Hedging can make individuals less persuasive, but new research from Wharton’s Jonah Berger shows how communicators can use hedging to their advantage.
2 min. read
“People hedge all the time,” says Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger. “Whether we are talking to a boss or a colleague, a salesperson talking to a client, a marketer trying to pitch something, or even talking to family members, we often say things like ‘That could work’ or ‘This might be a good approach.’ But how does hedging impact persuasion? And might certain types of hedges be more impactful than others?”
Jonah Berger is an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School.
(Image: Courtesy of the Wharton School)
But are hedges always detrimental? “Some people hedge out of habit, others because they want to be careful. They want to avoid being attacked for being wrong,” Berger says. “There are lots of reasons people hedge, but regardless of why we do it, might some ways of doing it be more likely to work?”
A new study co-authored by Berger finds that hedging is most persuasive when it involves personal perspective and words that suggest higher likelihood, because it suggests that the communicator is more confident. This specific kind of hedging can put the speaker “in a communications sweet spot,” where they reap the benefits without the backlash if things don’t work out. The paper, “Effectively Communicating Uncertainty: The Persuasive Impact of Different Types of Hedges,” is published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
“When we hear someone hedge, the more confident we think they are, the more likely we often are to listen to them,” Berger explains. “If your mechanic said, ‘Yeah, this repair might work,’ you’d have a lot less confidence than if they said, ‘I believe this repair will solve the problem.’ Personal perspective means they’re taking more ownership, so we’re more likely to be persuaded by what they have to say.”
While the paper finds that personal hedges work best for interpersonal communication, the effect is reduced when the communicator is a brand because confidence matters less. But brands can still leverage the persuasive impact of hedging through anthropomorphized agents. According to Berger, that’s why many brands are now using the personal approach on social media with influencers who talk directly to the consumer.
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