The Psychology of Manipulation (Audiobook)

this request comes in the form of cards placed in guests bathrooms cards that provide some surprising insights into the remarkable science of persuasion a survey of the persuasive messages conveyed by dozens of request cards from a wide variety of hotels around the globe reveals that

these cards most commonly attempt to encourage towel recycling efforts by focusing guests almost exclusively on the importance of environmental protection in other words guests are almost invariably informed that reusing their towels will conserve natural resources and help spare

the environment from further depletion disruption and corruption to further draw guests attention to the impact of towel recycling on the environment this information is often accompanied by various eye-catching environment related pictures in the background ranging from rainbows to raindrops to

rainforests to reindeer this persuasion strategy generally seems to be an effective one for example one of the largest manufacturers of these signs whose messages focus entirely on the importance of environmental protection reports that the majority of hotel guests who have the opportunity

to participate in these programs do reuse their towels at least once during their stay but could the results be improved researchers are often on the lookout for ways to apply their scientific knowledge to make existing policies and practices even more effective much like a highway billboard

that reads "Place your ad here." These little towel recycling cards spoke to us practically pleaded with us to test your ideas here so we did and in doing so we showed that just by making a small change in the way the request is made hotel chains can do much much better as this book will

reveal starting with our towel experiments small easy changes to our messages and to our requests can make them vastly more persuasive in fact we're going to claim that everyone's ability to persuade others can be improved by learning persuasion strategies that have been scientifically proven to

be successful we will report on dozens of studies some conducted by us some by other scientists that demonstrate this point in many different settings along the way we'll discuss the principles behind these findings the central purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a better

understanding of the psychological processes underlying our efforts to influence others to shift their attitudes or behavior in a direction that results in positive outcomes for both parties in addition to presenting a variety of effective and ethical persuasion strategies we also discuss the types of things to watch out for to help you resist both subtle and overt influences on

your decision-making the studies discussed in this book are scientifically rigorous but they can also be fun for example we'll seek to provide insights about what single office supply can make your attempts to persuade others significantly more effective what Luke Skywalker can teach

us about being an influential leader why people named Dennis are disproportionately more likely to become dentists how slipping your audience the perfectly legal drug 137 trimethylanthin can help you become more persuasive how inconveniencing your rivals will make them more likely to do

favors for you and why people would be more likely to buy a BMW just after giving reasons for preferring a Mercedes we'll also seek to answer a number of other important questions for example what common mistake do communicators often make that causes their message to backfire which one

word will strengthen your persuasion attempts is it better to start low or high when selling items on eBay how can you turn your weaknesses into persuasive strengths how can waiters increase their tips without changing the quality of their service and why can sometimes seeing yourself or

being seen by others as an expert result in one of the most dangerous situations in which you could ever be placed persuasion as science not art the scientific study of persuasion has been continuing for over half a century now yet the research on persuasion is somewhat of

a secret science often lying dormant in the pages of academic journals considering the large body of research that's been produced on the subject it might be useful to take a moment to think about why this research is so often overlooked it's no surprise that people who are faced with choices

about how to influence others including important program or policy choices will often base their decisions on thinking that's grounded in the established theories and practices of fields such as economics finance and public policy however what's puzzling is how frequently decision makers

fail to use established psychological theories and practices to guide them in their choices one potential explanation for this tendency is that unlike the fields of economics finance and public policy which tend to require learning from outsiders to achieve even a minimal level of competence people believe they already possess an intuitive understanding of

psychological principles simply by virtue of living life and interacting with others as a consequence they're less likely to learn and to consult the psychological research when making decisions setting policies or generating solutions to problems this overconfidence inevitably

leads people to miss golden opportunities for psychologically informed social influence or worse still to misuse psychological principles to the detriment of themselves and others besides being overly reliant on their personal experiences with others people also rely too much on introspection

for example why would the marketing practitioners charged with the task of designing the hotel towel reuse signs focus almost exclusively on the impact of these programs on the environment they probably did what any of us would do they ask themselves "What would motivate me to participate in one of

these programs by recycling my towels?" And by examining their own motives they would come to the conclusion that a sign that tapped into their values and identity as environmentally concerned people would be particularly motivating but in doing so they would also fail to realize how they

could increase participation just by changing a few words in their request persuasion has often been referred to as an art but in a sense this is a mclassification although talented artists can certainly be taught skills to harness their natural abilities the truly remarkable artist

seems to possess a certain level of talent and creativity that no instructor is capable of instilling in another person fortunately this isn't the case with persuasion even people who consider themselves persuasion lightweights people who feel they couldn't convince a child

to play with toys can learn to become persuasion heavyweights by understanding the psychology of persuasion and by using the specific persuasion strategies that have been scientifically proven to be effective regardless of whether you're a salesperson manager marketer negotiator educator

policy maker lawyer health care worker food server ebeayer or parent this book is designed to help you become a master persuader we'll even describe certain techniques that are based on what one of us Robert Shelini explored in the book Influence Science and Practice as

the six universal principles of social influence reciprocation we feel obligated to return favors performed for us authority we look to experts to show us the way commitment consistency we want to

act consistently with our commitments and values scarcity the less available the resource the more we want it liking the more we like people the more we want to say yes to them and social proof we look to what others do to guide our behavior we'll discuss what these principles mean and how they

operate in some detail throughout the book but we won't limit ourselves to them although the six principles act as the foundation for the majority of successful social influence strategies there are also many persuasion techniques that are based on other psychological factors which we'll cover

we'll also place a special emphasis on how these strategies operate in a number of different contexts both within and outside the workplace and provide practical and actionoriented advice for how to maximize your persuasive prowess in those settings and beyond the advice we'll

provide will be ethical and easy to follow will require very little additional effort or cost on your part and should pay big dividends with apologies to Henny Youngman we fully expect that by the time you finish this book your persuasion toolbox will be packed with so

many scientifically proven social influence strategies you'll hardly be able to close it one how can inconveniencing your audience increase your persuasiveness colleen Zot is one of the most successful writers in the paid programming industry and for good

reason in addition to penning several well-known infomercials for the famed and fast-selling Nordic Track exercise machine she recently authored a program that shattered a nearly 20ear sales record for a home shopping channel although her programs retain many of the elements common to

most infomercials including flashy catchphrases an unrealistically enthusiastic audience and celebrity endorsements Zot changed three words to a standard infomercial line that caused a huge increase in the number of people who purchased her product even more remarkable these three

words made it clear to potential customers that the process of ordering the product might well prove somewhat of a hassle what were those three words and how did they cause sales to skyrocket saut changed the all too familiar call to action line "Operators are waiting please call now to if

operators are busy please call again." On the face of it the change appears foolhardy after all the message seems to convey that potential customers might have to waste their time dialing and redialing the toll-free number until they finally reach a sales representative yet that surface view underestimates the power of the principle of social proof when people

are uncertain about a course of action they tend to look outside themselves and to other people around them to guide their decisions and actions in the Colleen Zot example consider the kind of mental image likely to be generated when you hear operators are waiting scores of bored phone representatives filing their nails clipping their coupons or twiddling their thumbs

while they wait by their silent telephones an image indicative of low demand and poor sales now consider how your perception of the popularity of the product would change when you heard the phrase "If operators are busy please call again." Instead of those bored inactive representatives

you're probably imagining operators going from phone call to phone call without a break in the case of the modified "If operators are busy please call again" line home viewers followed their perceptions of others actions even though those others were completely anonymous after all if the phone lines are busy then other people like me who are also watching

this infomercial are calling too many classical findings in social psychology demonstrate the power of social proof to influence other people's actions to take just one in an experiment conducted by scientist Stanley Mgrim and colleagues an assistant of the researchers stopped on a busy New York City sidewalk and gazed skyward for 60 seconds

most passers by simply walked around the man without even glancing to see what he was looking at however when the researcher added four other men to that group of skygazers the number of passers by who joined them more than quadrupled although there's little doubt that other people's behavior is a powerful source of social influence when we ask people in our own studies whether

other people's behavior influences their own they are absolutely insistent that it does not but social psychologists know better we know that people's ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor perhaps this is one reason that the people in the business

of creating those little cards encouraging hotel guests to reuse their towels didn't think to use the principle of social proof to their advantage in asking themselves "What would motivate me?" They might well have discounted the very real influence that others would have

motivate me?" They might well have discounted the very real influence that others would have on their behavior as a result they focused all their attention on how the towel reuse program would be relevant to saving the environment a motivator that seemed at least on the surface

of it to be most relevant to the desired behavior in our hotel experiment we considered the finding that the majority of hotel guests who encounter the towel reuse signs do actually recycle their towels at least sometime during their stay what if we simply informed guests of this fact would it

have any influence on their participation in the conservation program relative to the participation rates that a basic environmental appeal yields with the cooperation of a hotel manager two of us and another colleague created two signs and placed them in hotel rooms one was designed to reflect

the type of basic environmental protection message adopted throughout much of the hotel industry it asked the guests to help save the environment and to show their respect for nature by participating in the program a second sign used the social proof information by informing guests that the majority of guests at the hotel recycled their towels at least

once during the course of their stay these signs were randomly assigned to the rooms in the hotel now typically experimental social psychologists are fortunate enough to have a team of eager undergraduate research assistants to help collect the data but as you might imagine neither our research assistants nor the guests would have been very pleased with the research assistants

sneaking into hotel bathrooms to collect our data nor would our university's ethics board nor our mothers for that matter fortunately the hotel's room attendants were kind enough to volunteer to collect the data for us on the first day on which a particular guest's room was serviced they simply recorded whether the guest chose to reuse at least one towel guests who learned that

the majority of other guests had reused their towels the social proof appeal which was a message that we've never seen employed by even a single hotel were 26% more likely than those who saw the basic environmental protection message to recycle their towels that's a 26% increase in

participation relative to the industry standard which we achieved simply by changing a few words on the sign to convey what others were doing not a bad improvement for a factor that people say has no influence on them at all these findings show how being mindful of the true power of social

proof can pay big dividends in your attempts to persuade others to take a desired course of action of course the importance of how you communicate this information should not be underestimated your audience is obviously unlikely to respond favorably to a statement like "Hey you be a sheep

and join the herd." Instead a more positively framed statement such as "Join countless others in helping to save the environment," is likely to be received much more favorably besides the impact on public policy social proof can have a major impact in your work life as well in addition to

touting your top selling products with impressive statistics conveying their popularity think of the McDonald's sign stating billions and billions served you do well to remember to always ask for testimonials from satisfied customers and clients it's also important to feature those testimonials when you're presenting to new potential clients who may be in need of some reassurance about the

benefits that your organization can provide or better yet you can set up a situation in which your current clients have the opportunity to provide firstirhand testimonials to prospective clients about how satisfied they are with you and your organization one way to do this is to invite current and potential customers to a lunchon or educational seminar and arrange the seating

charts so that they can easily co-mingle in this setting they're likely to naturally strike up conversations regarding the advantages of working with your organization and if while taking RSVPs for the lunchon your potential attendees tell you they'll have to call you back to let you

know just be sure to tell them that if your phone line is busy they should keep trying two what shifts the bandwagon effect into another gear herds are persuasive because people are

motivated to follow other people's behavior but which herds are people most likely to follow in the previous chapter we noted that hotel guests followed the behavior of the herd of other hotel guests but might people be even more influenced by herd that looks even more like them the herd of

hotel guests who had previously stayed in their particular room there are actually some good reasons to expect not first from a purely logical standpoint you shouldn't exactly view the previous occupants of your hotel room in an especially positive light after all those are the same people

who have by simple virtue of staying in that room previously played a larger role in reducing the quality of your room and its amenities than any other guests in the hotel engaging in activities that range from the mundane to the who knows what second there's no rational reason to believe that

the behavior of those previously occupying your hotel room is any more valid than say the behavior of those previously occupying the room next door yet as we discussed the psychological research shows that people are often wrong about what motivates them to engage in certain behavior

the social proof message used in the hotel study informed guests that similar others specifically the majority of other guests who had previously stayed at the hotel had reused their towels at least once during their stay we decided to take the perceived similarity one step further by conducting another study in a hotel setting in which some hotel guests saw request to reuse

their towels communicating the social proof of guests who had specifically stayed in the same room in which they were staying in addition to the standard environmental protection appeal and the social proof appeal used in the prior study some guests saw a sign informing them that the majority of people who had previously stayed in their particular room participated

in the towel reuse program at some point during their stay guests who learned that the majority of the prior occupants of their particular room had participated were even more likely to reuse their towels than guests who learned the norms for the hotel in general and compared to the

standard environmental appeal that was a 33% increase in the likelihood of participation these results suggest that if Henny Youngman had encountered a sign in his bathroom indicating that not a single person who had previously stayed in his room had ever stolen a towel he would

probably have had a much easier time closing his suitcase as he prepared to check out but why it's usually beneficial for us to follow the behavioral norms associated with the particular environment situation or circumstances that most closely match our own environment situation or circumstances

for example when you're at a public library do you follow the norms of other library patrons quietly browsing through the fiction section and occasionally whispering to your friends or do you follow the norms of the patrons at your favorite bar crushing books against your forehead on a dare and playing games where you take a drink from your flask every time you read a word with the

letter E if you want to avoid a lifetime ban from the premises you'd obviously choose the former alternative rather than the latter earlier we described the importance of testimonials in trying to sway others opinions in your direction the results of this experiment suggest that the

more similar the person giving the testimonial is to the new target audience the more persuasive the message becomes this means that in deciding which testimonials to show to a prospect you need to take your ego out of the process you should begin not with the testimonial you're most proud

of but with the one whose circumstances are most comparable to your audiences for instance a high school teacher trying to convince a student to come to class more often should solicit comments about the benefits of doing so not from students in the front row but rather from students who are more similar to the target student as another example if you were selling software to the

owner of a string of local beauty salons she'd be more influenced by information about how pleased other salon owners are with your software than by how pleased the big shots at General Motors were after all she'd be likely to think "If others like me have gotten good results with this product then it should be right for me too." And if you're a leader or a manager attempting

to persuade employees to willingly embrace a new system you should ask for a positive testimonial from others within the same department who've already agreed to make the switch but what if you've tried that yet you still have one stubborn employee perhaps the person who's been working with the older system the longest whom you still can't win over a common mistake managers might

make in such a case would be to choose the most eloquent coworker to try to explain the benefits to his or her stubborn coworker even if he or she is completely different from that person on a number of important dimensions instead the manager's best bet would likely be to solicit the opinions of another coworker perhaps someone else who had also been working under the system

for a long time even if that particular person happens to be somewhat less articulate or popular three what common mistake causes messages to self-destruct commercials are typically designed

to move products not people but in the early 1970s the Keep America Beautiful organization created a commercial that was widely thought to be so moving that many consider it perhaps the most effective public service announcement of all time designed to infuse America's daily television

viewing diet with an extra serving of moral fiber the spot featured a Native American reacting to the widespread corruption of the environment that he observed by shedding a single but powerful tear many years later the same organization revisited its old friend in a new campaign designed to

capture viewers attention and reopen their tear ducts this time the camera featured several people waiting at a bus stop engaging in everyday activities such as drinking coffee reading the newspaper and smoking cigarettes after the bus arrived and they all climbed aboard the camera cut

to the empty bus stop waiting area now completely covered with cups newspapers and cigarette butts as the camera panned from right to left it slowly zoomed into a poster of the Native American overlooking the littered bus stop still with a tear in his eye as the screen faded to black

the text of the spots take-home message appeared back by popular neglect back by popular neglect what sort of message is conveyed by this phrase and by the litter-filled environments featured in this advertisement it unintentionally conveys the message that despite strong disapproval for

littering behavior littering is quite common although communicating strong disapproval for the littering behavior might certainly prove motivating conveying the fact that many people litter acts as strong social proof for more littering because people tend to follow the most popular course of action this message can potentially be more harmful than helpful

other examples are abundant in everyday life we don't mean to ruffle his feathers but we take issue with some of the messages conveyed by the lovable but psychologically naive US Forest Service mascot Woodsy Owl in a longunning print ad titled Gross National Product he proclaims

"This year Americans will produce more litter and pollution than ever before." Several weeks before the 2004 presidential election Women's Voices Women Vote a major political organization sent out about 1 million mailings designed to increase participation in the political

process by single women their message was "Four years ago 22 million single women did not vote."

More generally political groups of all sorts misunderstand the impact of their communications by condemning the rise in voter apathy and then watch their communications backfire as more and more voters fail to turn up at the polls health centers and hospitals place posters on waiting room walls decrying the number of patients who don't show up for their appointments then they

get frustrated when the non-attendance rates rise further in Arizona visitors to the state's Petrified Forest National Park quickly learn from prominent signage that the park's existence is threatened because so many visitors have been taking pieces of petrified wood from the grounds

your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year mostly a small piece at a time although these pronouncements and depictions may indeed reflect reality and are well-intentioned the designers of these campaigns may fail to realize that by using negative social proof as part of a rallying cry they might be inadvertently

focusing the audience on the prevalence rather than the undesirability of that behavior in fact we became aware of the wood theft problem at the petrified forest as a result of a story that a former graduate student told he'd visited the petrified forest with his fianceé a woman he described as the most honest person he'd ever known someone who'd never borrowed a paperclip

without returning it they quickly encountered the aforementioned park sign warning visitors against stealing petrified wood he was shocked when his otherwise holy law-abiding fiance nudged him in the side with her elbow and whispered "We better get ours now." To test the role of negative social

proof and to see if we could design a more effective message one of us along with a team of other scientists created two signs designed to deter wood theft at Petrified Forest National Park the negative social proof sign said "Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the

park changing the natural state of the petrified forest and was accompanied by a picture of several park visitors taking pieces of wood." A second sign conveyed no social proof information rather it simply conveyed that stealing wood was not appropriate or approved saying "Please don't remove the petrified wood from the park in order to preserve the natural state of the

petrified forest." That sign was accompanied by a picture of a lone visitor stealing a piece of

petrified forest." That sign was accompanied by a picture of a lone visitor stealing a piece of wood with a red circle and bar the universal no symbol superimposed over his hand we also had a control condition in which we didn't put up either of these signs unbeknownst to park visitors

we placed marked pieces of petrified wood along visitor pathways we also varied what sign if any was posted at the entrance of each pathway through this procedure we were able to observe how the different signs affected petrified wood theft in a finding that should petrify the national parks

management compared with a no sign control condition in which 2.92% of the pieces were stolen the social proof message resulted in more theft 7.92% in essence it almost tripled theft

thus theirs was not a crimerevention strategy it was a crime promotion strategy in contrast the other message which simply asked visitors not to steal the wood and depicted a lone thief resulted in slightly less theft 1.67% than the control condition besides asking visitors not to steal

the wood the park management should have focused attention on the huge number of people who don't take any wood to influence the few who do this can often be done by simply reframing the statistics for example although 14 tons of wood are stolen each year at the park the actual number of thieves

is minuscule less than 3% of the visitor total compared to the massive number of people who respect the park's rules and choose to preserve its natural resources if the circumstances allow for it focusing the audience on all people who do engage in the positive behavior can be a very

influential strategy for instance imagine you're a manager recognizing that attendance at your monthly meetings has gone down rather than calling attention to the fact that so many people are missing the meetings you could not only express your disapproval for that behavior but also highlight that those who don't attend the meetings are in the minority by pointing out the large

number of people who do actually turn up similarly business leaders would be well advised to publish the number of departments employees or colleagues that have already incorporated a new software system new procedures or a new customer service plan into their everyday ways of working in doing so they can be assured that they are harnessing the power of social proof as opposed to having

it potentially backfire on them by complaining about the many people who haven't come on board this strategy can be used to encourage many other types of socially desirable behavior for instance along with several colleagues one of us created a set of three public service announcements designed to increase recycling in the state of Arizona each one included a scene in which the majority of the

characters featured in the ad frequently recycled and all spoke disapprovingly of a single person in the scene who did not recycle this made it clear to the viewers that not only are people who don't recycle in the minority but others widely disapprove of them and their behavior the PSAs

also included information about how to recycle and the benefits of doing so for example one purposely campy PSA featured a set of neighbors in a Leave it to Beaver type of scene with several people standing on a driveway child over here Mrs rodriguez it's our week to take the recycling down

to the center child hands a paper bag filled with newspapers to his mother who places it onto the flatbed of a truck mrs rodriguez does the same child gee Dad where's Mr jenkins mrs rodriguez

rolls her eyes dad disappointed well son you see Mr jenkins doesn't recycle the camera then cut to a slovenly unckempt Mr jenkins napping on a lawn chair in his backyard completely enveloped by the old newspapers lying all around him the camera then cut to the child's face as a single tear

rolled down his cheek finally to emphasize the huge number of Arizonans who recycle a picture of the geographical outline of the state of Arizona then appeared on the screen filled with the faces of scores of different people and the words Arizona recycles accompanying the picture typically many veterans of the PSA industry will say their commercials have been successful if they

are able to move 1% or 2% of the audience in the desired direction these professionals commonly have the advantage of more experience better equipment and much greater access to funds than we had when making ours yet in a field test in which this psychologically informed PSA

and two others like it were played on local TV and radio stations of four Arizona communities we recorded a 25.4% new advantage in recycling tonnage over a pair of control communities not

exposed to the PSAs all that on a budget so tight it would make a shoestring blush four when persuasion might backfire how do you avoid the magnetic middle the petrified forest

study shows that people have a natural tendency to do what most other people are doing even when that behavior is socially undesirable although we recommended trying to reframe the message to focus on the many people who are behaving in a more desirable way unfortunately that is not always possible what's a persuader to do in those situations consider a study two of

us conducted with lead researcher Wes Schultz and several other colleagues in this study 300 California households agreed to have their weekly energy use recorded research assistants then went to participating homes and read their energy meters to get a baseline measure of how much energy the households consumed per week afterward a little card was hung on the front door of each

household giving feedback to the homeowners about how their energy consumption compared to the neighborhood average of course some of the households consumed more energy than the average whereas others consumed less over the next several weeks those who had been consuming more energy than their neighbors reduced their energy consumption by 5.7% not much of a surprise there

more interesting however was the finding that those who had been consuming less energy than their neighbors actually increased their energy consumption by 8.6% these results show that what most others are doing acts as a magnetic middle meaning that people who deviate from the average tend to be drawn to the average like metal filings to a magnet they changed their actions to be more

in line with the norm regardless of whether they were previously behaving in a socially desirable or socially undesirable way so how do we prevent the backfire effect that occurs when people already acting in a socially conscious way learn that they're deviating from the less desirable

norm it might be helpful to convey society's approval for their behavior in some way but how with the cost of singing telegrams prohibitively high these days one less expensive solution just might be to accompany the feedback with some sort of symbol of approval such an image would serve

not only as a reminder of the desiraability of energy conservation but also as positive reinforcement but what kind of symbol should we use a thumbs up image an actual stamp of approval how about a simple smiley face to test this idea another experimental condition was included in the

study for these other households the feedback on the card was accompanied by either a smiley face or a frowny face depending of course on whether they were using more or less energy than the neighborhood average the data revealed that the addition of the frowny face didn't make much of a difference in other words those who used a relatively large amount of electricity reduced

their consumption by over 5% regardless of whether the feedback included the frowny face we were quite impressed however by the impact of adding the smiley face to the feedback given to those who used a relatively small amount of electricity whereas their no symbol peers had shown the 8.6% 6% increase in energy consumption that we described earlier these smileyfaced

households continued to consume energy at the same low prefeedback rate the results of this study demonstrate not only the power of the social norm to bring people's behavior toward it like a powerful magnet but also how we as persuaders can reduce the likelihood of our message backfiring for half the population that receives it we should convey our approval for and

appreciation of those already acting in a socially desirable way suppose for example that an internal report of a large company becomes public and it states that the average employee arrives late for work 5.3% of the time the good news is that those who arrive late more often than that will

likely adjust their behavior to be more in line with the norm but the bad news is that so will those who are much more consistently punctual our research shows that those who tend to come in on time should be praised for their behavior and it should be made clear to them how much punctuality

is appreciated those who work in public services should also consider the impact of their messages although there may be rising rates of truency in classrooms school superintendent teachers and other education personnel should applaud and publicly declare the fact that the majority of parents see to it that their children do attend classes regularly while also showing widespread

disapproval for the small number of parents who don't more generally to prevent a good apple from getting spoiled by a bunch of bad ones remember to show your appreciation for it five when does offering people more make them want less we all know the feeling we start a new

job and immediately we're inundated with loads of paperwork asking us to make all kinds of important decisions for many of us one of those decisions is whether to enroll in a retirement plan in which part of our salary is automatically placed in an investment fund that we'll be able to access later

in life if we decide to enroll we're typically given many options from which to choose so that we can find the one that's right for us however despite the numerous incentives for enrolling in these programs which often include tax advantages and matching employer contributions many people

don't take advantage of them but why could it be that organizations are unknowingly discouraging enrollment by offering their employees too many options behavioral scientist Sheena Ayenar thinks so she and several colleagues analyzed company sponsored retirement programs for nearly 800,000

workers looking at how the participation rates varied as a function of how many fund choices the organization offered sure enough the researchers found that the more choices that were offered the less likely the employees were to enroll in the program at all for every 10 additional funds a company offered to its employees the participation rate dropped almost 2%

to give just one specific comparison they found that when only two funds were offered the rate of participation was roughly 75% but when 59 funds were offered the participation rate dropped to about 60% ayangar and fellow social scientist Mark Leper also examined whether the damaging effect

of offering too much occurred in other domains such as food products they set up a display at an upscale supermarket in which passers by could sample a variety of jams that were all made by a single manufacturer throughout the course of the study the researchers varied the number of

flavors of the jam offered so that either six or 24 flavors were featured at the display at any given time the results demonstrated a clear and astonishing difference between the two conditions only 3% of those who approached the extensive choice display actually purchased any jam

contrast that with the 30% who bought jam when they approached the limited choice display what could possibly account for this 10-fold increase in sales when so many choices are made available consumers often find the decision-making process frustrating perhaps due to the burden of having

to differentiate so many options from one another in an attempt to make the best decision this may result in disengagement from the task at hand leading to an overall reduction in motivation and interest in the product as a whole the same logic holds for the retirement plans does this mean that offering many varieties and alternatives is always a bad thing

before trying to answer this question let's first consider one of Vancouver's most celebrated sweet shops LaCasa Gelato this business offers gelato ice cream and sorbetto in any flavor you could possibly think of and many that you couldn't what began as a sports and pizza bar in the commercial

district of Vancouver in 1982 has grown into what owner Vince Macho describes as an ice cream wonderland upon entering the store customers are faced with an eclectic array of over 200 flavors including wild asparagus fig and almond aged balsamic vinegar jalapeno garlic rosemary

dandelion and curry considering the research findings we discussed has Vince Macheo with his shop of over 200 flavored gelatoes ice creams and sorbettos made a mistake by offering so many choices the store's proprietor obviously embraces the philosophy that providing his customers with

more choices will lead to better business and it certainly appears from his success that he's right for one thing the extensive variety of flavors has generated a great deal of publicity for his business the extremely varied offerings have become a unique identifying feature of the brand

second the majority of a shop's clientele seem to genuinely savor both literally and figuratively the process of sampling and eventually choosing the flavors they'd like to try and third maximizing the number of options available may be especially helpful when customers are likely to know exactly what they want and are simply looking for a store or a business that supplies it

unfortunately there are few companies that find themselves in the position of having hordes of prospective buyers literally salivating at the opportunity to choose from their wide selection of goods and services instead it's often the case that potential customers don't know precisely what they want until they've surveyed what's available to them what this means for most businesses is

that by saturating the market with a large number of unnecessary varieties of their products they could well be inadvertently harming their sales and as a result they could be diminishing their profits in such cases a business might enhance a customer's motivation to purchase its goods and services by reviewing its product line and cutting out redundant or less popular items

there are a number of major manufacturers of a variety of consumer products that in recent years have been streamlining the range of options they provide to their customers perhaps in response to a modest rebellion by their customers against the excessive numbers of choices they were offered for example take Proctor and Gamble a leading manufacturer of a wide range

of products from personal health care products and laundry detergents to prescription drugs when the company reduced the number of versions of Head and Shoulders one of its very popular shampoo products from a staggering 26 to only 15 it quickly experienced a 10% increase in sales what

are the implications of these findings suppose that you work for an organization that sells many different variations of a similar product although it may seem against your intuition at first it may be worth considering a reduction in the number of options provided by your business in order to drum up maximum interest in your offerings this could be especially true if

you have customers and clients who are uncertain of exactly what they might want of course there could be additional benefits of offering less such as making more storage space available requiring reduced spending on raw materials and a reduction in the production of marketing and point of sale materials to support a smaller portfolio a worthwhile exercise would be to review the extent

of your product portfolio and ask yourself the following question where we have customers who may not be clear about their requirements might the number of choices we offer be causing them to seek other and potentially fewer alternatives elsewhere the lessons of this research can also

be applied to home life giving children choices in what books they'd like to read or what dinner they'd like to eat can undoubtedly be beneficial but too many choices might be overwhelming and ultimately demotivating the old saying may well assert that variety is the spice of life but as

the scientific research demonstrates in some circumstances too much variety like too much spice can be the ingredient that spoils the dish and as a result spoils your efforts at persuasion

six when does a bonus become an onus a stationer set a ballpoint pen a cosmetic case a box of chocolates a sample vial of perfume or cologne an oil change these are all examples of gifts

or services offered free by companies and chances are that at some point in your life as a consumer you've been enticed by deals that offer products like these as gifts with your purchase of another product sometimes these little extras can be just the thing to push you to choose one company's

product over another but if everyone likes a gift how could it be that giving gifts can actually backfire social scientist Priya Ragabir wanted to test the idea that when consumers are offered a bonus gift for purchasing a product the target product the perceived value and desiraability

of the bonus gift as a standalone product can sharply decline she thought this could be the case because consumers might infer that the products manufacturer wouldn't give away a valuable product for free in fact it might even lead them to ask "What might be wrong with this thing?" People may assume for example that the gift is obsolete or out of style or perhaps that

thing?" People may assume for example that the gift is obsolete or out of style or perhaps that the supply overwhelmingly exceeded the demand and the manufacturer is simply trying to purge its inventory of the item or maybe they think it's just plain junk to test the idea that the value

of an item declines when it's offered as a gift Ragabir had participants view a duty-free catalog that featured liquor as the target product and a pearl bracelet as the bonus gift one group of participants was asked to evaluate the desiraability and value of the pearl bracelet in

the context of the gift and another group was asked to evaluate the pearl bracelet by itself the results confirmed the hypothesis people were willing to pay around 35% less for the pearl bracelet when they saw it bundled with the target product as an add-on than when they saw it

as a standalone product these findings reveal some potentially negative implications for businesses that promote a particular line of products by throwing in goods or services for free that the business normally sells independently ragabir suggests that one way of preventing the offer of

gifts or services from backfiring is to inform or remind customers about the true value of the gift for example imagine that you work for a software company one way that you attract new business is to offer a free piece of software let's say a security program to new customers if in your

advertising and your mailings you offer this free product and fail to point out what it would cost customers if they had to pay for it themselves you're losing out on an effective way of positioning your offer as valuable and significant after all if you write down free numerically the number is $0 not a message you would want to send to prospective customers about the worth

of your products to ensure that your offer is seen as the valuable proposition it actually is the customer needs to be shown the true value of your offer so no longer should your message read "Receive a free security program." Instead it becomes "Receive a $250 security program at no

cost to you." The idea of valuing what you do doesn't just apply to those running a business there are potential applications for anyone looking to influence others you might point out to a colleague that you were happy to stay for an extra hour at work to help finish an important proposal because you know how much it means to his or her business prospects you are valuing your

time in your colleagueu's eyes an entirely more influential strategy than simply saying nothing similarly if you're on the board of a school that's promoting a free after-school club for students you would want to point out in the communication to parents what it would cost if those parents chose a private afterchool students club instead in doing this you create

a value which will likely increase the club's uptake of members as a consequence not only do these findings have implications for business and public service transactions they might work on your family as well perhaps you could use the results of this research to convince your in-laws

that in order to avoid having their opinions devalued they should stop giving you free advice seven how can a new superior product mean more sales of an inferior one a number of years ago the kitchen retail store William Sonoma started offering a

bread makingaking machine that was far superior to a best-selling bread maker that they stocked yet when they added this new product to their inventory sales of their existing bestseller nearly doubled why the story of William Sonoma started during the late 1940s and early 1950s

when Chuck Williams who worked as a contractor in Soma California traveled with a couple of his friends to Paris there they saw for the first time specialized French cooking equipment omelette pans and sule molds whose quality and style he'd never seen in the United States voila the William Sonoma

Kitchen Outlet was born it grew quickly opening more stores and starting a catalog business a good portion of the sales from the catalog at one point came from the bread maker whose sales nearly doubled immediately after an improved more expensive one was introduced according to decision

researcher Simson when consumers consider a particular set of choices for a product they tend to favor alternatives that are compromised choices choices that fall between what they need at a minimum and what they could possibly spend at a maximum when consumers must make a decision

between two products they often compromise by opting for the less expensive version however if a third product were to be offered that was more expensive than the other two choices the compromised choice would shift from the economy pricriced product to the moderately priced product which is no longer the highest priced product in the set of choices in the case of the William

Sonoma bread makers the introduction of a more expensive bread maker made the original bread maker seem like a wiser and more economical choice in comparison let's say that you're a business owner or sales manager who has responsibility for the sale of a range of products and services you would be well advised to recognize that your company's highest end and highest priced products

provide two very important potential benefits for your business the first is straightforward these top-of-the-line products meet the high-end needs of a small group of current and future customers as a result you'll see greater revenues injected into your business by offering them but the second

is perhaps underrecognized the next highest priced model will more likely be considered attractively priced as a compromise let's take an everyday example where this principle is often not used to its full potential an example that many of us will be familiar with choosing a bottle of

wine from a wine list in a bar or restaurant a substantial number of wine bars and hotels will present their more expensive wines at the bottom of the wine list although customers eyes sometimes never even get there as they consider the many available options in some establishments

the high-end champagnes might even be printed on a separate menu as a result the mid-range wines and champagnes aren't presented as compromised choices and therefore they appear less attractive just by making a small change and offering these high-end wines and champagnes at the

top of the menu a restaurant should do much more business for its next most pricey alternative this strategy should be effective in a number of other domains for example suppose you were part of an organization that decided to pay for you to attend an educational conference taking place on a cruise ship and that you wanted to stay in a room with a window rather than simply asking your manager

his or her opinion about the window room you can bookend that choice with two other possibilities one that's not as nice a windowless inside cabin and one that's clearly better but may be viewed as too expensive a room with a balcony by constructing this set of alternatives around the

window room you increase the likelihood that he or she will agree that the alternative you desire is the best choice the compromised strategy doesn't just apply to bread makers alcohol and accommodations anyone who has a range of products or services to offer could make mid-range products

more popular by offering more expensive ones first it's important to recognize that even if your company does employ this high-end framing approach it could be that an unexpected slump in sales of the highest end version of a product might tempt you to stop offering that item

however as this research suggests removing that item from the set of consumer choices without replacing it with another top-of-the-line product could produce a negative domino effect that would start with your next highest end version of your product and work its way down such a

shift in your customer's compromised choice could land you in a compromising position of your own eight does fear persuade or does it paralyze in his first inaugural address the 32nd US President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered the following famous words to anxious depression era Americans so first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance but was Roosevelt correct when trying to persuade an audience to behave a certain way does fear paralyze as he suggested or does it persuade and motivate for the most part research has demonstrated that fear arousing communications

usually stimulate the audience to take action to reduce the threat however this general rule has one important exception when the fear-producing message describes danger but the audience is not told of clear specific effective means of reducing the danger they may deal with the fear by blocking

out the message or denying that it applies to them as a consequence they may indeed be paralyzed into taking no action at all in one study conducted by health researcher Howard Levventhal and colleagues students read a public health pamphlet detailing the dangers of tetanus infection the pamphlet

was either filled or not filled with frightening details of the consequences of contracting tetanas in addition they either did or did not receive a specific plan for how to arrange to get a tetanus injection finally there was a control group of students who did not get a warning about tetanus

but did get a plan of how to get a tetanus injection the high fear message motivated the participants to get a tetanus injection only if it included a plan identifying the specific action they could take to secure a tetanus injection and thereby reduce their fear of tetanas the more clearly people see behavioral means for ridding themselves of fear the less they'll need

to resort to denial these findings can be applied to business and beyond advertising campaigns that inform potential customers of the real world threats that a company's goods or services can alleviate should always be accompanied by clear specific effective steps they can take to reduce the danger simply scaring customers into believing that a product or service can help

with a potential problem might have the opposite effect potentially cementing them into inaction if there is a failure to provide specific achievable steps that they can take to avoid such a threat similarly if you happen to spot a particularly serious problem in a large-scale project undertaken by your organization you'd be wise to accompany your statements to management with at

least one viable plan of action a company could take to avert the potential disaster assuming you can design a plan quickly of course if you decide that you will tell management about a problem first and generate a plan later by the time you and your co-workers have developed a plan management may have already found ways to block out the message or refuse to admit that it

applies to that particular project health care professionals and public service communicators should also be aware of the implications of this research physicians or nurses who wish to persuade an overweight patient to lose weight and exercise more often should focus that patient on the potential dangers of failing to lose weight but only if they follow up that message with some

clear straightforward steps the patient can take to do so perhaps in the form of a specific diet and a specific set of exercises simply pointing out that he or she is at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes if no weight is lost might only serve to instill fear and

denial in a patient in the case of public service officials merely painting a gruesome picture of the impact of dangerous behavior such as smoking having unprotected sex and drunk driving may also be ineffective or even potentially backfire if unaccompanied by a good plan of action given the necessity of pairing a message conveying the potential threat faced by

the audience with a clear specific easy to follow plan perhaps Roosevelt's statement should be amended to say "The only thing we have to fear is fear by itself."

Nine what can chess teach us about making persuasive moves in April 2005 despite facing strong censure by the United States government the Parliament of a sovereign nation voted overwhelmingly to grant citizenship to former world chess champion and

then fugitive from US law enforcement Bobby Fiser what country would risk straining its relationship with the world's most powerful nation to protect an eccentric outlaw who openly spoke highly of the September 11 2001 hijackers was it Iran syria North Korea surprisingly it was the

nation of Iceland typically a loyal ally of the United States of all the countries in the world why would Iceland be so willing to welcome Bobby Fiser with open arms especially considering he violated United Nations sanctions by playing a $5 million chess match in the former Yugoslavia

the answer to this question requires us to go back over 30 years to a very high-profile chess match the 1972 World Chess Championship match between challenger Fiser and the defending champion the Russian master Boris Spasi no match in the history of the game had received more worldwide publicity and chess playing was given a tremendous impetus everywhere

the match played at the height of the Cold War has been dubbed the chess match of the century typical of his eccentricity Fiser failed to arrive in Iceland for the opening ceremony for several days it looked doubtful that the match would be played at all for it was proving impossible for the authorities to accommodate Fischer's myriad demands such as banning television cameras and

giving him a 30% share of the revenue from spectators fischer's behavior was full of self-contradictions as it had been throughout his chess career and his personal life finally after a surprise doubling of the prize fund and a great deal of persuasion including a reputed phone call

from then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger Bobby Fiser did fly to Iceland and went on to beat Spasi handily by the time the contest had been completed its coverage had been all over the pages of newspapers both domestic and foreign iceland was willing to tolerate Fischer's

controversial persona because in the words of one Icelandic news reporter on the BBC he put Iceland on the international map over 30 years later Icelanders had not forgotten what a significant gift Fiser had bestowed upon the isolated nation for instance a representative in Iceland's Foreign

Affairs Ministry made a statement saying that Fiser contributed to a rather special event here over 30 years ago but that people remember very well according to the BBC analysis Icelanders were keen to repay the favor by offering sanctuary to Mr fiser even though many people considered Fiser

to be unlikable on a personal level this event emphasizes the importance and universality of the norm of reciprocity which obligates us to repay others for what we have received from them the norm drives us toward fairness and equity in our everyday social interactions our business dealings

and our close relationships and it helps us build trust with others social psychologist Dennis Regan conducted a classic study of reciprocation in his experiment people who received a small unsolicited gift from a stranger in the form of a can of Coca-Cola purchased twice as many raffle

tickets from him as those who received no gift at all this occurred despite the fact that there was a time delay between the gift and the request and the stranger didn't make any kind of reference to the original gift when he made his pitch about the raffle tickets consistent with the relationship between Fiser and Iceland Rean also found that those who received a can of Coke from the

stranger made their purchase decisions completely irrespective of the extent to which they liked him for the participants who had received the gift those who didn't like him purchased just as many raffle tickets as those who did this demonstrates that you don't necessarily have to be liked to

receive the benefits of the reciprocation norm you just have to be generous that the norm of reciprocity has real staying power and transcends likability is a useful insight for anyone looking to be more persuasive it should also be welcome news to anyone who's asked to do a large or

costly favor for another person for which there appears to be no short-term gain in sight as informed and ethical influencers we would be well advised to help out others or make concessions to them first if we seek out and give our help to a team member colleague or acquaintance we

create a social obligation for that person to help us or support us at a future date offering help to our boss puts us in a cooperative light in his or her eyes that could serve us well when we need assistance and the manager who offers to allow a member of his or her staff to leave the office a little early for a dentist appointment is a manager who has wisely invested in a colleague

who will feel the need to reciprocate that gesture in the future if an important project needs to be completed president John F kennedy once famously said "Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country." From an interpersonal standpoint there may be no better

orientation for those who wish to be influential among friends co-workers and customers we often make the mistake of asking "Who can help me here?" This may be a short-sighted approach to influencing others it is far more productive to ask ourselves whom can I help or for whom can

I do a favor if management is about getting things done through others than a healthy web of indebted colleagues who've benefited from a manager's useful information concessions attention and perhaps a friendly listening ear can stand that manager in goodstead for the future similarly our

friends neighbors and partners will become more responsive to our requests when we have first provided for them we should also note that there's one particular type of person for whom a little favor goes a long way customer service agents if you've ever had a problem with your computer tried

to make a lastminute change to a plane ticket or wanted to return an item to a vendor you've probably encountered a less than helpful customer service agent at one point or another to reduce the likelihood that you'll have such an encounter try the following if you find toward the beginning of your interaction that the customer service agent is being particularly friendly polite or

responsive perhaps before you get to your toughest request tell the agent that you're so happy with the service so far that you're going to write a positive letter or email about your interaction to his or her supervisor as soon as you get off the phone after getting the agents name and the

supervisor's contact information you can then get to the more complex issues at hand or even easier you can tell the person that you're so happy with the service that you'd like to be transferred to the agent supervisor when you're done so that you can pay the person a compliment although there are several psychological reasons for why this might be an effective strategy the norm of

reciprocity is a powerful factor here you've offered to do a favor for that person so now that person is going to feel obligated to return the favor and for the low cost of paying a quick compliment afterward you can avoid getting into a strategic chess match and perhaps a screaming

match with the agent that may ultimately lead to disappointment and frustration so long as you follow through with your promise the strategy should be an ethical and effective one 10 which office item can make your influence stick paper clips pens pencils pads protractors

planners and paper weights your office desk is full of practical items but is there one common office item that can help make your influence attempts stick social scientist Randy Garner wondered whether sticky notes the best known being Post-it notes made by the 3M Corporation might have the power to enhance compliance with a written request made to

another person in an intriguing study he sent out surveys to people with a request to complete them the survey was accompanied by either A a handwritten sticky note requesting completion of the survey which was attached to a cover letter B a similar handwritten message on the

cover letter or C the cover letter and survey alone that little yellow square packed quite a persuasive punch more than 75% of the people who received the survey with the sticky note request filled it out and returned it whereas only 48% of the second group and 36% of the

third group did so why was it so successful could it be the simple fact that sticky notes are attentiongrabbing in all their neon glory to test this possibility Garner sent out a new batch of surveys this time a third of the surveys came with a post-it note with a handwritten request

a third came with a blank post-it note and a third had no Post-it note at all if the benefits of using sticky notes come mainly from their ability to attract attention then response rates should be equally high for both sets of Post-it note surveys that turns out not to be the case however

the handwritten sticky note outperformed its competition with a response rate of 69% compared to 43% for the surveys with the blank sticky note and 34% for the surveys with no sticky note so what's the explanation although finding a post-it note slapping it on a cover sheet and

handwriting a message on it isn't exactly the most difficult of tasks Garner suggests that people recognize the extra effort and personal touch that this requires and that they feel the need to reciprocate this personal touch by agreeing to the request after all reciprocity is the social glue that helps bring and keep people together in cooperative relationships and you can bet

that it's a stronger adhesive than the kind on the back of a sticky note the evidence supports this reciprocitybased explanation garner found that placing a personalized sticky note on the survey did more than just simply persuade people to respond to the survey at higher rates those who filled out the survey with the handwritten sticky note message returned it more promptly and gave

more effortful detailed and attentive answers to the questions in fact when the researcher made the note even more personal in nature by adding his initials and thank you to the handwritten message the response rate shot up even higher broadly speaking this research provides a valuable insight

into human behavior an ounce of personalized extra effort is worth a pound of persuasion the more personalized you make a request the more likely you'll be to get someone to agree to that request more specifically this research shows that in the office or in the community a personalized sticky note could highlight the importance of your reports and communications and prevent them from

becoming the proverbial needle in a hay stack of other reports letters and mailings that are also vying for attention what's more the timeliness and quality of compliance with your request are likely to be enhanced as well what's the bottom line if you use personalized messages for your

persuasive practices the 3M Corporation won't be the only ones posting a profit 11 why should restaurants ditch their baskets of mints unless you're on your way to slay a vampire after a garlicky meal at a restaurant you're probably hoping to see a basket of mints

by the exit yet could it be that offering the mints in this location might not be the sweetest arrangement for the restaurant and its weight staff although many restaurants have the mints placed in a basket near the door some provide the mints in a different and far more effective way at these restaurants diners will be given a little gift at the end of their meal

by their food servers in the majority of cases it's nothing more than a chocolate mint or other type of candy presented on a silver platter along with the bill behavioral scientist David Strottz and colleagues conducted an experiment to determine what effect if any giving a little

candy to patrons at the end of the meal would have on food servers tips in one set of trials when presenting the bill the food servers included a single piece of candy for each diner sitting at the table compared to occasions on which diners receive no candy the researchers found a modest

increase in tips not a huge one just 3.3% in a second set of trials the food servers gave two candies to each diner at the table and tips rose by 14.1% compared to the no candy condition all of this is reasonably predictable considering what we know about the norm of reciprocity the

more a person gives to us the more we feel obligated to give in return but what factors make a gift or favor most persuasive it turns out that the third condition in this study provides us with the answer for the third group of diners the servers first gave one piece of candy to

each person at the table then they turned away from the table signaling that they were leaving however before exiting the area completely they turned back toward the diners at the table reached into a pocket and placed a second piece of candy on the table for each diner through this gesture

it was almost as if they were saying to the customers "Oh for you nice people here's an extra candy each." The result a 23% increase in tips this study demonstrates that there are three major factors that help make a gift or favor more persuasive and as a result more likely to

be reciprocated the first is significance giving diners two candies compared to one had the effect of increasing tips from 3.3% to over 14% because two seemed significant where one seemed proforma

notice that significant need not mean costly two candies cost no more than a few pennies but also notice the difference between the two multiple candy conditions there was no difference in the amount of gift given but there was a difference in the way the gift was given when the server

gave the diners an extra candy their gift was unexpected and personalized the diners in this third set of trials probably concluded that after they were given the one candy and the waiter turned away this would be the last interaction they would have with him and that's exactly why the gift was unexpected by making it seem as if he felt a special liking for that table's

