Speaking to move hearts and minds

By Alistair Jones

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer – When Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I have a dream” address in 1963, it inspired the U.S. civil rights movement to continue the struggle and helped persuade the wider American public to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Not every speech can influence the course of history. And not every speech will be both inspiring and persuasive. So how do these attributes work?

The roles of inspiration and persuasion, along with storytelling techniques that facilitate their effectiveness, are the subject of new research co-authored at Singapore Management University (SMU) by Associate Professor of Corporate Communication Mark Chong, and Assistant Professor of Information Systems Swapna Gottipati.

Despite extensive research literature on persuasion and inspiration, this is the first quantitative study of the narrative similarities and differences between them.

For their data, the co-authors turned to TED, the most globally prominent of the multimedia event organisations that curate and present talks and share them online. TED positions itself as a platform for “ideas worth spreading”.

Using advanced text analytics and natural language processing techniques, the co-authors examined the content of 2406 TED talk transcripts from 2006 to 2017, and used the online audience comments as a measure of engagement with the material.

The insights from their findings can inform effective speech-making beyond the TED format, such as in the lucrative B2B event marketing industry with its various launches, seminars, pitches and more.

Inspiration versus persuasion

Professor Chong notes that “the key difference between inspiration and persuasion is that inspiration has the all-important motivational aspect to it. To inspire someone means to motivate someone to do something differently about something.

“Whereas persuasion has to do more with changing one's perception or one's mind, which may not necessarily translate into behaviour or action. So whether one is more effective than the other as a catalyst would depend on what the objective of the communicator is.”

Both inspiration and persuasion use emotional triggers. Fear and anger, for example, can be utilised powerfully in a persuasive talk that could then go on to offer a solution. And, surprisingly, the research found that a negative emotion such as sadness can increase audience engagement in an inspiring talk, which is generally designed to be uplifting.

“The prevailing understanding is that if you want to engage audiences, the use of positive emotions would do the trick. It's counterintuitive that negative emotions could actually engender higher audience engagement,” Professor Chong says.

“But as our research seems to indicate, the thing when it comes to story-telling is that the human mind is configured to notice changes: changes in the story line, changes in the emotional state of the storyteller or the protagonist of the story. So when you have the juxtaposition of negatives versus positives, then the mind, because of the way it's configured, is geared towards noticing that transition.

“And when the mind notices it, it translates into greater attention and hence engagement,” he adds.

The researchers found that TED talks registering in a 'high persuasive' ratings category were more emotional than 'low persuasive' talks and, similarly, 'high inspiring' talks were more emotional than 'low inspiring' talks.

Towards a happy ending

“Negative emotions do play a role but our studies show that the most engaging talks, and in fact the vast majority of talks that feature on TED, are also those that end on a high note,” Professor Chong says.

“People listen to TED talks because they want to learn something that empowers them to make a difference, either in their own lives or in the lives of others. And I think a positive ending is aligned with what the audience is hoping to get out of it,” he adds.

The narrative arc that a speech, or story, employs to reach this positive conclusion is also a key component of a successful communication that can transport the receiver from the here and now into the story world.

“We've all experienced this in movie theatres where we're literally in the world of the story,” notes Professor Chong.

Extant research using AI to study the plot lines of books found story arcs that followed the fall-rise-fall (Oedipus), or the rise-fall-rise (Cinderella) arcs, were the most popular among readers.

But books have hundreds of pages and can accommodate more twists, turns and emotional undulations than a TED talk, which is capped at 18 minutes, with some even shorter.

“But even when we look at the smaller subsets of arcs that we find in the TED talks – rise, fall, fall-rise and rise-fall – we found that the ones with the most undulation, namely fall-rise, were the most engaging,” Professor Chong says.

Cutting through information overload

A lot of time and effort goes into a TED talk and the organisation offers extensive preparation tips. And yet, the researchers found that 61 percent of talks were received as 'low inspiring and persuasive', which would seem disappointing.

“We surmise that TED audiences may have highly elevated expectations of speakers and their talks, given their exposure to the plethora of very high-quality content,” Professor Chong says.

The research identified the most popular, or evergreen, TED topics. Architecture, education, health, the environment, photography and society stand out, with education having a particularly strong presence. Several topics saw a steady increase through the years, especially cancer, immigration and poverty.

Other topics – notably AI and bitcoin – experienced an abrupt spike in recent years, which the co-authors suggest “may be seen as a reflection of the zeitgeist”. They also suggest speakers in other settings could refer to the evergreen list when seeking a topic to resonate with audiences.

The study is still in an “exploratory preliminary” stage. Perhaps a further element to consider could be the stirring power of a skilled orator. The war-time speeches of Britain's Winston Churchill spring to mind, where the delivery was almost as powerful as the content. Professor Chong is enthusiastic about this direction.

“Research has shown that nonverbal communication has a significant impact on a speaker’s effectiveness. Future research on inspiring and persuasive talks should take nonverbal cues such as prosody, pitch, pace and timbre into account,” he says.

It's likely that this, too, will confirm the good sense of concluding on a positive note.

Back to Research@SMU May 2020 Issue