STUDENT NEWS

Mayer with her fellow graduate students and Professor Linda Skitka. In order from left to right: Brad Lytle, Sylvia Perry, Nicole Mayer, Linda Skitka, G. Scott Morgan, and Dan Wisneski.

Psychology PhD Student Asks: Are the Words "I think" or "I Feel" More Persuasive?

Graduate student in psychology Nicole Mayer recently worked with Zakary Tormala, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, on a study proving that nearly identical messages can have radically different persuasive impacts depending on whether the messages are oriented toward "thinking" or "feeling."  In their findings, emotionally-oriented people responded favorably to messages beginning with "I feel," whereas cognitively-oriented people responded more favorably to messages beginning with "I think," even when the content of the messages was the same.  Mayer, now working with Professor of Psychology Linda Skitka, was kind enough to answer a few questions about her work. 

Q:  How was it that you got to work with Professor Tormala on this project? 

A:  I came to the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) as a research assistant after I graduated from the Ohio State University.  I was an undergraduate research assistant at OSU in the same lab, and under the same advisor with whom Zak had worked to earn his PhD. Before coming to Stanford, I had read some of Zak’s work for my undergraduate project in the OSU lab. I had some ideas that fit with his research, so I pitched them, and he happened to like the "feel/think" project, so we started working on it.

Q:  How did you go about ascertaining that emotionally-oriented people tend to respond positively to messages beginning with "I feel," whereas cognitively-oriented people respond more positively to statements beginning with "I think."  What was the research like, and what role did you play in it?

A:  A host of literature on the matching effect exists already, which suggests that affective messages tend to be more successful at changing affective attitudes and cognitive messages tend to be more successful at changing cognitive attitudes. This provided the backbone of our research, and we relied on the matching literature when explaining our findings.

The research was fun! For the first time, I was in charge of a project of my own. On a semi-regular basis, Zak and I would meet and discuss what we had gathered from the study I had just run, and then we would devise a plan for the next study. My main functions were to program studies, create study materials, collect and sort data, and conduct literature searches. I also helped to edit the manuscript.

Q:  What was it like working with Professor Tormala?

A:  I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor. I always felt like my ideas were valid and valued when we were discussing them. As I wasn’t even a student yet, it was hard to maintain a sense of competency among so many bright people. I could ask him any question about our area of study (persuasion of attitudes) and he always had an insightful and helpful answer. He was also patient when I made mistakes—and I made a few! For example, during a study we were running with Berkeley students on their campus—this  was a big data collection; I think we were administering it to about 150 people—I put together all of the materials, and after we received the results, I was entering data into the computer and realized that I’d forgotten a condition. We could not use the results we’d collected. I was really upset, but with Zak’s help, I quickly put together another study, and life moved on. He also taught me some skills that I am finding valuable now, as an official graduate student. He taught me how to use syntax in SPSS (our data analyzing program), how to read a complex graph, how to conduct a literature search (it’s an art), etc. I also learned the process of submitting a paper, which is a process that I will hopefully repeat many times. In summation, working with Zak was great; he was patient, understanding, and very knowledgeable! Even though I have moved to UIC, I learned so much from Zak and the entire process that I am continuing to expand on the ideas that we developed while I was at Stanford.

Q:  Professor Tormala mentioned that these findings could aid advertisers in creating more effective ads.  What are other ways you're hoping your findings could be used to benefit society?

A:  Originally, this idea emerged from pondering (and perhaps viewing some reality-based shows) why men and women so often do not communicate effectively. After learning more about the field, and especially because this is a persuasion study, I realized that this is great research for marketers and ad agencies to use. However, I have not given up hope that our research could be used in a more communication-oriented manner, such as training for people staging  interventions.  Also, politicians could use it to learn how to speak to their audiences, or instructors and counselors could use it in classes and sessions for more effective communication.

Q:  Could you tell us a bit about yourself?  What brought you to UIC? What would you like to do upon graduation?

A:  I became interested in and inspired by the study of morality in psychology in 2008, when I attended Morality Lab, which was lead by Liz Mullen and Benoit Monin, who are both faculty at the Stanford GSB. Currently and more specifically, I am interested in the movement of morally-based attitudes. Moral attitudes are quite tenacious, and I am working on finding a way, or an avenue through which people will switch from one side to another on an issue they consider to be moral. I am especially interested in the differences between moral attitudes of liberals and conservatives.

As I was preparing to apply to graduate schools a little over a year ago, my friend told me that Linda Skitka from the University of Illinois at Chicago was giving a talk on morality. I went to see the talk and I was blown away. I vowed to become her student, and a year later, what do you know…

I am a first-year student now, and I’m working with Linda on a few different projects, one concerning cognitive and affective bases of moral attitudes. We are also examining new "moralizing personality" traits. Upon graduation, I hope to attain a faculty position at a research 1 institution in a pleasant climate.

Q:   Finally, were there any poignant moments that occurred during your research that you might like to share with us?

A:  After we had collected data and were preparing the manuscript, I presented our findings to a group that was not affiliated with the marketing division. I received such negative feedback that I was left with the feeling that our research was, in essence, ridiculous. I was hesitant to tell Zak about it, because I did not want him to think that I had lost faith in what we had accomplished. After some deliberation, I did tell him how I felt, and he gave me one of the greatest pep-talks that I’ve received to date. He said something like, "Nicole, in some ways this could be a good learning experience, because you do have to deal with criticism in this line of work.  Usually it's constructive, but even when it doesn't feel that way, try to see it for what it is, take what you can from it, and don't take it personally.  People with different academic backgrounds, doing research in different areas, etc. often have different research values or find different topics more interesting and important than others.  So people who don't seem to accept your work might just not fully understand it or see its contribution.  But just keep at it and if you do good work, you'll have a positive impact." I still carry that with me.