Pre-suasion Flashcards
1
Q
Older voices have recognized the wisdom of undertaking prior action to secure subsequent success.
A
In asserting the value of early planning, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared, “Every battle is won before it is fought.”
2
Q
The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request.
A
They spent much of their time toiling in the fields of influence thinking about and engaging in cultivation—in ensuring that the situations they were facing had been pretreated and readied for growth. Of course, the best performers also considered and cared about what, specifically, they would be offering in those situations. But much more than their less effective colleagues, they didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can carry equal or even greater weight.
3
Q
they did something that gave them a singular kind of persuasive traction:
A
before introducing their message, they arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.”
4
Q
an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication:
A
what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next
5
Q
all mental activity arises as patterns of associations within a vast and intricate neural network,
A
and that influence attempts will be successful only to the extent that the associations they trigger are favorable to change
6
Q
the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is often not the one that offers the most accurate or useful counsel;
A
instead, it is the one that has been elevated in attention (and thereby in privilege) at the moment of decision.”
7
Q
“it comes down to this: in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses;
A
for confirmations of the idea rather than for disconfirmations. It is easier to register the presence of something than its absence.
8
Q
Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” Following brief reflection, nearly everyone answered yes. In that privileged moment—after subjects had confirmed privately and affirmed publicly their helpful natures—
A
the researchers pounced, requesting help with their survey. Now 77.3 percent volunteered.
9
Q
thesis of this book: frequently the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is not the one that counsels most wisely there;
A
it is one that has been elevated in attention (and, thereby, in privilege) at the time of the decision.
10
Q
this nontraditional—channeled attention—approach, to get desired action it’s not necessary to alter a person’s beliefs or attitudes or experiences.
A
It’s not necessary to alter anything at all except what’s prominent in that person’s mind at the moment of decision. In our example of the new soft drink, it might be the fact that, in the past, he or she has been willing to look at new possibilities.
11
Q
when asked the single-chute question of whether they fit this category, people nominate themselves almost invariably.
A
Such is the power of positive test strategy and the blinkered perspective it creates. The evidence shows that this process can significantly increase the percentage of individuals who brand themselves as adventurous or helpful or even unhappy
12
Q
the guiding factor in a decision is often not the one that counsels most wisely;
A
it’s one that has recently been brought to mind. But why? The answer has to do with the ruthlessness of channeled attention, which not only promotes the now-focal aspect of the situation but also suppresses all competing aspects of it—even critically important ones
13
Q
just as there is a price for paying attention, there is a charge for switching it: For about a half second during a shift of focus, we experience a mental dead spot, called an attentional blink,
A
when we can’t register the newly highlighted information consciously.
14
Q
influence process:
A
whatever we can do to focus people on something—an idea, a person, an object—makes that thing seem more important to them than before.
15
Q
a communicator who gets an audience to focus on
A
a key element of a message pre-loads it with importance.
16
Q
The central tenet of agenda-setting theory is that the media rarely produce change directly, by presenting compelling evidence that sweeps an audience to new positions;
A
they are much more likely to persuade indirectly, by giving selected issues and facts better coverage than other issues and facts. It’s this coverage that leads audience members—by virtue of the greater attention they devote to certain topics—to decide that these are the most important to be taken into consideration when adopting a position
17
Q
This sensible system of focusing our limited attentional resources on what does indeed possess special import has an imperfection, though:
A
we can be brought to the mistaken belief that something is important merely because we have been led by some irrelevant factor to give it our narrowed attention.
18
Q
the persuader who artfully draws outsize attention to the most favorable feature of an offer“becomes a successful pre-suader.
A
That is, he or she becomes effective not just in a straightforward attention-based way—by arranging for audiences to consider that feature fully—but also by arranging for them to lend the feature exaggerated significance even before they have examined it
19
Q
Any practice that pulls attention to an idea will be successful only when the idea has merit.
A
If the arguments and evidence supporting it are seen as meritless by an audience, directed attention to the bad idea won’t make it any more persuasive. If anything, the tactic might well backfire.
20
Q
to receive the benefits of focused attention, the key is to keep the focus unitary.
A
merely engaging in a single-chute evaluation
can automatically cause people to value the focused-upon entity more and become more willing to support it financially.
21
Q
First, a thorough analysis of all legitimate roads to success is time consuming, requiring potentially lengthy delays for identifying, vetting, and then mapping out each of the promising routes;
A
and highly placed decision makers didn’t get to their lofty positions by being known as bottlenecks inside their organizations.
22
Q
Second, for any decision maker, a painstaking“comparative assessment of multiple options is difficult and stressful, akin to the juggler’s task of trying to keep several objects in the air all at once.
A
The resultant (and understandable) tendency is to avoid or abbreviate such an arduous process by selecting the first practicable candidate that presents itself.
23
Q
the persuasive consequences of managing background information and inviting singular evaluation went unrecognized by individuals subjected to those procedures, too.
A
Through this cloaked influence, techniques designed merely to channel temporary attention can be particularly effective as pre-suasive devices.
24
Q
directed attention gives focal elements a specific kind of initial weight in any deliberation
A
It gives them standing as causes,“which in turn gives them standing as answers to that most essential of human questions: Why?
25
become focal in attention;
and what is focal is seen to have causal properties—to have the ability to make events occur.
26
because what’s salient is deemed important and what’s focal is deemed causal,
a communicator who ushers audience members’ attention to selected facets of a message reaps a significant persuasive advantage: recipients’ receptivity to considering those facets prior to actually considering them.
