Truths depend on our own point of view

There are a lot of absolute truths in the world, but many are subjective. For example, I can 100% prove that Chick-Fil-A has the fastest drive-thru of all similar restaurants, but I can also 100% prove that they have the slowest. Both are true, but they depend on your point of view.

In Star Wars: Episode VI (“Return of the Jedi”), Obi-Wan Kenobi simply says “ Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view “.

This came up while listening to an episode of Adam Grant’s “WorkLife” podcast, where he was chatting with Charan Ranganath. Charan said:

“And so what happens is then we tell these stories to different people and we tune them up to different audiences, and then they react. And that changes the way we think about that memory.”

Depending on the audience that we’re speaking with, we often adjust our stories. We still (hopefully) are sharing the truth every time, but the shift in story can change things a bit and even help us refine the views in our own head.

Audience Tuning

This is known as the audience-tuning effect, which simply refers to how communicators adjust their messages to align with the perceived attitudes of their audience. As you tune your message for an audience, it’s likely to enhance the future recall…