diners in particular the gift of the second candy appeared to be quite personalized this research clearly shows the value of giving gifts that are significant unexpected and personalized of course if servers used this tactic on every table not only would they be seen as unethical

by the restaurant patrons the tactic wouldn't work for long as soon as diners noticed that the same practice was being used on everyone the value of the gift would collapse it wouldn't be seen as possessing any of these three important factors instead it would be viewed as a cunning trick and

it would backfire however it's possible to use the lessons of the study in an ethical manner to ensure that any gift that you give or favor that you perform is most appreciated make sure to take some time to find out what gift to the recipient would best fit those three important criteria even

if we consider only the findings from the first two conditions of the study however we can see that a restaurant that chooses to put its mints by the exit may be missing out on an important opportunity to have the food servers give a token of appreciation to their patrons and receive a token of appreciation from their patrons in return even though the cost of these little candies may

only be a few pennies the diner's appreciation of the restaurant's efforts will be invaluable 12 what's the pull of having no strings attached what's one of the best ways to secure someone's cooperation to work toward a common goal earlier we talked about how most hotels that have towel reuse programs try to persuade their guests to cooperate with

them by reminding the guests about the importance of protecting the environment some hotels however take an additional step toward creating a cooperative atmosphere they offer guests an incentive for their cooperation in these incentive-based messages the towel reuse card indicates that if the guests reuse their towels the hotel will donate a percentage of

the energy savings to a nonprofit environmental protection organization it's easy to imagine why the designers of these signs would think that incentives would be effective most of us intuitively believe that incentives work ice cream cones excel at persuading kids to clean their rooms carefully timed treats can help even old dogs learn new tricks and paychecks are

quite good at limiting the number of times we hit the snooze button before getting out of bed and going to work each morning although the incentives being offered would not directly benefit the guests it still seems logical that guests would be especially motivated to participate in the program because of the additional benefit to the environment being offered by the

hotel but does it work to find out two of us conducted another study at the same local hotel this time some rooms displayed towel reuse cards that featured the standard environmental appeal whereas other rooms displayed cards using this incentivebased approach when we examined the data

we found that this new persuasive appeal produced no improvement over the standard environmental protection sign why there was good reason to believe that a small shift needed to occur in that message to make it more persuasive than the standard approach after all there's little social obligation to cooperate with someone who offers you something only on the condition that

you initiate the cooperative effort that kind of exchange is simply an economic transaction on the other hand there's a powerful sense of obligation embodied in the norm of reciprocation to return favors already performed for you little wonder then that the incentive-based cooperation appeal

was no more effective in persuading the guests to reuse their towels than the standard appeal it contained no social obligation to comply with the request as the hotel gave nothing first this suggests that the hotels using the incentive based cards may have gotten the general idea

of cooperation right but gotten the sequence wrong considering our knowledge of how the norm of reciprocity operates perhaps a more effective way to increase participation in the program would be to reverse the sequence of favor doing in other words for the hotel to give the donation

first with no strings attached then ask guests to cooperate in this effort by reusing their towels this idea formed the basis for a third message that we also included in that study this third message was similar to the incentive-based message in that it discussed a donation to a nonprofit

environmental protection organization however rather than offering to make the donation only on the condition that the guests took the first step in the cooperative effort this appeal stated that the hotel had already donated to such an organization and it did so on behalf of its guests

it then asked the guests to reciprocate this gesture by reusing their towels during their stay impressively those who saw the reciprocationbased message were 45% more likely to reuse their towels than those who saw the incentivebased message this finding is particularly interesting in light of

the fact that these appeals have nearly the same content although both of these messages informed the guests that the hotel was donating money to a nonprofit environmental protection agency the reciprocationbased message informed the guests that the hotel had initiated the joint effort using the forces of reciprocation and social obligation to prompt guests to participate in

the program along with data from other research studies these findings make it clear that when we're trying to solicit cooperation from other people be they co-workers clients students or acquaintances we should offer help to them in a way that's unconditional and no strings attached approaching the potentially cooperative relationship in this way should not only

increase the likelihood that you'll secure their cooperation in the first place but also ensure that the cooperation you do receive is built on a solid foundation of trust and mutual appreciation rather than on a much weaker incentive system you'll also find this approach to be much longerlasting otherwise the moment the incentive you've been promising or awarding can

no longer be offered or is no longer desired by the other person the brittle foundation of the relationship may crack and the cooperative bridge you've built up may come crashing down

13 do favors behave like bread or like wine in several of the previous chapters we sought to offer evidence that by first providing a gift service or favor for someone we create a social obligation in the recipient to reciprocate at a future date whether that gift consists

of providing some useful information helping out a colleague with a favor placing a personalized sticky note on a request we make to others or in the case of Bobby Fiser putting a whole country on the map there is a social obligation to repay others the form of behavior they have afforded

to us but what happens to the influence of those gifts and favors as time passes are favors like bread in that they become stale over time or are they more like wine getting better and increasing in value with age according to researcher Francis Flynn the answer to this question depends on

whether you are the favor doer or favor receiver flynn asserts that immediately after one person performs a favor for another the recipient of the favor places more value on the favor than does the favored doer however as time passes the value of the favor decreases in the recipient's eyes

whereas for the favored doer it actually increases although there are several potential reasons for this discrepancy one possibility is that as time goes by the memory of the favored doing event gets distorted and since people have the desire to see themselves in the best possible light receivers

may think they didn't need all that much help at the time while givers may think they really went out of their way for the receiver to test this idea Flynn conducted a survey of employees working in the customer service department of a large US airline this particular business context is one

in which co-workers commonly exchange favors by helping one another to cover shifts the researcher asked half of the employees to consider a time when they had performed a favor for a co-orker whereas the other half of the employees were asked to consider a time when they had received a favor all the employees in the study were then asked to indicate the perceived value of the favor and also

to specify how long ago the favor was performed consistent with Flynn's hypothesis the results of the survey revealed that recipients of the favor perceived it as more valuable immediately after the favor was performed but less valuable as time passed favor doers on the other hand showed just the opposite effect they placed a lower value on the favor immediately after it

was performed but then placed greater value on it as time went by these findings have implications for our effectiveness in persuading others both inside and outside the workplace if you've done a favor for a colleague or an acquaintance that favor will likely have the most impact

on that person's desire to reciprocate within a short period of time following the favor however if you're the recipient of a favor you need to be aware of the tendency of people in your position to downplay that favor as time goes by if you fail to recognize the full value

of the favor weeks months or even years after it has occurred which Flynn's research shows is a natural inclination this may ultimately damage your relationship with the favordoer if you are the giver of the favor you might tend to think ill of the recipient due to his or her

reticence to pay back what you have given previously so what can be done to maximize the value of a favor we provide if its value might diminish in the eyes of the receiver over time one way might be to recognize the value of the gift or favor you have provided at the time by telling

the receiver that you are happy to help because you know that if the situation was ever reversed I'm sure you would do the same for me a second and potentially more risky strategy might be to restate the value of the previous gift before making a subsequent request in the future of

course you should consider carefully the words you choose when taking this approach saying something like "Remember when I helped you out a few weeks ago well now it's payback time." is destined to fail but offering a gentle reminder perhaps by inquiring "How useful did you find the report I

sent you?" might be an appropriate communication before you make your request although there's no

sent you?" might be an appropriate communication before you make your request although there's no universal method of influencing others 100% of the time we're certain that understanding all the factors that influence favor valuation is a good start and if all else fails just remember one

simple rule of favor exchange just as you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar you'll definitely catch more favors with a bottle of vintage wine than with a loaf of stale old bread

14 how can one small step help your influence take a giant leap imagine that your house is situated in a wealthy picturesque community the kind of neighborhood where people take great pride in perfectly trimmed hedges uniformly colored grass and freshly painted white picket fences

one day someone from the local road traffic safety committee knocks on your door and asks if you'd be willing to support the drive carefully through our neighborhood campaign by placing a large unsightly sign measuring 6 ft by 3 ft and stating drive carefully on your front lawn his assurance that workmen and not you will be employed to dig the support

holes in which the billboard posts will be placed does little to ease your concerns how many people do you think would agree to such a request according to an experiment conducted by social psychologists Jonathan Freriedman and Scott Frasier 17% of homeowners in a posh

neighborhood agreed to it but astonishingly the researchers were able to obtain a 76% compliance rate from a different set of residents from the same neighborhood simply by making one seemingly insignificant addition to their request what was the addition and what does that tell us about how to persuade others effectively a different research assistant approached this

separate group of residents two weeks prior to this burdensome request and asked them if they'd be willing to display a very small relatively inconspicuous sign in their window that read "Be a safe driver." Because it was such a small request almost all these residents agreed two weeks later when someone else came to their home and asked them if they'd be willing to place

the large billboard on their otherwise perfectly manicured lawn they were much more inclined to agree but why would such a simple additional request a strategy that the researchers refer to as the foot in the door technique result in this astonishing boost in compliance with the

much larger request the evidence suggests that after agreeing to the request the residents came to see themselves as committed to worthy causes such as safe driving when these homeowners were approached a couple of weeks later they were motivated to act consistently with this perception of themselves as concerned citizens there are countless applications of the foot in

the door technique including sales applications for example one astute sales expert advises "The general idea is to pave the way for full line distribution by starting with a small order."

Look at it this way when a person has signed an order for your merchandise even though the profit is so small it hardly compensates for the time and effort of making the call he or she is no longer a prospect he or she is a customer in cases in which a business can't secure even

a small initial product purchase this commitment and consistencybased strategy has other uses for example potential clients who are reluctant to use your service may be more inclined to do so if they're first asked to take a small step such as agreeing to an initial 10-minute appointment similarly a marketing research department is more likely to get people to answer a large

number of survey questions by first asking them if they'd be willing to answer a brief survey in fact Freriedman and Frasier conducted another experiment supporting this last point in that experiment a research assistant called up homeowners and asked them if they'd be willing

to participate in a survey specifically the caller said "The survey will involve five or six men from our staff coming into your home some morning for about 2 hours to enumerate and classify all the household products that you have they will have to have full freedom in your house to go through the cupboards and storage places then all this information will be used in the writing of the

reports for our public service publication The Guide." In response to this very inconvenient request 22% of the homeowners agreed pretty amazing considering that behavior this intrusive usually requires a search warrant however the researchers called a second set of residents 3

days before this invasive request in the first call they were asked "We are calling you this morning to ask if you would answer a number of questions about what household products you use so that we could have this information for our public service publication the guide would you be willing to give us this information for our survey?" Most agreed sure enough 3 days later nearly

53% of these homeowners agreed to the larger request such an approach can also be applied to two of the most resistant influence targets that you're ever likely to come across your children and yourself resistant children who easily find excuses not to do their homework or tidy their

room are more likely to be persuaded if they're first asked to take a small step in that direction this could take the form of asking them to spend a short period of time with you working on their homework or requesting that they put a cherished toy back in its box when they finish playing with it as long as they feel they've said yes to the first small request voluntarily rather

than through coercion the psychological momentum should propel them towards scholastic awards and cleaner living quarters in which to place those awards in the case of influencing ourselves rather than setting a large and seemingly insurmountable goal to improve for example our fitness levels we would be well advised to set a task for ourselves that is small enough that we would have no excuse

for not completing it at least once for example taking a short walk around the block as a result we should find ourselves gradually increasing our degree of commitment to meet the larger fitness

goals after all Confucious wisely said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

15 how can you become a Jedi master of persuasion a long time ago about a quarter century ago to be exact in a galaxy far far away Luke Skywalker gained the ultimate form of compliance he persuaded Darth Vader to turn against the evil emperor saving his own life and restoring hope

and peace to the rest of the galaxy what social influence strategy did he use the movie Return of the Jedi the final episode of the Star Wars series includes a scene in which Luke Skywalker turns to Darth Vader and says "I know there's still good in you there's good in you i can sense it."

Is it possible that these simple words could have persuaded Vader or at the very least planted the seeds of persuasion to come over to the light side of the force when Luke asks Vader to save him from the emperor according to the social psychological research the answer appears to be yes this

strategy known as the labeling technique involves assigning a trait attitude belief or other label to a person and then making a request of that person consistent with that label in an effective demonstration of this strategy researchers Alice Tyout and Richard Yelch showed how the

labeling technique could be used to increase the likelihood that people would vote on election day they interviewed a large number of potential voters and randomly told half of them that based on their responses they could be characterized as above average citizens likely to vote and participate in political events the other half of the interviewees were informed that they could be

characterized as about average in terms of these interests beliefs and behaviors those respondents given the label of good citizen with a high likelihood of voting not only came to see themselves as better citizens than those labeled as average but they were also 15% more likely to

vote in an election held one week later of course the labeling technique isn't limited to political change in democracies or the empire there are a number of ways that you can use this technique in your business dealings and other personal interactions for example let's say that someone in your work team is struggling with a particular project you've asked him to manage perhaps this

team member is losing confidence in his ability to provide the required deliverables of the project a useful approach assuming that you still believe him to be capable of the task would be to remind him how hardworking and persevering he is you should even point out examples of previous times

when he had triumphed over similar challenges and successfully delivered teachers trainers and parents can apply this labeling strategy to sculpt desired behavior by pointing out that they regard their students clients or children as just the type of people who would thrive when given this sort of challenge this strategy works for adults and children alike for instance research one of

us conducted with several colleagues showed that when teachers tell children that they seem like the kind of students who care about having good handwriting the kids spent more of their free time practicing their handwriting even when they thought no one was around to watch a company's relationship with its clients can be strengthened in this way you might be familiar with the way

many of the airlines have taken advantage of this principle when the chief flight attendant tells a plane's passengers at the end of the flight "We know you have many airlines to choose from so we thank you for choosing ours he or she is using a derivative of the labeling technique reminding you implicitly that if there are so many choices out there you must have chosen this airline for a

reason." told that they have confidence in that airline passengers come to believe it similarly

reason." told that they have confidence in that airline passengers come to believe it similarly you can use the technique to remind clients that their decision to deal with your organization shows their confidence in your company and in you and that you appreciate and will continue to justify that confidence just remember as tempting as it might be to move over to the dark

side with this strategy like all other influence strategies this one must be used only earnestly in other words only when the trait attitude belief or other label accurately reflects the audience's natural capabilities experiences or personality of course we know you wouldn't even

think of using this strategy in an insincere manner after all we sense much good in you 16 how can a simple question drastically increase support for you and your ideas as any politician

will tell you in election periods candidates are under enormous pressure to find ways not only to convince the electorate that they are the most qualified and credible leader but also to draw those supporters to the polls on election day to secure their votes whereas some campaigners will invariably pour more and more money into television advertisements mailings and

media appearances the truly astute candidate and probably the winning candidate will look to harness not just the art of persuasion but the science as well the 2000 US presidential election in which only 537 votes made a huge difference made it clearer than ever before that every single

vote really does count during that infamous election with the media and the United States as a whole focused on myriad controversies one important fact was that even the tiniest boost in voter turnout in one direction or the other could have had a large impact on the outcome what simple

strategy could have been used to draw supporters from either side to the polls the answer involves merely asking potential voters to predict whether they will vote on election day and to provide a reason for their prediction when social scientist Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues tried this technique on potential voters on the eve of one such election day those who were asked to make

a prediction yielded a turnout rate that was 25 percentage points higher than the rate for those who weren't asked 86.7% compared to 61.5% there are two important psychological steps involved in the success of this technique first when people are asked to predict whether they'll engage in

a socially desirable behavior in the future they feel compelled to say yes because that's the socially desirable thing to say considering the value that society places on voting it'll be difficult for the respondents to say something like voting that's this Tuesday right can't do it there's a really important History Channel special on civic responsibility that I don't want to miss

it's no surprise then that in this study 100% of all the survey respondents asked to make a prediction about their voting behavior claimed that they would indeed vote second after most if not all of these people have publicly stated that they'll perform the socially desirable behavior they'll be motivated to behave consistently with the commitment they just made

for instance one restaurant owner greatly reduced the percentage of no shows people who booked a table but didn't honor the reservation and didn't call to cancel it by having his receptionist changed what she said when taking a reservation from "Please call if you have to cancel," to "Will you please call if you have to cancel?" Of course nearly all customers committed themselves

to calling by saying yes to that question more important they then felt the need to be consistent with their commitment the no-show rate dropped from 30% to 10% consequently an easy way for candidates to get more of their supporters to the polls is to have volunteers call these

self-proclaimed supporters ask them if they'll vote in the next election and wait for the yes if the caller then adds "We'll mark you down as a yes and I'll let the others know as well." The

commitment has three components that potentially cement that potential voters's commitment the commitment becomes voluntary active and publicly declared to others what lessons can we draw from this research that you can employ effectively in the workplace and in the broader community let's say that you're thinking about doing a charity run for your favorite nonprofit organization

but you don't want to sign up unless you're fairly certain you'll get a lot of donations asking family friends and co-workers whether they think they'll donate will not only give you an idea of their initial support for your undertaking but will also increase the likelihood they'll donate should you decide to join the run as another example of this strategy imagine that

you manage a team of people and you recognize that the success of a new initiative depends not just on gaining verbal support from others on your team but also on turning that verbal support into meaningful action rather than just explaining to team members what benefits they would derive from supporting a particular initiative you would be well advised to also ask them if they'd

be willing to support such an initiative and wait for a yes in response following that yes response you should ask those co-workers and colleagues to describe briefly why they support the initiative

17 what is the active ingredient in lasting commitments the Amway Corporation one of America's most profitable direct selling companies encourages its salesperson by providing the following advice one final tip before you get started set a goal and write it down whatever

the goal the important thing is that you set it so you've got something for which to aim and that you write it down there is something magical about writing things down so set a goal and write it down when you reach that goal set another and write that down you'll be off and running why

might writing down our goals be so effective at strengthening our commitments put simply commitments that are made actively have more staying power than those that are made passively in a recent demonstration of both the power and subtlety of active commitments social scientists Deia ChiFi and Randy Garner solicited college student volunteers for an AIDS education project

to be carried out at local schools the researchers set up the study so that the students were given one of two different sets of instructions those who received the active instructions were told that if they wanted to volunteer they should fill out a form stating that they were willing to participate in contrast those who received the passive instructions were told that if they wanted

to volunteer they should leave blank the form stating that they were not willing to participate the researchers found that the percentage of people who agreed to volunteer didn't differ as a function of whether the instructions invited active or passive responding yet there was quite an astonishing difference in the percentage of people who actually showed up to participate

in the project several days later of those who agreed to participate passively only 17% actually appeared as promised what about those who agreed to participate through active means of those 49% kept their promises in all the clear majority of those who appeared as scheduled 74% were those

who had actively agreed to volunteer for the program why are commitments that are written and therefore active so much more successful at eliciting participation people make judgments about themselves based on observations of their own behavior and they infer more about themselves

based on their actions than on their non-actions in support of this explanation ChiFafi and Garner found that those who volunteered actively were more likely to attribute their decisions to their own personality traits preferences and ideals than were those who volunteered passively what

can active commitments do for you let's say that it's the time of year when many of us traditionally make a very specific commitment the New Year's resolution writing down and describing in detail the resolution you've committed to rather than just thinking about it and also describing what steps you'll take to achieve your chosen commitment could be helpful to you

especially if you then go on to show your friends and family those written commitments if you're a sales manager asking members of your sales team to write down their goals will help strengthen their commitment to those goals and ultimately boost everyone's bottom line it would also be wise to ensure that during a meeting participants write down and publicly share the actions that they have

agreed to take a similar example in the retail environment also provides a telling illustration of the power of actively writing things down many stores offer their customers the opportunity to spread the cost of purchasing products over a number of months or even years by signing up for

a store credit card or some other finance product retailers find that customers are less likely to cancel the agreement if the customers themselves rather than the salesperson fill out the application form these data show that to maximize commitments to the initiatives you undertake

jointly with clients and business associates you should arrange for all parties involved to take an active role filling out any relevant business agreements active commitments also have the potential to be used with great benefit throughout the health care industry in recent years health care providers have reported that more patients than ever have been failing to show up for their

appointments at the scheduled time one study for example indicated that 7 million medical appointments were missed by patients in one year alone a staggering figure with serious financial and health consequences in what way might active commitments be harnessed to help alleviate the

problem when we make appointments for our next visit whether it's for a routine checkup or important surgery it's standard practice that the receptionist or administrator of the unit writes down the date and time of that next appointment on a little reminder card with such a routine however

the patients role is passive rather than active asking patients to fill out the card themselves is not only more effective but saves staff time as well finally as with many other approaches described in this book active commitments can be useful to generate compliance in our

personal lives too a small but psychologically significant action such as securing an active written commitment from our children neighbors friends partners or even ourselves can often mean the difference between being able to influence others effectively versus soliciting commitments that others have all the intention in the world of fulfilling but somehow never get around

to 18 how can you fight consistency with consistency according to Oscar Wild consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative a similarly disdainful Ralph Waldo Emerson said "A foolish

consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." And finally Aldis Huxley noted "The only truly consistent people are dead." Why is it more likely that these famous authors made these statements when they were young whippers snappers rather than when they were elderly sages and what

could this mean for your attempts to influence others as we discussed earlier in the book people generally prefer their behavior to be consistent with their pre-existing attitudes statements values and actions but how does the aging process alter this inclination along with lead researcher Stephanie Brown and another colleague one of us conducted a study showing that people's preference

for consistency becomes greatly strengthened as they get older this is likely the case because inconsistency can be emotionally upsetting and older people have greater motivation to avoid emotionally upsetting experiences this finding has important implications for how we try to influence

older people for example suppose you work for a company that's attempting to market a range of new products to a more mature audience our research suggests that this particular demographic is going to be more resistant to change than others in such a case you'd be well advised to focus your

messages on how purchasing and using the product is consistent with the audience's pre-existing values beliefs and practices the same lesson can be applied in other domains such as convincing an older member of a work team to switch to a new system or even getting one's elderly parent to

take his or her medication but do people really give up their previous behavior that easily simply by being told that the new suggested behavior is consistent with their pre-existing practices beliefs and values what about the original decisions they made to behave the way they do

from their point of view remaining consistent with those decisions is probably a good thing after all everyone knows how frustrating it can be to deal with people who are routinely inconsistent who constantly change their mind who are easily influenced by the very next message they hear who are indecisive such a situation requires us to do something else in addition to pointing out

how our proposal aligns with what they have previously declared to be important to them to ensure our message is optimally persuasive we need not only to free them from their previous commitment but also to avoid framing their previous decision as a mistake perhaps the most productive method is to praise their previous decision as correct at the time that they made it

pointing out that the previous choices they made were the right ones given the evidence and information they had at the time can help free them from such a commitment and allow them to focus on your proposal without the need for loss of face or inconsistency with this pre-persu statement your next message still aligned to their overall

values beliefs and practices has legs in the same way that a painter will prepare a canvas before painting a medical professional will prepare surgical equipment before operating and a sports coach will prepare her team before a match a persuasive appeal requires preparation too and sometimes such preparation requires us not only to consider how to pitch

our message but also to pay attention to previous messages that have been acted upon for many years as the saying goes the best way to ride a horse is in the direction that the horse is going only by first aligning to the direction the horse is going is it possible to then slowly and deliberately

steer it where you'd like to go simply trying to pull the horse immediately in the desired direction will just wear you out and you'll probably just upset the horse in the process 19 what persuasion tip can you borrow from Benjamin Franklin born in 1706 Benjamin Franklin

is renowned as a leading author politician diplomat scientist publisher philosopher and inventor as a politician perhaps more than any other he encouraged the very idea of an American nation as a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance

that helped to make independence possible as a scientist he was a major figure for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity and as an inventor he was responsible for the creation of bifocals the odometer and the lightning rod but it's what he discovered about how to win over

respect of his opposition by inconveniencing them no less that might be most electrifying of all when Franklin was in the Pennsylvania legislature he was deeply bothered by the staunch political opposition and hostility of another legislator franklin himself best explains how he successfully

won his respect and even his friendship i did not however aim at gaining his favor by paying any surviile respect to him but after some time took this other method having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book I wrote a note to him expressing my desire

of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days he sent it immediately and I returned it in about a week with another note expressing strongly my sense of the favor when we next met in the house he spoke to me which he had never done before and

with great civility and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death this is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned which says "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready

to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged." A century later researchers John and David Landy set out to see if Franklin was right in one study participants won some money from the experimentter in a contest afterward one group of participants was approached by the experimentter

who asked them if they'd be willing to give back the money because he was using his own money and had little left almost all agreed another group of participants was not approached with any request all of the participants were then anonymously surveyed about how much they liked the

experimentter was Franklin's strategy as illogical as it sounds supported indeed it was jer and Landy found that those who were asked to do the favor for the experimentter rated the experimentter more favorably than did those who were not asked to give back the money why we know from other studies

that people are strongly motivated to change their attitudes in ways that are consistent with their behavior when Franklin's opponent found himself doing a favor for someone he didn't care for he probably had to say to himself "Why am I going out of my way to help out this person I don't even like perhaps Franklin's not so bad after all." Come to think of it he does have some

redeeming qualities franklin's strategy lends itself to managing relationships in any number of different environments to take one often we are in need of assistance from a c-orker colleague or neighbor who for one reason or another doesn't view us in a particularly favorable light we might

be reluctant to ask for the favor because we're afraid this person will like us even less rather than ask for such a favor a more typical tendency is to put off the request potentially delaying a timely accomplishment of the task at hand the results of this research indicate that such

hesitation is unwarranted now in the case of some objectionable people asking for a favor might seem to be a rather brave thing to do but consider the following if you currently have nothing to show from your communications or non-communications with this person the worst thing that will

happen is that you'll end up with the same nothing try it you truly have nothing to lose 20 when can asking for a little go a long way presumably a very little person first said

"Good things come in small packages." Whoever coined the phrase it's clear that this person understood the power of thinking big by going small throughout this book we've attempted to provide evidence to support our claims that we can successfully and ethically move people to say yes

but in certain situations and environments it's also important to understand why people say no to reasonable requests such as a request to donate to a legitimate charity along with several colleagues one of us set out to do just that we thought that when asked to make a donation even those who would

genuinely like to support the charity in some way say no because they can't afford to donate very much and they assume the small amount they can afford won't do much to help the cause based on this reasoning we thought that one way to urge people in this situation to donate would be to inform them that even an extremely small sum would be helpful to the cause essentially legitimizing

such contributions to test this hypothesis our research assistants went doortodoor to request donations for the American Cancer Society after introducing themselves these research assistants asked the residents "Would you be willing to help by giving a donation for half of the residents the

request ended there for the other half however the research assistant added "Even a penny will help."

