Page 97 - Hard Goals

88 HARD Goals

To begin, whenever you talk about a goal, you want to use
really concrete words. Allan Paivio, now professor emeritus at
the University of Western Ontario, is the scientist who pioneered
the concept of concrete words. In one of my favorite studies,
Paivio analyzed people’s ability to remember concrete words as
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compared to abstract words. Concrete words have high “imag-
ery value,” that is, you can picture what they refer to. For exam-
ple, words like road, bridge, clown, and even picture are all
pretty concrete. But words like condition, amount, request, and
purpose are all pretty abstract. Paivio paired concrete nouns
and adjectives and tested them against paired abstract nouns
and adjectives to see which words were easier to recall. Some
of the word pairs were related, like young lady, and some were
not, like soft lady.
In every case, recall was better for concrete word pairs than
it was for abstract word pairs. It’s just easier to remember dead
body or happy clown than it is essential nutrient or signifi -
cant result. In fact, and this is critical, you’ll remember totally
unrelated concrete word pairs way better than you’ll remember
related abstract word pairs. Across Paivio’s experiments, con-
crete word pairs could be remembered as much as two to three
times more frequently than the abstract word pairs.
Now here’s the real kicker: almost anyone who’s ever set
a goal for someone else, for instance a corporate CEO, suffers
from abstract word disease. Let me share some of the actual
abstract word pairs tested in Paivio’s study:

Complete set
Annual event
Useful purpose
Original fi nding
Critical condition