LITMIR.BIZ

      1 Want to “know that you care before they care what you know.”Perceptions of caring, empathy, and listening account for as much as 50% of how people determine whether they trust an individual or organization.Trust is often determined in the first 9‐30 seconds.Once lost, trust is difficult to regain.

      2 Have difficulty hearing, understanding, and remembering information.Fear, stress, and anxiety can reduce the ability to process information by up to 80%‐100%.Ninety‐five percent of the questions and concerns that cause fear, stress, and anxiety can be anticipated and prepared for in advance.

      3 Receive information best when presented in small digestible chunks and bytes.Key messages ideally contain no more than 140 characters, 27 words, and 3‐5 messages, with each message supported and expanded by 3‐5 facts or additional information.

      4 Are more likely to recall information they hear first and last.Provide the most important information first.Provide the second most important last.Prepare for people to ignore or forget messages not announced first or last.Repeat the first and last messages several times.

      5 Process information at a grade level substantially below their formal educational attainment.Keep initial messages short and simple, often four grade levels below formal educational attainment.Use a variety of tools, such as visuals, to simplify risk information.

      6 Will focus more on negative information than positive.Negative information typically needs to be balanced by three to five pieces of positive or constructive information.Avoid negative absolute statements (e.g., statements that contain the words never, nothing, or none.)Avoid words or phrases with high negative imagery (these typically go to the visual part of the brain for processing and “stick”).

      7 Judge risks to a large extent based on perceptions of trust, benefits, personal control, dread, fairness, and voluntariness.As much as 95% of fear, anxiety, and stress caused by risks can be traced back to factors such as perceived trust, benefits, personal control, dread, fairness, and voluntariness.

      8 Actively look for visual information to support verbal messages about risks.People often give greater weight to nonverbal cues and visual information than verbal information.People in high concern and high‐stress situations often assign a negative interpretation to nonverbal cues, such as body language.A significant amount of risk and high concern information is processed in primitive parts of the brain (the lizard or reptilian brain) that focuses on nonverbal information and determines the response of fight, freeze, or flight.