Why You Should Always Ask the Guy in the Blue Jacket for Help

February 02, 2016 by Austin Fabel in Weapons of Influence, Influence & Communication

Based on the bestselling book “Influence” by Robert Cialdini, this is the third week of our six-part "Weapons of Influence" miniseries within "The Science of Success". If you loved the book, this will be a great refresher on the core concepts. And if you haven't yet read it, some of this stuff is gonna blow your mind.

So what are the 6 weapons of influence?

Each one of these weapons can be a powerful tool in your toolbelt - and something to watch out for when others try to wield them against you. Alone, each of them can create crazy outcomes in our lives and in social situations - but together - or combined - they can create huge impacts.

Today’s episode covers the third weapon of influence - Social Proof. In it, we'll cover:

How social proof can over-ride people’s will to liveWhy news coverage makes mass shootings more likelyWhy TV shows use canned laughterHow someone could be stabbed in front of 38 people without any helpHow you should ask for help in a dangerous situation

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today you’re going to learn why news coverage makes school shootings more likely by a factor of more than 30 times, which is pretty insane; how someone can get stabbed to death in front of 38 people and no one does a thing; and why you should always point at the dude in the blue jacket and tell him to help you. If you missed last week’s episode about weapons of influence, don’t worry. I explain the series now, but you should absolutely go back and listen to it. 
For those of you who were here last week this is going to serve as a quick refresher on the topic. This is the third episode in a six part series based on the bestselling book Influence by Robert Cialdini. If you love that book you’re going to find this to be a great refresher on the core concepts, and if you haven’t read it yet some of this stuff is going to blow your mind.
So, what are the six weapons of influence? “Reciprocation”, which we talked about two weeks ago. Highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode, as well as the second one, which is “consistency and commitment tendency”, which we talked about last week; “social proof”, which we’re going to talk about today; “liking”, “authority”, and “scarcity”. Each one of these weapons can be a powerful tool in your tool belt, and something to watch out for when others try to wield them against you. Alone each of them can create crazy outcomes in our lives, and in social situations, but together or combined, they can result in huge impacts.
In episode one we talked about the biological limits of the human mind. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet you should really go back and check it out after you listen to the Weapons of Influence series, or even just after you listen to this particular podcast, because it explains how these automatic click-whirr responses get triggered when cognitive biases, like social proof, come into play. It explains how some of these evolutionarily beneficial traits and behaviors can sometimes result in crazy, ridiculous outcomes. 
In episode one we talked about the example of the mother turkey taking care of a polecat, which is one of those examples, and in the last two episodes of Weapons of Influence we’ve gone through dozens of research studies and examples that show how tiny little tweaks in behavior can result in substantial differences in outcome solely based on activating, or triggering, cognitive biases. 
The weapons of Influence series- and this is again the third part; we’re going to talk about “social proof”- is really going to dig into the meat of some of the most powerful cognitive biases that can impact your mind, and we’re going to learn how these can be used to manipulate you if you don’t know how to defend against them, and how they can be part of your arsenal if you learn how to harness them. Here’s how Cialdini describes the impact of these weapons of influence: Quote, “Each principle has the ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic mindless compliance from people that is a willingness to say ‘yes’ without thinking first.” 
Today we’re going to talk about “social proof”. It’s so powerful it can literally override someone’s desire to live. Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t know what was going on? Maybe in a foreign country, or a new city, and you get caught up in something and think, “What am I supposed to do next? What am I supposed to do here?” Do you ever have that tendency to look around and see what other people are doing? They probably know what to do so you follow them; get in line; etcetera; right? That’s “social proof” and sometimes social proof can be totally conscious. If you’re in a foreign country and you go somewhere and you don’t know where to stand; you don’t know where to line up; you don’t know how to eat your food; you don’t know what the customs are; you look around and you figure out, “How’s everybody else doing it?” and you consciously imitate them. That’s a conscious example of social proof, but there are also a number of ways social proof can manifest itself totally subconsciously. Like I said at the top, “It is an incredibly powerful phenomenon.” Literally in many cases can override the desire to live. Here’s how Cialdini describes it in Influence: “This principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”
This week is going to get a bit darker than some of the other weeks as we look at some of the crazy things social proof can motivate people to do. As I said before, “It’s literally so powerful that it some instances it can result in people committing suicide as a result of social proof.”
Here’s another quote from Influence: “Work like Phillips helps us appreciate the awesome influence of the behavior of similar others. Once the enormity of that force is recognized it becomes possible to understand one of the most spectacular acts of compliance of our time, the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. If you remember- if you’ve ever heard of Jonestown- it’s the instance where a huge cult of people all drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and killed themselves, and that’s something the we will talk about in a minute, but something that is a striking and haunting example of the ridiculous power of social proof.
One of the most simple experiments, and it’s just something -it’s a little bit more uplifting than some of these other ones- but I call it “The Dog Terror Experiment”, and it was conducted in 1967 on nursery school age children. They were chosen because specifically they were terrified of dogs, and the experiment was really basic. Essentially they had these children who were really scared of dogs watch a little boy play with the dog, and have a lot of fun, and be happy for 20 minutes a day. These children- the result of just watching that video produced such as drastic change in these children that were terrified of dogs that after only four days 67% of them were willing to climb in a playpen and play with a dog, with being literally terrified of dogs four days earlier. That shows you how someone who’s very similar to you- and similarity is one of the key drivers of social proof- people who are really similar to you, just watching a video of them doing something can subconsciously change your perception. It can overcome phobias; that’s how powerful social proof is as a phenomenon.
The next instance of social proof, and this isn’t necessarily an experiment, but it demonstrates a concept which is called “pluralistic ignorance”. It’s something that’s pretty shocking, but you may have heard of it if you’ve dug in or done much reading about psychology, but it’s the infamous incident of Kitty Genovese. I’ll read you this quote from Influence: “For more than half an hour 38 respectable law abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices, and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights, interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault. One witness called after the woman was dead. That was two weeks ago today, but assistant chief inspector Fredrick M. Wilson, in charge of the borough’s detective activities and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked. He can give a matter-of-fact resuscitation of many murders, but the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him. Not because it is a murder, but because quote unquote: ‘Good people failed to call the police,’ end quote. How does something like that happen? How does somebody get stabbed in front of 38 people and nobody does anything to stop it? Again, it’s a phenomenon called “pluralistic ignorance”, and it’s a manifestation of social proof. What happened in the Kitty Genovese stabbing, and a lot of psychologist have talked about this; have researched this; have written about it; but essentially it’s the idea- and I’m sure everybody has thought this or felt this at some time: If you’ve ever driven by somebody with their car broken down on the side of the road and you think, “Oh, somebody’s going to help them,” right? That’s what pluralistic ignorance is. It’s the idea that every one of those 38 people saw this happening, heard this happening, and they thought to themselves, “Somebodies got to be calling the police. Somebodies got to be doing something. Somebody else is helping, so I don’t need to help,” or “I don’t want to help,” or “I don’t want to be another phone call into the police,” or whatever. The reality is because every single person felt that way, and thought the same thing, no one did anything and she was murdered in front of 38 bystanders, all of them which could have potentially saved her life. That’s pretty shocking and it shows you how social proof can have a huge impact.
