Want to convince someone to do something? A new University of Michigan study has some intriguing insights drawn from how we speak.

The study, presented May 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, examines how various speech characteristics influence people's decisions to participate in telephone surveys. But its findings have implications for many other situations, from closing sales to swaying voters and getting stubborn spouses to see things your way.

"Interviewers who spoke moderately fast, at a rate of about 3.5 words per second, were much more successful at getting people to agree than either interviewers who talked very fast or very slowly," said Jose Benki, a research investigator at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

For the study, Benki and colleagues used recordings of 1,380 introductory calls made by 100 male and female telephone interviewers at the U-M ISR. They analyzed the interviewers' speech rates, fluency, and pitch, and correlated those variables with their success in convincing people to participate in the survey.

来自Michigan 大学的研究人员发现：当你想说服某人时，说的什么并不重要，怎么说才重要。如果你想说服某人（例如面试），那么最好按照下面的做法，即便撒谎也没关系。

研究人员Benki 找来100个男女，录了1380段不同的自我介绍，然后把这些介绍拿去调查面试，看看那种介绍更容易说服人。结果发现，面试的时候每秒钟说3.5个单词，每隔4-5分钟停顿一下，更容易让你得到这份工作。

因为这个频率会让你显得有生气，并且不像是在背台词。据说不那么流利的对话，比特别流畅的对话更容易收到面试官青睐。