Credible communication carries its own credentials
How do we make people believe our ideas?
Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves—a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. When we’re trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach.
Good communication helps people believe by appealing to external credibility (both authority and anti-authority) and internal credibility—by using convincing details, making statistics accessible, and using testable credentials.
See also:
- Communicating ideas requires overcoming the curse of knowledge
- Simple communication expresses the core of an idea
- Unexpected communication violates expectations
- Concrete communication explains in terms of human actions and senses
- Emotional communication makes people feel something
- Story-based communication elicits effective responses