Another similar experiment was conducted in Toronto in 1971. They had a single bystander- they created situations where there was a single bystander, and then they sort of created some kind of faux “emergency situation”; somebody collapsed on the ground, or something like that. In the instances where there was a single bystander, 90% of the time the single person helped the person who was having some kind of an emergency situation. In the instance where they then planted two passive bystanders to simply sit there and watch as the emergency situation- quote unquote- unfolded. In that instance only 16% of people helped the person who looked like they were having the emergency situation. So, if it happened to be one person walking down the street, and this person collapses on the ground and is writhing around, 90% of the time that person is going to help the person who’s on the ground struggling, but if you just plant two people standing there and watching, only 16% of people will then help the person who’s on the ground. And again, that’s “pluralistic ignorance” manifesting itself. It’s an example of how social proof can shape our behavior even if we’re not cognizant of it; even at a subconscious level.
The next example of social proof is something called the “Werther effect”, or as I like to call it, “Why I don’t like the evening news.” The Werther effect is this fascinating phenomenon where they discovered that every time a suicide is published in the news, there’s a massive uptick in suicides, and related suicides, and suicides that are very similar to that particular kind. I’ll quote here from Influence: “The Werther effect from examining the suicide statistics of the United States between 1947 and 1968 found that within two months of every front page suicide story, an average of 58 more people than usual killed themselves. In a sense, each suicide story killed 58 people who otherwise would have gone on living.” That’s pretty wild; it’s pretty fascinating. Again, they did a statistical analysis over a 20 year period where they controlled for seasonality; they controlled for age; they controlled for all these different factors; and they basically found that because of the idea that these people- again it’s about similar others; people who are like you- there’s this subconscious tendency that as soon as you see somebody who is like you doing something, it suddenly kind of enters the realm of “acceptable behavior”, or behavior that’s okay for you to do. Or maybe it’s like, “Oh, well somebody just like me did this. Maybe it’s something that I should be thinking about. Maybe it’s something that I should be doing.” Sometimes that can be good; sometimes that can be bad; sometimes it can be really, really bad. It blows my mind, but every time they publish a front page story about a suicide 58 more people, then otherwise would have, kill themselves. 
There’s actually a related inference from the Werther effect, and I’m sure you might be thinking about it now, but I’ll read this quote from Influence and then we’ll talk about it: “Back in the 1970s our attention was brought to the phenomenon in the form of airplane hijackings, which seemed to spread like airborne viruses. In the 1980s our focus shifted to product tamperings, such as the famous case of Tylenol capsules injected with cyanide, and Gerber baby food products laced with glass. According to FBI forensics experts, each nationally publicized incident of this sort spawned an average of 30 more incidents. More recently we’ve been jolted by the specter of contagious mass murders occurring first in the workplace setting, and then, incredibly, in the schools of our nation. I don’t think that could be timely, or more relevant, today. When you think about the fact that mass shootings have become something that everybody’s talking about now in the United States, and it’s amazing, but when you think about it: every time we publish, and blow up, and talk nonstop incessantly about these things, FBI research and statistical analysis has shown every time one of these events gets publicized it creates 30 copycat events. That’s mind-blowing to me, and it’s one of the reasons that- and maybe we’ll talk about this in a future podcast- but I really… I don’t read the local news; I don’t read the evening news because it’s filled with so much negativity, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now. 
So, what are the practical takeaways that we can learn about social proof, and this incredibly powerful phenomenon, and how can we take these lessons and apply them to our daily lives? Remember “social proof” is the conclusion that people often use other’s behavior in order to decide how they should handle situations. Especially when dealing with uncertainty. To quote Cialdini again: “The principle of social proof states that one important means that people use to decide what to believe, or how to act in a situation, is to look at what other people are believing or doing there. Powerful imitative effects have been found among both children and adults, and in such diverse activities as: purchase decisions, charity donations, and phobia remission. The principle of social proof can be used to stimulate a person’s compliance with a request by informing the person that many other individuals- the more the better- are, or have been, complying with it.” 
Cialdini also nails the two most important implications of social proof in this quote: “Social proof is most influential under two conditions. The first is “uncertainty”. When people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more likely to attend to the actions of others and to accept those actions as correct. In ambiguous situations, for instance, the decisions of bystanders to help are much more influenced by the actions of other bystanders then when the situation is a clear-cut emergency. The second condition under which social proof is most influential is “similarity”. People are more inclined to follow the lead of similar others.” 
So, how do people make use of that? How do you see that manifesting itself in everyday life? Obviously there’s a lot of those negative consequences. One of the smaller ways that you see it, or one of the ways that people apply it in a sales context, is through the use of testimonials, or through the use of: “50 million households can’t be wrong that they’re buying XYZ,” right? Or, when you see your friends doing something and you want to do it as well, right? Trends- in a lot of ways- are kind of manifestations of social proof, but another way that you can kind of combat some of the implications of pluralistic ignorance, which is the Kitty Genovese phenomenon that we talked about before, is by using specific call-outs. Here is what Cialdini says, “Point directly at that person and no one else: ‘you sir in the blue jacket, I need help. Call an ambulance.’ With that one utterance you would dispel all the uncertainties that might prevent or delay help. With that one statement you will have put the man in the blue jacket in the role of the rescuer.” So, if you’re ever in a situation, and it’s an emergency and you’re being robbed, or being- you’re choking, or have some kind of medical situation and there’s a group of people, single out an individual person. Point to them and ask them specifically to help you. That eliminates the pluralistic ignorance; that eliminates social proof from kind of combating people from potentially being able to help you.
Another way that you can potentially use social proof to your advantage is by figuring how to arrange group conditions. If you’re in a management context- or something like that- to leverage social proof for your benefit. You want to be able to kind of demonstrate: “Hey, here’s how XYZ is doing it. Here’s how our competitors are doing it. Here’s how similar others are doing it,” right? Because similarity is one of the most powerful drivers of social proof, but there’s a lot of applications of social proof in day-to-day life and sales testimonials; all kinds of different things. So, it’s something that has these huge social implications. If you think about school shootings; you think about mass suicide- all this type of stuff- but it also has a lot of implications in our day-to-day life, and it’s something that- it’s really, really hard bias to combat. One of the ways you can defend yourself against it is kind of cultivating that ability to stop and say, “Hey, why am I doing this?” If you catch yourself saying, “Well, everybody’s doing this so I should think about doing it too,” that’s a red flag, and that’s something that you should really think about: “Hey, hold on. Pump the brakes. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that. Maybe I should think this through,” and more logically really come to a conclusion then just be influenced by similar others, and kind of fall prey to social proof.