When we analyzed the results we found that this dimminionative disc of copper and zinc was worth its weight in persuasive gold consistent with our hypothesis people in the even a penny will help condition were almost twice as likely as those in the other condition to donate to the cause 50%

versus 28.6% on the face of it the study suggests that when you want assistance from others simply pointing out that even a small offering would be acceptable and worthwhile to you is likely to be an effective strategy still is there a possibility that adopting an even a penny will help strategy

could backfire although the number of people who donated almost doubled when people were told that even a penny would help might their donations have been smaller than those in the other condition after all those residents were informed that even a single cent would help which might have led them to give a smaller donation than they ordinarily would we looked at the size

in donation amounts and were happy to find that there was no difference in the average donation per contributor what this means is that the even a penny will help request should come out ahead of a standard request not only in the number of people who donate but in the overall amount collected from your efforts in our study for instance for every hundred people we asked we

collected $72 in donations in the even a penny condition compared to only $44 in the standard condition there are several applications of the even a penny will help approach in the workplace to co-workers regarding a community project just an hour of your time would really help

to a colleague whose handwriting is illegible just a little more clarity would help to a busy prospective client whose needs must be more fully understood even a brief initial phone call would help the chances are that this little step in your direction won't prove so little after all

21 start low or start high which will make people buy what can items such as gum chewed by Britney Spears a Papa Smurf commemorative plate or a broken laser pointer teach us about how to most effectively sell goods and services through a competitive bidding process

for example can an examination of how people list their treasures on eBay tell us whether we should use a low starting price or a high starting price ebay Incorporated is the company that manages eBay.com the online auction and shopping website where people and businesses buy and sell goods

and services worldwide it was founded in 1995 in San Jose California by a computer programmer named Pierre Omdiar who ran a consulting company called the Echo Bay Technology Group when he attempted to register his consultancy group's website he found that echoay.com had already been taken

by the gold mining company Echo Bay Mines so he shortened the company name and eBay.com was born the very first item to appear on eBay was Omdar's broken laser pointer which he sold for $14.83 astonished that someone would want to buy such an item he contacted the winning bidder and

asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken responding to the email the buyer explained "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers." In 2006 eBay registered some $6 billion in sales on a site where it is now possible to buy pretty much anything you can imagine and sometimes

beyond in recent years some of the more notable sales included the original Hollywood sign an entire city in California and the rights to choose a seller's new middle name an Arizona man successfully managed to sell his prized air guitar for $5.50 50s even though he pointed out

that biders were in fact buying nothing and in 2005 the clearly outraged wife of a UK radio disc jockey sold his beloved Lotus Aspree sports car for a buy it now price of 50 about 90 cents at the time after she heard him flirting on the airwaves with a glamour model the car sold in 5 minutes

clearly eBay.com has identified a hugely successful business model based on online auctions many companies have adopted similar models using online bidding processes and systems to secure tenders and choose vendors because of the inherent similarities between an online auction's bidding processes and a business's competitive bidding process observing

how sellers most effectively sell their stuff on websites like eBay can teach us quite a bit about how to most effectively manage a company's competitive bidding behavioral scientist Gillian Coup and her colleagues knew that when the initial price for an item is high as a potential buyer

you're likely to think it's worth more than if the initial price were lower yet they wondered whether the increase in perceived value that comes along with a high starting price would actually lead to a higher final sale price instead based on their research they suggest that lower starting prices

can actually lead to a higher final sale price for three reasons first because the starting prices for auctions act as somewhat of a barrier to entry lower starting prices are better for encouraging participation by as many people as possible in the bidding process for an item

second the increase in traffic reflected in the total number of bids as well as the number of different biders afforded by these lower initial prices acts as social proof for new potential biders in other words prospective biders considering an item that started off at a low price would find social validation that the item is of value because so many more people were

also bidding on the item and this validation would spur them to bid on the item as well third bidders for items with low starting prices especially those who get in early are likely to spend more time and effort updating their bids in an effort to justify the time and energy they've already spent on the bidding process these biders are more likely to stay

committed to winning the auction by continuing to bid and raising their bids even higher these research findings suggest that if you're in the business of offering goods or services through any kind of competitive bidding process starting the bidding at a fairly low price can be a way of enhancing the final sale price however there is one very important

caveat to consider the researchers found that the social proof component was a critical factor in the enhanced effectiveness of the lower starting price so when the traffic for a particular item was constrained for example due to a misspelling of the product name which limits the number of prospective biders who are likely to find the item through a typical eBay search the lower starting

price was less effective this means that a lower starting price is likely to be most effective when there's a possibility that many biders will join the bidding fry for your product but is likely to be least effective when the bidding is limited to only two potential parties although taking this advice might not earn you millions of extra dollars on

your company's widgets or your family's antique thimble collection at the very least it should help you earn enough to bid on that air guitar should the original buyer decide to resell it

22 how can we show off what we know without being labeled a showoff if you're like most people when you know best you want to tell the whole world about it but even when you have the credentials to present yourself as a knowledgeable authority on a topic there's a formidable dilemma to overcome

in trying to convey your expertise to others and in attempting to persuade them toward your point of view you might come across as boastful and conceited as a result they may like you less and possibly even be less inclined to follow your advice with unabashed self-promotion out of the question what's a genuine expert to do one option is to get someone else to speak on

your behalf this approach has been widely accepted by speakers authors performers and other public communicators for many years arranging for someone else to introduce your expertise and credentials to your audience will do wonders to convince them that they should listen to what you have to say while also avoiding the damage that blatant self-promotion can cause ideally this person would

be a true believer in your skills and knowledge and volunteer to tell everyone how smart you are in the hope that you'll make the world a better place but your mother isn't always available instead you can hire a representative to do the job but won't people completely discount the words of the representative who's being paid to sing your praises not if they commit one of the

most common errors that people make which social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error when observing another person's behavior we tend not to give sufficient weight to the role situational factors for example money play in shaping that person's behavior in a set of studies

one of us conducted with lead researcher Jeffrey Feffer and two other colleagues we argued that people do not discount this information nearly as much as they should which means that paying an intermediary to tout your abilities should still be an effective form of persuasion in one of those studies participants were asked to imagine themselves in the role of senior editor for a

book publisher in this role they had the specific job of dealing with an experienced and successful author they were asked to read excerpts from a negotiation for a sizable book advance one group read excerpts touting the author's accomplishments spoken by the author's agent whereas a second

group read identical comments made by the author himself the data verified our hypothesis participants rated the author more favorably on nearly every dimension especially likability when the author's agent sang his praises as compared to when the author tooted his own horn this research

confirms that having a skilled third party who will set up your initial presentation can be a very productive and worthwhile strategy for conveying your expertise in an area in fact where possible that third party should also negotiate contract conditions and remuneration on your behalf we'd also recommend that when giving a presentation to people who don't know

you very well you should arrange for someone else to introduce you to your audience one of the most efficient ways of doing this is to ensure that you have prepared a short biography of yourself this biography needn't be lengthy but it should at the very least contain some information about your background experience training or education that makes it clear that you're qualified to speak on

a certain topic you could also include several examples of successes you've had on the topic on which you'll be speaking in fact recently one of us had the opportunity to work with a real estate agency that used this approach to immediate and highly successful effect the agency concerned has both a sales and a rental division consequently customers who called into the office

would typically first speak with a receptionist who having identified which department they needed to speak with would say "Oh rentals you need to speak to Judy or you need the sales department let me put you through to Sheldon." In response to our recommendation that her colleagues should be introduced along with their credentials the receptionist now tells inquiring customers not

only which of her colleagues they should speak to but also her colleagues expertise as a result customers who want further information about rentals are now told "Oh rentals you need to speak to Judy who has over 15 years experience renting properties in this neighborhood let me put you through now." Similarly customers who want more information about selling their

property are now told "I'm going to put you through to Sheldon our head of sales sheldon has 20 years of experience selling properties in fact he recently sold a property very similar to yours." There are four notable features of this change first everything the receptionist tells

yours." There are four notable features of this change first everything the receptionist tells her customers about her co-workers experience is true judy does have 15 years experience sheldon is one of the most successful real estate salespeople but for Sheldon or Judy to tell the

customers themselves would be seen as boastful and self-promoting and as a result not nearly as persuasive second it doesn't seem to matter that the introduction comes from someone who's clearly connected to Judy and Sheldon who will both obviously benefit from such an introduction the third notable feature is how effective it is judy Sheldon and their colleagues report a significant

rise in the number of appointments they're generating compared to when they hadn't been introduced and finally it's important to note that the intervention was for the most part costless to implement everyone knew of the wide-ranging expertise and experience that resided in the office everyone that is except the most important people of all the company's potential customers

but what if it's impractical to have someone else sing your praises is there another subtle way of demonstrating that you're competent without saying so indeed there is to take an example one of us was approached by a group of physicians assistants who were frustrated by their patients non-compliance with important exercises that the patients needed to perform to get healthier

no matter how hard they tried to convey the necessity and urgency of doing these exercises the patients would rarely follow their instructions when we asked to see the examining room one thing stuck out there were no credentials whatsoever on the wall or anywhere else for that matter after we advised them to put their credentials in places that

their patients could see the physicians assistants reported a huge difference in patient compliance the lesson display your diplomas certificates and awards to those you want to persuade you've earned those credentials and in turn they'll help you earn your audience's trust

23 what's the hidden danger of being the brightest person in the room over drinks bar patrons have been known to tell some dubious stories i dated that supermodel before she got famous i could have won the fight but I didn't want to hurt the other guy i was accepted with a

full scholarship to study at MIT but took a job sweeping floors there instead but on a cold and unpleasant February evening in 1953 two gentlemen walked into the Eagle Public House in Cambridge England and after ordering their drinks one of them publicly announced to the other patrons what

must have seemed like the tallest tale of all we have found the secret of life although their claim might seem rather boastful and arrogant it was nonetheless true that morning scientists James Watson and Francis Crick had indeed found the secret of life they had discovered the double

helix structure of DNA the biological material that carries life's genetic information on the 50th anniversary of what could be described as perhaps the most important scientific discovery of our time Watson took part in an interview on the topic of this accomplishment the interview was designed to inquire about the aspects of Watson and Crick's work that had led

them to solve the problem of the structure of DNA ahead of an array of other highly accomplished and recognized rival scientists at first Watson listed a set of contributo factors that were largely unsurprising it was crucial that he and Crick had identified the problem that was the most important to attack they were both passionate about their work

they devoted themselves single-mindedly to the task at hand they were willing to embrace and attempt approaches that were outside their area of familiarity but then he added another reason for their success that was nothing short of stunning he and Crick had cracked the elusive code for

DNA primarily he said because they were not the most intelligent scientists pursuing the answer watson went on to explain that the most intelligent person working on the project in those days was Rosalyn Franklin a British scientist who was working in Paris at the time rosalyn was so

intelligent that she rarely sought advice and if you're the brightest person in the room then you're in trouble watson's comment shines light on a familiar error seen in the actions of many well-intentioned leaders leaders in organizations who are dealing with a specific issue or problem for example how to design the most effective sales pitch for a possible client or how to create the

most effective campaign to raise funds for a local parent teacher association should ensure that they collaborate with team members towards its resolution even if they are the best informed most experienced or most skilled person in the group not to do so would be foolhardy in fact behavioral scientist Patrick Laughlin and his colleagues have shown that the approaches and

outcomes of groups who cooperate in seeking a solution are not just better than the average member working alone but are even better than the group's best problem solver working alone far too often leaders who by virtue of greater experience skill and wisdom deem themselves the

ablest problem solver in the group fail to ask for input from team members the research conducted by Laughlin and his colleagues tells us why the best leader operating individually will be beaten to a correct solution by an all-inclusive cooperating unit first lone decision makers can't match the

diversity of knowledge and perspectives of a multi-person unit that includes them the input from others can stimulate thinking processes that wouldn't have been developed when working alone we can all recall being led to an insight by the comment of a colleague who didn't deliver the insight but who sparked the association to the best solution second the solution seeker who goes

it alone loses another significant advantage the power of parallel processing whereas a cooperating unit can distribute many subtasks of a problem to its members a lone operator must perform each task sequentially but isn't full collaboration risky after all decisions made completely by

committee are notorious for suboptimal performance mindful of that problem our recommendation is not to employ a vote counting strategy in order to come to a resolution in fact the recommendation is not for making joint decisions at all the final choice is always for the leader to make but it's

the process of seeking input that leaders should engage in more collectively those who arrange for regular team input can expect to achieve better outcomes in addition they can expect better relationships and rapport with their team which enhances future collaboration and influence but is there not a risk of bruised egos and lost motivation if a team member's idea is ultimately

rejected as long as a leader assures the team that each view while perhaps not the deciding factor will be considered in the process this shouldn't occur and who knows although building a team of people who are encouraged and persuaded to offer insights cooperate and collaborate with each other may not enable you to declare like Watson and Crick that you have found the secret

to life it may well help you to find the secret to unlocking your and your group's true potential 24 who is the better persuader devil's advocate or true dissenter in outer space exploration

two days of national mourning have been etched into history forever on January 28th 1986 the US shuttle Challenger exploded during liftoff and on February 1st 2003 the US shuttle Colombia was

destroyed upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere both disasters killed all seven crew members although the causes of the tragedies in one case damage to the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing and in the other case a failed O-ring seal on the shuttle's solid rocket booster were different

a close examination of these failures suggests the same root cause nasa's poor decision-making culture to understand how these disasters came about consider the following exchange between a Colombia disaster investigator and the chairwoman of the mission management team investigator:

As a manager how do you seek out dissenting opinions chairwoman well when I hear about them investigator by their very nature you may not have heard about them what techniques do you use to get them the chairwoman had no answer the nature of these tragedies reminds us that

sometimes the goal should not be to persuade but to allow ourselves to be persuaded by others if we're leaning in the wrong direction but how do we most effectively seek out dissenting opinions as leaders can we simply ask a member of our team to play devil's advocate for nearly four

centuries the Roman Catholic Church relied on the advocaciably or devil's advocate to investigate and present to the church all the negative aspects of the life and work of a candidate for saintthood in what might be referred to as a form of saintly due diligence the idea was that if there were

a thorough investigation that uncovered all the unfavorable information concerning the candidate and presented it to the church leadership the decision-making process would be more informed and would profit considerably from the diversity of ideas perspectives and sources of information

anyone who works in the business world knows that the terms business and saintthood are not commonly associated with each other yet business managers could learn a valuable lesson from the devil's advocate procedure when it seems that everyone on a team initially agrees on an issue be it a

revamped business plan a new marketing strategy or some other important topic it can often be fruitful to encourage and to seek out alternative points of view this becomes even more important considering the potentially devastating effects of group think and group polarization in which the

majority opinion in a group becomes more extreme the more it is discussed social psychologists have also known for some time that even one lone denter in an otherwise unanimous group may be enough to generate more creative and complex thinking within that group but until recently very little research

had been conducted regarding the nature of the denter are devil's advocates that is pseudo denters better or worse than authentic desenters at enhancing the problem-solving abilities of a group of otherwise like-minded people the results of a study conducted by social psychologist

Charlene Neimoth and colleagues suggest that in comparison to an authentic desenter a person asked to play the role of devil's advocate will be much less effective at promoting creative problem solving among group members the researchers argue that majority members are more likely to perceive the true dissenters arguments and positions as principled and therefore as valid

the position favored by the devil's advocate on the other hand seems like disagreement simply for the sake of disagreement when the majority members are confronted by a person who truly appears to oppose their position they search to understand why the dissenter is so committed to his or her beliefs in the process they come to a better understanding of the problem and consider it from

a broader perspective do these findings imply that the devil's advocate is outdated and obsolete in the 1980s Pope John Paul II officially eliminated the practice from the church's storied process indeed there's some evidence that experience with a devil's advocate has the potential to

strengthen rather than weaken majority members confidence in their original position presumably because they believe that they have considered and subsequently dismissed all possible alternatives considering the findings of this research perhaps the best policy for leaders is to

create and sustain a work environment in which co-workers and subordinates not only feel welcome but are also encouraged to openly disagree with the majority viewpoint this could well translate into more innovative solutions to complex problems and greater overall employee morale as long as

dissension remains professional and not personal and could eventually lead to increased profits in situations in which decisions will have long lasting and potentially far-reaching implications consideration should also be given to actually seeking out true dissenters by encouraging

knowledgeable others to passionately persuade us that we may be leaning in the wrong direction we place ourselves in a position to gain a greater understanding from a genuine argument rather than a simulated one allowing us to make optimal decisions and create maximally effective messages unfortunately there are all too many counterex examples of this orientation where higher ranked

and more experienced leaders create an atmosphere in which subordinates are afraid to question the leader decisions even in situations in which the subordinates are correct it's too often the case that employees are reluctant to disagree with their managers nurses are hesitant to question their supervising doctors and first officers defer to their aircraft's captains

for leaders to create a better environment the first step is to have a little humility in other words just remember to check your ego at the boardroom hospital or cockpit door

25 when can the right way be the wrong way strength courage determination commitment selflessness some might say that our firefighters should be role models for how we behave both

within and outside our organizations even though saving lives and rescuing kittens from trees might not be in your work description learning how firefighters train for their job might just help you become an everyday hero in yours behavioral researcher Wendy Jung and her colleagues were

interested in examining whether certain types of training programs would be more effective than others at minimizing errors in judgment on the job specifically they wanted to know whether focusing the trainee on past errors that others have made would provide better training than focusing the trainee on how others had made good decisions in the past they thought that training

that focused more on others errors would be more effective for several reasons including increased attention to the training and a more memorable training experience the researchers aimed to test their hypothesis on a group of people whose decision-making skills under stress were vital

and whose decisions carried important consequences it's not surprising that they chose firefighters in the study a training and development session that included several case studies was presented to the firefighters however the nature of the case studies differed between two groups of

participants one group learned from case studies that described real life situations in which other firefighters made poor decisions that led to negative consequences the other group learned from case studies in which firefighters avoided negative consequences through good decision-making jung and her colleagues found that firefighters who underwent the error-based training showed

improved judgment and were able to think more adaptively than those who underwent the error-free training training is all about influencing others so if you want to maximize your influence on employees future behavior the implications for your organization's training programs are clear although many companies typically focus their training exclusively on the positive in other

words on how to make good decisions the results of this study suggest that a sizable portion of the training should be devoted to how others have made errors in the past and how those errors could have been and can be avoided specifically case studies videos illustrations and personal testimonials of mistakes should be followed by a discussion of what actions would have been appropriate

to take in these and similar situations of course specific individuals don't have to be singled out by management for their previous poor decision-making these error-based experiences can be completely anonymous however you might find that some of the more experienced and respected employees are more than happy to donate their error laden war stories to the company's training

archive this approach shouldn't be limited to the corporate classroom teachers tutors sports coaches and just about anyone who provides training to others can benefit from such an orientation that includes parents of course for example when teaching children to stay away from strangers

parents can describe hypothetical scenarios in which a child is tricked by a stranger by focusing on what the child in the example could have done to get away from the stranger in that specific situation parents will prepare their children to deal with such scenarios in the future

26 what's the best way to turn a weakness into a strength suppose that one day you decide that you want to own two or more copies of this book for a total of three one for home one for the office and one for the glove compartment of your car in case of emergencies after you grab the

last two copies of Yes off the shelf at a local bookstore and bring them to the checkout counter you're taken aback by something the clerk says are you sure you want to buy those books here he asks i know we have one of the most competitive prices on that book but the bookstore just down the street is selling it for about 15% less than our price if you'd like I can draw you a map of

how to get there with customer service like that or more accurately with non-C customer service like that you wonder how this place is still standing although this example may sound somewhat absurd some businesses have actually adopted this seemingly self-exterminating practice for instance

take Progressive Auto Insurance the third largest auto insurance company in the United States the company has always prided itself on innovations that distinguish it from its competitors including being the first major insurance company in the world to launch a website in 1995 one year later car owners searching for auto insurance rates could use the Progressive website

not only to learn about Progressives rates but also to learn about the rates offered by Progressives major competitors today the company even features a rate ticker prominently on its homepage which displays a scrolling information bar listing the various comparisons that recent visitors learned about although Progressive clearly has the better rates in many of these

instances this is certainly not always the case for example as we write this within 1 minute of visiting the site the rate ticker revealed that someone with the initials CM in Wisconsin would save almost $942 per year on insurance for his or her Toyota by choosing a competitor

over Progressive so is Progressive ensuring more customers with this strategy or is it ensuring its own extinction the company's enormous growth since it implemented this innovation an average of 17% a year with annual premiums growing from $3.4 billion to$14 billion suggests that

it's quite effective at turning potential customers from web browsers into web buyers indeed research conducted by social scientists Valerie Trifs and Gerald Hyel also supports progressives practices participants looking to buy books in a simulated online environment reported being more likely to shop from a moderately priced book seller when that book seller also

provided its competitors sometimes lower prices to understand why this strategy is so successful consider another example nearly half a century ago the advertising firm of Doyle Dayne and Bernbach was challenged with the almost insurmountable task of introducing a tiny German automobile

to a US market in which only larger domestic cars had previously thrived within a short period the Volkswagen Beetle was transformed from a relatively obscure laughingstock to an extremely popular status symbol the success of the Beetle can be largely attributed to the firm's

engineering of one of the greatest ad campaigns in the history of advertising this campaign certainly broke with the industry's conventional wisdom at the time when promoting the brand they didn't emphasize the product's strengths such as the fact that it was relatively inexpensive

or that it got good gas mileage so what did they focus on then they touted its weaknesses these ads focused on the fact that the Volkswagen was not nearly as pleasing to the eye as the typical Americanmade cars of the day for example ugly is only skin deep and it will stay

uglier longer were some of the slogans used in the campaign it's easy to understand why these headlines attracted attention and it's easy to see why the campaign in general was very likable but these factors alone can't account for the huge surge in sales that accompanied the

launch and continuation of this campaign why do the types of marketing strategies employed by Progressive and Volkswagen succeed arguing against your self-interest which can include mentioning a drawback of your arguments proposals or products creates the perception that you and

your organization are honest and trustworthy this puts you in a position to be more persuasive when promoting your genuine strengths in Progressive's case the company's strength is that many of its rates are truly superior to its competitors and in the case of Volkswagen sure the Beetle

wouldn't win any beauty contests but its strengths were durability fuel economy and price similarly Avis car rental the world's second largest car rental company took advantage of this principle in its memorable motto "Avis we're number two but we try harder." When you're not number one

you have to other examples include "The Peace Corps the toughest job you'll ever love." Motel

