How to tell if a CEO is lying

bobulate:

The Economist summarizes a study from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business showing how to tell when a CEO is lying:

Deceptive bosses, it transpires, tend to make more references to general knowledge (“as you know…”), and refer less to shareholder value (perhaps to minimise the risk of a lawsuit, the authors hypothesise). They also use fewer “non-extreme positive emotion words”. That is, instead of describing something as “good”, they call it “fantastic”. The aim is to “sound more persuasive” while talking horsefeathers.

By analyzing the linguistic features present during 30,000 conference calls by CEOs and CFOs the study also found:

[D]eceptive CEOs use significantly fewer self-references, more third person plural and impersonal pronouns, more extreme positive emotions, fewer extreme negative emotions, and fewer certainty and hesitation words.

Give CEOs a pencil and paper and listen well, and you too can detect horsefeathers.

[via]

Source: bobulate

55 Notes/ Hide

  1. incrdblyclose reblogged this from youmightfindyourself
  2. magicalsillage reblogged this from youmightfindyourself
  3. therichgirlsareweeping reblogged this from youmightfindyourself and added:
    Fascinating stuff!
  4. gimmesomecoffee reblogged this from xueqiang and added:
    The aim is to “sound more persuasive” while talking horsefeathers. This is one interesting read indeed!
  5. youmightfindyourself reblogged this from bobulate
  6. xueqiang reblogged this from bobulate and added:
    This is for the ELL students: Fran, Nadia, Yanpeng and Joshua. :)
  7. journo-geekery reblogged this from bobulate
  8. robert-on-paper reblogged this from bobulate
  9. modernandmaterialthings reblogged this from bobulate
  10. triadic reblogged this from bobulate
  11. iomegadrive reblogged this from bobulate
  12. fuddmain reblogged this from erina and added:
    I have an easier way to tell. See if their lips are moving.
  13. erina reblogged this from bobulate
  14. bobulate posted this