The Power and Danger of a Seemingly Innocuous Commitment

January 26, 2016 by Austin Fabel in Weapons of Influence, Influence & Communication

Based on the bestselling book Influence by Robert Cialdini, this is the second part of a new six-part miniseries within "The Science of Success" called "Weapons of Influence". If you loved Cialdini's book, this will be a great refresher on the core concepts in it. And if you haven't yet read it, some of this stuff is gonna blow your mind.

So what are the 6 weapons of influence?

Each one of these weapons can be a powerful tool in your belt - and something to watch out for when others try to wield them against you. Alone, each of them can create crazy outcomes in our lives and in social situations, but together they can have huge impacts.

Today’s episode covers the second weapon of influence: Consistency & Commitment Bias. We'll cover:

The powerful application of the “foot in the door” techniqueWhy hard won commitments are the most powerfulThe dangers of seemingly innocuous commitmentsHow commitment builds its own internal justificationsHow you can defend yourself against falling prey to commitment bias

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, you’re going to learn why you should always ask that stranger to guard your bag at the airport; how a simple phone call increased donations to the American Cancer Society by 700%; how people get slowly roped into huge commitments without realizing in, and much more.

If you missed last week’s episode about weapons of influence don’t worry, I’ll explain the series now, but you should go back and listen to it. For those of you who tuned in last week, here’s a quick refresher on the Weapons of Influence series. This is the second of a six part series based on the bestselling book, Influence, by Robert Cialdini. If you loved that book this will be a great refresher on the core concepts, and if you haven’t read it yet some of this stuff is going to blow your mind.

So, what are the six weapons of influence? Reciprocation, which we talked about last week, and I highly recommend after you listen to this, go back and listen to Reciprocation so that you can get all six of the weapons; consistency and commitment, that’s what we’re going to talk about this week; social proof, that’s next week’s episode; liking, authority, and scarcity. Each one of these weapons can be a powerful tool in your tool belt, and something to watch out for when others try to wield them against you. Alone each of them can create crazy outcomes in our lives, and in social situations, but together or combined, they can result in huge impacts.