6 our rooms aren't fancy but our prices aren't fancy listerine the taste you hate three times a day and L'Oreal were more expensive but you're worth it evidence for this strategy has been found outside the domains of marketing as well consider one example of its use in law

social psychologist Kip Williams and colleagues found that when jurors heard a lawyer mention a weakness in his own case before the opposing attorney mentioned it jurors evaluated him as more trustworthy and were more favorable to his overall case in their verdicts because of that perceived honesty in a second study the same held true for an expert witness testifying

for the prosecution in a civil trial when the prosecution's witness volunteered the weakness in his testimony and then explained why the weakness wasn't especially important verdicts were more likely to be in favor of the plaintiff 65% then when the defense attorney was the one to first

bring up the issue 43% there are a number of other applications for this persuasion technique as well for example if you're selling your car when a prospective buyer comes to give it a test drive volunteering negative information about the car especially information that the prospect would be

unlikely to discover on his or her own for example that the light inside the trunks a little touchy or the fuel economy is modest should do wonders for his or her trust in you and your vehicle the strategy can also be applied at the negotiating table for example if there's a small area in

which your leverage is weak your negotiating partner is likely to see you as more trustworthy if you mention it upfront rather than having it be discovered later the same goes for direct sales if you are selling color copiers to a business and your copier holds slightly less paper than your competitors it might be helpful to mention that fact early on in the process to earn the potential

buyer's trust then it will be easier to convince the buyer that the truly superior features of your copier really do surpass the competition in those areas note however that you're going to be able to use this strategy effectively only if your weaknesses are genuinely minor ones this is why we rarely see ad campaigns with models like ranked last in its class by JD Power and

Associates but once we get these wrongful death suits taken care of we'll try harder 27 which faults unlock people's vaults francois Duke de la Rash Fakau the 17th century French writer and moralist foreshadowed the astonishing success of the famed Volkswagen Beetle advertising

campaign when he wrote "We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones." Although that campaign seemed to handle its products faults deafly attempting to use such messages leaves us with a dilemma which little faults should we choose to confess research

conducted by social scientist Garrett Boner and his colleagues suggests that for such two-sided persuasive appeals to be maximally effective there must be a clear connection between the negative and positive attributes that are conveyed in one study Boner created three different

versions of an advertisement for a restaurant one message featured only positive product attributes of the restaurant to take just one example the advertisement touted the restaurant's cozy atmosphere a second message mentioned those positive features in addition to some

unrelated negative ones for example in addition to mentioning the cozy atmosphere the advertisement stated that the restaurant couldn't offer dedicated parking to its clients the third message described certain negative features and added some related positive ones in this message for instance

the ad described the restaurant as very small but it also mentioned that it had a cozy atmosphere so participants who saw the third advertisement were able to make the connection between the negative aspects of the restaurant and the positive ones there's little space but that's part of what makes the atmosphere cozy in short although both types of two-sided messages produced increases in

the restaurant owner's perceived credibility the evaluation of the restaurant itself was highest in the two-sided message in which the positive and negative attributes were related these findings indicate that if you're primarily looking to increase your trustworthiness in the eyes of others the particular types of weaknesses you convey in your two-sided messages are less

likely to matter however if you're also looking to enhance their positive feelings specifically toward the object of discussion be it a restaurant a product or even your credentials then you'd be well advised to ensure that any dark cloud you describe is paired with a silver lining tailored

to that particular cloud to take a real life example when US President Ronald Reagan was up for reelection in 1984 some voters were concerned that he was too old to have an effective second term in office during the US presidential debate against opponent Walter Montdale Reagan acknowledged that

he was very old but stated "I also want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign i'm not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience although Montdale's immediate response was to let out a laugh he was certainly not laughing

when he was later routed in one of the biggest landslide losses in US presidential history this research has many business applications as well for instance let's say that you're presenting a product that your company has recently launched to a new client it has some notable features and benefits over that of your competitors but these features and benefits come at a cost

as a result it carries a price premium of some 20% more than the product that this new client company is currently using however you also have information that this initial 20% premium is offset by the fact that your product lasts longer and is more cost effective to maintain it's also

faster and more compact using up significantly less space than your competitors the results of this research suggest that after you mention the weakness of the price premium you should follow that statement with a benefit related to cost and not any other attribute of your product

therefore a statement such as "On the face of it our new product has a 20% price premium but this is more than offset when you consider how much longer it lasts and the lower maintenance costs."

Would be more persuasive than the statement that on the face of it our new product has a 20% price premium but it's much faster and also takes up less space in other words be sure to follow your discussion of a drawback with a positive aspect that's related to and that neutralizes the

drawback in other words when fate gives us lemons we should try to make lemonade not apple juice 28 when is it right to admit that you were wrong in February 2007 JetBlue Airways

the New York-based low-cost American airline frustrated thousands of passengers due to a lack of preparation and poor decision-making in the face of severe winter weather in the northeastern United States almost without exception all other airlines that provided passenger service in that

region had canled massive numbers of flights in anticipation of the storm they then returned to normal service within a couple of days in contrast JetBlue gave hope to many of its passengers that their planes would fly yet they remained out of service for many days in short the storms never

let up so many of JetBlue's customers were let down after stranding thousands of passengers in airports and on tarmacs in this operational nightmare JetBlue had a difficult public relations decision to make who or what to blame should they focus the blame on external factors

like the extreme weather or should they focus the blame on internal factors relevant to the company's operations at large the company chose the latter acknowledging JetBlue's failures during the meltdown were caused by internal rather than external problems it takes bravery and a sense of

humility to admit one's mistakes which is perhaps why it is so rare to see organizations and the people within them take the blame for a misstep or a misjudgment does the social influence research support the decision by JetBlue to do what many companies in its position would probably never even consider social scientist Fiona Lee and her colleagues suggest that organizations that

attribute failures to internal causes will come out ahead not only in public perception but also in terms of the profit line they argue that blaming internal potentially controllable failures makes the organization appear to have greater control over its own resources and future they also suggest that the public response to an organization's internal focus to explain

failures might be to assume that the organization has a plan to modify the internal features of the organization that may have led to the problems in the first place to test these ideas Lee and colleagues conducted a brief study in which participants read one of two annual reports of a fictitious company both of which explained why the company had performed so poorly over the last year

for half of the participants the annual report blamed internal but potentially controllable factors for the poor performance fictitious company report A the unexpected drop in earnings this year is primarily attributable to some of the strategic decisions we made last year decisions to

acquire a new company and to push out several new drugs in international markets directly contributed to short-term decreases in earnings as a management team we were not fully prepared for the unfavorable conditions that emerged from both the domestic and international sectors for the other half of the participants the annual report blamed external and uncontrollable factors for

the poor performance fictitious company report B the drop in earnings this year is primarily attributable to the unexpected downturn in the domestic and international economic environment and increased international competition these unfavorable market conditions directly contributed to a short-term slump in sales and difficulties in the introduction of several key drugs to the

market these unexpected conditions arose from federal legislations and are completely outside our control participants in the first condition report A viewed the company more positively on a number of different dimensions than did participants in the second condition report B

but the researchers didn't stop there they wanted to test their hypothesis in a natural setting to do this they collected hundreds of these types of statements from the annual reports of 14 companies over a 21-year period they discovered that when these companies explained failures in their

annual reports those that pointed to internal and controllable factors had higher stock prices one year later than those that pointed to external and uncontrollable factors so if taking responsibility for your mistakes and admitting that you're wrong is not only the right thing to do but also right

for your company why is this behavior such a rarity often the usual response to a costly or embarrassing error regardless of whether it's an organization or an individual making the mistake is to attempt to blame someone or some external factors to divert attention from the source of

the problem by taking such an approach we create two bigger problems for ourselves first as the research suggests this strategy is likely to be ineffective because it does nothing to prove to skeptics that we have any control over the problem or that we have the ability to fix the problem

second even if we do manage to distract attention from our mistake in the short term the spotlight or perhaps more accurately the bullseye will eventually find its way back to us in the long term potentially highlighting not only our mistake but also our deceptive

impulses this should hold true not only for companies but for individuals too if you've made a mistake an error in judgment or a bad decision you should admit the mistake immediately followed by an action plan demonstrating that you can take control of the situation and rectify it through these actions you'll ultimately put yourself in a

position of greater influence by being perceived as not only capable but also honest in some the results of this research suggest that if you play the blame game pointing your finger at external

factors rather than at yourself both you and your organization will likely end up as the losers 29 how can similarities make a difference in the summer of 1993 the flood waters of

the Mississippi River threatened to devastate several cities in the Midwest including the city of Quincy Illinois in response to the imminent danger Quincy residents worked night and day to secure vulnerable areas with thousands of sandbags things looked bleak for the residents supplies

and food were on the decline while fatigue pessimism and water levels were on the rise the mood among the volunteers brightened considerably however when they learned that residents of a small city in Massachusetts had donated a large amount of provisions that was already in route to their location what was it that influenced the people of a

seemingly random city to act so generously toward a town located a thousand miles away and why help Quincy in particular out of all the many cities and towns threatened by floodwaters a substantial amount of psychological research has shown that we're most likely to relate to

others with whom we share personal characteristics such as values beliefs age and sex but the reason behind this town's behavior lies in a subtle and seemingly irrelevant similarity between the two municipalities they have the same name based simply on a shared name the residents of

Quincy Massachusetts felt a bond with the people of Quincy Illinois one that was strong enough to motivate their generosity how can this be explained social psychologists have found that we tend to feel especially positive toward subtle things that we associate with ourselves

such as our names this tendency has manifested itself in some surprisingly powerful ways evidence suggests for example that people are more likely to comply with a stranger's request when the two share the same birthday in one set of studies researcher Randy Garner sent surveys

by mail to perfect strangers accompanying the survey was a request to complete and return it made by a person whose name was either similar or dissimilar to the name of the survey recipient for example in the similar name condition a person whose name was Robert Greer might get the

survey from someone named Bob Greger or a woman named Cynthia Johnston might get the survey from someone named Cindy Johansson the names used in the notsimilar condition were one of five names of the real research assistants involved in the study those who received the survey from someone

with a similar sounding name were nearly twice as likely to fill out and return the packet than were those who received the surveys from names that were not similar 56% compared to 30% in fact after the first phase of the study was completed all who had returned the original survey were sent another survey assessing what role various factors might have played in their decision to return the

packet for this survey roughly half responded but none of the participants indicated that the name of the sender affected their decision to complete the packet findings such as these show both the power and the subtlety of similarity as a cue that people use to decide whom to help

potential clients may thus be more receptive to a sales pitch from a salesperson with whom they share similarities in any number of domains including names beliefs hometowns and alma modders pointing out similarities can also be the first step to resolving potentially ugly conflicts with co-workers and even neighbors of course we're not advocating that people invent

similar characteristics or attributes with others to gain their favor but what we are suggesting is that if you do share genuine similarities with someone you should bring those similarities to the surface in your discussions with that person before making your request or presentation

30 when is your name your game in one episode of the hit NBC comedy The Office branch manager Michael Scott discovers that his sicopanic underling Dwight Shroo has gone behind his back to try to convince upper management to award Michael's job to him to cover up

his absence at work Dwight tells Michael that he needs to go to the dentist to have a crown put in when Dwight returns to the office Michael asks him about his experience at the dentist including a question about why Dwight is munching on candy when he just supposedly had major dental work unaware that Michael has learned about the coup attempt Dwight tries to

bluff he tells Michael that the dentist gave him a new type of quick drying bonding pretending to be impressed Michael asks him his dentist's name and after a long awkward pause Dwight

replies michael your dentist's name is Cren dwight yeah michael huh sounds a lot like dentist dwight maybe that's why he became a dentist although Dwight's explanation of how Dr

became attracted to the profession of dentistry sounds ridiculous even idiotic new research makes it clear that claims like Dwight's might actually have a basis in reality in the previous chapter we discussed how people tend to have more positive feelings toward and are more likely to comply with

requests from others who are similar to themselves in some way even in superficial ways like sharing similar sounding names but is it possible that our names can affect important lifealtering decisions such as the type of career we decide to pursue or where we decide to live research conducted by

social psychologist Brett Pelum and his colleagues suggests that the answer is yes they claim that the tendency to favor things we associate with our names does in fact have a subtle but powerful influence on major life decisions such as the career path we choose to follow according to

the researchers there's a reason Susie chose a job in which she could sell seashells by the seashore and why Peter Piper picked a profession picking pecks of pickled peppers not the other way around people are attracted to professions with names similar to their own to test this idea

Pelum came up with a list of names that sounded like the word dentist such as dentist according to census data the name Dennis was the 40th most frequent male first name in the US population at the time with the names Jerry and Walter ranking 39th and 41st respectively armed with this

information Pelum searched the National Directory of the American Dental Association examining the number of dentists with one of those three first names if people's names have no effect whatsoever on what career path they follow you'd expect there to be roughly equal numbers of people with these

three names going into the field of dentistry but that's not what Pelum and his colleagues found the nationwide search revealed that 257 dentists were named Walter 270 were named Jerry and 482

were named Dennis that means that dentists are about 43% more likely to be named dentists than you'd expect if name similarity had absolutely no effect on career choice similarly people whose names begin with the letters GEO for example George or Jeffrey are disproportionately likely

to do research in the geosciences for example geology in fact even just the first letter of a person's name influences his or her career choice for example they found that hardware store owners are about 80% more likely to have names that start with the letter H than the letter R but

roofers are about 70% more likely to have names that start with the letter R than the letter H of course if you were to ask say a thousand roofers whose names begin with R whether their names played any role at all in the career they chose it's likely that half of them would look at

you as if you were crazy and the other half would look at you as if you were just stupid it turns out that the tendency to be drawn to things that are associated with ourselves plays out in other important areas of life including where we decide to live to mention just a few of their

findings pelum and his colleagues have shown that at a disproportionate rate people move to states that are similar to their own names for example people who move to Florida are disproportionately likely to be named Florence and people who move to Louisiana are disproportionately likely to be

named Louise people move to cities with numbers in them that match their own birth date numbers for example cities with the number two in their names like Two Harbors Minnesota have a disproportionate number of residents who were born on February 2nd 22 whereas cities that have

the number three in their names like Three Forks Montana have a disproportionate number of people who were born on March 3rd 33 people choose to live on streets whose names match their own in other words someone named Mr washington is more likely to choose to live on Washington Street

than someone named Mr jefferson people choose to marry others who have similar sounding first or last names all else being roughly equal if Eric Erica Charles and Charlotte all meet one another for the first time erica will be more likely to become romantically involved with Eric than with

Charles and the opposite is more likely to occur with Charlotte when asked to trust their feelings and intuitions people prefer products whose first letters matched the first letters of their own name so someone named Allan might be more likely to put the candy bar Almond Joy toward the top of

his list than someone named Nick who might be more likely to put Nutrages toward the top of his list this research suggests that if you're designing a program initiative or product that's being tailored for a specific client you can harness the power of people's natural tendency to be attracted

to things that remind them of themselves in the name title or label that you give it specifically you should name it based on the client's name or even just the first letter of the client's name for example if you're considering pitching a strategy to someone named Peterson at Pepsi

calling the strategy the Pepsi proposal or even something like the Peterson plan would likely be effective and as long as the program is truly customized for a particular client the strategy should not only be successful but also completely costless similarly if you're having difficulty

getting your child interested in reading books finding one that shares some name commonality with him or her Harold or Harriet could be offered Harry Potter might just be the key to getting him or her excited about it or if little Craig or Crystal is deathly afraid of paying a visit

to the dentist you could always look in the yellow pages to see if you can find one named 31 what tips should we take from those who get them from business lunches with clients to bonding experiences with our colleagues friends and family restaurants play a vital role in the success of

both our professional and personal lives although there's quite a bit to be gained by interacting with our dining partners in such a setting the next great tip you get from a restaurant visit might just come from a different group of people a group that hopes to get great tips all day but

is seldom asked to dish any out waiters can teach us a great deal about how to be more persuasive to take one example many food servers have found that they receive larger tips when they repeat their customers orders back to them exactly as the customer verbalized it many of us have had

the experience of a waiter or waitress taking our order and then passively saying "Okay." Or

worse still not even acknowledging our order no surprise then that we're left sitting at the table wondering whether the cheeseburger we ordered will arrive at our table reincarnated as a chicken sandwich some research by Rick Vanbar tested the idea that food servers who match

their customers verbalizations after receiving the order will increase their tip size no paraphrasing no nodding no okays just repeating back word for word the customer's order in one study they found that the food servers at one restaurant increased their tip size by nearly 70% simply by matching

their customers verbalizations after receiving the order as opposed to saying "Okay," or "Coming up."

Why should mirroring another person elicit such a generous response from that person perhaps it ties into our natural inclination to prefer people who are similar to us in fact social psychologists Tanya Chartrand and John Bar argue that matching the behavior of others creates feelings of liking

and strengthens bonds between two people in one experiment the researchers set up a situation in which a research assistant either mirrored the posture and behavior of a subject for example if the participant sat cross-armed and tapped her foot the research assistant sat cross-armed

and tapped her foot or did not the researchers found that the participants who had been mirrored liked the research assistant more and felt that the interaction was smoother than did participants whose behavior had not been mirrored similarly food servers who match their customers

verbalizations probably garnered more tips because of the liking principle that we want to do nice things for and say yes to people we like recently researcher William Maddox and his colleagues conducted a set of experiments examining these processes in a different domain negotiation

they suggested that behavior mirroring during negotiations could produce better outcomes not only for the person matching the other's behavior but for both parties for example in one experiment MBA students were either instructed to subtly mirror their partner for example lean back in your chair if the other person does during a negotiation or were not

asked to mirror that person when one party was instructed to mirror the other the two parties reached a deal 67% of the time when they weren't told to mirror the other only a poultry 12.5% based on some additional data from the experiment the researchers concluded that behavior mirroring

led to increased trust and that increased trust typically led one negotiator to feel comfortable disclosing details that weren't ultimately necessary to break a stalemate and create a win-win situation for both parties we've all had experiences when we're in a meeting with a team member or we're negotiating with an adversary and we notice that our postures are mirroring theirs

a typical response to this realization is to change our physical positioning and posturing so that it no longer mirrors the other person's in other words we act as if there were something wrong with behavior matching this research suggests the exact opposite the mirroring should result in better outcomes for you both or at the very least the benefit to you won't come

at the expense of the other person there are other applications of these findings as well for example if you work in sales and customer service settings you can foster greater rapport with clientele by first repeating customers verbalizations back to the customer regardless

of whether those verbalizations are in the form of questions complaints or even orders for example so you're saying you'd like to purchase 10 units now with the possibility of increasing that to 20 units in May the insight from this research was demonstrated in a less than desirable way

when one of us was recently asked to review a series of recorded telephone conversations made to a customer service center one rather angry customer called and demanded to speak to a manager because she was angry about a particular promise that this company had failed to act on i'm sorry you're upset came the reply from the customer service operator i'm not upset i'm angry replied

the customer in an increasingly loud voice yes I can hear that you're disturbed disturbed disturbed i am not disturbed i am angry shouted the customer the conversation quickly spiraled into a battle of wills with the customer becoming increasingly angry at the customer service agents

reluctance to acknowledge the fact that she was angry the simple repetition of the customer's own words might have led to a different outcome i'm sorry to hear that you are angry what can we do together to resolve the situation would have been a more effective response and one that every one of us could apply to good effect when trying to build better rapport and stronger

relationships 32 what kind of smile can make the world smile back don't open a shop unless you like to smile warns a simple but instructive Chinese proverb we've all heard about the importance of

service with a smile but is one smile the same as the next and could the way you smile have a positive effect on those who see it social scientist Alicia Grandandy and her colleagues asked whether all types of smiles are equally effective when it comes to customer satisfaction based on previous findings demonstrating that people can often distinguish between

authentic and inauthentic smiles the research team thought that the authenticity of customer service workers smiles could have an influence on customer satisfaction even though the difference between the two types of smiles is very subtle in one study designed to test this possibility the researchers had participants watch one of several videos of a customer service interaction between

an employee at the front desk of a hotel and a guest checking in at the hotel participants were also asked to indicate how satisfied they would feel with the interaction had they been the guest unbeknownst to the participants the video was staged the researchers hired actors to play the

employee and the guest although the script between the actors remained the same the researcher varied the instructions given to the actress playing the employee in one case she was asked to generate positive feelings toward the guest and to think about how she could make the guest feel good the

authentic condition in the other case she was told she was required to smile during the interaction the inauthentic condition the researchers also varied whether the hotel employee performed the tasks well or poorly the first finding is an obvious one the observers registered greater

satisfaction when the hotel employee performed the tasks well versus poorly a second finding was that when the tasks were performed poorly authenticity of the smile didn't make much of a difference in reported satisfaction however when the tasks were performed well those who

viewed the authentic smile video said they would be more satisfied with the customer service than those who viewed the inauthentic smile video in a second study one that took place in a more natural setting the researchers surveyed random restaurant patrons about how satisfied they were with the customer service of the weight staff in addition to asking about satisfaction the patrons

were asked about the perceived authenticity of the food servers positive attitudes toward them consistent with the results of the other study patrons who perceived their food servers to be authentic in their positive displays were more satisfied with their customer service the

results of this research suggest a revision of the old adage smile and the world smiles with you if you fake your smile those you deal with may very well frown back but how can we have and encourage others to have more authentically positive experiences one possibility for managers

of serviceoriented companies might be to provide emotional skills training to service workers to help them better regulate and elevate their moods after all unhappy employees when forced to smile for their customers may engage in lower quality interactions which will ultimately lead to reduced

customer satisfaction but that kind of emotional training often requires a great deal of time effort and cost a second more general approach is to try to follow the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin search others for their virtues many of us spend too much time finding faults in the people we deal

with in our everyday lives if instead we try to search their character for what we like about them we'll like them more and as a result they'll like us more everyone comes out ahead this approach can also be fruitful in dealing with co-workers and superiors one of us has a friend who had a very

difficult relationship with her boss they rarely saw eye to eye but worse still she truly disliked him as a person one day however she decided to follow Franklin's advice even though her manager was not a kind person in the office he was a very devoted family man something she genuinely

admired after focusing on this quality a little at a time she started to like him more and more one day she told him that she admired how family oriented he was which she could say quite honestly to her surprise the next day he was in her office giving her a heads up on some information

that was very useful to her an action she certain he never would have taken before 33 when is a loser a winner in the year 2003 there was clearly one car line that exceeded all

US sales projections to a far greater extent than any other ironically this car line had previously proven itself to be a completely ineffective profit maker for the manufacturer strange then that all of a sudden and without explanation its sales skyrocketed but why it couldn't have

been driven by advertising in fact because of disappointing sales there was even less money available for marketing nor was there any engineering or price change to account for the unexpected popularity which car line was it and why did it become so successful the car line

was the Oldmobile and the reason for its success was paradoxical general Motors its manufacturer had decided it was going to discontinue the line due to consistently poor sales in response to the announcement that the Oldsmobile would soon no longer be available

sales jumped like never before why the answer lies in the scarcity principle people show a greater desire for an object or opportunity when they learn that it is unique available in limited quantities or obtainable for only a limited time quite a bit of scientific research supports the

power of scarcity to influence our decision-m we can also see the scarcity principle operating in everyday life in recent years even the holiday spirit has become scarce with parents practically fighting one another in stores for nearly out of stock gaming consoles in October 2003 the notion

of losing something caused many thousands of people to stop their cars and block a major motorway just to see the final departure of the Concord a site it should be pointed out that had been a familiar one every single day for the last 30 or so years in fact immediately after British Airways announced in February 2003 that it would be permanently grounding flights of the Concord

the sale of seats on the plane did the opposite they took off so what does this tell us about how to be more persuasive if you run a business you would be well advised to provide information to your customers about what is genuinely rare and unique about your products and services pointing

out to them the features your product has that a competitor doesn't can be a powerful route to getting them to say yes to your offering and not your competitions similarly colleagues at work might be persuaded to help you out on a project or initiative if they're told of its uniqueness it's not often we get the chance to be involved in an initiative such as this even family members

are more likely to respond when told that your time and assistance are rare and dwindling by simply and honestly pointing out that your products services time and help are limited you place a greater value on them to the point that people appreciate them and you more and in

general we say yes more to those we appreciate we've all experienced the psychological effects of the scarcity principle in our daily lives however there is a less tangible domain in which the scarcity principle operates both subtly and powerfully the domain of information studies have

demonstrated that information that is exclusive is viewed as both more valuable and more persuasive for example in a study conducted by researcher Amram Ram Nashinsky wholesale beef buyers more than doubled their orders when they were informed that a shortage of Australian beef was likely due to weather conditions there an understandable response in a competitive market yet when those

purchasers were told that the information came from an exclusive source and was not generally available to the rest of the public both pieces of scarcity information were true they increase their orders by a remarkable 600% these findings offer a clear insight and

applications that will make your requests more persuasive if you pass along information that is uniquely known by you but fail to point out the exclusivity of the information you could be losing an excellent opportunity to use an effective and ethical influence technique

34 what can you gain from loss on April 23rd 1985 the Coca-Cola Company made a decision that Time magazine later dubbed the marketing fiasco of the decade in response to data that more people

preferred Pepsi's sweeter taste they decided to pull their traditional formula for Coke off the market and replace it with a sweeter new Coke many of us remember that day in the words of one news report "The Coca-Cola Company failed to foresee the sheer frustration and fury its

action would create from Bangor to Burbank from Detroit to Dallas tens of thousands of Coke lovers rose up as one to revile the taste of the new Coke and demand their old Coke back."

