The Words Around Us: Shaping a Healthier Environment
If words can shape our attitude, ask yourself this: “Is my attitude helping my team or my customers? Is it helping me to be the person I want to be?” Be the spark, the living invitation. With your words. Because they matter. Scientific American spoke with Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, about why words matter and how language changes our perceptions of the world. “Words have power. If I tell you this hamburger is 80% lean as opposed to 20% fat, then in some sense I am communicating the same thing. But what people get from those two communications is very different: People perceive the 80% lean hamburger as much healthier than the 20% fat option. By choosing how you frame and talk about something, you are cuing others to think about it in a specific way. We can drastically change someone’s perspective by how we choose to talk about and frame something.”