If you remember in episode one we talked about the biological limits of the human mind. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet you should absolutely go back and check it out. In that episode we talked about the automatic click whirr response that gets triggered when a cognitive bias comes into play; how evolutionarily beneficial traits and behaviors can sometimes manifest themselves in ridiculous outcomes, like the example of a mother turkey taking care of a polecat, which happens to be its natural predator and enemy. These weapons of influence are exactly those kinds of cognitive biases. We’re really going to get into the meat of some of the most powerful cognitive biases that cause human decision making to go haywire. These weapons of influence can be used to manipulate you if you don’t know how to defend against them, and can be part of your arsenal if you learn how to harness them. As Cialdini described weapons of influence in his book, Influence: Each principle has the ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic mindless compliance from people. That is a willingness to say ‘yes’ without thinking first. 

The topic today is weapon of influence number two, consistency and commitment. I will start with an overview of what consistency and commitment bias is, then we will dive into a number of ridiculous research studies that demonstrate this behavior in the real world, and lastly we will look at some of the practical implications of how you can use this in real life.

So, what is consistency and commitment tendency? Here’s how Cialdini puts it: “It is quite simply our desire to be, and to appear, consistent with what we have already done. Once we make a choice, or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.” He continues later in the book, “To understand why consistency is so powerful a motive we should recognize that in most circumstances consistency is valued and adaptive.” Remember this all comes back to the biological limits of the mind. The traits and characteristics that were super valuable from an evolutionary standpoint- that’s why he says it’s adaptive- can often go haywire when they collide with modern day society. Okay, so what? People like to be consistent. Why does that matter? Well, that simple bias toward staying consistent with what you have said, and more importantly with what you have done, because research shows that actions commit us more strongly at a subconscious level. 

Here’s another quote from Cialdini about the importance of the commitment and consistency bias: “Psychologists have long recognized a desire in most people to be and look consistent within their words, beliefs, attitudes, and deeds. This tendency for consistency is fed from three sources. First, good personal consistency is highly valued by society. Second, aside from its effect on public image, generally consistent conduct provides a beneficial approach to daily life. Third, a consistent orientation affords a valuable shortcut through the complexity of modern existence. By being consistent with earlier decisions one reduces the need to process all the relevant information in future similar situations. Instead, one merely needs to recall the earlier decision, and to respond consistently with it. Within the realm of compliance, securing an initial commitment is the key. After making a commitment that is taking a stand or position, people are more willing to agree to requests that are in keeping with their prior commitment.”

Now let’s dig into the research. The first experiment that we’re going to talk about today is what I call ‘the blanket experiment’. This experiment was done in 1975. The control scenario: They had somebody sitting outside with their stuff, and they simply got up, walked away, and then they had a sort of staged theft where someone would come in, steal their bag, and run off. They did this 20 separate times and on four occasions somebody stepped in and did something to stop, or prevent, or say something: “Hey, what are you doing? Why are you taking that person’s bag?” whatever. Then they did the experiment a little bit differently with a slight twist, and the results were dramatically different. In this instance they have the same person come by, set down their bag, and then walk off, with the exception that they then asked somebody nearby to, “Watch my things”. That was the only difference. Three words, “Watch my things.” In that instance, 19 out of the 20 instances, that person who was asked became as they say in Influence, “virtual vigilantes running after and stopping the thief, demanding an explanation, often restraining the thief physically, or snatching the object back.” That’s pretty amazing when you think about that. Simply by committing a total stranger to a simple sentence with a three word question, or a three word statement: “Watch my things,” they went from 4 out of 20 people stopping them from taking the bag, to 19 out of 20 people stopping them, and becoming, as they say, “virtual vigilantes”. That’s what happens when you get people to commit to something very simple. They stay locked in and become extremely consistent. They want to stay consistent with their behavior. So, that little toehold, that little question, causes them to suddenly be chasing after a thief, which is something that could be incredibly dangerous, right? 

This next experiment is also pretty fascinating, and the results are astounding. This took place in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. A social psychologist named Steven J. Sherman conducted this experiment. He had the control group, where he simply called people and asked them: “Hey, would you be willing to spend three hours volunteering for the American Cancer Society going door-to-door collecting money?” He then had the experiment group where they called people and asked them ahead of time, “As a hypothetical, would you be willing to spend three hours volunteering for the American Cancer Society?” Not wanting to be rude or uncharitable, people said, you know in thinking about, “Yeah, of cour- yeah, I’d be willing to do that. Yeah, hypothetically.” Then they had that group… they had them call again three days later and ask those people, “Hey, can you volunteer at such and such date, and can you actually go door-to-door and canvas for three hours for the American Cancer Society?” They had a 700% increase in volunteers in their success rate when they did that. That’s an astounding result if you think about it. A 700% increase simply by calling three days ahead of time and saying, “Hypothetically, would you be willing to volunteer?” and people said, “ Yeah, of course. I love volunteering. I love helping people fighting cancer. Yeah, I’d, in theory, I’d volunteer,” right? That little tiny subconscious commitment days later resulted in a 700% increase in volunteers. It’s fascinating. 