Perhaps the most extreme example of this combined outrage and yearning comes from the story of a retired Seattle investor named Gay Mullins who became something of a national celebrity by establishing a society called Old Cola Drinkers of America this was a widespread group of people who

worked tirelessly to get the traditional formula back on the market by using any civil judicial or legislative means available to them for instance he set up a hotline where angry consumers could vent their rage and register their feelings which received over 60,000 calls he distributed anti-new

Coke buttons and t-shirts by the thousands and he even tried to bring a class action lawsuit against the Coca-Cola company which was quickly dismissed by a federal judge what's most astonishing about Mr mullen's behavior is that it didn't matter to him that in two separate blind taste tests

he either preferred New Coke over the original or couldn't tell the difference between them note that the thing Mr mullins liked more was less valuable to him than the thing he felt he was losing we'll come back to this idea in a moment in the meantime however it's worth noting that even after giving in to customer demands and bringing the original Coke back to the shelves company

officials were stung and somewhat perplexed by what had hit them as Donald Kio then president of the Coca-Cola Company said about consumers diehard loyalty to the original Coke "It's a wonderful American mystery a lovely American enigma and you can't measure it any more than you

can measure love pride or patriotism." We disagree first off it's no mystery not if you understand the psychology of the scarcity principle and particularly how it relates to people's sensitivity to losing something they already have this is especially the case for a product that's

as wrapped up in a person's history and traditions as Coca-Cola has always been throughout the world second this natural inclination on the part of Coca-Cola drinkers is not only something that can be measured but something that we think the Coca-Cola Company had measured in its own market research no less it was sitting right there in front of them before they made their infamous

decision to change but they hadn't combined their own data with an understanding of social influence factors the people of the Coca-Cola Company are no penny pinchers when it comes to market research they've been willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and more to ensure that they've analyzed the market correctly for new products in their decision to switch to the new

Coke they were no different from 1981 to 1984 they very carefully tested the new and old formulas in taste tests involving nearly 200,000 people in 25 cities what they found in their taste tests

was a clear preference 55% to 45% for the new Coke over the old although most of these tests were blind some of them were not conducted with unmarked samples in those tests the participants were told which was the old Coke and which was the new Coke beforehand under those conditions

the preference for the new Coke increased by an additional 6% how does that fit with the fact that people expressed a clear preference for the old Coke when the company finally introduced the new Coke consider the role scarcity played in each step of the timeline during the taste tests it

was the new Coke that was unavailable to people for purchase so when they knew which sample was which they showed an especially strong preference for what they couldn't otherwise have the company must have looked at the 6% difference between blind and non-blind preferences and said to themselves "Oh good this means that when people know that they're getting something new their

desire for it will shoot up." But in fact what that 6% increase really meant was that when people know what it is they can't have their desire for it will shoot up later when the company replaced the traditional recipe with the new one now it was the old Coke that people couldn't have and

it became the favorite even more powerfully than simply making a product unavailable removing the original Coke from the shelves meant that in the process lifetime Coke drinkers were actually losing something they used to have regularly the tendency to be more sensitive

to possible losses than to possible gains is one of the best supported findings in social science psychological researchers Daniel Conaman and Amos Tverki were the first to test and document the notion of loss aversion the idea that people are more motivated to avoid losses than they are to

acquire gains loss aversion can explain quite a bit of human behavior including behavior in areas such as finance decision-m negotiation and persuasion for example one consequence of loss aversion is that it often motivates inexperienced investors to prematurely sell stocks that have

gained in value because they simply don't want to lose what they've already gained similarly the desire to avoid any potential for a loss also motivates these investors to hold on to stocks that have lost value since the date of purchase because selling the stock at that point would be to formally and irrevocably take a loss on the investment many of these

investors are reluctant to do so a decision that often precedes further stock price decline loss aversion is also important from a marketing standpoint generally speaking marketers and advertisers are often focused on getting the message out about the benefits of their product to potential customers in attempting to do so they often frame their message in terms of what

the prospective clients have to gain from the product in such cases however they may well be wasting an opportunity to present their message in an entirely more persuasive way by focusing on what the audience stands to lose in the situation this suggests that rather than

using language such as "Take this opportunity to try our new product line at a 20% discount," one might be more successful using language such as "Don't miss out on this opportunity to try our new product line at a 20% discount." In the latter example you'd be pointing out to the

audience that because the deal is scarce in some way for example limited time they're in danger of genuinely losing the opportunity to purchase the products with the current discount similarly if you're hoping to persuade your colleagues to work with you on a particular project it's important to point out not just what they stand to gain in terms of opportunities and experience

but also that they stand to lose out on those very same factors in fact research has shown that potential losses figure far more heavily in managers decision-making than the same things presented as gains for example let's say you have an idea that if adopted can potentially produce savings of up to $100,000 a year for your department instead of presenting that idea

as a saving you're likely to be more persuasive if you frame the initiative in terms of losing the same amount if it fails to get adopted it's also crucial to remember that you can be unduly influenced by this same strategy for example some devious negotiators or even car salespeople will

wait until just before a final agreement appears to be within reach to throw in an unpalatable take it or leave it demand knowing full well that their counterparts are going to be disincined to walk away after all walking away would mean a lot of lost time and effort and opportunity also

known as sunk costs if you believe a salesperson with whom you're negotiating is manipulating your loss aversion in this way you should walk away it's the salesperson who should feel the loss 35 which single word will strengthen your persuasion attempts

based on Elrank Bomb's famous children's story book the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz remains today a traditional family favorite many of us are familiar with the plight of Dorothy and her friends the Scarecrow the Tin Man and the Lion as they make their perilous journey along the yellow

brick road clearly the Wizard of Oz had succeeded in persuading them that he was both benevolent and powerful after all along the way the four travelers say they were off to see him because because because because of the wonderful things he does what can their song tell us about how we can

successfully persuade others to follow the paths we lay down for them let's think about waiting in line whether you're at a bank supermarket or amusement park waiting in line is probably not your idea of fun considering the almost universal motivation to get through the line as quickly as

possible under what circumstances would you be willing to let another person cut in front of you in the line a central theme of this book is that small changes in the way that requests are made can often lead to some startlingly big results but is it possible that just a single

word from a requester could drastically increase the likelihood that you'd say "Yes go ahead."

Yes and the single word is because behavioral scientist Ellen Langanger and her colleagues decided to put the persuasive power of this word to the test in one study Langanger arranged for a stranger to approach someone waiting in line to use a photocopier and simply ask "Excuse me I have

five pages may I use the Xerox machine?" Faced with this direct request to cut ahead in the line 60% of the people were willing to agree to allow the stranger to go ahead of them however when the stranger made the request with a reason "May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?"

Almost everyone 94% complied this kind of boost may not seem very surprising after all providing a solid reason for the request justifies asking to jump ahead here's where the study gets really interesting langanger tested one more version of the request this time the stranger also used the

word because but followed it with a completely meaningless reason specifically the stranger said "May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make copies." Because you have to make copies who doesn't you're certainly not going to use it to sharpen your pencils are you despite the hollowess

of the reason the stranger provided it generated nearly the same elevated levels of compliance as when the reason was wholly legitimate 93% the Xerox study demonstrates the unique motivational influence of the word because the word gets its persuasive power from the continually reinforced

association over the course of our lives between because and the good ration that typically follow it for example because it would help me get that promotion because I'm running out of time because we have the best sports team money can buy of course like most things the power of because

has its limits in the Xerox study compliance was equally high no matter how poor the rationale was that followed because but in those cases the request was small the requesttor only asked to make five copies to see what would happen with a larger favor Langanger introduced another set

of experimental conditions the requesttor told a group of participants that she needed to make 20 copies besides the longer wait time anyone who has ever used a copy machine knows the likelihood that the machine will jam seems to rise exponentially with each added page in other words participants

compliance with this larger request might have a substantially greater impact on them than compliance with a less involving request this time when the stranger simply made her request without providing a reason or using the word because only 24% complied and for those who gave a bad reason

uh because I need to make copies there was no increase in compliance at all however when the larger request was made with a good reason because I'm in a hurry the response rate doubled taken together the results of this study suggest that when the stakes are low people

are more likely to take mental shortcuts on the other hand when the stakes are high people really do take the strength of the requesters's reasoning into consideration when deciding how to respond to the request these findings serve as a reminder to always be sure to accompany your requests with a strong rationale even when you think the reasons might be fairly clear

for example when booking a meeting with a customer or when asking a c-orker to cooperate on a new project be sure to state the reasoning behind your request that may sound obvious but too often we mistakenly assume that other people understand the reasons behind our requests the strategy is also likely to pay dividends at home rather than demanding that your children come to the

table for dinner now do their homework or go to bed immediately a more effective strategy would be to provide a reason why you're asking them to take that action and not just because I said so it's important to note that the word because works both ways you should not only say because to

others but also get others to say because to you for instance suppose you work for an information technology services firm your long-term customers may have gotten used to working with your company over the years and with each passing year the actual reasons for sticking with your company

may have become less salient or even worse may have been entirely forgotten consequently your business can be left vulnerable to competitors one effective way to strengthen your business ties and your clients confidence in your company is to have the decision makers at your client's firm generate

a few reasons they use your business this could be accomplished through formal or informal feedback surveys in which the clients are asked to describe why they like doing business with your company research by Gregory Mayo and colleagues suggests that this procedure will strengthen your client's commitment to your firm by reminding the clients that the continued

business relationship is rational rather than simply habitual in other words get people to say because to you and like Dorothy and her travel companions they'll end up singing your praises too

36 when might asking for all the reasons be a mistake first do no harm although the hypocratic oath applies first and foremost to medical practitioners obligations to their patients it surely holds for advertisers obligations toward the products they're trying to sell

at the very least they shouldn't hurt sales of the goods and services they're trying to sell but how might a well-intentioned copywriter actually drive potential customers of a given product away from that product and toward a competitor in the last chapter we discussed how having people generate reasons that they're in favor of a certain

position can be a highly effective strategy for strengthening their beliefs in that position if we apply this thinking to advertisements it seems wise to encourage consumers to think of as many reasons as possible to choose our goods and services however recent research suggests that under certain circumstances this strategy can actually backfire imagine you're in the market

for a new premium automobile and you've narrowed your choices down to either a BMW or a Mercedes you open a magazine and see an ad for BMW that says the following: BMW or Mercedes there are many reasons to choose a BMW can you name 10 in one study conducted by Michaela Vanka and her

colleagues a group of business students saw an ad just like this among several other advertisements a different group of business students at the same university saw a slightly different ad one that stated "Bmed there are many reasons to choose a BMW can you name one?" Afterward the participants

were asked for their opinions about BMW and Mercedes including their interest in one day purchasing a vehicle from either of those brands the results were clear the advertising copy that asked readers to name 10 reasons to choose a BMW led to lower evaluations of the BMW and

higher evaluations of the Mercedes than the copy that asked the readers to name just one reason to choose a BMW what's responsible for this backfire effect the researchers explained that participants in this study based their judgments of BMW on how easy they found it to come up with reasons

in support of BMW when they were asked to name only one reason participants had a relatively easy time coming up with a single advantage however when they were asked to name 10 the task was hard they might have identified a few such reasons rather easily but they found the process of coming

up with so many reasons to be difficult so rather than using the number of reasons they generated as the best indicator for their evaluations of the brands the participants instead based their judgments on the ease or difficulty of the process of generating reasons more generally psychologists

refer to the ease or difficulty of experiencing something as the fluency of that experience a concept we'll be coming back to the data from this research indicate that before asking your audience to generate many reasons in support of your position it's important to consider just how easily they'll be able to do so if the task seems like a relatively difficult one ask them instead

to generate only a small number of reasons the findings also suggest a rather ironic strategy you can potentially give yourself a competitive edge by asking your audience to generate many reasons in favor of your rivals offerings the more difficult it is for the audience to come

up with a large number of rationale the better your goods services or initiatives will look in comparison other research has shown that the ease or difficulty of merely imagining using a product will also affect consumers decisions with lead researcher Petia Petrova one of us conducted

a series of studies showing that encouraging customers to imagine themselves experiencing the delights of a restaurant or holiday destination only increases the desire to visit if it's easy to imagine doing so along these lines one aspect you might want to consider is the extent of which

your product or more generally your request for the behavior you'd like your audience to undertake involves actions that are novel or foreign to them for instance you may want to persuade a consumer group to purchase a brand new product marketed by your company if this product has complicated technical features with which the group has little to no experience and that have not yet

been fully explained it may be difficult for your prospects to imagine themselves actually using the product which will make them less likely to select it another arena where these findings are clearly important is in advertising production art directors are often given free reign to generate images that are eye-catching or memorable but in the process they may create pictures that

are abstract giving little consideration to how their images affect the target audience's ability to visualize themselves using the featured product this research shows that concrete images are likely to be more effective than abstract ones in addition the decision-making process in

these types of cases can be facilitated through greater collaboration with the copywriters prior testing of the ads and focus groups that are specifically geared toward understanding how easy or difficult it is for a relevant audience to imagine themselves in the requested situations

37 how can the simplicity of a name make it appear more valuable when he was once asked the complex question of what the stock market would do next JP Morgan reportedly gave a simple response it will fluctuate but how can the power of simplicity particularly in the naming of your

product your project or even your company help you boost your influence and exceed your own earnings expectations according to social scientists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer people tend to have a greater affection for words and names that are easy to pronounce that is those that have a high

degree of fluency than those that are hard to pronounce they argued that people would feel more positively toward company names and stock symbols that are relatively easy to read and to pronounce leading to higher stock prices to first test this hypothesis in a controlled study they generated

names of fictitious stocks that were either very easy to pronounce or very difficult to pronounce they told study participants that these were real companies and ask them to estimate the future performance of each of the stocks the results were clear not only did participants predict that the

easily pronouncable stocks for example Slingerman Vander Tanley would outperform the others for example Sagster Furio Zagabdan they also predicted the latter would go down while the former would

rise to find out if this effect happened in the real world Alter and Oppenheimer randomly picked 89 companies whose shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange and had their initial public offering between 1990 and 2004 they then looked at the relationship between the fluency of a stock

name and its performance 1 day 1 week 6 months and 1 year after the initial public offering for that stock the researchers found that if a person invested $1,000 in the 10 most fluently named companies on the list versus the 10 least fluently named companies on the list the investment in

the first group would have outperformed its counterpart for each of the designated time periods including a $333 difference just one year after the initial public offering what's more in a separate study the authors separated over 750 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange

or the American Stock Exchange by whether their stock ticker symbol was pronouncable for example K A R or CAR or unpronouncable for example RDO they found similar results so are we recommending that you go right out and trade in your shares of MLE Pikatick Holding

Company for Yahoo stock fire your financial adviser or have a garage sale to rid yourself of your stockpicking monkeys and dart boards not quite however we are advising you not to underestimate the power of simplicity even in the name you give your company product or initiative often people are so focused on seemingly more influential aspects of their

projects that they overlook the first piece of information that will be communicated to its audience its name all else being equal the easier it is to read and pronounce the more likely consumers potential stockholders and other decision makers will be to view it positively

in a similar vein researchers have found that the persuasiveness of a handwritten message is influenced by the quality of the handwriting the worse the handwriting the less persuasive the message will be readers mistakenly interpret the sense of difficulty they feel when they read a message with bad handwriting as a sense of difficulty believing the content of the message

at least on the surface of things there appears to be an easy and accessible solution for those of us who are calligraphically challenged can't we just type out our persuasive messages yes but even that advice comes with a caveat research has demonstrated that your arguments are likely to be deemed far more persuasive if they are in an easyto- read font

the findings of all this research also have more general implications for how people choose to communicate with one another take for example the fact that communicators frequently try to convey their aerudition via their grandiloquent magniloquent cesquipelian verbosity in other words

they try to look smart by using unnecessarily long words or overly technical jargon consider for instance the following communication sent out by a manager to his team as reported in the New York Post in October 2006 we're leveraging our assets and establishing strategic alliances to create a

robust knowledge center one with a customer ruled business structure using marketleading technologies to maximize our human systems huh this uh apparently means we're consultants additional research by Oenheimer has shown that using overly complex language like this can

produce the exact opposite of the intended effect because the audience has difficulty interpreting the language the message is deemed less convincing and the author is perceived to be less intelligent regrettably these kinds of messages are all too frequent in everyday life ranging from business

communications to healthcare advice to the language used in students papers for example a poll taken at Stanford University found that 86.4% of the students surveyed admitted that they had used complicated language in their academic essays to try to make themselves sound smarter more

disturbing however is the finding from a UK-based consulting services firm that 56% of employees thought that their managers and supervisors didn't communicate clearly with them and often used incomprehensible language that confused the messages making them generally less persuasive if you make sure your message is clear and simple the people who receive it might not throw a ticker

tape parade in your honor but at the very least they won't sell your information short 38 how can rhyme make your influence climb is Gillette really the best a man can get are loose

lips responsible for sinking ships is it true that the best part of waking up is folders in your cup when it comes to seat belts will I really get a ticket if I don't click it and finally compared to its competitors is Bounty truly the quilted thicker quicker picker upper from advertising

to public service announcements rhyming slogans are everywhere out of all the potential marketing strategies to choose from why does so many organizations convey their message with rhymes part of it is that rhyming messages are more memorable and easily repeated to others which should come as no surprise but could it also be that rhyming statements are actually seen as more

accurate and truthful noting the pervasiveness of rhyming proverbs such as birds of a feather flock together social scientists Matthew Mccloan and Jessica Tophi Bachish set out to investigate whether statements that rhyme are thought to be more accurate than those that don't as part of

their study they took a number of rhyming sayings previously unknown to the study participants and created parallel but non- rhyming versions of them for example they took the relatively obscure saying "Caution and measure will win you treasure," and modified it to say "Caution and

measure will win you riches." As another example they took the saying "What sobriety conceals alcohol reveals," and changed it to "What sobriety conceals alcohol unmasks." Participants then read some of these sayings and rated each one for the extent to which it accurately reflects the way

the world really works the researchers found that even though all the participants in the study strongly held the belief that rhyming was in no way an indicator of accuracy they nonetheless perceived the statements that rhymed as more accurate than those that didn't the researchers explained that rhyming phrases are characterized by greater processing fluency they're mentally

processed more easily than non- rhyming phrases because people tend to base accuracy evaluations at least partly on the perceived fluency of the incoming information the rhyming statements are actually judged as more accurate these findings have many applications in everyday life

for one the results of this research suggest that when marketers and business operators think about what slogans mottos trademarks and jingles to employ they should consider that using rhymes may increase not only the likability of the message but also its perceived truthfulness perhaps this is why when asked what a company could say about its product when there was

nothing new to say about it a seasoned advertising executive replied "Well if you have nothing to say about your product then I suppose you can always sing about it." Second parents can use rhyme to their advantage when faced with a common and frustrating influence challenge getting their kids to go to bed after quality time reading nursery rhymes with them perhaps having them

join in a few verses of it's off to bed for sleepy head will prove persuasive finally the power of rhyme can even be applied in a legal setting in fact the authors of this research point out one infamous rhyme that seems so weighty that it just may have tipped the scales of justice

during OJ Simpson's murder trial Johnny Cochran Simpson's defense attorney told the jury "If the gloves don't fit you must acquit." Considering the subtle influence of rhyme the study's authors may be right to question how the verdict may have been affected if Cochran had instead implored "If the gloves don't fit you must find him not guilty."

