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“But
sweetie, you love asparagus!”
That’s the
kind of line that parents have been using for years to get
their children to eat their vegetables. And sometimes it
works! The logic has always been that the little
white lie tricks the child into liking the green vegetable.
There’s now
scientific proof that this logic is correct at least some of
the time, according to a study written up in a recent edition
of the New York Times. And at Speechworks, we’re holding out
hope that such research might actually show people how to learn to
love public speaking.
The research
suggests that positive memories of certain things can make you
enjoy those things, even if those memories are false.
To prove
this, researchers asked students a series of questions about
their early eating memories. A week later they were presented
with a bogus food history profile that embedded a single
falsehood – that they loved asparagus -- among real memories.
That lie made the students more likely to want asparagus than
if the lie had not been implanted.
What does
this have to do with public speaking? At Speechworks, we find
that many of our clients dislike public speaking because of
some perceived bad experience in the past. Conversely, we
find that many of our clients who love public speaking say
things like “I have always been good at this, even when I was
a kid.”
With that in
mind, here’s the experiment we’d love to see. Tell students
that they actually loved public speaking as a child. Then ask
them to get up and give a speech. Who knows, maybe they’ll
turn out to be the next great public speaker.
At
Speechworks we help our clients learn how to communicate in a
way that connects and persuades. If you’re interested in
becoming a great communicator give us a call at 404-266-0888
or check out our website at
www.speechworks.net |
