Lyngo Lab

📝 Disclosing Use of ChatGPT

Covertly, content creators are using AI to produce content more than ever before. But how does disclosing one’s use of AI programs affect perceptions of the content (and its creator)?

We conducted an experiment with 1,200 readers in which we randomly disclosed that an article was written by either:

(a) A human
(b) A human with the assistance of ChatGPT
(c) ChatGPT only

The results? Readers disliked our writer 10-15% more when ChatGPT was involved (p’s < 0.001) and they trusted the information 5% less (p = 0.001). The results were even more significant for audiences who do not use ChatGPT. In sum, students, professionals, and content creators will need to be mindful of using gen AI once disclosure is mandated, especially around non-users of AI.

Policy or Politics?

We like to believe that we vote for political candidates based on their policies. But could it be the other way around? Perhaps we support certain policies simply because the politicians we like (or don’t like) endorse them.

🔍 Experiment

We recruited 400 participants from an online research pool, Amazon MTurk, to take a survey about their political party affiliation and their agreement with a policy, lowering interest rates, which we framed as being supported by either the Federal Reserve or Former President Trump (randomly assigned). We then tested whether Democrats’ or Republicans’ support for the policy was affected by the Fed vs. Trump framing.

📊 Results

The Fed vs. Trump framing did matter. A lot. Simply framing support for the policy as Trump’s triggered Republicans to agree 14.4% more and Democrats to agree 25% less (F = 16.67, p < 0.001, Adj R-Sqr = 13.5). In this case, partisan politics not only affected policy, it affected citizens’ own beliefs about the policy itself.

📖❗Emails & Exclamation Marks❗📖

Can throwing an exclamation mark into your emails make you seem warmer? We conducted an email experiment with 400 people and found that it really doesn’t matter too much—with one exception.

While exclamations do not greatly affect how likable, warm, or smart you seem, on average, nor does the gender of the email sender or recipient matter, the AGE of your recipients does.

To Gen Z, seeing exclamation marks in your emails increases how likable you seem by 22% (p = 0.002).

As one of hundreds of studies run by our award-winning, Harvard-trained team of psychology researchers, the findings demonstrate the importance of rigorous, practical communication research.

Check out our other studies to gain even more insights into how to communicate effectively.

☕ Coffee Psychology: Black vs. Milk

Does how you take your coffee affect how others perceive you?

About two-thirds of Americans drink coffee, with most taking it black or with some form of milk and sugar. Given that coffee culture is as strong as the drink itself, our latest study pours over the psychology of how drinking black coffee vs. coffee with milk affects your image, specifically warmth and competence.

🔍 The Experiment:

We showed 400 research participants a photo of either black coffee or coffee with milk (randomly assigned), asking them to imagine that the cup of coffee belongs to a hypothetical coworker. Participants then rated how warm (i.e., nice) and competent (i.e., smart) the coworker seemed on a 1-7 survey scale. 87.9% of the people in our sample were coffee drinkers.

♨️ Results:

Surprisingly, whether the coffee was black or had milk made no significant difference in perceived competence (avg. 5.23 for black vs. 5.27 for milk; p = 0.769), nor perceived warmth (avg. 5.09 for black vs. 5.24 for milk; p = 0.253). Thus, one’s choice of coffee seems more a matter of taste.

Typos Hurt Your Image

Typos are hard to avoid. But those tiny errors pack a punch. Across multiple experiments, we’ve found that grammatical errors ranging from bad sentence structure to the misuse of there, their, and they’re make us look less competent. In this study, we consider how typos might affect other outcomes in a professional context.

📚 Experiment:

400 participants from Amazon MTurk were presented with a work email from a hypothetical boss, John, containing either four minor typos or pristine correctness, randomly assigned. Participants then rated how smart, nice, likable, and trustworthy John seemed using a 1-7 scale.

📊 Results:

Typos do matter, and their impact on perception is palpable. Making four minor typos resulted in a 21.5% reduction in perceived intelligence, a 5.7% decrease in perceived niceness, a 9.0% decline in likability, and an 11.2% drop in perceived trustworthiness. The effect on perceived intelligence was particularly significant, as it was in our previous studies, and all outcomes were consistent across participants’ ages and genders.

🗝️ Conclusion:

The occasional typo might seem innocuous, but this study underscores the importance of vigilance, especially when aiming to project professionalism and intelligence. Before hitting send, take that extra moment to ensure your messages are not only content-rich but also free of inadvertent errors.

Emojis are everywhere. They're used across social media, texts, emails, and other digital mediums now more than ever before. But how does emoji use affect your image? Does the age or gender of the emoji user or reader matter? What about context? Might perceptions differ in an email vs. social media?

We conducted a randomized experiment with 1,200 people to find out. Participants read a short block of text that either contained a smiley face emoji 😊 or did not contain the emoji, randomly assigned. We also randomized whether the context was a Facebook post or an email, and whether the gender of the sender was “Jon” or “Jen.”

As it turns out, using the smiley face emoji didn't matter much. It generated only a trivial increase (2%) in how nice our person seemed, which was mainly driven by our female sender (4%). The findings were surprising, in that there actually wasn't much nuance in how emojis affect one's image.

📝 “There” Misuse: How It Affects Your Image

How many times have you come across someone using the wrong “there” in an email or a social media post? Using it correctly may be more important than we think. According to an experiment we conducted with over 1,000 people, misusing the common homophones of “there,” “their,” and “they’re” significantly hurt a person’s perceived intelligence.

🔍 The Experiment

We designed a randomized controlled trial in which 1,200 people read a fictitious email or social media post. Unbeknownst to participants, we varied whether the words “there,” “their,” and “they’re” were used correctly or incorrectly. After reading the email or post, participants rated how intelligent the sender seemed using a 1-7 survey scale.

