Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2023 · 67 citations

• Psychology
• Aesthetics
• Social psychology

). Eight studies reveal that the Hero's Journey predicts and can causally increase people's experience of meaning in life. We first distill the Hero's Journey into seven key elements-protagonist, shift, quest, allies, challenge, transformation, legacy-and then develop a new measure that assesses the perceived presence of the Hero's Journey narrative in people's life stories: the Hero's Journey Scale. Using this scale, we find a positive relationship between the Hero's Journey and meaning in life with both online participants (Studies 1-2) and older adults in a community sample (Study 3). We then develop a restorying intervention that leads people to see the events of their life as a Hero's Journey (Study 4). This intervention causally increases meaning in life (Study 5) by prompting people to reflect on important elements of their lives and connecting them into a coherent and compelling narrative (Study 6). This Hero's Journey restorying intervention also increases the extent to which people perceive meaning in an ambiguous grammar task (Study 7) and increases their resilience to life's challenges (Study 8). These results provide initial evidence that enduring cultural narratives like the Hero's Journey both reflect meaningful lives and can help to create them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How Verb Tense Shapes Persuasion

Journal of Consumer Research · 2023 · 33 citations

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Linguistics

Abstract When sharing information and opinions about products, services, and experiences, communicators often use either past or present tense (e.g., “That restaurant was great” or “That restaurant is great”). Might such differences in verb tense shape communication’s impact, and if so, how? A multimethod investigation, including eight studies conducted in the field and lab, demonstrates that using present (vs. past) tense can increase persuasion. Natural language processing of over 500,000 online reviews in multiple product and service domains, for example, illustrates that reviews that use more present tense are seen as more helpful and useful. Follow-up experiments demonstrate that shifting from past to present tense increases persuasion and illustrate the underlying process through both mediation and moderation. When communicators use present (rather than past) tense to express their opinions and experiences, it suggests that they are more certain about what they are saying, which increases persuasion. These findings shed light on how language impacts consumer behavior, highlight how a subtle, yet central linguistic feature shapes communication, and have clear implications for persuasion across a range of situations.

What Holds Attention? Linguistic Drivers of Engagement

Journal of Marketing · 2023 · 78 citations

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Social psychology

From advertisers and marketers to salespeople and leaders, everyone wants to hold attention. They want to make ads, pitches, presentations, and content that captivates audiences and keeps them engaged. But not all content has that effect. What makes some content more engaging? A multimethod investigation combines controlled experiments with natural language processing of 600,000 reading sessions from over 35,000 pieces of content to examine what types of language hold attention and why. Results demonstrate that linguistic features associated with processing ease (e.g., concrete or familiar words) and emotion both play an important role. Rather than simply being driven by valence, though, the effects of emotional language are driven by the degree to which different discrete emotions evoke arousal and uncertainty. Consistent with this idea, anxious, exciting, and hopeful language holds attention while sad language discourages it. Experimental evidence underscores emotional language's causal impact and demonstrates the mediating role of uncertainty and arousal. The findings shed light on what holds attention; illustrate how content creators can generate more impactful content; and, as shown in a stylized simulation, have important societal implications for content recommendation algorithms.

Marketing insights from text analysis

Marketing Letters · 2022 · 34 citations

• Computer Science
• Computer Science
• Data science

What Holds Attention? Linguistic Drivers of Engagement

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 14 citations

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Reaching for rigor and relevance: better marketing research for a better world

Marketing Letters · 2022 · 25 citations

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Marketing