27
very often the biggest challenge for a communicator is not in providing a meritorious case
but in convincing recipients to devote their limited time and energy to consider“ing its merits. Perceptions of issue importance and causality meet this challenge exquisitely.
28
In any situation, people are dramatically more likely to pay attention to and be influenced by
stimuli that fit the goal they have for that situation
29
What’s the persuasive alchemy that allows a communicator to trouble recipients deeply about the negative outcomes of their bad habits without pushing them to deny the problem in an attempt to control their now-heightened fears?
The communicator has only to add to the chilling message clear information about legitimate, available steps the recipients can take to change their health-threatening habits. In this way, the fright can be dealt with not through self-delusional baloney that deters positive action but through genuine change opportunities that mobilize such action
30
the prism of a core claim of this book: the effectiveness of persuasive messages—in this case, carrying two influence themes that have been commonly used for centuries—
will be drastically affected by the type of opener experienced immediately in advance.
31
Put people in a wary state of mind via that opener, and, driven by a desire for safety, a popularity-based appeal will soar,
whereas a distinctiveness-based appeal will sink. But use it to put people in an amorous state of“mind, and, driven by a consequent desire to stand out, the reverse will occur.
32
Research confirms that rather than using cuts judiciously to direct attention solely to the most important facets of their material, TV advertisers have chosen instead to increase indiscriminately and dramatically the overall frequency of scene shifts within their ads by more than 50 percent over the years.
Predictably, viewers end up confused as to the point of the ad and irritated by having their focus whipped around so often and so haphazardly. As a result, even though cut-heavy TV commercials draw more total attention, they produce significantly less memory for the ad’s persuasive claims and significantly less persuasion. It’s easy to understand why: viewers’ attention isn’t fixated on the ads’ best points but is scattered all over the material’s relevant and irrelevant attributes.
33
To leverage the power of difference when employing these vehicles, persuaders typically resort to a more traditional tactic. They insert novelty into the appeal—that is, something designed to appear distinctive (original or unfamiliar or surprising) which also works well to attract attention.
Indeed, almost anything a persuader can do to set an item apart from competitors has this effect. And as long as the spotlighted item has worth, its allure can leapfrog over that of equally worthy or even more worthy rivals.
34
adding three models with durable cushions made the Dream stand out as distinct from the other four possibilities on the feature of cushion softness and comfort
—and distinctiveness, as we’ve seen, swings attention to the distinguishing factor, which in this instance led to cushion comfort’s greater perceived importance.
35
who can fasten an audience’s focus onto the favorable elements of an argument raises the chance that the argument will go unchallenged by opposing points of view, which get locked out of attention as a consequence.
Certain kinds of information do, in fact, combine initial pulling power with staying power. Information about oneself, for example, packs that potent one-two punch
36
when recipients get a message that is self-relevant because it has been tailored specifically for them (for example, by referencing the recipient’s age, sex, or health history), they are more likely to lend it attention, find it interesting, take it seriously, remember it, and save it for future reference—
all of which leads to greater communication effectiveness, as reflected in arenas as diverse as weight loss, exercise initiation, smoking cessation, and cancer screening.
37
unfinished tasks are the more memorable, hoarding attention so they can be performed and dispatched successfully.
Once completed, attentional resources are diverted from“the undertaking to other pursuits; but while the initial activity is under way, a heightened level of cognitive focus must be reserved for it
38
on a task that we feel committed to performing, we will remember all sorts of elements of it better if we have not yet had the chance to finish, because our attention will remain drawn to it.
Second, if we are engaged in such a task and are interrupted or pulled away, we’ll feel a discomforting, gnawing desire to get back to it. That desire—which also pushes us to return to incomplete narratives, unresolved problems, unanswered questions, and unachieved goals—reflects a craving for cognitive closure.
39
when an important outcome is unknown to people, “they can hardly think of anything else.”
And because, as we know, regular attention to something makes it seem more worthy of attention, the women’s repeated refocusing on those guys made them appear the most attractive.
40
She never lets herself finish a writing session at the end of a paragraph or even a thought.
She assured me she knows precisely what she wants to say at the end of that last paragraph or thought; she just doesn’t allow herself to say it until the next time
41
Mystery,Albert Einstein proclaimed as “the most beautiful thing we can experience”
and simultaneously “the source of all true science and art.
42
the most successful of the pieces each began with a mystery story.
The authors described a state of affairs that seemed perplexing and then invited the reader into the subsequent material as a way of dispatching the enigma
43
An example is in order. A little-recognized truth I often try to convey to various audiences is that, in contests of persuasion, counterarguments are typically more powerful than arguments.
This superiority emerges especially when a counterclaim does more than refute a rival’s claim by showing it to be mistaken or misdirected in the particular instance, but does so instead by showing the rival communicator to be an untrustworthy source of information, generally.
44
Whereas descriptions require notice and questions require answers, mysteries require explanations. When I challenged students to engage in the process of providing explanations to account for states of affairs that otherwise wouldn’t make sense, their test scores went up.
Why? Because that process also provided them the best chance to understand the lecture material in a meaningful and enduring way.
45
demonstrating that an opponent’s argument is not to be believed because its maker is misinformed on the topic will usually succeed on that singular issue.
But a counterargument that undermines an opponent’s argument by showing him or her to be dishonest in the matter will normally win that battle plus future battles with the opponent.
46
the brain’s operations arise fundamentally and inescapably from raw associations.
Just as amino acids can be called the building blocks of life, associations can be called the building blocks of thought.
