This finding suggests that it may be the tangibility, rather than the magnitude, of the benefits that makes people care. You don’t have to promise riches and sex appeal and magnetic personalities. It may be enough to promise reasonable benefits that people can easily imagine themselves enjoying.

... emotional language had different effects in these two types of domains.

As mentioned, for hedonic things (music, movies, and novels), emotional language increased impact. Emotional reviews were more helpful and made consumers more interested in making a purchase…

For utilitarian products, however, the opposite occurred. For razors, emotionality backfired. Emotional reviews were less helpful, made people less willing to purchase whatever was reviewed.

Because while emotionality is good for hedonic things, it’s bad for more utilitarian ones. When picking and using hedonic products and services, emotion is a deciding factor. People want sports cars to be exciting, movies to be enjoyable, and vacations to be fun. So when emotional words are used to describe hedonic things, people think they’ll like those things more. But when picking and using utilitarian products and services, evoking emotion isn’t really the goal.

When marketing a product, service, or experience, for example, is it more hedonic or more utilitarian? Are people buying it for pleasure or enjoyment, or more functional or practical reasons? If it’s more about enjoyment, emotional words like “awesome” and “beautiful” fit really well. Saying a movie is “heartwarming,” a destination is “inspiring,” or a meditation app is “fantastic” not only suggests those things are good but does so in a way that encourages purchase and action.

If the product, service, or experience is more about practical functionality, however, those same positive words may backfire. Less emotional words like “brilliant,” “flawless,” and “perfect” will be more persuasive. Calling a dictation app “brilliant” rather than “awesome,” for example, should encourage purchase and use.

Telling someone they’re smart, good at math, or a great presenter implies that their performance depends on a stable trait. If they did well on a test, they have that trait, but if they did badly, well, they’re just out of luck. They don’t have what it takes and there’s not much they can do to change it.

But rephrasing that feedback as process praise is more likely to have the intended effect. Telling someone they did well, or did a good job on a test or presentation, focuses less on stable traits and more on the particular instance at hand. Which means if things don’t go so well once in a while, it’s not a mark of failure or lack of ability. It’s just a misstep and a reminder to work harder next time around.

I’m always interested in what others, and not just the esteemed critic from The New York Times, think about what we’re doing. If your business involves making people happy, then you can’t be good at it if you don’t care what people think. The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind.