Michael Aaron Flicker

So they bring a number of study participants together and they show them a clip of a car crash and everybody sees the same clip of the car crash.

And the challenge is to estimate how fast the cars were moving when the accident occurred.

Simple enough, straightforward enough.

But here's the twist in the experiment.

They change the word, only one verb in the question.

They ask about how fast were the cars going when they, A, contacted the wall, B, hit the wall, C, bumped the wall, how about collided with the wall, or how about smashed the wall?

Those that heard the word, how fast was the car going when it contacted the wall, guess 31.8 miles per hour.

Whereas those that were asked how fast was the car going when it smashed the wall, they guessed 40 miles an hour, actually 40.5.

There's a 27% increase in their estimate of the speed by just changing one word.

And that has real impact for brands, for us when we work interpersonally with people.

Even think about the impact on the legal system.

One change of a word when there's a lawyer asking a question of a witness can really change the way they feel and how they respond.

So a lot of power in this idea of naming and the power of words.