47
For issues of persuasion, this assertion seems to me groundbreaking. No longer should we think of language as primarily a mechanism of conveyance; as a means for delivering a communicator’s conception of reality.
Instead, we should think of language as primarily a mechanism of influence; as a means for inducing recipients to share that conception or, at least, to act in accord with it
48
We achieve the goal by employing language that orients recipients to those regions of reality
stocked with associations favorable to our view.
49
the linguistic devices that researchers have identified for driving attention to one or another aspect of reality. They include verbs that draw attention to concrete features of a situation, adjectives that pull one’s focus onto the traits (versus
behaviors) of others, personal pronouns that highlight existing relationships, metaphors that frame a state of affairs so that it is interpreted in a singular way, or just particular wordings that link to targeted thoughts.
50
“Incidental (but Not Accidental) Exposure to Words
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word.
—Joseph Conrad
51
Multiple studies have shown that subtly exposing individuals to words that connote achievement (win, attain, succeed, master)
increases their performance on an assigned task and more than doubles their willingness to keep working at it.
52
“If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.
—Joseph Campbell
53
It appears, then, that initial incidental exposure either to simple words or simple images can have a pre-suasive impact on later
actions that are merely associated with the words or images.
54
Since Aristotle’s Poetics (circa 350 BCE), communicators have been advised to use metaphor to get their points across.
They’ve been told that an effective way to convey a somewhat elusive concept to an audience is to describe it in terms of another concept that the audience can recognize readily.
55
the main function of language is not to express or describe but to influence—something it does by channeling recipients to sectors of reality pre-loaded with a set of mental associations favorable to the communicator’s view.
If so, we can see why metaphor, which directs people to think of one thing in terms of their associations to a selected other thing, possesses great potential as a linguistic device.
56
in any public pronouncements on the topic, she should portray the crime surge as a wild beast rampaging through the city that must be stopped. Why?
Because to bring a wild beast under control, it’s necessary to catch and cage it. In the minds of her audiences, these natural associations to the proper handling of rampaging “mals will transfer to the proper handling of crime and criminals.
57
in all her public pronouncements on the topic, the candidate should portray the crime surge as a spreading virus infecting the city that must be stopped.
Why? Because to bring a virus under control, it’s necessary to remove the unhealthy conditions that allow it to breed and spread. These disease-related associations should now frame the way citizens think about how best to deal with their crime problem.
58
According to chroniclers of that success, he never pressured reluctant prospects into a sale. Instead, he employed a light (and enlightened) touch that led them smoothly toward a purchase
Mr. Feldman was a master of metaphor. In his portrayal of life’s end, for instance, people didn’t die, they “walked out” of life—a characterization that benefitted from associations to a breach in one’s family responsibilities that would need to be filled. He was then quick to depict life insurance as the (metaphorically aligned) solution: “When you walk out,” he would say, “your insurance money walks in.” When exposed to this metaphoric lesson in the moral responsibility of buying life insurance, many a customer straightened up and walked right
59
he concept pre-loaded with associations most damaging to immediate assessments and future dealings is
untrustworthiness, along with its concomitants, such as lying and cheating.”
60
Therefore, anything that is self-connected (or can be made to seem self-connected) gets an immediate lift in our eyes
Sometimes the connections can be trivial but can still serve as springboards to persuasive success.
61
I Am We, and We Are Number One. When considering the persuasive implications of implicit egoism, there’s an important qualification to be taken into account.
The overvalued self isn’t always the personal self. It can also be the social self—the one framed not by the characteristics of the individual but by the characteristics of that individual’s group.
62
There is much positivity associated with getting something with ease, but in a particular way. When we grasp something fluently—that is, we can picture or process it quickly and effortlessly—
we not only like that thing more but also think it is more valid and worthwhile. For this reason, poetry possessing rhyme and regular meter evokes something more than greater favor from readers; it is also evokes perceptions of higher aesthetic value
63
Tellingly, when people can process something with cognitive ease, they experience increased neuronal activity in the muscles of their face that produce a smile.
On the flip side, if it’s difficult to process something, observers tend to dislike that experience and, accordingly, that thing.
64
they’ve taken a piece of psychological information—that background cues in one’s physical environment can guide how one thinks there—
and employed it to generate a desired effect.
65
It’s easy for some feature of the outside world to redirect our attention to an inner feature—to a particular attitude, belief, trait, memory, or sensation.
As I’ve reported, there are certain consequential effects of such a shift in focus: within that moment, we are more likely to grant the focal factor importance, assign it causal status, and undertake action associated with it.
66
Let’s explore how that might work for our most coveted unit of experience: felt happiness. Although cherished for its own sake, happiness provides an additional benefit.
It doesn’t just flow from favorable life circumstances, it also creates them—including higher levels of physical health, psychological well-being, and even general success.
67
he best “attention management” skills (those good at orienting to and staying fixed on positive material) show the greatest mood enhancement.
Those with poor such skills, however, can’t use strong attentional control to extricate themselves from their tribulations. They are the ones who experience mood degeneration as they age
68
he spent that crucial time consciously calming his fears and simultaneously building his confidence by reviewing his past academic successes and enumerating his genuine strengths
I was struck that he could create an ideal state of mind for himself not just because he understood where, precisely, to focus his attention but also because as a savvy moment maker, he understood how to do it pre-suasively immediately before the test.
