YES is a magic word…

Yes in Polish is tak, which looks and sounds similar to tack—the Swedish word for thank you. When I first came to Warsaw I thought the Poles were incredibly polite, saying thank you all the time. This isn’t necessarily true. It wasn’t until I actually questioned their frequent use of this word that I realized tak means yes. The meaning of the word still doesn’t change the fact that you here it all the time in Poland. Why is that? I can’t give you clear answer quite yet as I’ll have to dig further into the language as a whole once I become fluent but most likely it has a linguistic explanation.

I’ve replayed scenarios in my head of a variety of conversations in the languages I know. In Poland, it is not uncommon to hear tak as many as five times in a 30 second conversation between a barista and customer. In Sweden and the US I’d say this number is down to two, and in Italy I’d say maybe three. When considering conversations between people in the stores, people that know each other, as well as conversations on the phone, tak is as frequently used as in the coffee shop situations. Although in these latter cases it’s not that the word shows up in every other sentence, but rather that once it shows up, it’s in a multiple form—tak, tak, tak. Hearing a repetition of ja (Swedish word for yes), or yes usually means that someone is upset. Once again, I’d say Italians are in between in their usage of the word.

To continue on the comparison of “the international yes,” I want to bring your attention to the length of the word in different languages as well as to how easy it is to let it slip off your tongue in any given language (tak, yes, si, etc) once you’ve learned it. There’s an international simplicity in this word and at the same time it is one of the most powerful words there is.

The psychology of yes was discussed as recently as last week in our behavioral science class. It was the topic of patient-physician relationship and it was demonstrated through a role play how a single question from a physician that guarantees a yes as the answer from the patient, will release most of the tension in a patient and facilitate the patient-physician cooperation. This is certainly not the only case in which “yes-psychology” will work as efficiently. Think about salesmen and their persuasion skills. Once a person has answered yes to one question, he is more likely to keep answering yes to the questions following. Sales people simply ask this given yes question and are with that one step closer to a deal.

Why that much power in such a tiny word? As with so many things, our psyches and early childhood plays a role. Yes simply feels good because we’ve learnt that it is supposed to make us feel god. At an early age we associate yes with having our will acknowledged and a positive energy becomes affiliated with the word. Is it then a coincidence that we usually pose questions such that the wanted answer is yes and not no...?

Our professor also kindly suggested us to use this psychology in our relationships, a tip I now pass forward to you…