I'm putting together my notes for an upcoming episode on the self-
monitoring personality and I ran across exactly the thing (okay, only
one of the things) I mentioned in a post last week regarding what I
hate about research: the way it is written. Here's an example from an
article I'm reading (no offense to the authors - this is the article
that just happened to be in front of me). Here's how the authors
explain self monitoring:
…the behaviors of subjects who are high in self-monitoring should
exhibit more cross-situational variability and should be more strongly
associated with salient aspects of the proximal perceived environment
than should the behaviors of low self-monitoring subjects." (36 words,
grade level: 12 Flesh reading ease: 0)
Here's how I would suggest rewriting it (only one possibility of
course):
"...the behavior of people who are high in self-monitoring changes in
different situations according to what the person thinks is important
in that situation. This is less true of low self-monitoring
individuals." (41 words, grade level: 12, Flesh reading ease: 27)
I used slightly more words but the reading level is the same (12).
The "Flesh reading ease" scores are obviously different. Can't we
follow the trend that we're following regarding "legal-ease" ("...the
party of the first part..."etc., etc.) and write more like human
beings than "scientists" (whatever we think that means)?
Okay, I'm off my soap box now and am calming down...
Michael
Michael Britt
[email protected]
www.thepsychfiles.com
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