INTHEBLACK February / March 2026 - Magazine - Page 49
“If you want to come across as more powerful, you
don’t have to be overly positive, but reining in those
negative emotions is a really important thing to do.”
JEN OVERBECK, MELBOURNE BUSINESS SCHOOL
EVERY DAY, 376 BILLION EMAILS FLOOD
inboxes worldwide. Most come from businesses,
professionals and bots. Whether it is a quick
update, a formal proposal, a casual check-in
or an annoying bit of spam, email is the
preferred communication tool for many.
While frantically sending, replying and
forwarding, few stop to consider what this
constant stream of communication might be
saying. Are writing styles coming across
as assertive, collaborative, friendly, decisive
and professional? Or something else entirely?
Recent research from Melbourne Business
School offers valuable insights into these
questions. It shows that word choice, sentence
structure and punctuation plays a powerful
role in shaping how others perceive power,
confidence and credibility. In short: writing
style might be speaking louder than
previously thought.
Jen Overbeck, professor of management
and associate dean at Melbourne Business
School, says a key goal of her research on
word usage was to find out whether the
power someone tries to project in their
writing matches how others actually
perceive it.
“Consciously or unconsciously, we tailor
our communication to reflect how we want
to be seen and ideally to influence how others
actually see us,” she says. “We wanted to find
out whether, when people try to convey their
sense of power through language, others
actually pick up on it.”
POWERFUL LANGUAGE
The research analysed linguistic cues in relation
to specific concepts of status such as power,
dominance and prestige. Key findings suggest
that expressing negative emotions correlates
with being perceived as less powerful, while
using analytical language is positively
associated with perceived power and prestige.
“What’s interesting is that people tend to
judge those expressing emotions, especially
negative ones, as less powerful,” says Overbeck.
This is particularly true for emotions like
anxiety and sadness.
“If someone says, ‘I’m really worried about
this’ or ‘I’m feeling down about what happened’,
people tend to perceive less power in the
speaker. Similarly, when someone writes an
angry email, people do not see a reason to
respect them,” she says.
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