“You” speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas

Significance Feeling resonance in response to ideas is a pervasive human experience. Previous efforts to enhance resonance have focused on changing the content of a message. Here we identify a linguistic device—the generic use of the word “you” (e.g., “You live, you learn”)—that accomplishes the same goal. Using crowd-sourced data from the Amazon Kindle application, we found that generic-you was substantially more likely to appear in passages that people highlighted (vs. did not highlight) while reading. Moreover, we present the results of four experiments ( n = 1,900), indicating that generic-you causally promoted resonance. These data reveal how a subtle linguistic shift can shape a pervasive human experience, promoting connection between people and ideas.