Another experiment, which I call the ‘yard sign experiment’, was conducted in 1966 by Jonathan Friedman and Scott Frasier, and I’ll quote here from Cialdini’s Influence: “A researcher posing as a volunteer worker had gone door-to-door in a residential California neighborhood making a preposterous request of homeowners. The homeowners were asked to allow a public service billboard to be installed on their front lawns. To get an idea of the way this sign would look they were shown a photograph depicting an attractive house, the view of which was almost completely obscured by a very large, poorly lettered sign reading, ‘Drive Carefully’.” In that instance only 17% of the people said yes to this request. This is where it gets really interesting. They conducted another study. They went door-to-door, same thing, asked people to display a ridiculously oversized drive carefully sign, but in this instance 76% of the people said yes. From 17% to 76%. What was the change? Two weeks before that a door-to-door canvasser had come by and asked those homeowners to display a small three inch sign on their driveway that said, “Be a safe driver.” That tiny little commitment two weeks beforehand resulted in 76% of the people being willing to display a gaudy, ridiculous, oversized billboard on their front yard that said, “Drive Carefully,” whereas only 17% of the people who were asked to do that without a prior commitment did it. That shows you how powerful it can be when you commit something, when you commit to something, even the smallest fashion. You kind of escalate into it, and subconsciously want to be consistent with what you’ve done, and so you get roped into it, or sucked into it, and all of a sudden you don’t even realize that it’s a completely subconscious process, and suddenly you’ve got a giant billboard on your front yard.

Interestingly, Friedman and Frasier conducted a similar experiment where they had someone go door-to-door and get people to sign a petition about state beautification. They then came by a couple weeks later and asked again, “Would you like to put a giant ‘Drive Carefully’ sign in your yard?” and of those people, nearly half of them said yes. So, it wasn’t quite the 76% jump. It was from 17% to 50%, or so, which is still a pretty astounding leap. That’s still almost a tripling of the compliance rate. What caused people to do that? They speculated that because people somehow now viewed themselves as civic-minded citizens, because they had signed a simple petition weeks earlier about state beautification, something totally unrelated, they now were willing to put that billboard in their driveway. As Cialdini says in Influence, “What the Friedman and Frasier findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests because that agreement can influence our self-concepts,” and that’s why this is such an insidious tendency. In this instance, whether it’s simply agreeing to a hypothetical, “Hey, yeah I’d be willing to volunteer my time, in theory,” or signing a petition, “Yeah, I’m in favor of state beautification,” or putting a tiny little sign in your yard, again and again these simple, innocuous commitments can result in an escalation that you get sort of drawn in, and sucked in, and before you know it you’re doing all kinds of stuff because you’ve built up this image in your mind that you’re trying subconsciously to stay consistent to, and that’s why it’s such a powerful cognitive bias.

So, those are a couple examples of the research and how different research studies have demonstrated this tendency, and it’s been demonstrated many more times than that, but those are just three examples that I thought you would find really interesting. Now, I want to talk about: What are some of the practical implications of the consistency and the commitment bias? Here’s a great quote from Cialdini that sums it up very nicely: “It appears that the commitments most affective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior are those that are active, public, and effortful.” So, let’s dig into a couple of these practical implications. The first is the concept of the foot in the door technique, and that’s what they demonstrated with the yard sign experiments, is that a lot of times if you can land, or if you can get, just this innocuous initial concession you can kind of build on that, and suddenly get people to agree to things that internally to them seem very consistent with their self-image, but started with this tiny little commitment. An example of that in negotiations is to give somebody a reputation to live up to. Here’s a quote from Influence talking about Anwar Sadat: “One of the best at it was former President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. Before international negotiations began, Sadat would assure his bargaining opponents that they, and the citizens of their country, were widely known for their cooperativeness and fairness. With this kind of flattery he would not only create positive feelings, but he also connected his opponent’s identities to a course of action that served his goals.” Remember public commitments are more powerful. That’s why if you put something in your yard, or you state publicly a position, it’s really hard to back down from that. It’s really hard to change course from that, and the research shows again and again that the more publicly committed to something you are, the more it’s kind of engrained in your identity. Hard one conclusions are the most valued, as Cialdini says, and he actually uses the example in the book Influence of fraternity hazing, right? The more you suffer and toil away for a conclusion, or a piece of your identity, the more you want to stay committed to that. The more it means something to you, and the harder it is to see that blind spot in your mind, to see that bias that’s shading your vision, or your actions.

Another really important take away is that the most effective commitments are focused internally, not externally. There’s an experiment that is fascinating, and a little, in some ways, shows how twisted psychologists can be, but I call it the ‘toy robot experiment’, and in this experiment they had 22 kids come and visit this psychologist, and they would leave the kids alone in a room with a number of different toys. In the first example the psychologist said to the child, before they left them alone and then went around to watch them through a one way mirror, “It is wrong to play with the robot. If you play with the robot, I’ll be very angry and will have to do something about it.” So, they had five or six toys in there. All of them were pretty lame, except the robot was like, totally awesome, so the kids had this natural incentive to go play with the robot, or it was like, a rubber duck and a bunch of other junk toys, but in that survey, only 1 out of the 22 children played with the robot. 

