Rogelberg et al. (Reference Rogelberg, King and Alonso2022) do an excellent job of highlighting industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists’ struggle with making I-O psychology relevant to the public. However, we believe one important concept that contributes to this irrelevance needs to be further emphasized—that is, the phenomenon of “Wittgensteinian shortfall” (Martínez & Mammola, Reference Martínez and Mammola2021). This is the notion that refers to the ineptitude to fully acquire the permeation pertaining to the special affinity across diverse systematic enterprises that build and organize knowledge about the universe.

The last sentence illustrates the subject of our response article; jargon leads to confusion and, as we will describe later, division. Wittgensteinian shortfall is “the inability to successfully communicate specific ideas across unalike scientific communities” (Martínez & Mammola, Reference Martínez and Mammola2021, p. 4). This tongue-in-cheek term was coined by Martínez and Mammola (Reference Martínez and Mammola2021) in an article that examined jargon and the number of citations in “cave research” of geologists, zoologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. In their literature review they examined citation patterns associated with use of jargon in titles and abstracts. They found that, indeed, the use of jargon was negatively related to the number of citations. Their explanation for this negative correlation was that scientists review hundreds, if not thousands, of titles (and abstracts) a year and jargon prevents them from easily understanding the material. This explanation could be extrapolated beyond the scientists. We argue that through our profession’s jargon we are making our field more exclusive and out of reach to those who matter: the decision makers, policy makers, and the public.

Although the origin of the word “jargon” comes from the sense of “twittering, chattering, and gibberish,” the more recent Oxford dictionary defines jargon as “special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.” Attridge (Reference Attridge1991) states that jargon is a “cardinal misuse of language” (p. 42) and that it is “external properties, sounds and shapes that signal exclusiveness, foreignness, technicality, artifice, but do no real intellectual work” (pp. 42–43). There appears to be a theme among the discussion of jargon: although it may not always be intentional, jargon is divisive—which can prevent our work from getting to a broader audience. In the focal article, Rogelberg et al. (Reference Rogelberg, King and Alonso2022) touch on the concept of jargon, such that they describe some articles using “dense academic language” and “do not even use the right words”. They even provide a more colorful description of our work, such that “we sound like eggheads”. We propose that for all the suggestions proposed in the focal article to be successful (e.g., blogs, trade journals, books, podcasts), we need to cut the jargon as a profession.

Changing how we use jargon as a field will require us to engage in specific behaviors in how we communicate our science. Important goals should be both to avoid jargon and to convey meaningful scientific ideas (see Sharon & Baram-Tsabari, Reference Sharon and Baram-Tsabari2014). One way to convey meaning more effectively is to consider the intended audience and use language that is accessible and engaging for that audience (Stableford & Mettger, Reference Stableford and Mettger2007). Notably, scholars have recommended that fewer than 1 in 50 unfamiliar words should be used in either written or spoken communication (Nation ISP, Reference Nation2006). More than just a stylistic concern, communicating clearly in a manner that connects with readers can result in better adoption of recommendations. Indeed, using language familiar to the intended recipient is considered of great importance for learning, the formation of attitudes, and behavioral change (see Sharon & Baram-Tsabari, Reference Sharon and Baram-Tsabari2014). Furthermore, researchers have found that the use of jargon lowers the ability to process scientific information, which, in turn, can harm efforts to inform and persuade the intended audience (Bullock et al., Reference Bullock, Colón Amill, Shulman and Dixon2019). Therefore, if a goal of our field is to support positive change, we must consider how we communicate with our intended audiences. Similarly, acronyms are a communication tool that can be just as confusing as jargon (Hales et al., Reference Hales, Williams and Rector2017). Ask a non-psychological-science colleague whether they understand enough of the following titles to convince them to read the articles: “Does CWB repair negative affective states, or generate them? Examining the moderating role of trait empathy” (Koopman et al., Reference Koopman, Conway, Dimotakis, Tepper, Lee, Rogelberg and Lount2021) or “Expert vs. general working sample differences in KSAO 'improvability’ ratings and relationships with measures relevant to occupational and organizational psychology” (Maurer & Lippstreu, Reference Maurer and Lippstreu2008). Although these are both examples of excellent scientific work, the titles limit the interest of a potential broad audience.

Given the ongoing culture of jargon within the academy and in scientific communication, it is important to ask, “How do we change the culture of jargon?” One way to improve how we communicate our science could be to provide formal training to graduate students, which could be added to the graduate curriculum as a formal class or workshop. One example is a 10-week course in which students wrote multiple New York Times-style articles based on scientific papers presented during the course in order to improve scientific communication skills (Brownell et al., Reference Brownell, Price and Steinman2013). Specific recommendations for building effective graduate science communication courses include (a) teaching communication along with substantive content, (b) providing opportunities for practice and revision, (c) identifying opportunities to share products from the course with actual audiences, and (d) implementing oral science communication training (see Brownell et al., Reference Brownell, Price and Steinman2013). One challenge to building such a course may have to do with the available resources at a given institution. In situations in which adding curriculum on science communication is not feasible, it may be possible to host a workshop on science communication (e.g., see https://www.aaas.org/programs/communicating-science). The workshops could be presented through graduate programs and/or have a special session at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP) yearly conference.

The goal is for this early training to trickle down to the other “offenders” of jargon use. Through early communication training, reviewers and editors would be less likely to reinforce the use of jargon-filled manuscripts and might even include a “readability” component in the review process (Plavén-Sigray et al., Reference Plavén-Sigray, Matheson, Schiffler and Thompson2017). All I-O journals might consider requiring lay summaries to share our findings with a broader audience (Kuehne & Olden, Reference Kuehne and Olden2015). Consultants and managers would be more likely to thoughtfully use their language to support more effective communication and increase employee and organizational success (Patoko & Yazdanifard, Reference Patoko and Yazdanifard2014). Researchers would be more likely to avoid the “communication traps” of using scientific terms and acronyms (Tumpey et al., Reference Tumpey, Daigle, Nowak, Rasmussen and Goodman2018). The readability of scientific works is decreasing over time (Plavén-Sigray et al., Reference Plavén-Sigray, Matheson, Schiffler and Thompson2017), and we can change the trajectory at all these levels so the knowledge gleaned from I-O psychology will be accessible to all.

In conclusion, we believe that I-O psychologists should strive to be leaders in the “Wittgensteinian shortfall” recovery. This recovery would manifest as successful communication across all scientific and lay communities. It would represent a recovery in which I-O psychology would show a profit through dividends such that our work would be placed “readily and fully into the hands of decision makers, policy makers, and the public” (Rogelberg et al., Reference Rogelberg, King and Alonso2022). Making this change will require each of us to look inward and think about who we serve as a field along with how we can contribute to a culture of change to better support these stakeholders. Through the use of straightforward and familiar language, we can continue to do our important work—but this time our work will reach the public.