69
The basic idea of pre-suasion is that by guiding preliminary attention strategically, it’s possible for a communicator to
move recipients into agreement with a message before they experience it. The key is to focus them initially on concepts that are aligned associatively with the yet-to-be-encountered information.
70
a rather underappreciated characteristic of mental activity:
its elements“don’t just fire when ready; they fire when readied. After we attend to a specific concept, those concepts closely linked to it enjoy a privileged moment within our minds, acquiring influence that nonlinked concepts simply can’t match.
71
Linked Elements fire when readied for two reasons:
First, once an opener concept (German music, weight) receives our attention, closely associated secondary concepts (German wine, substance) become more accessible in consciousness, which greatly improves the chance that we will attend and respond to the linked concepts. This newly enhanced standing in consciousness elevates their capacity to color our perceptions, orient our thinking, affect our motivations, and thereby change our relevant behavior.
Second, at the same time, concepts not linked to the opener are suppressed in consciousness, making them less likely than before to receive our attention and gain influence. Rather than being readied for action, they get decommissioned temporarily.
72
There’s an important limit to pre-suasive effects.
Attention to the first concept readies the second for influence in proportion to the degree of association between the two.
73
their implications for optimal pre-suasion: the strength of the association between an opener“concept and a related concept will
determine the strength of the pre-suasive effect. Therefore, an aspiring pre-suader wishing to prompt an action (helping, let’s say) should find a concept already associated strongly and positively with the action (togetherness would be a good choice) and bring that concept to mind in potential helpers just before requesting their aid
74
The statements have various names in scholarly usage, but I’m going to call them if/when-then plans. They are designed to help us achieve a goal by readying us (1) to register certain cues in settings where we can further our goal, and (2) to take an appropriate action spurred by the cues and consistent with the goal.
Let’s say that we aim to lose weight. An if/when-then plan might be “If/when, after my business lunches, the server asks if I’d like to have dessert, then I will order mint tea.” Other goals can also be effectively achieved by using these plans.
75
Merely stating an intention to reach a goal or even forming an ordinary action plan is considerably less likely to succeed. There are good reasons for the superiority of if/when-then plans:
the specific sequencing of elements within the plans can help us defeat the traditional enemies of goal achievement. The “if/when-then” wording is designed to put us on high alert for a particular time or circumstance when a productive action could be performed.
76
We become prepared, first, to notice the favorable time or circumstance and, second, to associate it automatically and directly with desired conduct.
Noteworthy is the self-tailored nature of this pre-suasive process. We get to install in ourselves heightened vigilance for certain cues that we have targeted previously, and we get to employ a strong association that we have constructed previously between those cues and a beneficial step toward our goal
77
This recognition highlights the potential usefulness of if/when-then plans for accomplishing our main goals. These goals exist as prefetched sources of information and direction that have been placed on standby, waiting to be launched into operation by cues that remind us of them.
Notice again that the form of if/when-then plans puts the specification of those reminders in our own hands so that we are likely to encounter them at a time and under a set of circumstances that work well for us (“when it is eight in the morning, and I finish brushing my teeth . . .”). Even seemingly intractable bad habits can be improved as a result.
78
“(1) what is more accessible in mind becomes“more probable in action, and (2) this accessibility is influenced by the informational cues around us and by our raw associations to them.
The section on if/when-then plans and the chapter on the geography of influence provided welcome evidence that we can derive higher-order benefits from these elementary processes. We can do so by engineering into our everyday settings cues to actions associated strongly with our greater goals.
79
From a list of brands, audience members indicated which ones they would be likely to choose when shopping. Guess what? It turned out that the survey respondents were least likely to select the products that had been inserted most prominently.
It seems that the conspicuousness of the placements cued viewers to the advertisers’ sly attempts to sway their preferences and caused a correction against the potential distortion
80
Sleep researchers have noted that in field tests of combat artillery units, teams that are fully rested often challenge orders to fire on hospitals or other civilian targets
But after twenty-four to thirty-six sleepless hours, they often obey superiors’ directives without question and become more likely to shell anything. Similarly, in criminal interrogations, even innocent suspects often can’t resist interrogators’ pressure for them to confess after hours of mentally exhausting questioning.
81
Besides fatigue, numerous other conditions can keep people from recognizing and correcting potentially foolish tendencies.
Indeed, such foolish tendencies are likely to predominate when a person is rushed, overloaded, preoccupied, indifferent, stressed, distracted, or, it seems, a conspiracy theorist
82
In addition to its time-challenged character, other aspects of modern life undermine our ability (and motivation) to think in a fully reasoned way about even important decisions.
The sheer amount of information today can be overwhelming—its complexity befuddling, its relentlessness depleting, its range distracting, and its prospects agitating. Couple those culprits with the concentration-disrupting alerts of devices nearly everyone now carries to deliver that input, and careful assessment’s role as a ready decision-making corrective becomes sorely diminished.
83
Thus, a communicator who channels attention to a particular concept in order to heighten audience receptivity to a forthcoming message—
via the focus-based, automatic, crudely associative mechanisms of pre-suasion—won’t have to worry much about the tactic being defeated by deliberation. The cavalry of deep analysis will rarely arrive to reverse the outcome because it will rarely be summoned.
84
If we want them to buy a box of expensive chocolates,
we can first arrange for them to write down a number that’s much larger than the price of the chocolates.
85
If we want them to choose a bottle of French wine,
we can expose them to French background music before they decide.
86
If we want them to agree to try an untested product,
we can first inquire whether they consider themselves adventurous.
87
If we want to convince them to select a highly popular item,
we can begin by showing them a scary movie.