They did another study where the psychologist simply said, “It is wrong to play with the robot.” That’s it, they didn’t have any threat. They didn’t say they were going to be angry, whatever. In that research, in that study, again, 1 out of the 22 children played with the robot initially, but this is where it gets really fascinating. In the scenario where they threatened the students, where they had this external punishment: “I’m going to be angry and do something about it,” six weeks later they had the kids come back, put them in the same room, didn’t say anything to them, and let them play with whatever. The kids who had been threatened, 77% of those children, went back and played with the robot when they were in the room six weeks later. That’s because the external threat didn’t matter as much then. They weren’t as committed to it. They didn’t feel the need to stay as consistent with it. The kids who had been told only, “It is wrong to play with the robot,” no threat, more of an internal motivation, something they internalized, only 33% of those children played with the robot. So, less than half of the kids played with the robot in that scenario, and that demonstrates how much more powerful a commitment is if it’s internalized. Whether somebody’s trying to get you to internalize a commitment, or you can get someone to internalize a commitment, it shows you that to be super powerful, if these commitments are internalized, they’re- in this instance- more than doubly effective.

Another practical application is what’s called the ‘low ball technique’. That’s what Cialdini refers to it as, and I’ll read this quote from Influence, “When calling one sample of students, we immediately informed them of the 7 AM starting time. Only 27% were willing to participate.” He’s talking here about an activity that they wanted the students to participate in. The quote continues: “However, when calling a second sample of students we threw a low ball. We first asked if they wanted to participate in a study of thinking process, and after they responded, 56% of them positively; we mentioned the 7 AM start time and gave them a chance to change their minds. None of them did. What’s more, in keeping with their commitment to participate, 95% of the low balled students came to the psychology building at 7 AM, as promised.” So, that’s kind of a strategy where you get somebody to commit to something and then you layer in the bad news. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that at one time or another in our life, where someone had done that to us. That’s an example of the commitment and consistency tendency, right? If people knew off the bat that it was a 7 AM start time, only 24% of them were willing to participate, but as soon as they committed, and 56% of them committed on the front end; then after they had that commitment, and were psychologically anchored into that outcome, then when the bad news starts rolling in, they were okay and they accepted it, and they stuck with it. So, just flipping the wording, flipping that situation around, which seems so trivial, and something that you would never think about, can more than double the impact of what you’re saying or what you’re doing.

One of the other really fascinating takeaways that Cialdini talks about, and why commitment is such an insidious weapon of influence, is because commitment, in many cases, can be self-perpetuating. What he says is that commitments build their own legs. He likens it to a table analogy, and basically the table starts out with sort of a single leg, which is the commitment that you agree to, or you get someone to agree to, but then it starts building all of these other justifications around it, and people actually end up building their own subconscious justifications for that commitment that have nothing to do with what they initially committed to. The yard sign example is a perfect example that demonstrates that. These people started to think of themselves as an advocate for safe driving, or a civic minded citizen, or whatever, and all of these other justifications start being built, where the original justification doesn’t even matter and can be taken away, and people will still behave that way. That finding is found again and again in the research that you can actually literally take away the justification that people had for changing their behavior, or committing to a certain course of action, and in many cases their commitment stays just as strong, or sometimes even gets stronger once they’ve been committed down that path.

So, how do you defend against the commitment and consistency tendency? Here’s how Cialdini handles it: “I listen to my stomach these days, and I have discovered a way to handle people who try to use the consistency principle on me. I just tell them exactly what they are doing. This tactic has become the perfect counterattack for me. When my stomach tells me I would be a sucker to comply with the request, merely because doing so would be consistent with some prior commitment I was tricked into, I relay that message to the requester. I don’t try to deny the importance of consistency, I just point out the absurdity of foolish consistency. Whether in response the requester shrinks away guilty, or retreats in bewilderment, I am content. I have won and an exploiter has lost.” That shows us how important consistency and commitment tendency is, and how it can have huge results in your life, and how these little, simple commitments, something you would of never thought of or never even thought about, can actually change your self-image and your self-perception, and become these little seeds that get planted in your mind, and almost become self-perpetuating. Especially, think about the toy robot example, if it changes your identity, and changes your self-image or self-perception, it can shift the future direction of your behavior even if you completely forget about the original source of the commitment.

That’s it for today’s episode.

How To Triple the Rate of Your Success With One Simple Question

January 19, 2016 by Austin Fabel in Weapons of Influence, Influence & Communication

This week we are kicking off a new miniseries within "The Science of Success" called "Weapons of Influence". This is the first in a six-part series based on the best selling book Influence by Robert Cialdini. If you loved that book, this will be a great refresher on the core concepts. And if you haven't yet read it, some of this stuff is gonna blow your mind.

So what are the 6 weapons of influence?

Today’s episode covers the first weapon of influence - Reciprocation Bias - and you'll learn:

How reciprocation creates unequal exchanges, and in one experiment by a factor of more than 500%
Why reciprocation is powerful regardless of how much someone likes you
How giving away flowers help build a powerful religious movement
What made the “rejection and retreat” technique triple the success of an experiment
How to defend against reciprocation bias from negatively impacting your decisions

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, you’re going to learn how adding one simple question can triple the rate of your success, how a church used flowers to exponentially multiply their fundraising campaign, how one free drink generated over a 500% return, and much more.

I’m super excited this week because we are kicking off a new miniseries within Science of Success called Weapons of Influence. This is the first in a six part series based on the bestselling book, Influence, by Robert Cialdini. If you loved that book, this will be a great refresher on the core concepts, and if you haven’t read it yet, some of this stuff is going to blow your mind.

