians say nice words
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found a significant correlation between politicians' favorability ratings and how often they said pleasant words connoting cooperation and general niceness.
Studying the speech habits and approval polls of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the researchers determined that "The individual words whose use most strongly predicted public approval were as follows: gentle, involve, educate, contribute, concerned, give, tolerate, trust and cooperate."
The study also noted that politicians can expect more favorable news coverage if they say nice things, though the effect takes about six months to kick in.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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