The same goes for a car. If someone says it’s fun to drive, or looks amazing, their opinion is based more on feelings. If they say it’s well built or gets good gas mileage, feelings are playing less of a role.

... 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.

Being nice is good, but eventually decisions need to be made and problems need to be solved.

And that is where less emotional, more cognitive language becomes important. Indeed, when customer service agents used more emotional language at the beginning of conversations, and more cognitive language in the middle, customers were more satisfied with the interaction and purchased more afterward.

Don’t just solve. And don’t just connect.

Connect, then solve.

Help people feel successful. Just four words. But so important. Note that this maxim doesn’t say, “Help people be successful.” It’s about feeling successful instead.

Every product or service that is growing and thriving today does this well. They help us feel successful. Look at the products and services you love—from shopping online to the clothing you wear to the apps you use every day for driving, communicating, or playing games. You’ll see that you’re getting a feeling of success from them.

More than two thousand years ago Aristotle used a term that is still in wide use in psychology today: eudaimonia. It refers to a state of deep wellbeing in which a person feels that their life has meaning and purpose. It is often contrasted with hedonia (the origin of the word hedonism), which refers to the fleeting happiness of various pleasures. To put it another way, if hedonic happiness is what you mean when you say you’re having a good

time, then eudaimonic happiness is what we mean when we say life is good. It is a sense that, outside of this moment, regardless of how pleasurable or miserable it is, your life is worth something, and valuable to you. It is the kind of well-being that can endure through both the ups and the downs.