So, what are the six weapons of influence? The first is reciprocation; the second, consistency and commitment; the third, social proof; the fourth, liking; the fifth, authority; and the sixth is scarcity. Each one of these weapons can be a powerful tool in your tool belt, and something to watch out for when others try to wield them against you. Alone, each of them can create crazy outcomes in our lives and in social situations, but together, or combined, they can result in huge impacts. Something billionaire business partner of Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, once described as ‘Lollapalooza Effects’. 

Remember in episode one when we talked about the biological limits of the human mind? If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, you should absolutely go back and check it out after you listen to this one. In that episode we talked about the automatic click whirr response that gets triggered when a cognitive bias comes into play. We talked about how evolutionarily beneficial traits and behaviors can sometimes manifest themselves in ridiculous outcomes, like the example of the mother turkey taking care of a polecat, which happens to be its natural predator and enemy. These weapons of influence are exactly those kinds of cognitive biases. Now, we are really going to get into the meat of some of the most powerful cognitive biases that cause human decision making to go haywire. These weapons of influence can be used to manipulate you if you don’t know how to defend against them, and can be part of your arsenal if you learn how to harness them.

Here’s how Cialdini describes the impact of these weapons in his groundbreaking book, Influence: “Each principle has the ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic mindless compliance from people. That is a willingness to say yes without thinking first.” Don’t forget, we like to keep our discussions grounded in the science. Each of these weapons of influence are deeply rooted and verified, again and again, by experimental psychology research. In this series I will share a number of crazy, hilarious, and sometimes sad examples of that with you.

The topic today is weapon of influence number one, reciprocation. I will start with an overview of what reciprocation bias is, then we will dive into a number of wacky research studies that demonstrate this behavior in the real world, and lastly we will look at some of the practical implications of how you can use this in real life. So, what is reciprocation bias? Part of the reason these biases are so powerful is because they have been built into our minds by thousands of years of evolution, and in the vast majority of cases, were incredibly evolutionary beneficial. It’s something that has been engrained in humans since birth, and in our culture for millennia. Here’s how Cialdini describes it: “According to sociologists and anthropologists, one of the most widespread and basic norms of human culture is embodied in the rule of reciprocation. The rule requires that one person try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided. By obligating the recipient of an act to repayment in the future, the rule for reciprocation allows one individual to give something to another with confidence that it is not being lost. The sense of future obligation within the rules makes possible the development of various kinds of continuing relationships, transactions, and exchanges that are beneficial to society. Consequently, all members of the society are trained from childhood to abide by the rule or suffer serious social disapproval.” 

Here’s how Cialdini defines the reciprocation rule, and note one of the terms he uses is a bit clunky. He often cites what he calls “compliance professionals”, which is essentially someone who is trying to get you to do something. Think of a salesperson, a boss, a negotiator, someone who’s trying to get you to comply with their requests. That’s why he says, “compliance practitioners”. Cialdini uses this throughout the book as a blanket term to describe those who wield the weapons of influence. Here’s another quote from Cialdini where he lays out the definition, and some of the ground rules, of reciprocation: “One favorite and profitable tactic of certain compliance professionals is to give something before asking for a return favor. The exploitability of this tactic is due to three characteristics of the rule for reciprocation. First, the rule is extremely powerful, often overwhelming the influence of other factors that normally determine compliance with a request. Second, the rule applies even to uninvited first favors, thereby reducing our ability to decide whom we wish to owe, and putting the choice in the hands of others. Finally, the rule can spur unequal exchanges. To be rid of the uncomfortable feeling of indebtedness an individual will often agree to a request for a substantially larger favor than the one he or she received.” In a nutshell, reciprocation bias is the tendency to reciprocate when someone does something for us, which makes perfect sense when you think about it, but the power of the bias really manifests itself when you think about the fact that: one, the effect still holds even when the gift is unwanted, and even when you don’t like the person giving you the gift; and two, the reciprocation often takes the form of a substantially larger gift than the original gift.

Now we’re going to dive into some of the research and see how exactly reciprocation bias impacts people in the real world, and what psychological studies have shown some of these effects can be. One of the first experiments is something that I call a ‘Coke bottle experiment’. In this experiment there was a subject in a room, and there was also an experimenter with them- his name was Joe- and they had some sort of task that they were supposed to perform. It was kind of a red herring. There was a two minute break in the middle of the study, and Joe would leave the room, and in half of the instances he would come back with nothing and they would just continue on with the experiment. In the other half he would buy two cokes and bring one back, give one to the other person and say, “Hey, there was a drink machine and I thought I would grab you a drink too,” and just gives it to them. At the end of the study, they would have Joe then ask that person to buy some raffle tickets from him. This was in the ‘70s, so he would sell them for 25 cents, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but Joe would basically say, “Hey, by the way, I’m selling these raffle tickets. I was wondering if you would be willing to buy some.” So, one of the most interesting things was that in the scenario where people- where Joe didn’t bring back anything, where he just went along with the experiment, and then at the end asked them to buy raffle tickets, there was actually a liking scale. They, after the experiment, had people rate how much they liked Joe, and basically they would give him- they would buy a certain number of raffle tickets from him based on how much they liked him on a scale. So, they would obviously have already purchased the tickets, and then they would come and say, “Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you like Joe?” and they would go through a number of questions about him, and his behavior, and everything else. There was a pretty strong correlation between how much they liked him, and how many raffle tickets they would buy, but the most fascinating thing is that in the instances where Joe brought back the Coke and gave it to the subject of the experiment, the relationship between liking and compliance was completely wiped out. For those who owed Joe a favor because he had given them a drink, even though they never asked or it, it made no difference whether they liked him or not. They felt a sense of obligation to repay him, and they did. Again, this experiment took place a long time ago, so at the time a Coke cost ten cents. He was selling these raffle tickets for 25 cents. So, the average return that he had for the people that he gave the Coke to was more than 500%. That’s a pretty fascinating study, but the most interesting thing about it is the fact that even though it’s a miniscule, small gift, in the scenario where he didn’t give them anything, how many tickets they purchased was completely dependent on how much they liked Joe, but as soon as he gives them a ten cent present, the relationship is completely obliterated and all they care about is repaying that favor that he had given to them.

