In a fastidious quest for optimal mechanisms to substantiate your intellectual influence, some suppose it proper to larder their prose with flowery and elaborate phrases plucked out of a thesaurus. According to this article in Fast Company, they may be wasting their time.
It might sound counterintuitive, but using four-syllable textbook words to demonstrate your smarts will actually make you appear less capable.
"So often, our intuitions about what will impress others are wrong," says Daniel M. Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He led a series of studies on how the use of language can make one appear more or less intelligent.
In one study, the researchers took essays from online college admissions essays and replaced words using an algorithm to replace shorter words with longer words and asked participants to evaluate the quality of the author. Surprisingly, participants rated the authors as less capable and less confident. Concerned that the replacement strategy used made the essays worse, the researchers took sociology dissertation abstracts, which tend to be dense in long words, and replaced the longer words with shorter words. Participants judged the authors as more capable and intelligent if they were reading shorter words.
He goes on to explain:
The reason for this phenomenon, Oppenheimer explains, is that the ease of processing information is strongly associated with positive qualities such as confidence, intelligence, and capability. "To the extent that you use long words, you make it more disfluent to read your prose, people will judge you disfavorably," says Oppenheimer.
The secret is to be clear and concise in your communications. When your co-workers require less strain to understand you, they are more likely to value what you are saying!
Here is the link to the full article: The Secret To Sounding Smart? Using Simple Language
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