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Key points
- To engage others when you’re writing, use the second person pronoun, “you,” as your pronoun of choice.
- The second person, unlike the third person, get readers to imagine themselves in the shoes of the action.
- “You” also fires up special circuitry in the brain, rewarding readers with a deeper sense of social connection.
What is it with you, anyway? That question has aroused the curiosity of scientists for years. What gives “you,” the pronoun, so much impact when you write with it? Why does it help you connect so deeply with readers? What magic does it produce when you’re advising, teaching, and explaining things to others?
In a classic experiment by Richard Mayer and others at the University of California, two groups of people were asked to listen to a presentation on the respiratory system. Each group heard a 100-word text accompanied by lung and windpipe animations. They learned about inhalation, oxygen exchange, and exhalation.
The two groups heard identical scripts except for one thing. In the second, Mayer’s team replaced “the” 12 times with “your.” A fragment: “During inhaling, the [your] diaphragm moves down, creating more space for the [your] lungs, air enters through the [your] nose or mouth, moves down through the [your] throat and bronchial tubes to tiny air sacs in the [your] lungs…”
Would such a small change make a difference in its impact on readers?
The effect was striking. The “your” group, quizzed afterwards, gave much better answers than the “the” group in applying what they learned.[i] In other words, people could better transfer the knowledge from the presentation to new situations.
Why is that? The explanation comes from Benjamin Bergen, author of Louder Than Words and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. Bergen has long looked into how “you” and “your” shape understanding. He has found that the second person pronoun induces a “participant” perspective. “The” and other pronouns induce an “observer” perspective.[ii]
When you’re prompted to take an observer perspective, you comprehend a text as if you’re watching the action. When you’re prompted to take a participant perspective, you comprehend it as if you’re walking in the shoes (or breathing in the lungs) of the action.
Such research suggests that using the impersonal “the”—as well as pronouns “he/she,” “they,” and “we”—flop in their impact in comparison to the second person. Neuroscientists haven’t pinned down the biology of why. But they have observed that “you” sparks a consistent pattern of action in different parts of the brain.
One experiment shows that using “you” activates more of the brain’s social circuitry. When people read texts with “you,” the part of their circuitry known to fire when people are deeply involved in interacting with others, the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is activated. This is the same region that swings into action when people read text that includes a person’s name.
The TPJ is a patch of the cortex up behind each of your ears. Arvid Guterstam and others at Princeton University found that “You are at an airshow…” activates the TPJ just like “Karen is at an airshow…” When they tested text that lacked “you” or a person’s name, the TPJ didn’t fire up at all.[iii]
The significance of this finding requires more research. But we know that the firing of the TPJ reflects a signature pattern of brain activation when people experience deep social connection. It buzzes with activity when people infer what’s going on in other people’s minds—that is, when they are “reading” others’ thinking.
While we wait to learn more about the meaning of the TPJ’s involvement, we do know that “you” offers many practical benefits. In some computer-training experiments, for example, listeners were more motivated when they read scripts with the third person replaced with “you.” They also better remembered the content with the “you.”[iv] Other studies replicate the Mayer group’s findings, showing that “you” helps readers better transfer their knowledge.[v]
Not all experiments yield the same conclusions, of course. Some come up with mixed results.[vi] In online articles, for example, studies show that the use of “you” in headlines has less impact than using “we.” The “you” headlines rack up fewer clicks.”[vii] This research relies on a trove of A/B test data from the website Upworthy.
Yet the engaging qualities of “you,” however varied, remain undeniable. Grant Packard and Jonah Berger at York University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School teased out some of you’s nuanced effects. Using automated text processing, they found that song lyrics in which “you” appears as the object instead of the subject rank higher on Billboard charts.
Packard and Berger found the same effect in the lab when people read lyrics without music, and yet again the same effect when they read poetry. The readers ranked “you” as more likeable when it came as the object rather than the subject.[viii] (Give it a try: Which works better, “I love you” and “I want you” or “You are mine.”)
Packard and Berger suggested that when you write songs and poetry with “you” as the object, you get people to imagine a friend (or lover) as the “you” in the text. In other words, the “you” as the object gets readers and listeners of lyrics to cast a significant other, instead of themselves, as the participant.
The research overall points to a simple lesson for workaday writing. Recast your sentences to favor using the pronoun “you.” You’ll not only invoke the participant effect, you’ll treat readers to a deeper firing in their social circuitry. And if you’re a songwriter, be sure to recall the words of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca as he parted with Ingrid Bergman: “Here’s looking at you, kid.”[ix]
References
[i] Richard E Mayer et al., "A Personalization Effect in Multimedia Learning: Students Learn Better When Words Are in Conversational Style Rather Than Formal Style," Journal of Educational Psychology 96, no. 2 (2004).
[ii] Benjamin K. Bergen, Louder Than Words (New York: Basic Books, 2012), chapter 5.
[iii] Arvid Guterstam et al., "Temporo-Parietal Cortex Involved in Modeling One’s Own and Others’ Attention," Elife 10 (2021).
[iv] Maria Reichelt et al., "Talk to Me Personally: Personalization of Language Style in Computer-Based Learning," Computers in Human Behavior 35 (2014).
[v] Silke Schworm and Klaus D. Stiller, "Does Personalization Matter? The Role of Social Cues in Instructional Explanations," Intelligent Decision Technologies 6, no. 2 (2012).
[vi] See three studies: Reichelt et al., "Talk to Me Personally: Personalization of Language Style in Computer-Based Learning."; Schworm and Stiller, "Does Personalization Matter? The Role of Social Cues in Instructional Explanations."; Roxana Moreno and Richard E Mayer, "Personalized Messages That Promote Science Learning in Virtual Environments," Journal of Educational Psychology 96, no. 1 (2004).
[vii] Kristina Gligorić et al., "Linguistic Effects on News Headline Success: Evidence from Thousands of Online Field Experiments (Registered Report)," Plos ONE 18, no. 3 (2023).
[viii] Grant Packard and Jonah Berger, "Thinking of You: How Second-Person Pronouns Shape Cultural Success," Psychological Science 31, no. 4 (2020).
[ix] Thanks to Grant Packard and Jonah Berger for pointing this out.
