Magic Words

A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB ’MUST-READ’

New York Times bestselling author Jonah Berger’s cutting-edge research reveals how six types of words can increase your impact in every area of life: from persuading others and building stronger relationships, to boosting creativity and motivating teams.

Almost everything we do involves words. Words are how we persuade, communicate, and connect, the foundation of all verbal influence. They’re how leaders lead, salespeople sell, and parents parent. They’re how teachers teach, policymakers govern, and doctors explain. Even our private thoughts rely on language.

But certain words are more impactful than others. They’re better at changing minds, engaging audiences, and driving action. What are these magic words, and how can we take advantage of their power?

In Magic Words, internationally bestselling author Jonah Berger gives you an inside look at the new science and psychology of language and how you can use it. Technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics, and natural language processing, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversations, have yielded unprecedented insights.

Learn the specific communication skills salespeople use to convince clients, lawyers use to persuade juries, and storytellers use to captivate audiences; how teachers get kids to help and service representatives increase customer satisfaction; how startup founders secure funding, musicians make hits, and psychologists identified a Shakespearean manuscript without ever reading a play.

This nonfiction guide is designed for anyone who wants to increase their impact. It provides a powerful toolkit and actionable techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to persuade a client, motivate a team, or get a whole organization to see things differently, this book will show you how to leverage the power of magic words.

Based on years of behavioral science research, this book breaks down the toolkit you need:

• Activate Identity and Agency: Learn why using nouns is more persuasive than using verbs, and how a simple word shift can help you be more creative and achieve your goals.
• Convey Confidence: Discover the language of confidence that helps lawyers persuade juries and leaders inspire action, and learn when expressing doubt can actually be more effective.
• Ask the Right Questions: Understand the science of asking questions, why asking for advice makes you seem smarter, and how to deepen any social connection.
• Leverage Concreteness: See why concrete language gets startups funded, makes customers feel heard, and why talking about "fixing" a problem is better than "solving" it.
• Employ Emotion: Master the emotional language that builds hit podcasts and captivates any audience by learning what truly makes a good story.

Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. He’s a world-renowned expert on natural language processing, change, social influence, word of mouth, and why products, services, and ideas catch on. Berger has published more than seventy papers in top-tier academic journals; and popular accounts of his work often appear in publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. He frequently consults for companies like Google, Apple, Nike, and the Gates Foundation, helping them leverage language, drive change, and get their stuff to catch on. He’s been named one of Fast Company’s most creative people in business and millions of copies of his books are in print in dozens of languages around the world.