Instrumental Goal Activation Increases Online Petition Support Across Languages

Research on processing fluency and instrumental goal activation suggests people often perceive complex information positively when effort in a task is valued. The current paper evaluates this idea in five online petition samples (total N = 1,047,655 petitions and over 200 million words), assessing how the linguistic fluency of a petition associates with support. Consistent with prior work, petitions with lower rates of lexical fluency (fewer common words) associated with more signatures and an increased probability of petitions making concrete change than those with higher rates of lexical fluency (more common words). Exploratory results suggest other forms of linguistic complexity also associated with petition support: petitions written with less stylistic fluency (a more analytical and complex communication style) and with less structural fluency (less readable writing) received more signatures than those with more stylistic fluency and more structural fluency. Controlling for the political leaning of the petition writers as inferred by their language patterns revealed consistent effects. Crucially, the lexical fluency effects were maintained across 8 languages as well. Various types of linguistic complexity are therefore instrumental to get people to support online causes.