88
If we want them to feel warmly toward us
we can hand them a hot drink.
89
If we want them to be more helpful to us,
we can have them look at photos of individuals standing close together.
90
If we want them to be more achievement oriented,
we can provide them with an“image of a runner winning a race.
91
If we want them to make careful assessments,
we can show them a picture of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.
92
specificity fits with the way that successful openers operate for a communicator.
They pre-suasively channel recipients’ attention only to those concepts that are associated favorably with the communicator’s particular goal.
93
I argued that there are six such concepts that empower the major principles of human social influence
They are reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, and consistency.
94
principle of authority to illustrate the expanded point:
communicators stand to be more effective by highlighting the idea of authority not just inside their message but inside the moment before their message. In this pre-suasive way, audiences will become sensitized to (and thus readied for) the coming authoritative evidence in the message, making them more likely to pay attention to it, assign it importance, and, consequently, be influenced by it
95
Reciprocation: People say yes to those they owe.“often enough that behavioral scientists have labeled this tendency the rule for reciprocation.
It states that those who have given benefits to us are entitled to benefits from us in return. So valuable is it to the functional health of societies that all human cultures teach the rule from childhood and assign socially punishing names—freeloader, user, taker, parasite—to those who don’t give back after receiving.
96
Requesters who hope to commission the pre-suasive force of the rule for reciprocation have to do something that appears daring:
they have to take a chance and give first. They must begin an interaction by providing initial gifts, favors, advantages, or concessions without a formal guarantee of compensation. But because the tendency to reciprocate is so embedded in most people, the strategy frequently works better than the traditional approach to commercial exchange, in which a requester offers benefits only after an action has been taken: a contract signed, a purchase made, a task performed.
97
It makes sense to inquire, then, if there are specific features of an initial gift or favor that increase significantly the chance that it will be returned at high levels of recompense.
There are three main features of this sort: in order to optimize the return, what we give first should be experienced as meaningful, unexpected, and customized.”
98
Meaningful and Unexpected
requesters of various sorts can elevate the likelihood that they will receive high levels of benefit from others if they first deliver benefits viewed by the others as meaningful and unexpected
Providing a costly gift can often be meaningful, but costliness isn’t necessary. Of course, the receipt of two chocolates was not only twice that of one chocolate but also more unexpected.
“After offering guests one chocolate from her basket and turning to walk away, she unexpectedly returned to the table and offered a second chocolate to each diner. As a result, her average tip improved by 21.3 percent.
99
Customized--
When a first favor is customized to the needs, preferences, or current circumstances of the recipient, it gains leverage
it makes good psycho-logical sense: Visitors went to the restaurant because they were hungry. An upfront gift of food activated not only the rule for reciprocation but a more muscular version, which states that people should feel especially obligated to reciprocate a gift designed to meet their particular needs.
If a gift, favor, or service incorporates all three features of meaningfulness, unexpectedness, and customization, it can become a formidable source of change
100
Two Keys to Liking
by far, two specific ways to create positive feelings got the most attention. We were instructed to highlight similarities and provide compliments. There’s good reason why these two practices would be emphasized: each increases liking and assent
101
Similarities--
We like those who are like us. It’s a tendency that’s part of the human experience almost from the start
“Parallels in language style (the types of words and verbal expressions conversation partners use) increase romantic attraction, relationship stability, and, somewhat amazingly, the likelihood that a hostage negotiation will end peacefully. What’s more, this influence occurs even though the overlap of styles typically goes unnoticed by the conversation partners.
Waitresses coached to mimic the verbal style of customers doubled their tips. Negotiators coached to do the same with their opponents got significantly better final outcomes.
102
Compliments--
Indeed, we seem so charmed by flattery that it can work on us even when it appears to have an ulterior motive. Chinese college students who received a preprinted flier from a clothing store saying “We’re contacting you because you’re fashionable and stylish” developed positive attitudes toward the store and were more likely to want to shop there
103
Similarities and compliments cause people to feel that you like them, and once they come to recognize that you like them, they’ll want to do business with you.
That’s because people trust that those who like them will try to steer them correctly. So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely“like them. There’s a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
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Social Proof--
The principle asserts that people think it is appropriate for them to believe, feel, or do something to the extent that others, especially comparable others, are believing, feeling, or doing it. Two components of that perceived appropriateness—validity and feasibility—can drive change
105
Validity--
n one study, after learning that the majority of their peers supported the military’s use of torture to gain information, 80 percent of group members found the practice more acceptable and demonstrated greater support for it in their public pronouncements and, more revealingly, their private opinions. ”
106
In addition to clarifying what’s right morally, social proof reduces uncertainty about what’s right pragmatically.
“Not every time, but the crowd“is usually correct about the wisdom of actions, making the popularity of an activity a stand-in for its soundness. As a result, we typically follow the lead of those around us who are like us. The upshots can be remarkable, creating simple, almost costless solutions to traditional influence challenges.
107
But certain nations have developed cost-effective programs that work by firing up the (nonpolluting) engine of social proof. They initially rate the environmental performance of polluting firms within an industry and then publicize the ratings, so that all companies in that industry can see where they stand relative to their peers.
The overall improvements have been dramatic—upward of 30 percent—almost all of which have come from changes made by the relatively heavy polluters, who recognized how poorly they’d been doing compared with their contemporaries
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Feasibility--
If I inform home owners that by saving energy, they could also save a lot of money, it doesn’t mean they would be able to make it happen. After all, I could reduce my next power bill to zero if I turned off all the electricity in my house and curled up on the floor in the dark for a month;
but that’s not something I’d reasonably do.