39 what can batting practice tell us about persuasion the world of sports can be a useful training ground for those of us who wish to become more persuasive at a baseball game it's relatively common to see players place a weighted ring around their bat before they take their warm-up swings

according to ball players repeatedly swinging a heavier bat makes the unweighted bat feel lighter in comparison the primary principle underlying this effect is known as perceptual contrast simply put the characteristics of objects are not perceived in a vacuum but rather in comparison to

others if you're asked to pick up a 10 lb weight in a gymnasium it will appear lighter if you had first picked up a 20 lb weight and heavier if you had first picked up a 5 lb weight nothing is actually changed about the 10 lb weight except your perception of it this psychological process

is not limited to weight it holds for almost any type of judgment you could make in every case the perceptual process is the same prior experience colors perception social psychologists Zachary Tormala and Richard Penny recently applied these principles to show how contrast effects can

influence the persuasion process specifically they looked at how the amount of information people think they have about something can be influenced by the amount of information they learn about something else these researchers asked people to read a persuasive message for a fictitious

department store the target message called Browns but only after reading a persuasive message for a different fictitious department store the prior message called Smiths the target message was the same for all participants of the experiment it described three departments of Browns

the prior message varied with less one department or greater six departments information about Smiths when the prior message contained a great deal of information the target message was seen as less persuasive and produced less favorable attitudes toward the department store whereas the opposite occurred when the prior message contained very little information

it seems that the participants felt more knowledgeable about Browns after learning relatively little about Smiths and vice versa this is the perceptual contrast effect in action to extend their findings the researchers conducted another study that was similar in most respects to

the first one however before receiving persuasive information about another department store they received a little or a lot of persuasive information about a car the Mini Cooper the results were consistent with the earlier study suggesting that the prior information doesn't

even need to be all that relevant to affect the persuasive impact of a subsequent message this idea can be applied to sales imagine that you work for a company selling a line of products and you're confident that one particular product would provide the best fit for your prospective client you should be sure to discuss the merits of that better fitting product at length after you've

spent a much shorter period of time discussing another product what's interesting to note is that perceptual contrast offers us a very efficient means of persuasion often we don't have the luxury of changing our products services or offerings it would be far too costly and timeconuming but using

perceptual contrast we can change how others think about our initiatives goods services and requests to give just one realworld example a home improvement company was able to increase the sales of one of its top-of- the- range backyard hot tubs by over 500% simply by a

telling prospective customers honestly that many buyers of the top of the range model reported that having it was like adding an extra room to the house and then b asking them to consider how much it would cost to build another room onto the side of their house after all a $15,000 spa seems much

less expensive when compared with construction that would cost at least twice as much 40 how can you get a head start in the quest for loyalty whether it's free cups of coffee money off vouchers discounted flights or coupons towards

your next hotel stay many companies look to increase customer loyalty by offering incentive programs such as frequent flyer plans and club card point programs the results of some recent research offer insights into how you can increase interest in what you have to offer and strengthen the loyalty of your customers consumer researchers Joseph Nunees and Javier Drees thought

that customers involved in an incentive program would show more loyalty to the company by reaching payoff milestones more quickly if given a head start by the company even without decreasing the amount of purchases needed to reach the reward in one study loyalty cards were handed out to 300 customers of a local car wash the customers were told that every time they had

their car washed their loyalty card would be stamped however there were two types of cards one type of card required eight stamps to receive a free car wash with no stamps attached to the card the other stated that 10 stamps were needed to receive the free car wash but two stamps were

already affixed to the card this meant that both cards required eight washes to receive the reward but the second group seemed well on its way to completing the card with 20% of the stamps needed for the free wash afterward every time a customer came back for another wash an employee affixed a stamp to the card and recorded the date after several months when

the researchers ended the program and looked at the data their hypothesis had been confirmed whereas only 19% of customers in the eight stamp group made enough visits to claim their free car wash 34% of the 10 stamp head start group did what's more the Head Start group took less

time to complete their eighth purchase taking an average of 2.9 fewer days between visits to the car wash according to Nunes and Drees reframing the program as one that's been started but not completed rather than as one that has not yet begun meant that people felt more motivated to

complete it they also pointed to research showing that the closer people get to completing a goal the more effort they exert to achieve that goal the data revealed that the amount of time between visits decreased by about half a day on average with every additional car wash that was purchased besides the application of these findings to loyalty programs of all sorts the results of

this study indicate that when soliciting another person for help on anything you should try to point out how that person has already taken steps toward the completion of that task for example if you need help on a project that's similar to one that a colleague has worked on in the past you can emphasize that in essence she is well on her way to finishing the assignment

and if you've already done a fair amount of work on the project you can underscore that the task is already almost 30% completed in this way your colleague is more likely to view the project as one that's already underway but incomplete rather than as one that she has to start from scratch for another example suppose you're a sales manager your sales team has a target of a certain number

of sales but the team isn't doing too well in the early stages you learn that a large sale to be processed centrally is already in the offing rather than keeping the information about this sale to yourself thinking that you might use it to fall back on if your team doesn't hit the target you should consider publicizing the sale in this way you'd present a progressive effect toward the

goal promoting even more sales educators and parents can also benefit from such a strategy imagine that your child is being particularly stubborn about doing his homework and you feel compelled to try incentives if you decide to give him one full Saturday at the zoo for every six weekends in which he does his homework you might find that he would be especially

motivated to comply if you started him off with credit for one weekend before your little program officially begins the message is clear people will be more likely to stick with programs and tasks if you can first offer them some evidence of how they've already made progress toward

completing them if you use this strategy like cars at a car wash your influence will sparkle 41 what can a box of crayons teach us about persuasion

gone are the days when the names of colors were simple anyone who opens a new box of crayons will quickly notice that the old common names for example green yellow brown have been replaced by names such as tropical rainforest laser lemon and fuzzy wuzzy brown how can a color name like

cornflour or razimeaz help you keep your company's chips blue and your business out of the red researchers Elizabeth Miller and Barbara Khan noticed this aspect of crayons and countless other products and sought to better understand how these kinds of differences in product names influence consumer preferences as part of their research they distinguished between four

categories of color and flavor names one common which are typical and unspecific for example blue two common descriptive which are typical and specific for example sky blue three

unexpected descriptive which are atypical and specific for example Kermit green and four ambiguous which are atypical and unspecific for example millennium orange the researchers thought that unexpected descriptive and ambiguous color and flavor

names should elicit more positive feelings toward a given product than the other two types of color and flavor names however they believe that these two types of names are effective for different reasons unexpected descriptive names such as Kermit Green are effective because they act as a sort of puzzle to be solved which typically leads people to consider more aspects of the products

particularly the positive ones although solving this little puzzle may not qualify consumers to join Mensah it may create an aha moment that could lead them to associate positive emotions with the product ambiguous names such as Millennium Orange prompt consumers to try to discover in the absence

of any meaningful information what the makers of the product were trying to convey with that name this also leads consumers to think about the positive aspects the company is trying to highlight with the name using a variety of names for jellybean flavors and for sweater colors Miller and Khan confirmed that products with unexpected descriptive and ambiguous names

were in fact regarded as more desirable than were those of the other two category types what are the implications for a business looking to develop names or descriptions of its products and services one answer would be that businesses should not shy away from using less than straightforward

names for certain aspects of its products names that fall into the unexpected descriptive category or the ambiguous category create a sense of mystery and intrigue that leads potential customers to consider the positive aspects of your goods and services in fact this approach doesn't just have to work for products and services let's say for example that you're

looking to gain resources from colleagues at work to support a new project or training initiative by using what might be considered an unexpected title or name for the project or even adopting an ambiguous one you might well foster a sense of fascination with and attraction to it we can also put the lessons of this research into practice at home for instance when our kids

are considering whether to go out for dinner with their friends or eat at home jazzing up the label we give tonight's supper for example chicken surprise instead of plain old chicken may very well convince them to stay at home with us for the night of course when we'd rather have a

quiet night at home responding with broccoli and cod liver oil stew instead is always an option 42 how can you package your message to ensure it keeps going and going and going who am I

i'm Pink i'm a toy rabbit i have a drum and I'm powered by a brandame battery that outlasts the competition who am I depending on where you live I'm either the Energizer Bunny or the Duracell Bunny confused yet you're not alone the very first pink batterypowered bunny with a penchant for

persistent percussion on television was actually the Duracell bunny to be more accurate it wasn't a single bunny but rather a whole species of toy rabbits the Duracell bunnies whose power was said to be longerlasting than that of any other brand of battery in one commercial for instance

a number of drumbating toy rabbits each powered by a different brand of battery slowly came to a standstill leaving only one the one powered by Duracell still literally full of energy over 15 years ago however Duracell failed to renew its trademark in the United States which allowed

its competitor Energizer to swoop in and trademark its own pink alkaline powered drumming bunny in an effort to mock the Duracell campaign and claim its product superiority this is why these days North American television viewers are accustomed to seeing their bunnies running on Energizer whereas

it's Duracell for those in the rest of the world in the Energizer television commercials viewers think they are watching an advertisement for another product sitigan hemorrhoid ointment for example which is interrupted by the Energizer Bunny walking through the frame to the narration of still going and going and going and going "Nothing outlasts the Energizer."

Despite the early public and critical acclaim that these commercials received for the Energizer Bunnies offthe-wall and into other commercial antics there was just one problem many people even those who loved the commercials couldn't remember which company's batteries were being advertised in fact one survey showed that even out of viewers who chose the bunny ads as their

favorite commercials of the year an astonishing 40% were certain that the ads were for Duracell this was the case even though there are plenty of features that distinguish the Energizer Bunny from its copper top counterpart including bigger ears sunglasses a larger drum fur that's a brighter

shade of pink and flip-flops confusion between the two companies bunnies certainly played a role in this problem but as it turns out even many people who had never seen the Duracell commercials misremembered which brands sponsored these newer commercials thinking it was Duracell in

fact shortly after the ads became popular it was Duracell's market share that grew while Energizers shrunk a bit what action should Energizer have taken to prevent such a problem from occurring in the first place and what lessons can we learn from it the psychological research is clear placing

a memory aid on store displays and the actual packaging of their product for example an image of the Energizer Bunny with the text keeps going and going and going would do much to correct consumers faulty memories as well as product choices that they made based on those incorrect memories and

that's exactly what the company eventually did with great success what's the implication for marketing in general increasingly companies try to brand themselves via extensive media campaigns that emphasize the key element of their brand for example durability or quality or economy through a

story character that epitomizes that element they assume that viewers will connect their products with the branded element while exposed to the ads which is a reasonable assumption provided that the ads are properly constructed they also assume that viewers will recall the connection when ready to buy and that's a naive assumption consumers memories subjected to hundreds of thousands of

these associations in the course of modern life aren't up to the task at least not without the assistance of point of purchase cues that revive the desired connection it's for this reason that any major advertising campaign needs to integrate the essential images characters or slogans of

the ads into the instore product displays and product packaging the consumer sees when making a purchase choice although changing the display and packaging to match the central features of the media campaign may be more expensive in the short term it's essential this strategy isn't limited to

marketing products it can also be used to market information and ideas consider for example the massive challenge you'd face if you were part of a health organization devoted to reducing alcohol abuse on university campuses even if you were capable of creating an advertising campaign that motivates students to drink less how would you ensure that the message stays on their minds when

it's most necessary to take an example one type of persuasion campaign that's become increasingly popular with university health administrators who are trying to battle student alcohol abuse has been dubbed social norms marketing researchers have found that students typically overestimate the number of drinks that their peers consume and as we know from our discussions of social

proof people are motivated to behave in line with perceived social norms the goal of social norms marketing campaigns is to reduce the frequency of college student alcohol abuse by correcting students misperceptions for example a social norms marketing poster might indicate that a survey

found that 65% of students at our university have three or fewer drinks when they party the thinking is that providing the posters readers with more accurate figures for the amount that their peers drink will reduce the amount that they'll want to drink when they party although

these programs certainly show signs of promise the current evidence for their success is mixed even though such posters may be somewhat persuasive when students actually read them perhaps one of the reasons that these campaigns are not more effective is that by the time the students get to situations in which drinking occurs they either forget about or aren't focused on that information

for instance posters signs and other forms of media conveying anti-alcohol messages in normative campaigns are commonly and understandably from a practical point of view placed in libraries classrooms student unions health centers and common areas of residence halls rather than

the settings in which drinking is most likely to occur unfortunately the disconnect between where students see the information and where they are when they drink means that the distant voice of the message is likely to be drowned out by the here and now sounds of clanking bottles and drunken laughter prevalent in bars clubs parties and residence halls

the memory aid research indicates that students likelihood of focusing on the social norms information in the appropriate settings could be strengthened by placing the campaign's logo on objects native to those settings for example coasters entrance bracelets handstamps alternatively the campus could give away items that have the campaign's logo imprinted on it

such as Frisbes students in that case would be likely to take them back to their dorm rooms or fraternity houses where they would be more likely to see the memory aid ironically this strategy might even be more effective once the students get some alcohol in them as some research shows that simple persuasive messages tend to be more successful when people are drinking in

a similar approach some communities have tried to fight drunk driving by getting participating bar owners to put into patrons drinks something called light cubes which are LED lights enclosed in plastic in the shape of ice cubes emitting flashes of red and blue light these memory aids typically have the effect of making the drink look like flashing blue and red police

car lights serving as a persuasive extension of the long arm of the law all in all using memory aids will assure that your message doesn't fade at the finish but keeps going and going and going

43 what object can persuade people to reflect on their values mirror mirror on the wall what's one of the most persuasive objects of them all actually mirror you are no one doubts that

the primary purpose of a mirror is to allow us to see what we look like on the outside but mirrors also act as windows into what we look like and perhaps more important what we want to look like on the inside as a result looking at ourselves in a mirror causes us to reflect on our behavior

and act in more socially desirable ways take for example a study conducted on Halloween by social scientist Arthur Beman and his colleagues rather than conducting their study in a university laboratory or on the street Bean temporarily converted 18 local houses into makeshift research

facilities when trick-or-treaters rang the bell of one of the houses involved in the study a research assistant greeted them asked them their names and then pointed to a large bowl of candy sitting on a nearby table after telling the children that they could each take one of the candies she mentioned that she had some work to do and quickly exited the room that part of the experiment was

the treat and here's the trick what the children didn't know besides the fact that they were in a cleverly devised experiment was that someone was secretly watching them through a hidden peepphole that person was another research assistant who had the job of recording whether each child behaved honestly by taking only one piece of candy when the results were in the data revealed that over a

third of the kids took more candy than they should have 33.7% to be exact but as we've already hinted the researchers wanted to see if they could use a mirror to reduce the rate of candy theft in these cases the research assistant angled a large mirror by the candy bowl in such a way that

the trick-or-treaters had to look at themselves in the mirror when they took the candy the theft rate when the mirror was present only 8.9% in a similar vein one of us conducted a study examining how focusing people on themselves and their own image makes them act more consistently with their

values led by behavioral scientist Carl Calgrren we first assessed participants feelings about littering at the beginning of an academic semester later in the semester when participants arrived at the laboratory half were exposed to a closed circuit television featuring their own image so that it was almost like seeing themselves in a mirror while the other half watched the closed

circuit television featuring geometric shapes they were told that they would be completing a task that required their heart rate to be monitored which involved placing some gel on their hand once the subjects believed they were done with the study a research assistant handed them a paper towel to wipe off the gel and asked them to exit through the stairwell located on that floor

we were looking to see whether each participant dropped the paper towel in the stairwell on his or her way toward the exit what we found is that when they hadn't viewed an image of themselves before they had the opportunity to litter about 46% of the participants littered but when they had only about 24% littered if there's one thing this study does it helps

answer the question how can people who litter look at themselves in the mirror every day the answer appears to be that they don't in everyday life we can use mirrors to persuade others in the most subtle manner to behave in more socially desirable ways besides telling us how to arrange

our Halloween treats this research indicates that carefully placed mirrors can encourage kids to act more kindly toward one another also a manager who has experienced employee theft in the organization stock room for example might find that mirrors do wonders to reduce stealing in this case mirrors

act as a good alternative to video surveillance which is not only costly but sends a signal to the employees that they're not trusted a prospect that can actually lead to greater employee theft down the line not less if adding mirrors to a specific location isn't practical there are two other possibilities that produce mirror-like effects first social psychologist Ed Deer

and his colleagues have found that asking people their names can have a similar effect this means that asking kids and employees alike to wear name tags should lay the groundwork for more desirable behavior second recent research by scientist Melissa Bateson and colleagues suggests that placing a simple picture of eyes on the wall also has the effect of getting others to act in more

socially conscious ways for instance in one study the researchers added a picture to a communal area where various staff members are supposed to pay for their coffee or tea consumption in other words if they drink coffee or tea they're supposed to drop a certain amount of money into a jar to pay

for it but the pictures changed each week one week the picture was flowers the next week it was eyes then a different set of flowers then a new set of eyes and so forth the results showed that coffee and tea drinkers paid over two and a half times more for their drink when the sign was

accompanied by a picture of a pair of eyes than when it was accompanied by a picture of flowers as these findings demonstrate it can't hurt to have another pair of eyes looking over the situation regardless of whether they're yours or someone else's

44 does being sad make your negotiations bad in one episode of the hugely successful television series Sex in the City the main character Carrie Bradshaw is walking down a New York City street with close friend Samantha Jones who's telling Carrie why she's felt so sad

recently samantha is walking with a noticeable limp at one point in the conversation Samantha exclaims "Ow." In response Carrie inquires "Honey if it hurts so much why are we going shopping?"

exclaims "Ow." In response Carrie inquires "Honey if it hurts so much why are we going shopping?"

Samantha retorts "I have a broken toe not a broken spirit." Each year millions of us who feel down try to alleviate our sorrow through shopping a recent study conducted by social psychologist Jennifer Lerner and her colleagues investigated how emotions such as sadness can deeply affect

people's buying and selling behavior providing us with some interesting insights about the prevalence of this phenomenon the researchers hypothesized that the experience of sadness activates the motivation in people to alter their circumstances which might help them change their mood and get them out of their funk they also thought that this motivation would affect buyers

and sellers in different ways sad buyers would be willing to pay a higher price for a given item than neutral buyers whereas sad sellers would part with the same item for a lower price than neutral sellers in an experiment designed to test these ideas the researchers induced either sadness or no

emotion in their participants by having them view one of two different film clips those assigned to the sadnessinducing condition watched a movie clip from the film The Champ which featured the death of a boy's mentor following that they were asked to write a brief paragraph about how they'd feel if they'd been in the situation portrayed in the clip those assigned to the no emotion

condition watched an emotionally neutral film clip featuring fish and then wrote about their day-to-day activities afterward all participants were told that they were about to take part in a second unrelated study some of the participants were given a set of highlighters and asked to set a price at which to sell them whereas the other half were asked to set a price at which they would

buy the very same item the results supported learner's assertions sad buyers were willing to purchase the item for around 30% more than were emotionally neutral buyers and sad sellers were willing to part with the item for around 33% less than were their emotionally neutral

counterparts what's more the researchers found that the carryover of the emotion from the movie into their economic decisions occurred completely outside the subject's awareness they had no idea they've been so deeply affected by these residual feelings of sadness it's not just the negative emotions that can affect our decision-making tendencies behavioral scientists Christopher

Shei and Yuval Roenstrike have asserted that people's judgment and decision-making abilities can be impaired by any emotionally charged issue regardless of the positivity or negativity of the feelings it produces they argue that emotions lead people to become less sensitive to differences in

the magnitude of numbers in other words people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an event as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the event what this means is that people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of

an emotionladen offer as opposed to the specific numbers that characterize the offer to test this idea the researchers asked participants to spend a brief period of time thinking about some issues either emotionally or non-emotionally shortly afterward these research subjects were told to

imagine that someone they knew was selling a set of Madonna CDs half of them were told that there were a total of five CDs in the bundle whereas the other half of the participants were told that there were a total of 10 CDs in the bundle participants were then asked to report the maximum amount they'd be willing to pay for the bundle of CDs the researchers found that

those who had earlier spent time thinking in an unemotional manner were willing to pay more for the set of 10 CDs than for the set of five CDs a decision-making outcome that's quite rational more interestingly however those who had earlier practiced thinking in an emotional manner were

insensitive to the magnitude difference in number of CDs reporting that they would pay roughly the same amounts for the set of 10 CDs as they would for the set of five CDs the results of this study suggest that emotional experiences can have a detrimental impact on decision-making perhaps allowing you to be persuaded by an offer when you shouldn't be suppose that you're negotiating

with a supplier for raw materials and there's a $10,000 gap between the amount of money you're offering and the quantity of the raw materials the supplier is willing to provide to you for that amount recognizing this disparity but not willing to provide any more of those raw materials for the amount of money you're offering the supplier might offer to throw in 50 units of a brand new

product that you might be excited about due to its novelty whereas it may be the case that a hundred units not 50 are roughly valued at $10,000 this research teaches us that offers laden with emotion such as this one could potentially lead the buyer to overestimate the value of the 50

units and thus make a poor and unprofitable decision the same is true when buying a car a process that's invariably a roller coaster of emotions after you've picked out your new beauty it may be the case that what you're willing to buy it for and what the salesperson is willing

to sell it for is off by $500 knowing full well how much you want the car and how emotional you are in the moment salespeople will try to throw in an additional item such as a set of mud flaps whose value is realistically nowhere near $500 how can we prevent these factors from influencing us

the findings from this study indicate that doing something as simple as focusing on numbers and calculations before the negotiation should help restore your ability to differentiate between the magnitudes of numbers it might even behoove you to come prepared with a pricing sheet and a calculator in hand and always keep them in front of you on the table more generally

though it's extremely important to recognize what emotional state or mood you're in before you make an important decision begin a crucial negotiation or even respond to an unfriendly or aggressive email for example suppose you have the task of negotiating the financial terms of your contract with a vendor if you've just gone through an emotional experience even though you

might think your decision-making ability would be unaffected you should consider holding off on the negotiation process this short delay will allow time for those emotions to subside allowing you to make more rational choices even if you're not experiencing a particularly acute emotional

feeling it would generally be good practice in any high-value decision-making situation to allow a period of time to pass to compose yourself often people schedule meetings backto back as a matter of convenience however by giving yourself a short break between meetings you'll reduce

the likelihood that the feelings generated by an emotionally charged meeting don't spill over into the next especially if the second meeting is one in which you'll need to make budget or purchasing decisions the same is true with decisions you might make at home you might be considering the purchase of some new furniture a new appliance some form of home improvement or even the purchase

of a new home or you might be setting prices of items you're planning to sell online in those situations it's always wise to take a step back examine how you feel and put off that activity until you're feeling emotionally neutral finally those of us looking to influence others decisions

should also be aware of the role that mood plays of course it would be both unwise and wrong to attempt to persuade someone who's just been saddened by a piece of information or even worse to bring up some topic that will put the other person in a gloomy mood for example hey I heard

the bad news about your dog on an unrelated note here's the price I can offer for our deal such decisions will often lead to regret and do little to build long-term relationships with others in fact by offering to postpone negotiations with someone who's just had a negative emotional

experience you'll strengthen your relationship by making yourself seem noble caring and wise which are three priceless characteristics of anyone who wishes to be more influential 45 what can make people believe everything they read

a former Chinese political prisoner once described his experiences as a target of brainwashing you are annihilated exhausted you can't control yourself or remember what you said 2 minutes before you feel that all is lost from that moment the judge is the real master of you you accept anything he says to what technique was the former political prisoner

referring and what can this tell us about the factors that allow others to persuade us although the former prisoner was likely the victim of numerous and varied thought reform tactics one of the main strategies he was referring to was sleep deprivation it should come as no surprise that we tend to function better as a whole when we've had a good night's sleep as we all know

from experience when we're well-rested we're more focused we feel more alert and we communicate more eloquently but work done by social psychologist Daniel Gilbert offers an insight that's less obvious but completely consistent with the experiences of the political prisoner we may

be more susceptible to others deceptive influence tactics when we're tired in a series of studies Gilbert has found evidence supporting the hypothesis that upon hearing someone make a statement the listener immediately accepts it as true regardless of whether it's actually true it's only with a mental effort that a fraction of a second later the listener recognizes a

statement to be false subsequently rejecting it when the stakes are high people usually have enough cognitive resources and motivation to mentally reject statements that sound false but when people are tired they're more likely to be in a heightened state of gullibility because

of the diminished cognitive energy and motivation associated with exhaustion according to Gilbert's findings the consequence of this diminished energy is that the process of comprehending a message gets cut off before the rejection stage ever has a chance to take place making people more likely

to believe others weak arguments or downright falsehoods for example a manager soliciting bids for a big distribution contract would be less inclined to question a statement made by a potential distributor such as "Our distribution systems are top rated globally when operating on little sleep instead he or she is likely to take this statement at face value." It's

not only sleep deprivation or fatigue that can lead us to become more easily persuaded studies also demonstrate that distraction has a similar effect on our susceptibility to influence even if that distraction is only momentary for example research conducted by Barbara Davis and Eric Nolles found that homeowners were twice as likely to purchase Christmas cards from a door-to-door

salesperson when the salesperson distracted them by unexpectedly announcing the price in pennies rather than dollars which is clearly more typical before stating "It's a bargain their studies also show that it wasn't simply a matter of stating the price in pennies that increased the sales rate the rate of compliance with the request to purchase a pack of cards was higher than a standard appeal

only when the price was followed by the persuasive statement "It's a bargain." The findings reveal that it's during this instant of momentary distraction that the salesperson can stealthily insert a persuasive assertion under the radar in another study conducted by the same research team people walking around an outdoor bake sale were more likely to purchase a cupcake when the

vendors referred to them as half cakes rather than cupcakes but only when this was followed by the declaration "They're delicious." What do these studies say about how to avoid succumbing to the factors that make us more easily persuaded our first recommendation would be to get more

sleep of course we'd all like to get more shuteye and we understand that's easier said than done if you do happen to find yourself particularly distracted or sleepd deprived however try to stay away from programs such as infomercials which often make dubious claims if you don't you may end

up convinced that you really do need an exercise bike that also pops popcorn while you pedal instead try to make important decisions that rely on judgments of the truthfulness of others claims when you feel most awake for some people it'll be in the morning and for others it'll be later in

the day second if you're charged with a task let's say for instance that it's choosing a new supplier it's important that you recognize that you're more likely to believe what you read on a prospective supplers's website or formal bid if you're also being distracted for example by talking on the

phone instead you're likely to make more accurate evaluations of other statements and will generally be more resistant to deceptive persuasion tactics if you minimize your distractions you might for instance have a personal decision space at work or home that's free of distractions and background

noise so that you can focus on the task at hand more practically speaking to prevent being first duped by a doubledeing persuader and then dumped by your dissatisfied organization it's a good idea

to reduce multitasking when the stakes for these decisions and interactions with others are high 46 are trimeth labs boosting your influence bedwetting dry mouth and even restless legs

these days there's seemingly a drug for everything under the sun you might be surprised to learn however that there's a drug called 137 trimethylanthin that could make you more persuadable if you take it and make you more persuasive if you give it to others perhaps even more shocking is the fact that this drug is now widely available through trimeth labs

that are popping up in neighborhoods everywhere the drug known in the chemistry community as 137 trimethylanthin is more commonly known as caffeine and these trimeth labs are more commonly known as coffee shops starbucks Corporation alone has over 9,000 locations across 38 countries although we

doubt Chairman Howard Schultz ever dreamed that the beverages he'd make available on every street corner and in every shopping mall could be a potential tool of influence and persuasion we all know that caffeine can make us feel more alert but can it make us more persuasive to test coffee's persuasive prowess scientist Pearl Martin and her colleagues first asked all of their participants

to drink a product resembling orange juice like a mischievous teen adding the contents of his flask to the punch bowl at the high school dance the researchers spiked the orange drink before serving it to half of their research subjects but rather than turning the drink into a screwdriver the researchers instead spiked it with caffeine approximately the amount that you might find

in two cups of espresso shortly after drinking the juice all the participants read a series of messages containing very good arguments advocating a certain position on a controversial issue those who had consumed the caffeinated beverages before reading these arguments were 35% more favorably

disposed toward that position than were those who drank the unadulterated drink does this mean that you could walk down to the nearest coffee shop on your lunch break and sell the Brooklyn Bridge to any one of the patrons there hardly in a second study the researchers also tested the effect of caffeine when participants read messages containing weak arguments the results

showed that caffeine has little persuasive power under these circumstances given a choice then you should make your presentations when people are most alert shortly after they've had their morning coffee fix and never right after lunch even if you can't choose the time of day having

coffee or caffeinated tea on hand should make your audience more receptive to your message but be aware that it usually takes about 40 minutes for the full effect of caffeine to kick in so in a 90-minute presentation you may want to stop at the midway point to summarize your best arguments for whatever you've been pitching of course as the research suggests this strategy is likely to be

effective only if your arguments are genuine thoughtful and well-reasoned if they aren't caffeine is likely to have no effect or worse still there's a possibility that a caffeinated audience will be more resistant to your poorly reasoned arguments than a non-caffeinated audience

if that's the case and you still plan to serve refreshments we suppose there's always decaf 47 how can technology impede persuasive progress just like any other communications company US

