This Smart 2020 Resolution Will Make People Trust You More (and It Costs Nothing)

'May I have your attention please? Thank you.' Also: 7 other things worth a click. Oh, and Happy New Year!

May I have your attention please? Thank you.

I have an idea for a resolution for 2020. Some of you do it already, and you're probably the better for it.

For the rest of us, it costs nothing, it takes almost no time, and there’s actually some research that suggests it makes people trust you more.

The resolution? It’s simple.

Be more polite.

‘Best answers’

A study last year in the journal MIS Quarterly suggests that being more polite makes people’s arguments more persuasive.

The researchers—Shun-Yang Lee of the University of Connecticut, Huaxia Rui of the University of Rochester, and Andrew Whinston of the University of Texas at Austin—studied conversations on Stack Exchange, which is a network of question-and-answer websites and communities.

Key finding: The more polite an answer was, the more likely it was to be rated highly and chosen as the "best answer."

It's not totally foolproof. If the person offering an opinion was already perceived as a true expert, that helped overcome impolite resp…