A great strength of social-proof information is that it destroys the problem of uncertain achievability. If people learn that many others like them are conserving energy, there is little doubt as to its feasibility. It comes to seem realistic and, therefore, implementable”
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Authority--
For most people, the way to make a message persuasive is to get its content right: to ensure that the communication possesses strong evidence, sound reasoning, good examples, and clear relevance. Although this view (“The merit is the message”) is certainly correct to an extent, some scholars have argued that other parts of the process can be just as important. ”
“In addition, persuasion scientists have pointed to compelling support for yet a third claim: “The messenger is the message.
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Of the many types of messengers—positive, serious, humorous, emphatic, modest, critical—there is one that deserves special attention because of its deep and broad impact on audiences:
the authoritative communicator. When a legitimate expert on a topic speaks, people are usually persuaded.
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But when they received expert advice on any of these decisions (from a distinguished university economist), they not only followed that advice, they did so without thinking about the inherent merits of the options.
Related activity in the evaluating sectors of their brains flatlined. Tellingly, not all brain regions were affected in this way; the sectors associated with understanding another’s intentions were activated by the expert’s advice. The messenger had become the focal message.
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someone who is an authority and can thereby induce assent by way of recognized expertise. Moreover, within this latter category, there is a type—the credible authority—who is particularly productive.
A credible authority possesses the combination of two highly persuasive qualities: expertise and trustworthiness
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Trustworthiness--
If there is one quality we most want to see in those we interact with, it is trustworthiness.”
“And this is the case compared with other highly rated traits such as attractiveness, intelligence, cooperativeness, compassion, and emotional stability. In a persuasion-focused interaction, we want to trust that a communicator is presenting information in an honest and impartial fashion—that is, attempting to depict reality accurately rather than to serve self-interest.
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It turns out to be possible to acquire instant trustworthiness by employing a clever strategy. Rather than succumbing to the tendency to describe all of the most favorable features of an offer or idea up front and reserving mention of any drawbacks until the end of the presentation (or never),
a communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest. The advantage of this sequence is that, with perceived truthfulness already in place, when the major strengths of the case are advanced, the audience is more likely to believe them. After all, they’ve been conveyed by a trustworthy source, one whose honesty has been established (pre-suasively) by a willingness to point not just to positive aspects but also to negative ones.
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in advertising messages, where merchandisers who acknowledge a drawback before highlighting strengths often see large increases in sales.
The tactic can be particularly successful when the audience is already aware of the weakness; thus, when a communicator mentions it, little additional damage is done, as no new information is added—except, crucially, that the communicator is an honest individual. Another enhancement occurs when the speaker uses a transitional word—such as however, or but, or yet—that channels the listeners’ attention away from the weakness and onto a countervailing strength
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And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat,
yet you have never had, nor shall have, any that will love you better.
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the weakness-before-strength tactic works best when the strength doesn’t just add something positive to the list of pros and cons but
instead, challenges the relevance of the weakness. For instance, Elizabeth didn’t seek to embolden the troops at Tilbury by saying there is no one “that will love you better,” as her fighters had to be assured of a stout-hearted commander, not a soft-hearted one. She understood that to maximize its effect, an initially deployed weakness should not only be selected to preestablish the trustworthiness of one’s later claims, but also it should also be selected to be undercut by those claims. Her “weak and feeble” woman’s body became inconsequential for battle“field leadership if, in the minds of her men, it carried “the heart of a king, and a king of England, too.
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Scarcity--
We want more of what we can have less of. For instance, when access to a desired item is restricted in some way, people have been known to go a little crazy for it.
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Although there are several reasons that scarcity drives desire, our aversion to losing something of value is a key factor
After all, loss is the ultimate form of scarcity, rendering the valued item or opportunity unavailable.
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If you act now, you will gain twenty thousand dollars,’ he’ll scream at you and slam down the phone
But if you say, ‘If you don’t act now, you will lose twenty thousand dollars,’ he’ll thank you
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But the scarcity of an item does more than“raise the possibility of loss;
it also raises the judged value of that item.
| In the consumer’s mind, any constraint on access increased the worth of what was being offered
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Consistency--
Normally, we want to be (and to be seen) as consistent with our existing commitments—such as the previous statements we’ve made, stands we’ve taken, and actions we’ve performed.
Therefore communicators who can get us to take a pre-suasive step, even a small one, in the direction of a particular idea or entity will increase our willingness to take a much larger, congruent step when asked.“The desire for consistency will prompt it. This powerful pull toward personal alignment is used in a wide range of influence settings.
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Organizations can raise the probability that an individual will appear at a meeting or event by switching from saying at the end of a reminder phone call,
“We’ll mark you on the list as coming then. Thank you!” to “We’ll mark you on the list as coming then, okay? [Pause for confirmation.] Thank you.”
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Sometimes practitioners can leverage the force of the consistency principle without installing a new commitment at all.
Sometimes all that’s necessary is to remind others of a commitment they’ve made that fits with the practitioners’ goals
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At the first stage, the main goal involves cultivating a positive association, as people are more favorable to a communication if they are favorable“to the communicator.
Two principles of influence, reciprocity and liking, seem particularly appropriate to the task. Giving first (in a meaningful, unexpected, and customized fashion), highlighting genuine commonalities, and offering true compliments establish mutual rapport that facilitates all future dealings.