📊 The Results

Misusing “there” variants caused our writer’s perceived intelligence to drop by 15.7%, with an average rating of 3.91 relative to 4.64 on a 1-7 scale (p < 0.001). The effect equates to about half of a standard deviation, a fairly sizeable effect by psychology standards.

🖥️ The Email Signature Myth

Email signatures have become ubiquitous. They’re often seen as a hallmark of professionalism. But what do recipients really think? We ran an experiment with 400 email readers and uncovered some surprising results.

📚 The Experiment

Participants read an email from a sales manager at a hypothetical company that either included or excluded his email signature (randomly assigned). They then rated the company on professionalism, competence, trustworthiness, and friendliness, using a 1-7 survey scale.

📊 Results

Contrary to popular belief, email signatures had minimal, if any, impact on customer perceptions. In fact, the email signature made the company appear slightly less friendly (5%), professional (4%), and trustworthy (5%), though these effects were small and not statistically significant.

🗝️ Conclusion

Email signatures might not be the image-boosting tool we thought. Although they’re prevalent and informative, their psychological impact on email readers seems limited. So, if you’re using an email signature solely to boost your image, you may want to reconsider.

🍷 Does Drinking Wine Make You Look Sophisticated?

Studies abound on the health effects of drinking red wine. But what about its psychological effects? Conventional wisdom portrays wine drinkers as classy, cultured, and urbane. But more recently, views of alcohol more generally have been less rosy. So, can drinking red wine really boost how sophisticated you seem?

🔍 Experiment:

We recruited 400 participants from Amazon MTurk and asked them to imagine that they’re meeting up with a new co-worker at a nearby restaurant after work. We told them that the co-worker had placed an order for either a glass of water or a glass of wine, randomly assigned, then showed them a photo of the beverage for added realism. Participants then rated how sophisticated they thought the coworker was on a 1-7 scale.

📊 Results:

Our wine drinker was, in fact, rated higher in sophistication than our water drinker (4.83 vs. 4.41 points; p < 0.001). This 10% boost was statistically consistent across participants' age, gender, and frequency of drinking alcohol, as measured by survey questions at the end of our study.

🗝️ Conclusion:

Drinking wine does seem to make you look a bit more sophisticated. Just remember to drink responsibly.

📊 Bar Graphs: Perceptions of Error Bars

Ever wondered about the significance of those "T"-shaped lines on bar graphs? They’re used to report the data’s margin of error. It’s a rigorous practice to include them. But does it come at the cost of understandability?

We tested whether including error bars enhances or hinders the understandability, interestingness, and perceived rigor of bar graphs with a large-scale experiment.

📚 The Experiment:

1,200 people were shown a bar graph featuring data from a survey on men’s and women’s game preferences (table games vs. video games). For the experiment, we randomized whether margin of error bars were either included or excluded for each viewer. Graph viewers then rated how understandable, interesting, and scientifically rigorous the graph was using 1-7 survey scales.

📈 Results:

Although error bars reduced understandability by a trivial 2% (p = 0.054), error bars increased perceived rigor by 8.3% (p < 0.001). They even increased interestingness slightly, by 3.8% (p = 0.057).

Notably, error bars packed the biggest punch for horizontal bar graphs (as opposed to vertical). Including error bars in horizontal graphs enhanced perceived rigor by 16%.

📝 Conclusion:

Error bars aren't just statistical jargon; they boost the objectivity and perceived rigor of your graph. Don't shy away from them, especially if you're working with horizontal bar graphs.

🧠 Bulleted Lists & Memory

Can text formatting actually help us remember important information? For example, might bulleted lists in an email aid our colleagues’ recall of key details. The results of an experiment we ran with 400 people suggest it can.

📚 Experiment

We had 400 people participate in a grocery list activity in which they chose to place three common grocery items (bread, apples, and oranges) into either a paper or a plastic bag. Unbeknownst to participants, we randomized whether the three items were presented in a bulleted list or in-paragraph, as it was actually the items, not the bag choice, that was the focus of our study. Later, we asked participants to recall as many of the three grocery items as possible.

📊 Results

The bulleted list actually helped people remember. Participants in the bulleted list group recalled 2 items, on average, while those in the in-paragraph group only recalled 1.5 items. That’s a 33% increase (p < 0.001). Participants also recalled all three items more frequently with a bulleted list (34.5% vs. 22.7%).

🗝️ Conclusion

So, if you’re trying to help others (or yourself) remember important information:

• Use a bulleted list

📝 Do Semicolons Make You Look Smarter?

Over the past 200 years, semicolon usage has declined by 69%, according to Google Ngram. The semicolon tends to slip through the cracks between the comma and the period, often substituted by either of these more common punctuation marks.

But might the semicolon’s rarity and nuance make the writer look smarter? In previous studies, we’ve found that big words do. On the other hand, perhaps semicolons just make you look arrogant. Curiosity got the better of us, so we designed an experiment to test it.

🔍 Experiment

1,200 participants from the research platform Prolific read a paragraph, which we designed to either include or exclude semicolons (randomly assigned). We also randomized the context of the paragraph, either a work email or a fashion article, to enhance the generalizability of our findings. After reading the paragraph, participants rated how smart and how arrogant the writer seemed on 1-7 scales (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much).

📊 Results

Surprisingly, there were no significant differences. Semicolons did not sway perceived competence (p = 0.941) nor arrogance (p = 0.967). Context also failed to yield substantial differences, in this case an email vs. a fashion article (p = 0.113; p = 0.563).

🗝️ Conclusion

In everyday writing, semicolons appear to have a minimal effect on how others perceive you. They don’t make you look smarter, nor do they make you seem arrogant.