This ‘Magic Word’ Makes People Do What You Want (And It Isn’t ‘Please’)

In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi simply has to say, ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for’ with a funny hand gesture - and he gets what he wants.

But what about those of us who DON’T have the advantage of using The Force?

It’s actually easier than to persuade strangers to do what you want, research has shown - and one magic word could be the tipping point.

Contrary to what parents might tell children, it isn’t the world please: it’s ‘willing’, particularly when deployed in the form of ‘Are you willing to do such-and-such?’

Elizabeth Stokoe of Loughborough University says, ‘What we’ve found is this word, ‘willing’, seems to be the word that gets the most positive response from callers. And we’ve found that only 'willing’ gets a complete turnaround from no to yes.

Stokoe based her research on transcripts of callers to a mediation service - who were initially reluctant to use the service.

She said, ‘We start by collecting tens, hundreds, or even thousands of recordings of naturally occuring conversations, the kinds of things that get recorded for research or evaluation purposes.

‘Then we transcribe them in a lot of forensic and close linguistic detail, and identify the component features that make up a complete encounter from the start to the end.