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At the second stage, reducing uncertainty becomes a priority. A positive relationship with a communicator doesn’t ensure persuasive success. Before people are likely to change, they want to see any decision as wise.
Under these circumstances, the principles of social proof and authority offer the best match. Pointing to evidence that a choice is well regarded by peers or experts significantly increases confidence in its wisdom. But even with a positive association cultivated and uncertainty reduced, a remaining step needs to be taken.
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At this third stage, motivating action is the main objective. That is, a well-liked friend might show me sufficient proof that experts recommend (and almost all my peers believe) that daily exercise is a good thing, but that might not be enough“to get me to do it.
The friend would do well to include in his appeal the principles of consistency and scarcity by reminding me of what I’ve said publicly in the past about the importance of my health and the unique enjoyments I would miss if I lost it. That’s the message that would most likely get me up in the morning and off to the gym.
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Our ability to create change in others is often and importantly grounded in shared personal relationships, which create a pre-suasive context for assent.
It’s a poor trade-off, then, for social influence when we allow present-day forces of separation—distancing societal changes, insulating modern technologies—to take a shared sense of human connection out of our exchanges.
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The relationships that lead people to favor another most effectively are not those that allow them to say, “Oh, that person is like us
They are the ones that allow people to say, “Oh, that person is of us
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It’s about shared identities. It’s about the categories that individuals use to define themselves and their groups, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and family, as well as political and religious affiliations.
A key characteristic of these categories is that their members tend to feel at one with, merged with, the others. They are the categories in which the conduct of one member influ“ences the self-esteem of other members. Put simply, we is the shared me.
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The evidence for overlapping self and other identities within we-based groups is varied and impressive. People often fail to distinguish correctly between themselves and in-group members:
unduly assigning their own characteristics to those others, repeatedly failing to recall which personal traits they had rated previously for in-group members or for themselves, and taking significantly longer to identify traits that differentiated in-group members from themselves—all of which reflects a confusion of self and other. Neuroscientists have offered an explanation for the confusion: mental representations of the concepts of self and of close others emerge from the same brain circuitry. Activating either of those concepts can lead to neuronal cross-excitation of the other concept and the consequent blurring of identities”
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Kinship--
Indeed, the widely accepted concept of “inclusive fitness” within evolutionary biology undermines specifically the distinction between self and related others, asserting that individuals do not so much attempt to ensure their own survival as the survival of copies of their genes. The crucial implication is that the self in self-interest can lie outside of one’s body and inside the skin of another who shares a goodly amount of genetic material.
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people experience unusually high stimulation in the self-reward centers of their brains after aiding a family member;
it’s almost as if by doing so, they are aiding themselves—and this is true even of teenagers!
From an evolutionary perspective, any advantages to one’s kin should be promoted, including relatively small ones.
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But is there any way that individuals with no special genetic connection to us could employ the power of kinship to gain our favor?
One possibility is to use language and imagery pre-suasively to bring the concept of kin to our consciousness. For example, collectives that create a sense of we-ness among their members are characterized by the use of familial images and labels—brothers, sisterhood, forefathers, motherland, heritage—which lead to an increased willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests for the welfare of the group.
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why? because “humans are symbolizing creatures, one international team of researchers found that these imagined “fictive families” produce levels of self-sacrifice associated typically with highly interrelated clans.
In one pair of studies, reminding Spaniards of the family-like nature of their national ties led those feeling “fused” with their fellow citizens to become immediately and dramatically more willing to fight and die for Spain
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He added, “With that warning, I will tell you what I would say to my family today if they asked me about Berkshire’s future
he had claimed that he was going to advise me about them as he would a family member.
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We learned via Marshall McLuhan that the medium can be the message; via the principle of social proof that the multitude can be the message;
via the authority principle that the messenger can be the message; and now via the concept of unity that the merger (of self and other) can be the message.
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Place—
There is another usually reliable cue of heightened genetic commonality. It has less to do with physical similarity than with physical proximity.
It is the perception of being of the same place as another, and its impact on human behavior can be arresting
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Home. Humans as well as animals react to those present in their homes
while growing up as if they are relatives.
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Locality
Because humans evolved as a species from small but stable groupings of genetically related individuals, we have also evolved a tendency to favor the people who, outside the home, exist in close proximity to us
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Region
Even being from the same general geographical region can lead to we-ness. Around the globe, sports team championships stimulate feelings of personal pride in residents of the team’s surrounding zones—as if the residents had won. In the United States alone, research evidence reinforces the general point in additional and varied ways: citizens agreed to participate in a survey to a greater extent if it emanated from a home-state university
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“Because,” he said calmly
“we are Asian, like you.”
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there is another kind of unitizing effect available to those seeking elevated influence. It comes not from being together in the same genealogy or geography
but from acting together synchronously or collaboratively.
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There is something indelibly visceral about such synchronized experiences that marks them as
primitive and central to the human condition.
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When people act in unitary ways, they become unitized.
The resultant feeling of group solidarity serves societies’ interests well, producing degrees of loyalty and self-sacrifice associated usually with much smaller family units. Thus, human societies, even ancient ones, seem to have discovered group bonding “technologies” involving coordinated responding. The effects are similar to those of kinship: feelings of we-ness, merger, and the confusion of self and other.
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If acting together—in motoric, vocal, or sensory ways—can serve as a surrogate for being together in a kinship unit, we ought to see similar consequences from both forms of togetherness.
