GRAB their ATTENTION –
How to arouse curiosity and captivate your audience
When giving a speech, the quickest way to get your audience’s attention is to arouse their curiosity. Arouse their curiosity and you focus their attention on what you are saying. Words that create curiosity and get attention are:
1. Questions
2. Implied Questions
3. Questions with options
4. Startling statements
5. Incongruities
Props, movement and sounds also get attention. But here we are dealing with ‘words’. Words that arouse audience attention.
Can you give examples
QUESTION
“Who wants to make money?”
“Is climate change a major cause of depression?”
IMPLIED QUESTION
“I don’t know the way to the station.”
“2 x 2 = ___ “
QUESTION with OPTIONS
“Who was the first person to walk on the moon:
a) Neil Armstrong b) Buzz Aldrin c) Mike Collins d) Jim Lovell?”
“Which month of the year was named after Julius Caesar:
a) June b) July c)August d) October?”
STARTLING STATMENT
“Cancer strikes one in two people. Half of you here could get cancer.”
“An Australian man who “surfed” a floating whale carcass surrounded by sharks has admitted that he was an “idiot” to attempt the foolhardy feat.”
INCONGRUITY (joke)
A farmer walks into a pub with a pig under his arm. The barman says, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” And the pig says, “Yes he is. But we all love him.”
A man was in a restaurant and ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter says, “This is our finest white wine. 19.55.” The man pauses then says, “Have you got anything cheaper?”
CONFLICT
“You said you’d never been to London but here’s a picture of you near Big Ben.”
“He said he didn’t take sugar so why is he adding sugar to his coffee?”
Was any research done to prove this?
A) Daniel Berlyne
In the 1950s, the psychologist Daniel Berlyne was the first person to scientifically investigate curiosity. He conducted many experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which indicates the activity of the brain. He wanted to discover which stimuli caused curiosity and which parts of the brain were activated. He grouped these stimuli into categories.
UNCERTAINTY
He discovered that events where several alternative responses are possible would get attention. We call these events i) questions ii) implied questions iii) questions with options.
NOVELTY
Berlyne found that any stimulus that causes surprise or unexpectedness would get a person’s attention. We call them startling statements.
INCONGRUITY
Subjects would focus their attention when two stimuli were presented together, and each stimulus had a different expectation. The expectation is given a new meaning by a reinterpretation of the information that preceded it. We call this arrangement a joke.
CONFLICT
When subjects were given stimuli that had inconsistencies, they focused their attention. Events where new information was incompatible with existing knowledge also focused attention. We call this conflicting information.
B) George Lowenstein
In the 1990s, another psychologist, George Lowenstein, did further research into curiosity. He discovered that certain stimuli would arouse curiosity and get the person’s attention. His list was similar to Daniel Berlyne’s findings. The major stimuli that he supported were:
QUESTIONS – situations that present the person with missing information.
UNEXPECTED (Berlyne called this ‘Novelty’) - a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution. This creates curiosity to know the outcome.
INCONGRUITY – where there is a violation of an expectation and the information given is initially incongruent with the expectations, until further information is given which triggers a search from an explanation.
Lowenstein added three other categories that arouse curiosity and get attention. These are:
FEEDBACK – corrections can make a person aware of a wrong answer and then create the desire to find the correct answer.
SECRETS – when someone taunts you with information that they possess but you do not.
FORGOTTEN – when knowledge once remembered is now forgotten. This can create curiosity and attention by creating a desire to remember.
CONCLUSION
If you want to get your audience’s attention immediately, you should arouse their curiosity by using:
· QUESTIONS
· IMPLIED QUESTIONS
· QUESTIONS with OPTIONS
· STARTLING STATEMENTS
· INCONGRUITY
· CONFLICT
(For a detailed explanation of this discussion about curiosity and attention, see the pdf pamphlet: “GRAB their ATTENTION: How to arouse curiosity and captivate your audience”)
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