Pollster Frank Luntz calls “imagine” the most powerful word in the English language.  He says “imagine allows you to communicate in the eyes and the vision of the listener rather than yours.”

Good verbs like “imagine,” “remember,” and “picture in your mind” give a person the trigger to help them put themselves in the place of the person whose story you are telling.

Consider Hemingway’s famous challenge to write a six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

I’ve lost a child.  Those six words remind me vividly and painfully of a nursery.  We painted it to look like the blue of the sky, with a bright yellow sun.  And while I, with my complete lack of art skill, resigned myself to painting clouds and blades of grass (the ugly ones that didn’t taper properly at the top), my wife painted ladybugs and flowers and butterflies to welcome our child.

But the crib remained empty.  And while we did end up having two wonderful children, we moved from that house.  We used a different crib.  Some images stay.

My point here is that words can create images.  Hopefully, you pictured our nursery a little bit above.  I used (or rather, tried to use) some of the same techniques you would see in a movie:

• Setting the stage: a nursery.
• Using colors to evoke an image. Without using the Pantone or paint chip name, you have in your mind the picture of the sky and of the color or the sun.
• Showing action: it isn’t just a static room; now it’s being painted.
• Zooming in: on blades of grass.
• Panning around to capture detail.

Chances are you are picturing it entirely differently from how it was.  Heck, because of the vagaries of memory, so probably am I.  That doesn’t matter as much as you are seeing a scene in your mind.

This type of detail matters.  In the classic Made to Stick, the Heath brothers relay the study that sticks in my mind as the “Darth Vader toothbrush study” .   Simulated juries were given eight facts for and eight facts against describing a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ parent.

The stories differed only in detail. Half received irrelevant details for the ‘good’ side: e.g., instead of just “Mrs. Johnson sees to it that her child washes and brushes his teeth before bedtime,” they added “He uses a Star Wars toothbrush that looks like Darth Vader.”

The other half received irrelevant details for the ‘bad’ or dark side: e.g., in addition to “The child went to school with a badly scraped arm which Mrs. Johnson had not cleaned or attended to. The school nurse had to clean the scrape,” they mentioned that the school nurse spilled the treatment, staining her uniform red.

Jurors who heard vivid details for the good things judged Mrs. Johnson to be a more suitable parent than jurors who heard the unfavorable arguments with vivid details.

The stories differed only in detail. Half received irrelevant details for the good side: e.g., instead of just “Mrs. Johnson sees to it that her child washes and brushes his teeth before bedtime,” they added “He uses a Star Wars toothbrush that looks like Darth Vader.”

The other half received irrelevant details for the dark side: e.g., in addition to “The child went to school with a badly scraped arm which Mrs. Johnson had not cleaned or attended to. The school nurse had to clean the scrape,” they mentioned that the school nurse spilled the treatment, staining her uniform red.

Jurors who heard vivid details for the good things judged Mrs. Johnson to be a more suitable parent than jurors who heard the unfavorable arguments with vivid details.

Studies of the brain find that when we read a story written this way – asked to imagine, getting imagery, and focusing on details – our brain processes it as if it is a visual and motor experience. As a result, we remember it better.  We are more convinced by it.  And we donate more.

These imagery words we choose are capable of distorting our reality and those of our donors.  Hopefully for the good.

Nick