Authors who use big words needlessly tend to be seen as less intelligent than authors who use a more basic vocabulary, according to a study.
Findings were based on students’ feedback on writing samples that used simple or complex language. Writing samples included graduate school applications, sociology dissertations and work of philosopher Descartes. Half of the students knew the author of the writing samples while half did not.
People tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays with simpler language as higher than those who used complicated language, and the type of writing did not influence results. The more needlessly complex language used, the worse the essays were rated.
Though researchers were not certain why intelligence rating corresponded to simpler language, they suggest that people may prefer to read things that are easy to understand.
A previous survey found that as many as 75 percent of undergraduate students may add unnecessarily big words to their writing to appear more intelligent--a technique that may backfire according to the results of this study.
Researchers noted that the problem isn’t in using complex words, but rather in using them unnecessarily when a more basic word would suffice.
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