by Jonah Berger
Berger argues that small linguistic choices have outsized effects on persuasion, and he organises the new science of language into six categories: identity and agency, confidence, questions, concreteness, emotion, and similarity. He draws on computational linguistics, machine learning, and natural language processing research from thousands of real conversations and texts.
In this collection, Magic Words references 5 other books.
It draws on Contagious, The Catalyst and Influence.
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Explicitly extends the word-of-mouth thesis of Berger's own Contagious, moving from why things spread to the specific language that makes messages spread
Builds on Berger's own Catalyst REDUCE framework by showing how specific words reduce reactance, uncertainty, and distance
Cites Cialdini's Influence principles and research on compliance when explaining why words like because, you, and recommend boost persuasion
References Cialdini's Pre-Suasion on priming attention when explaining how word choice shifts what listeners focus on before the core message arrives
Draws on Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow distinction between intuitive and deliberative processing to explain why concrete language is easier to act on than abstractions
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