Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

It’s 1980 in America. Ronald Reagan is running for president against Jimmy Carter, who’d been elected in 1976. The economy is in horrific state, and Reagan must convince voters that it’s time to kick out Carter out of the White House.

In the last week of the 1980 presidential campaign, on October 28, the candidates held their one and only presidential debate and 80.6 million viewers tuned in to watch – making it the most-watched debate in American history at the time.

Reagan knew he needed to use Carter’s abysmal economic performance against him but, instead of doing what every candidate before him had done and stating the economic facts, he did something that no one had ever done, but every presidential candidate seems to have done since: he asked a simple but now legendary question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

A tele-vote poll carried out by ABC News immediately after the debate received 650,000 responses – and almost 70% of respondents said Reagan had won the debate. Seven days later, on November 4, Reagan defeated Carter by 10 points, in a historic landslide victory, to become the 40th President of the United States.

Just a question? No, political magic backed by science. Why?

Questions, unlike statements, elicit an active response – they make people think. Statements don’t.

That’s why researchers at Ohio State University have found that when the facts are clearly on your side, questions become extremely more effective than simply making a statement.

Asking is better than telling when it comes to influencing your own or another’s behavior. Questions prompt a psychological reaction that is different from the reaction to statements. Turning a statement into a question could influence a person’s behavior for up to six months.
Questions can be even more powerful if it can only be answered with either yes or no. The great thing about a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question is it doesn’t give you any wiggle room to deceive yourself. It forces you to commit one way or the other.