Carlos Solis
Public speaking, or even a difficult one-on-one conversation, can feel terrifying when you have something important to say. Paradoxically, the most effective way to beat that fear is to make yourself speak up. Tips from neuropsychologists will help you handle the stress.
1. Choose your position
Where you stand matters. Research at the University of East Anglia shows we use it to build connection, emphasize a point, or signal what the conversation is about. You might expect face-to-face talk to make communication easier, but in practice it can sometimes add pressure.
When someone holds your gaze, your self-awareness increases. French researchers found that under intense eye contact people judge their own physiological reactions, like skin sensitivity, more accurately. That sounds useful, but it can backfire: many people perform worse when they know others are watching.
So sometimes a side-by-side conversation, for example at a pub, on a walk, or in a car, feels less tense and helps the other person act more naturally. Still, use direct eye contact when the situation calls for it, such as checking whether a listener is paying attention.
2. Slow down—don’t stress your accent
If your accent differs from the people around you, you might worry they won’t understand you. The brain can process a wide range of speaking styles, so you don’t need to obsess about your accent. Focus on clarity instead.
Many people speak too quickly, and that creates the problem: rapid speech loses information carried by sounds. Our brains read a voice not only as words but as cues about who is speaking, the melody and rhythm, and the speaker’s emotional state. A sentence like “you scared me” takes on a completely different meaning if the speaker sounds bewildered, frightened, or angry.
You don’t need a stage to practice clarity. A new or unfamiliar setting gives you a chance to work on pronunciation and pace, and you’ll often see noticeable improvement faster than you expect.
3. Be expressive
Humans have very mobile faces. About 30 muscles on each side control chewing, speech, and facial expression, including movements that show emotion, add emphasis, and acknowledge someone.
Some of those movements happen automatically. Scientists have shown, for example, that when people meet someone they know they briefly raise their eyebrows for roughly 200 milliseconds. That quick, unobtrusive nonverbal greeting often comes with a smile that is hard to fake.
Combined with your tone of voice, facial expressions bring your message to life. They work especially well when they convey warmth or friendliness, because that makes you more approachable. It’s easier to do when you genuinely enjoy speaking.
You will usually do better exaggerating expressions than suppressing them. A 2024 U.S. study asked people to speak with strangers while either amplifying or suppressing their facial expressions. Listeners reacted more negatively to those who suppressed emotion and judged those speakers as less likable.
4. Use laughter
Laughter is a social behavior. People laugh about 30 times more often when they are with others than when they are alone. Laughter isn’t always appropriate, but when it comes at the right moment it eases tension. It signals confidence and informality, and using it during introductions makes connecting easier. When people laugh, social connection and closeness increase, and communication strengthens.
In randomized controlled studies, psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar showed that laughter encourages people to disclose more information.
You don’t have to be a comedian: most laughter isn’t tied to jokes but to a playful tone that increases warmth, trust, and interest. Avoid aggressive humor because it can damage relationships.
5. Tell stories
Don’t scatter facts without a clear connection; instead, give them a narrative shape. Back in 1972, U.S. researchers showed that people understand and remember information better when it appears in a structured, familiar story.
We even encode memories as if they belong to a familiar plot structure. Researchers at the University of Sussex later showed that if participants see only a fragment of a full event, say an athlete preparing to dive, then a week later the people who saw the fragment often remembered a completion that wasn’t in the original clip.
So a coherent story keeps listeners focused and improves recall. When you speak, use familiar, everyday examples and be concrete; that helps people understand and remember your message.
6. Match your approach to the group size
Conversation changes depending on how many people take part. In 1997, Robin Dunbar proposed that about four people is the maximum who can truly share a single conversation. When more people join, conversations often split into subgroups.
Part of the reason is managing speaking turns: a group must track who is speaking and who wants to speak next, and that tracking becomes harder in larger groups. We also cannot track the mental states of many people at once, and that ability, called theory of mind, gets strained when more than three other conversation partners are present.
In Dunbar’s lab studies, gossip about third parties occurred more often in groups of up to three, while ordinary conversations tended to fit groups of around four. The four-person limit may reflect a natural cap on cognitive resources that also shows up in working memory.
Beyond cognitive limits, external factors matter. Background noise makes speech harder to recognize, and that problem becomes more obvious in larger groups. The effect grows stronger for older adults because age-related hearing changes make it harder for them to separate speech from noise.
In those conditions, make sure listeners can see your face because that increases comprehension. Speak more slowly and enunciate vowels clearly. Being heard means not just saying the right words but making it easier for others to process them. If you pronounce vowels more slowly, your message will have a much better chance of reaching its audience.
Based on BBC Science Focus
