In Part 1, we looked at why the same message lands differently with different customers.
Researchers have identified seven traits behind it, and last week we covered the four thinking traits: field independency, crystalline intelligence, fluid intelligence and conceptual differentiation. Those affect how someone thinks through your message.
Now let’s look at emotional traits. They affect how someone reacts to it.
The Three Emotional Traits
When thinking about your message, you also need to understand these three emotional traits your message recipients are likely to possess:
1. Emotional intelligence – This is our ability to understand and control our emotions.
It’s likely composed of several related abilities, including the ability to:
- Read the emotions of others (empathy)
- Be aware of one’s own emotions
- Harness and manage one’s own emotions productively
- Handle the emotional demands of relationships
Having strong emotional intelligence tends to mean a person has a well-developed sense of empathy. These people are able to easily and often automatically see the world from another person’s perspective.
The more perspectives we can access, the stronger our emotional intelligence trait is.
When we’re highly developed emotionally, we’re more aware of our own emotions. We also better understand the factors that cause those emotions, so we’re able to seek the kinds of messages that get us the emotional reactions we want. In addition, we’re less impulsive and are able to exercise more self-control.
Ultimately, having high emotional intelligence means we can concentrate on the task at hand rather than become distracted by peripheral emotions.
2. Tolerance for ambiguity – This is how we deal with the variables in the information received.
We daily encounter unfamiliar people and situations. To prepare ourselves for such situations, we’ve developed sets of expectations. What do we do when our expectations are not met and we’re surprised? That depends on our trait of tolerance for ambiguity.
If we have a low tolerance for ambiguity, we’re likely to feel totally overwhelmed by the constant flood of information. When we feel overwhelmed, our information filtering system kicks in and we’ll likely choose to ignore those messages that don’t meet our expectations because we feel too confused or frustrated to work out the discrepancies.
In contrast, if we have a high tolerance for ambiguity, instead of feeling overwhelmed, we feel motivated by the challenge of making sense of the flow. We feel excited by the opportunity to use all that information as a resource to be creative and construct our own meanings. And we feel confident that the meanings we construct will help us satisfy our needs better than if we ignore all the messages.
During media exposures (i.e., any type of communications we’re providing to our target audiences), people with a low tolerance for ambiguity encounter messages on the surface. If the surface meaning fits their preconceptions, then it’s filed away and becomes a confirmation (or reinforcement) of those preconceptions.
If the surface meaning does not meet a person’s preconceptions, the message is ignored.
In short, there’s no engagement with the message.
People with a high tolerance for ambiguity don’t have a barrier to analysis (processing what our message is saying). They’re willing to break any message down into components and make comparisons and evaluations in a quest to understand the nature of the message and why their own expectations were wrong.
Those who consistently attempt to verify their observations and judgments are called scanners because they’re perpetually looking for more information (Gardner, 1968).
3. Non-impulsiveness – This trait refers to how quickly people make decisions about messages (Kagan et al., 1964). People who rush to a decision are impulsive. In contrast, people who take a long time and consider things from many perspectives are reflective or non-impulsive.
When making decisions, there’s typically a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Impulsive people are most concerned with speed and feel overwhelmed by decisions. That’s why they want to have things resolved as quickly as possible. For them, it’s worth the risk to make a bad decision as long as they can quickly end the worry that comes with being faced with a decision-making task.
In contrast, less impulsive people are more concerned with accuracy; they fear being wrong, so they think about all the options of a decision — even if it takes a long time.
How much time we take to make decisions is governed by our emotions. If we feel comfortable encountering new information and like to work through problems carefully, we’re likely to act reflectively and take our time. However, if we feel a negative emotion (such as frustration), we tend to make decisions as quickly as possible to eliminate the negative emotional state.
Age matters as well. Younger and less mature audiences have less capacity to regulate their emotional reactions to a message. That’s a large part of why age-appropriate content standards exist.
What’s Your Messaging Strategy?
You can’t read every customer’s mood before you hit send.
But you can (and need to) write with your audience’s range of emotions in mind.
Think about what we just covered. When a reader with a low tolerance for ambiguity ignores a message that doesn’t meet expectations, there’s no engagement. A quick decider wants things resolved fast. A careful one wants to be sure.
Here’s a quick checklist to use before you send your next communication:
- If your message surprises people, is it easy for recipients to make sense of the surprise?
- Can a reader in a hurry get the point fast?
- Does a careful reader have enough detail to feel confident?
If the answer to any of those is no, then rethink your message.
3 Big Takeaways
- Three emotional traits (emotional intelligence, tolerance for ambiguity, and non-impulsiveness) shape how people react to your message.
- People with a low tolerance for ambiguity ignore messages that don’t meet their expectations. People with a high tolerance break your message down and analyze it.
- Impulsive people want speed. Non-impulsive people want accuracy. And younger audiences have less capacity to regulate their emotional reactions.
What can you do to assure your message works for the reader in a hurry and the one who wants every detail? Do share!
Stay authentic — and use this advice to get your message to land instead of crash.
Jeffery E. Pizzino, APR (seen here in a vintage photo circa 1983 serendipitously doing a Clash impersonation in a since-forgotten location) is a spin-free public relations pro who is passionate about telling the why of your story with clarity, impact and authenticity. He began his PR career in 1987 at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City but has spent the majority of his career as a solopreneur. He’s the Chief Authentic Officer of the Johnson City, TN-based public relations firm, AuthenticityPR. He also functions as the fractional CCO for his clients.
Jeff has an MBA in Management from Western International University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications — with an emphasis in PR — from Brigham Young University (rise and shout!). He’s also accredited in public relations (APR) and an adjunct media and communication faculty at East Tennessee State University. This Milwaukee, Wisconsin native holds an Italian citizenship and plans to live and work there someday. Jeff and his storyteller wife Leticia have four children and five grandchildren. In his extremely limited nonwork hours, he studies Italiano, practices guitar, writes songs, gardens, works out, plays pickleball, disc golfs, reads, listens to New Wave music, serves as an assistant communication director in his church, watches BYU football, watches the original Mission Impossible TV series, and plays board games (mostly Dominion and Seven Wonders). No, this guy’s never bored and looking for something to do. Email Jeff.