And we do. Two of these consequences are especially important for individuals seeking to become more influential: enhanced liking and greater support from others, both of which can be accomplished pre-suasively
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When people act in unison, they not only see themselves as more alike, they evaluate one another more positively afterward.
Their elevated likeness turns into elevated liking. The actions can involve finger tapping in a laboratory, smiling in a conversation
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Isn’t there some generally applicable mechanism that social entities could deploy to bring about such synchrony to influence members toward group goals?
There is. It’s music. And fortunately for individual communicators, it also can be co-opted to move others toward the goals of a single agent of influence.
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There is a good explanation for why the presence of music stretches both from the start of human recorded history and across the breadth of human societies.
Because of a unique collection of detectible regularities (rhythm, meter, intensity, pulse, and time), music possesses rare synchronizing power. Listeners can easily become aligned with one another along motoric, sensory, vocal, and emotional dimensions—a state of affairs that leads to familiar markers of unity such as self-other merging, social cohesion, and supportive conduct
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Research suggests that even merely saying “I feel this is the one for you” will be more successful.
But if you are considering the purchase primarily on rational grounds (fuel economy and trade-in value), “I think this is the one for you” would be more likely to close the sale.
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Music’s influence is of the System 1 variety. In their sensory and visceral responses, people sing, swing, snake, and sway in rhythmic alignment with it—and, if together, with each other
Rarely do they think analytically while music is prominent in consciousness. Under music’s influence, the deliberative, rational route to knowing becomes difficult to access and, hence, largely unavailable.
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For anyone interested in maximizing persuasive success, the critical takeaway from this section should not be merely that music is allied with System 1 responding or that people act imprudently when channeled to that kind of responding.
The far larger lesson involves the importance of matching the System 1 versus 2 character of a persuasive communication with the System 1 versus 2 mind-set of its intended audience.
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First, the items escalate in personal disclosure. Thus, when responding, participants increasingly open them“selves up to one another in a trusting way representative of tightly bonded pairs.
Second, and in keeping with the overarching theme of this chapter, participants do so by acting together—that is, in a coordinated, back-and-forth fashion, making the interaction inherently and continuously synchronous
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Co-Creation
It’s a common human occurrence. For example, in what researchers have termed the Ikea effect, people who have built items themselves come to see “their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts’ creations.
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managers led to believe that they’d had a large role in developing the end product (an ad for a new wristwatch) rated the ad 50 percent more favorably than did managers led to believe they’d had little developmental involvement—
even though the final ad they saw was identical in all cases. In addition, we found that the managers with the greatest perceived involvement rated themselves more“responsible for the ad’s quality in terms of their much greater perceived managerial control over their employee, which I’d also expected.
But I didn’t expect a third finding at all. The more the managers attributed the success of the project to themselves, the more they also attributed it to the ability of their employee
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Companies struggle to get consumers to feel bonded with and therefore loyal to their brands; it’s a battle they’ve been winning by inviting current and prospective customers to co-create with them novel or updated products and services, most often by providing the company with information as to desirable features.
However, within such marketing partnerships, consumer input must be framed as advice to the company, not as opinions about or expectations for the company.
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Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind,
which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s
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they are exceedingly well captured by a particular socially promotive feeling in the situation: the (highly beneficial for you) state of togetherness.
The novelist Saul Bellow once observed, “When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
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Phrased in terms of a caution to any leader responsible for shaping the ethical climate of an organization, it is as follows:
those who cheat for you will cheat against you. If you encourage the first form of deceit, you will get the second, which will cost you dearly in the bargain
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Honesty ratings by customers and clients of employees they interact with should be part of the employees’ incentive“structures. In addition, the ethical reputation of the company as a whole should be measured and included in assessments of yearly performance.
Finally, ratings by employees of the firm’s ethical orientation should be a component of senior management’s (and especially the CEO’s) compensation package. The effect of these steps would not only incentivize ethical conduct but also bring continuing, heightened attention to ethical standards.
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behavioral scientists have offered a straightforward answer to the question of how to make a person’s initially affirmative response persist:
arrange for the individual to make a commit“ment to that response, usually in the form of an active step.
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The implication for effective pre-suasion is plain: pre-suasive openers can produce dramatic, immediate shifts in people, but to turn those shifts into durable changes, it’s necessary to get
commitments to them, usually in the form of related behavior. Not all commitments are equal in this respect, however. The most effective commitments reach into the future by incorporating behaviors that affect one’s personal identity. They do so by ensuring that the commitment is undertaken in an active, effortful, and voluntary fashion, because each of these elements communicates deep personal preferences.
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if you want to write in a way that connects with a particular audience, perhaps as you are preparing a report or presentation, surround yourself with cues linked to the group:
for instance, typical audience members’ faces. If you want to approach a task while possessing a strong achievement orientation, perhaps at work, give yourself contact with images of success, striving, and accomplishment, such as a runner winning a race. If you want to approach a different task while possessing an analytical orientation, perhaps when figuring a budget, give yourself access to images of contemplation, thoughtfulness, and examination: for example, Rodin’s The thinker.
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In large measure, who we are with“respect to any choice is where we are, attentionally, in the moment before the choice.
We can be channeled to that privileged moment by (choice-relevant) cues we haphazardly bump into in our daily settings; or, of greater concern, by the cues a knowing communicator has tactically placed there; or, to much better and lasting effect, by the cues we have stored in those recurring sites to send us consistently in desired directions. In each case, the made moment is pre-suasive. Whether we are wary of the underlying process, attracted to its potential, or both, we’d be right to acknowledge its considerable power and wise to understand its inner workings
