To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

by Daniel H. Pink

Devotees of Mandino, Hill, Robbins, and McKenna might shudder at allowing this shaft of doubt—questioning one’s ability?—to shine through our psychic windows. But social scientists are discovering that Bob has it right. Yes, positive self-talk is generally more effective than negative self-talk. But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions. Three researchers—Ibrahim Senay and Dolores Albarracín of the University of Illinois, along with Kenji Noguchi of the University of Southern Mississippi—confirmed the efficacy of “interrogative self-talk” in a series of experiments they conducted in 2010. In one, they gave participants ten anagrams to solve (for example, rearranging the letters in “when” to spell “hewn”). They separated the participants into two groups, each of which was treated identically except for the one minute before they tackled their assignments. The researchers instructed the first group to ask themselves whether they would solve the puzzles—and the second group to tell themselves that they would solve the puzzles. On average, the self-questioning group solved nearly 50 percent more puzzles than the self-affirming group.