An online survey (N = 210) is presented on how the perceived utility of correct and exaggerated countermeasures against Covid-19 is affected by different pronominalization strategies (impersonal form, you, we). In evaluating the pronominalization effect, we have statistically controlled for the roles of several personal characteristics: Moral Disengagement, Moral Foundations, Health Anxiety, and Embracing of Fake News. Results indicate that, net of personal proclivities, the <i>you</i> form decreases the perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, possibly due to simulation processes. As a second point, through a Structural Equation Model, we show that binding moral values (Authority, Ingroup, and Purity) positively predict both fake news embracing and perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, while individualizing moral values (Harm and Fairness) negatively predict fake news embracing and positively predict the perceived utility of correct countermeasures. Lastly, fake news embracing showed a doubly bad effect: not only does it lead people to judge exaggerated countermeasures as more useful; but, more dangerously, it brings them to consider correct countermeasures as less useful in the struggle against the pandemic. Pronouns and pronominal choices in communication Every communication has an addressee, and every speaker (or, more generally, every sender) has several options to refer to his/her addressee(s). The use of pronouns is a widely used strategy; they are part of those linguistic expressions whose referent is bound by the coordinates of the communicative situation, called deixis. Speakers and listeners use deictic fields ( Bühler, 1990 ) each having its own center, the origin to orient these expressions. Specifically, pronouns are manifestations of the personal deixis whose origin is the sender of the message, from which the receiver and the “third party” participants are distinct. This allows for various pragmatic effects. For instance, it has been shown that specific pronouns predict how couples think and feel about their relationship and behavior (Williams‐Baucom et al., 2010), how they cope with worry ( Biesen et al., 2016 ). When it comes to mass and political communication speeches, in which the speaker has the explicit or implicit goal to persuade the audience ( Mutz et al., 1996 ; Poggi, 2005 ; Poggi & Vincze, 2009; Vincze, 2010 ), the mere choice to pronounce “we” instead of “you” can have a different impact on the audience’s interpretations ( Gunsch et al., 2000 ), namely on how the addressees introject the speaker’s message. We (We should do it) Using we is a way of identifying oneself with the addressee(s), or at least with some of the characteristics of the audience; it constitutes a way through which the speaker comes closer to their audience, and theirself is also portrayed as a proper member of the addressee(s) group: the pronoun we is assigned a key function in the process of establishing membership categorization while at the same time signifying proximity, if not solidarity with the category’s ideology. […] Speakers define explicitly and publicly social groups vis à vis their interlocutors by using we pronouns. At the same time, they state their membership to these groups. ( Fetzer & Bull, 2008 , p. The first is used to strengthen the validity of an argument by extending the referential domain of the speaker’s arguments from self ’s beliefs and ideologies to that of a larger and more relevant social group (more general forms as, for example, the use of the pronoun everybody, generic you, or plural we); the second, on the contrary, weakens the power of an argument by reducing its domain of validity to that of a singled-out, smaller group (when using parts of an object, person or entity to indicate the whole object, person or entity) ( Fetzer & Bull, 2008 ). From the addressee’s point of view, receiving an utterance with the pronoun we provokes an automatic sense of inclusion within the speaker’s proposals. An utterance such as We should do it implies that the speaker will embrace the effort together with the addressee(s). Each receiver feels like a member of a group who is going to endeavor to do something. An utterance such as You should do it is likely to be perceived as a performative act of order or, as Orvell and colleagues (2019) suggest, “generic-you functions as a linguistic nudge that carries persuasive force”. Furthermore, it is implied that the speaker will not embrace the effort together with the addressee(s); quite the opposite, s/he is commanding the addressee to do something that s/he is too high ranked to do. Indeed, it has been shown that the use of you can have negative consequences also in customer-firm interactions ( Packard et al., 2018 ). Perceived utility (the good precursor to compliance) What we are aiming at is a better understanding of the mechanisms that lead one to be compliant with correct countermeasures and discourage exaggerated behaviors that can have negative social and psychological effects. But to do so, an explanation is required on why we used perceived utility instead of mere compliance. (2011) found that when the pronoun “you” was used, readers were more emotionally reactive to valenced narrative events. Together with those of Gast (2015) , all of these Such a complexity surely deserves new studies to be further addressed. Lastly, in this study, for the first time, a manipulation of the pronominalization strategy was employed to analyze the perceived utility of some recommendations. We are convinced that, beyond its use in similar themes, such an approach, with large-scale employment, could shed light on a wide range of topics related to linguistic strategies of persuasion (e.g., topicalization, degree of semantic vagueness, certainty markers, etc.). Although our results support what we hypothesized satisfyingly, in the future, we plan to test similar effects by using within-subjects designs.