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The formality effect

Abstract

This paper documents the existence of a ‘formality effect’ in government communications. Across three online studies and three field experiments in different policy contexts (total N = 67,632), we show that, contrary to researcher and practitioner predictions, formal government communications are more effective at influencing resident behaviour than informal government communications. In exploring mechanisms, we show that formality operates as a heuristic for credibility and importance. Recipients view the source of a formal letter as more competent and trustworthy, and view the request itself as more important to take action on, despite no evidence of change in comprehension or in perceived ease of taking action. These findings have immediate implications for government communicators and open the door for a renewed focus on how the design and presentation of information impacts behaviour.

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Fig. 1: Study 1 treatment effects on perceived formality, in standard deviations, relative to a letter with informal language and informal aesthetic.

Data availability

All data from the prediction survey and Studies 1, 4, 5 and 6 are available on OSF at https://osf.io/akh9b/. Accredited researchers can access data for Studies 2 and 3 after signing a data sharing agreement with BIT. Requests for data for Studies 2 and 3 can be directed to BIT.

Code availability

All code is available on OSF at https://osf.io/akh9b/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank BIT, our city government partners, and E. Cardon, K. Reddy and S. Tregebov at BIT Americas for work on Studies 2 and 3. We thank the California Policy Lab, Franchise Tax Board and Golden State Opportunity for collaboration on Study 4. We also thank seminar participants at Indiana University, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making annual conference and the Public Management Research Conference for feedback on the manuscript. Finally, we thank Bloomberg Philanthropies for funding for the BIT Americas studies. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Elizabeth Linos & Jessica Lasky-Fink

  2. Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Chris Larkin

  3. Veterans Health Administration, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA

    Lindsay Moore

  4. NESTA, London, UK

    Elspeth Kirkman

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  1. Elizabeth Linos
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the design of Studies 1, 5 and 6. As former employees of BIT, E.L., E.K. and L.M. contributed to the design and evaluation of Study 2. As former employees of BIT, E.K. and L.M. contributed to the design and evaluation of Study 3. E.L. contributed to the design and evaluation of Study 4. J.L.-F. conducted and led the analysis for Studies 1, 5 and 6. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to
Elizabeth Linos.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Austin Hubner, Christine Liebrecht and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–8, Tables 1–18, Methods and references.

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Linos, E., Lasky-Fink, J., Larkin, C. et al. The formality effect.
Nat Hum Behav (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01761-z

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  • Received: 29 January 2023

  • Accepted: 13 October 2023

  • Published: 23 November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01761-z

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