Want to convince someone to do something? A new University of Michigan (U-M) study has some intriguing insights drawn from how we speak.

The study, presented May 14, 2011 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, examines how various speech characteristics influence people’s decisions to participate in telephone surveys. But its findings have implications for many other situations, from closing sales to swaying voters and getting stubborn spouses to see things your way.

“Interviewers who spoke moderately fast, at a rate of about 3.5 words per second, were much more successful at getting people to agree than either interviewers who talked very fast or very slowly,” says Jose Benki, a research investigator at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

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