Cellular a large wireless carrier based in the Midwest relies almost entirely on technology as the backbone of its business that's why a policy that the company enacted several years ago seems so ironic if not completely insane over 5,000 employees were told that they were no longer

allowed to communicate with one another via email on Fridays how could that be possible in an age in which we're all so dependent on electronic transmissions to communicate quickly effectively and accurately with our co-workers banning email is almost like prohibiting the use of

calculators in favor of fingers and toes why would US Cellular Executive Vice President Jay Ellison make such a decree was it perhaps a nefarious plan concocted by upper management to force their employees to run up personal cell phone bills thereby increasing profits for the company

in the short term it turns out that after getting bombarded with more emails every day than he could open Ellison started to feel that the endless stream of impersonal electronic communications might actually be hurting teamwork and overall productivity not improving it according to an

abcnews.com report Ellison's memo told employees to get out to meet your teams face tof face pick up the phone and give someone a call i look forward to not hearing from any of you but stop by as often as you like the news report went on to describe some of the dramatic consequences of

the policy change for example two co-workers who previously had an emailon relationship were forced to talk to each other by phone in the course of doing so they were surprised to learn that they were not in fact across the country from each other but rather across the hall this discovery

led to face-to-face interactions which further strengthened their relationship the employees were also sure to receive another benefit from the policy shift increased clarity and understanding of their communications with one another research conducted by behavioral scientist Justin Krueger

and colleagues shows that miscommunications are much more likely to occur through email than face toface or over the phone they argued that voice inflection and physical gestures two non-verbal cues that are absent in email communications typically act as important indicators of the

true meaning of the communication when the content of the message is in any way ambiguous this fact alone is enough to make email communications problematic but what Krueger and his colleagues argue makes it an even more dangerous problem is that the senders of these messages are almost completely unaware that their messages may be misunderstood because the senders

have full psychological access to their own intentions when they create their messages they often assume that the message recipient does as well indeed the researchers found that senders overestimated the degree to which receivers understood the tone of the message for example

serious or sarcastic angry or sad remarkably the pattern of data looks exactly the same regardless of whether participant pairs are close friends or two people who had never interacted before the fact that written communication can't be fully deciphered even by people who are close to one

another suggests that even though you may think that your friends can read you like a book that's only the case if they're getting you in audiobook format or the made for TV version so what's a communicator to do about this potential deficiency perhaps you could simply use emoticons those funny

little faces that are intended to convey emotion pictorially however emoticons can also blend into the rest of the message or be unclear in other ways resulting in additional confusion how about eliminating emails entirely choosing to communicate only through phone or face-to-face

interactions maybe that might work once a week as at US Cellular but we don't always have the time or ability to engage in such interactions according to the findings of an additional study Krueger and his colleagues suggest that simply having senders pause for a moment to reflect

on how their email might be perceived differently than intended can drastically reduce this problem although it no doubt took some time to get accustomed to the consensus at US Cellular today is that the no email Fridays policy has been a resounding success and serves as an important reminder about the role that personal interactions with others plays in strengthening

our relationships with them but the case of US cellular dealt primarily with the consequences of electronic interactions for general workplace relationships and communication what about e influence for example how is a process like negotiation affected by whether it takes

place online or face toface gone are the days when negotiations were conducted exclusively in person today negotiations are being conducted online with increasing frequency with the stakes ranging from the terms of a multi-billion dollar contract to the pizza toppings for next month's office party

although the internet has often been referred to as the information superighway might the lack of personal contact between negotiating parties have the potential to act more like a roadblock than a route to successful outcomes research conducted by social scientist Michael Morris and colleagues

made this argument in one experiment MBA students negotiated with one another either face to face or via email when all was said and done those who negotiated through email exchanged far less of the kind of personal information that typically helps people establish better rapport realizing that the

lack of rapport created through e-negotiation could lead to poorer outcomes for all parties researcher Don Moore and his colleagues thought they might have a pretty simple fix to this potentially not so simple problem what if before the negotiation the negotiators engaged in some form of mutual self-disclosure in other words they could get to know a little

bit about one another's background in addition to emoozing for a few minutes on topics unrelated to the negotiation before the negotiation takes place to test this idea the researchers paired up students enrolled at two elite US business schools and had them negotiate a deal via email

whereas half were simply given the instructions to negotiate the other half were provided with a photograph of the negotiating partner some brief biographical information about the partner for example undergraduate alma mater interests and instructions to spend some time before the negotiation getting to know one another through email

when the participants were given no additional information 29% of the pairs came to an impass failing to agree on a deal however only 6% of the more personalized pairs came to an impass using another measure of negotiation success the researchers also found that when the pairs

involved in the experiment were able to come to a mutually agreeable negotiated solution the joint outcome of the negotiated settlement the sum of what each participant walked away with was 18% higher in the personalized groups as compared to the depersonalized groups so by taking the

time to disclose something personal about yourself and to learn something personal about your online counterpart you'll likely be able to increase the size of the pie for both of you to share the bottom line is this it's okay to use a computer to persuade just don't act like one when you do

48 how do you get to yes in any language hi how the Yeah see we people from around the globe say yes in very different ways but does that mean that the persuasion strategies we use to get them to say it should also differ depending

on the message recipient's cultural background or is a one-sizefits-all approach likely to be equally effective regardless of a person's country of origin although the fundamental principles of social influence and many of the strategies we discuss throughout this book are powerful persuaders in all cultures recent research suggests that there are some subtle

differences in how to tailor your tactics and your messages based on the cultural background of the person you're trying to persuade in essence these differences result from the variation in the cultural norms and traditions of diverse societies which leads the people of these different societies to place greater weight on some aspects of a persuasive message than on others

this means that successful organizations looking to transfer their practices policies and organizational structures from one cultural setting to another need to pay careful attention to how social influence differs in the two cultures or risk turning what may be a welloiled

machine in one society into a gunk-filled clunker in the next social influence researchers have focused much of their attention on how one particular dimension known as individualism collectivism affects the persuasion process in brief individualism is an orientation that assigns

highest priority to the preferences and rights of the individual collectivism on the other hand is an orientation that assigns highest priority to the preferences and rights of the group although it's an oversimplification one might say that in individualistic cultures it's more

about me whereas in collectivistic cultures it's more about we people in countries like the United States the United Kingdom and others in Western Europe tend to be more individualistic in contrast many other countries around the globe including those that are now burgeoning areas

for international business partnerships those in Asia South America Africa and Eastern Europe are more collectivistic researchers Sang Pil Han and Sharon Shabat set out to examine the implications of these different cultural orientations on persuasion in a marketing context their prediction

was that in collectivistic cultures advertisements that focus consumers on the products benefits to one's group members for example friends family or co-workers would be more persuasive than advertisements that focus consumers solely on the products benefits for the consumer him or herself they also thought that this would be especially likely for products that are typically shared with

others such as air conditioners or toothpaste han and Shaveet first looked for evidence to support their ideas they picked two magazines in the United States and two magazines in South Korea making sure that they matched the magazines in the two countries on overall popularity and genre

they then randomly selected advertisements from those magazines and had trained native and bilingual speakers evaluate the ads for the extent to which the ads focused on the benefit of the product to the reader him or herself or on the benefit of the product to the reader's group the researchers found that the US ads were indeed more likely than South Korean ads to highlight

how the products benefits were conferred on the individual rather than on the group especially for products that are shared with others whereas the US advertisements tended to appeal to the reader's individuality for example the art of being unique motivation for self-improvement

for example you only better and personal goals for example with this new look I'm ready for my new role the South Korean advertisements tended to appeal to the reader sense of responsibility to the group for example a more exhilarating way to provide for your family motivation to enhance

the group for example the dream of prosperity for all of us and consideration of the group's opinions for example our family agrees with the selection of home furnishings after confirming that the persuasive messages embedded in these advertisements targeted different consumer motivations based on the cultural orientation of the society the researchers

wanted to answer a more psychologically important question are collectivistic and individualistic oriented messages actually more persuasive in their respective cultures after all as we discussed in the introduction that marketers think certain types of messages will be

most effective doesn't simply make it so to answer this question Han and Shabet created two versions of advertisements for a variety of products one version was more individualistic oriented and the other was more collectivistic oriented for example the individualistic version of an ad for

a brand of chewing gum stated "Treat yourself to a breath freshening experience." Notice that this message is focused on the breath freshening benefits solely to the consumer but as we all know from experience the state of a person's breath isn't solely a personal issue it can affect those around that person as well understandably then the more collectivistic version of this ad

stated share the breath freshening experience of course the ads were written in English for the US participants and in Korean for the South Korean participants the results revealed that South Korean participants were more persuaded by the collectivistic than the individualistic ad

and the reverse was true for US participants and consistent with the earlier study this effect was especially powerful with products that people tend to share with others these findings should also give pause to any marketer considering blanketing various countries with a one strategy marketing

campaign instead such campaigns should be tailored to fit the particular cultural orientation of the societies in which they take place the breath of an entire nation may depend on it 49 how can you avoid driving your cross-cultural influence into the rough several years ago

legendary US golfer Jack Nicholas suffered a nearly unbearable tragedy witnessing the heartbreaking death of his young grandson several days later Nicholas made it clear in an interview that his chances of playing in one of golf's most prestigious events the Masters were between slim and none yet to the surprise of many he also announced that

he would play in two other golf outings in the near future what powerful factor could convince a grieving man to participate in these events after being stricken by such tragedy it turns out that Nicholas had made prior promises to play in each event before his

grandson passed away as the golfer put it "You make commitments and you've got to do them."

As we discussed earlier the motivation to be consistent with one's commitments can be quite powerful in influencing a person's actions but does it motivate with the same force equally across cultures all else being equal would someone from a different cultural background feel

just as bound by his or her previous actions and commitments at a time of family tragedy to help get a better understanding of the answer to this question let's consider an experiment that one of us conducted with lead researcher Pete Petrova in that experiment students who were native to

the United States generally more individualistic and students who were Asian international students generally more collectivistic received an email that asked them to complete an online survey a month after receiving the first request each participant received a second email requesting

their participation in another online survey related to the first project which they were told would take about double the amount of time to complete as the original survey when we looked at the compliance rates for the first request we found that US students were actually slightly less likely to comply with the initial request than were their Asian counterparts

yet of the participants who did comply with the initial request the US participants were actually more likely to comply with the second request around 22% than the Asian participants around 10% put another way we found that compliance with the initial request had a far greater influence

on subsequent compliance among US participants than among Asian participants why did this occur perhaps some additional research that one of us conducted might shed more light on this perplexing question along with several colleagues we conducted a study in which we found that when we asked American students to participate without pay in a marketing survey they were more influenced by

their own history of agreement to such requests in other words to their prior commitments than by their peers history of agreement but in Poland a more collectivistic oriented country just the opposite occurred in Poland what a student's peer group had previously done was a more powerful

motivator of current compliance than what the student him or herself had previously done these findings are primarily due to cultural differences in individualism and collectivism because people from individualistic cultures tend to give greater weight to their own personal experiences

consistency with one's previous experiences is often a more potent motivator of people from countries in North America or Western Europe and because people from collectivistic cultures tend to give greater weight to the experiences of close others the behavior of close others is often a more powerful motivator of people from countries in Asia Eastern Europe South America and Africa

what this means is that when asking an American Canadian or Britain for a favor you are likely to be more successful if you point out that it fits with what that person has done before but when asking a favor of people from more collectivistic countries the research suggests that you'll be more successful if you point out that it fits with what that person's peer group has done before

to take a specific example suppose you worked for a company that has been doing business successfully with a firm in Eastern Europe for 2 years during that time you've often had to ask your European partners for the favor of providing updated marketing information your main contact

there Slavic and his co-workers have usually gone out of their way to help you suppose further that you need updated information once more and that in a phone conversation you make your request as follows slavic you've been so helpful in the past that I'm hoping you can provide us with updated

information again in doing so you will have made a mistake the results of these studies suggest that you would have better success if you'd said "Slavic you and your co-workers have been so helpful in the past that I'm hoping that you can provide us with updated information." Again

it's an easy mistake for a North American British or Western European person to make because those individuals assume that everyone prefers to operate according to the principle of personal consistency the tendency to decide what's right to do in a situation based on what one has previously done there but as these studies demonstrated in many collectivistic countries personal consistency

with one's prior actions is outweighed by the principle of social proof the tendency to decide what's right to do in a situation based on what one's group has previously done 50 when does letting the call go to voicemail cause a hangup in your influence if you're like

us it happens to you all the time you should probably take the call but for one reason or another you don't you might be eating lunch perhaps you're busy surfing the web for the latest sports scores or maybe you just like the way the cell phone feels when it vibrates in your pocket regardless of the reason the negative impact is usually minimal the caller typically leaves a

message which you can return at a time that's more convenient but why might this common routine have more dire consequences if the caller is from a collectivistic rather than an individualistic culture people from collectivistic and individualistic cultures tend to differ in the relative weight they give to two central functions of communication in short one function

of communication is informational when we communicate we convey information to others a second less obvious function of communication is relational when we communicate we help build and maintain relationships with others although both functions are clearly important to people

in all cultures social psychologists Yuri Miiamoto and Norbert Schwarz argue that individualistic cultures place a greater emphasis on theformational function of communication whereas collectivistic cultures place a greater emphasis on the relational function although

this cultural difference has implications for a variety of communication related issues Miiamoto and Schwarz examined one aspect of communication that permeates our daily lives both at home and in the workplace leaving phone messages for others the researchers suspected that because people from

Japan tend to be collectivistic and therefore more focused on forming and maintaining relationships with others Japanese people would have a harder time making a somewhat complex request on an answering machine they reasoned that if Japanese people care more about how their communications affect their relationship with message recipients than American people conveying a message in which

they receive no feedback about how the message is being received should cause them to experience more mental fatigue to test this Miyamoto and Schwarz had American and Japanese participants leave a somewhat detailed request for help on an answering machine using their native languages

whereas American participants cut right to the heart of the information Japanese participants took longer to leave their messages seeming to be more concerned about how their message would affect their relationship with the recipient the researchers also surveyed Japanese and American participants about their experiences with answering machines

whereas Americans reported hanging up when reaching an answering machine about half the time Japanese people reported hanging up an astounding 85% of the time and consistent with the researchers explanation for the results of the previous study when asked what they disliked most about answering machines the Japanese respondents were more likely to site relational reasons for

example it's hard to sound personal on the answering machine than were Americans whereas the cultural pattern was reversed forformational reasons for example people sometimes don't check it what do these findings say about influencing others within and outside the workplace as we

discussed in previous chapters relationships are a key component to the persuasion process but this is especially true with people from countries with collectivistic orientations when leaving messages for others it can be tempting especially to people from individualistic cultures to focus entirely on efficiently and succinctly conveying a piece of information while ignoring one's relationship

with the message receiver these results suggest that when dealing with people from collectivistic cultures it is particularly important to attend to aspects of the relationship that the two of you share the same should apply for conversations as well in fact based on some prior

research showing how Japanese listeners tend to provide more feedback for example I see yes than their American counterparts during conversations miiamoto and Schwarz suggest that when a Japanese person talks to an American it's almost as if that person is talking to an answering machine

this idea fits with an additional survey finding that Japanese participants were more likely to say that they disliked answering machines because it is hard to speak because there are no responses these findings also suggest that we should be especially vigilant about providing such feedback with people from collectivistic cultures letting them know that we're attending to the

relationship that we share with them as well as to the information they're trying to convey the results also serve as a warning that letting the call go to voicemail can be a potentially treacherous decision especially when the caller is from a collectivistic culture if you think that the worst that can happen is that you get yourself into a simple game of phone tag you

might soon find that a simple sound click informs you that it's now become a single player game epilogue throughout this book we've described many social influence strategies that we've referred to

as tools for your persuasion toolbox and that's exactly how they should be used as constructive tools that help build authentic relationships with others highlight the genuine strengths of one's message initiative or product and ultimately create outcomes that are in the best interest of

all parties however when these tools are instead used unethically as weapons of influence for example by dishonestly or artificially importing the principles of social influence into situations in which they don't naturally exist any short-term gains will almost invariably be followed by

long-term losses in other words although the dishonest use of persuasion strategies may occasionally work in the short run perhaps someone could be persuaded with a bad set of arguments or could be tricked into buying a defective product the long-term consequences to one's reputation

are dire when this dishonesty eventually is discovered it's not simply the dishonest use of persuasion tools that people would be wise to avoid there are also inherent dangers in trying to exploit the applications of some of the tools that we've described for example in the spring of 2000

the United Kingdom found itself in the midst of a serious crisis businesses up and down the country were crying out in desperation schools were deserted shops were struggling to find customers and public services were at risk of a meltdown the reason for the crisis there was no fuel

actually that last statement is only partially true there was plenty of fuel it was just that stations had no supplies due to the blockading of a number of oil refineries by protesters who were upset with how much they had to pay at the pump the impact of the shortage quickly took effect in every city town and village tens of thousands of motorists quickly formed lines outside fuel

stations to fill up with muchneeded supplies as the shortage began to take a deeper effect the behavior of the motorists also changed local and national newspapers radio stations and TV channels ran stories describing how car owners would join one queue to fill their tanks with fuel only to drive a few miles down the road and join another one to top off their tanks again

other drivers slept overnight in their cars outside fuel stations hoping they might be the lucky recipients of one of the rare shipments of fuel that did get through the blockades this is the power of scarcity in action at the height of the crisis there was a gas station owner who had reportedly received a supply of much needed fuel in fact he was the only owner for many miles

around with supplies of fuel and the news quickly spread recognizing the unique position in which he found himself and seeing the lengthy line forming outside his business none of us would be surprised to learn that this enterprising businessman took advantage of his fortunate situation by adding a

premium to the price of his fuel but instead of adding a small amount he increased his prices 10fold which amounted to the equivalent of over $40 per gallon did the disgruntled but still fuel-hungry motorists refuse on mass to pay such extortionate prices hardly although

they were angry they still lined up in droves to get whatever fuel they could from the station in just a matter of hours the last drop of fuel had been drained from the station's tank and the owner made a profit in one single day that would have normally taken him two weeks to attain

but what happened to his business two weeks later after the crisis had ended in a word it was disastrous by exploiting the scarcity of the fuel and forcing desperate drivers to pay ridiculously inflated prices he profited in the short term but completely lost out in the long run people simply

boycotted his business some went further making it their goal to inform their friends neighbors and co-workers about the owner's actions his business lost nearly every customer it had and within a very short time his damaged reputation forced him to close this is completely consistent with

an abundance of research showing that those who behave in an untrustworthy manner can do little to regain the public's trust if the owner had considered the set of powerful social influence tools available to him in his persuasion toolbox certainly there were better choices available choices that could have led to far greater profits in the long term for one he could have

ensured that his fuel supplies went primarily to his local or regular customers making a point of informing them that the reason he was doing so was that he valued their loyalty or he could have put up a sign saying that he refused to gouge needy motorists in a time of crisis acting against his

own short-term self-interest in this way certainly would have made him appear more likable generous and trustworthy in the motorist size a move that surely would have paid big dividends in the future even if he had done nothing but keep the prices reasonable customers would have likely been more than happy to buy some extras from the shop just because they felt grateful that he

didn't take advantage of them under those trying circumstances in a way though the gas station owner's actions are somewhat understandable in the same way that many of the people we wish to influence are often forced to make decisions quickly by the fast-paced world around them the same is true for us as the persuaders often the first influence strategy that comes to mind

will not be the most ethical or the wisest as was demonstrated by the outcome of the owner's actions but by taking the extra effort to consider all of the available options and by now you should have a toolbox full of them you can move people toward your perspective product or initiative in

a way that's genuine honest and longasting and at the same time as ethical persuaders we can take comfort in knowing that those who do choose to wield social influence as a destructive weapon rather than a constructive tool will inevitably end up pointing that weapon at themselves and

shooting themselves in the foot in this book we've attempted to discuss a number of insights into how the influence process works from a scientific perspective we have been vigilant in providing only the influence strategies that have been shown through rigorously controlled studies and research

to be effective we deliberately haven't based our recommendations on our own hunches or anecdotes instead we relied entirely on the significant body of research from the study of social influence and persuasion accordingly you can be confident that your own attempts to influence and persuade

others no longer need be based solely on your own intuition and experience you now also have science on your side we would be delighted to hear from anyone who would like to submit an example of their own use of ethical influence for possible inclusion either in future editions of this

book or in new books you can submit them on our websites influencework.com or influencework.co.uk

book or in new books you can submit them on our websites influencework.com or influencework.co.uk