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It's easier and makes us feel better to beat around the bush a little bit. Manning says it's because we're looking out for ourselves. If bad-news recipients just want it straight, why do we tend to draw it out? He says when you just talk to people, you get a different story: "When you ask people if they want the bad news straight-up, they almost always say yes." The findings contradict a lot of the previous research, Manning says, which stressed buffers and positivity and silver linings. Participants also mostly responded that clarity and directness were more important than how considerate the message was. Manning says, in most cases, there was a clear preference for the more concise message. (Stuff in the vein of, "Your car is being recalled" all the way to "Let's break up" or "You're fired.") The procedure was simple: 145 volunteers were shown two similar but differently worded versions of the same message, side by side, and asked to choose which they found the least objectionable. Quite literally, how much stuff should you say or write before just getting on with it? According to the people who matter most.Īlan Manning, a professor of linguistics at Brigham Young University, and Nicole Amare, his research partner, were interested in what he calls the "information design" of giving bad news. A study from 2017 finds that, in most cases, a much smaller "buffer" before the bad news is actually preferable.
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