ABSTRACT
Temporal immediacy is the perceived closeness of an event or action in time and is impacted by linguistic choices, like grammatical tense and active/passive voice. Even when two statements have similar semantic meanings, variation in temporal immediacy can convey different feelings of closeness. For example, managers can use temporal immediacy to describe good news to make it seem closer and more likely. However, it is unclear whether discussing future positive news with immediacy (i.e., the “favorable” use of temporal immediacy) will influence investors’ judgments and whether this varies with communication mode. In two experiments, we find that favorable temporal immediacy increases investment willingness in text but not audio/video communications. Our findings have implications for investors, managers, and regulators, suggesting that reliance on text communications may lead to undue influence of linguistic features, such as temporal immediacy, and that audio/video communications will reduce the perceived closeness induced by these linguistic features.
Data Availability: Please contact the authors.
JEL Classifications: M41; C91; D91; G11; G41.