Another fascinating example, and again, this one takes place many years ago in the ‘70s, and part of that reason is that Influence was written originally in the ‘70s, and it’s been updated a number of times, but another example from the ‘70s is of the Hari Krishnas. This was a religious sect, that now it’s not really very popular, but back then they experienced this huge growth, and this huge boom, and it was funny because they had been struggling for a really, really long time financially. They couldn’t figure out how to raise money, and one day they happened on this idea of giving people a flower before they asked for a donation. So, they would go to high traffic areas, they would go to airports, they would go to bus stations, all that kind of stuff, and they would basically just come up and hand people a flower, or they would hand them a small book of their scriptures, or just some small gift, and they would not accept ‘no’ as an answer. They would say, “No, this is our gift for you. Please take it. Please accept it.” As soon as they implemented that strategy they went from struggling, stagnating, being kind of a washed up religious order, to massive growth. They exploded. This fundraising strategy completely revolutionized the church. 

Here’s how Cialdini describes the Hari Krishna strategy: “The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly found flowers pressed into their hands, or pinned to their jackets, were under no circumstances allowed to give them back, even if they asserted that they did not want them. “No, it is our gift to you,” said the solicitor, refusing to take it back. Only after the Krishna member had thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to bare on the situation was the target asked to provide a contribution to the society. This benefactor before beggar strategy was wildly successful for the Hari Krishna society. Producing large scale economic gains and funding, the ownership of temples, businesses, houses, and property in the 321 centers in the United States and abroad. 

So, the Hari Krishna example is a great example that shows us how even if you don’t want the gift, somebody who you don’t like, don’t care about, can give you something and suddenly this bias gets triggered and you feel obligated to give them something back. There’s a similar example in pharmaceutical research, and this example showcases also the superpower of incentives, which we will talk about in a later podcast. That’s something… we talked about Charlie Munger before. Charlie Munger, again the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffet, once said that he has been in the top of his age cohort his entire life in understanding the power of incentives, and his entire life he has underestimated them. Anyway, this example showcases the superpower of incentives. A study in 1998 found that 100% of the scientists who had published results supporting a certain calcium drug had received prior support from the pharmaceutical company that produced them, but only 37% of those publishing critical results had received the same kind of support. So again, it’s something that incentives are incredibly powerful, and it’s something that we often think, “Yeah, of course I know incentives are powerful,” but the reality is even when you account for the fact that you know how powerful they are, they can be even more powerful than that. Even something as simple as funding certain types of research, right, and you can see this in global warming, or tobacco, or all kinds of different things. Often the people who fund a lot of this research, the scientists, even if it’s at- not at a conscious level, but at a subconscious level, often come to conclusions that support whoever happens to be paying their bills. Paying their paychecks. So, there’s an Upton Sinclair quote that it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

Another really simple example, and this is pretty crazy: We all know what a pain in the ass it is to have to fill out surveys from an insurance company, or whatever other ridiculous junk mail. Most people just throw it out, right? Like, I mean I know personally that I throw gobs of mail out every day. I just get a ton of junk in the mail. Well, in this experiment, and this took place in 1992, an insurance company actually found that when they mailed people a $50- when they offered a $50 reward for completing a survey, they didn’t have a lot of traction, but when they switched to just sending people a $5 gift check along with the surveys, they doubled the effectiveness of their strategy. So literally, instead of getting paid $50 for filling the strategy out, when people received upfront a $5 gift, the reciprocation bias kicked in and they felt some sort of obligation, you know, “Oh my gosh, they sent me five bucks. Yeah, I’ll take 30 seconds and fill out this survey,” but it was literally one tenth of what they could have been offered and it was twice as effective. It just shows you how powerful reciprocation can be.

Another example is if you ever get those things in the mail where they send you shipping labels that have your own name and address on them. I know, for example, AAA sends me those all the time, and having read Influence I ruthlessly exploit them and just take the stickers for myself, but one charity found that when they would normally send out a mailer requesting donations, they would have about an 18% success rate, but just by including those individual shipping labels they doubled their success rate to 35%. Again, it might not seem like that much, but think about the fact literally just including a few shipping labels doubles their success rate with that strategy. It’s just like the… you know, I mean reciprocation is incredibly powerful bias.

Now we’re going to get into what I think probably is one of my favorite examples of how powerful the reciprocation bias can be, and that’s what’s called the “zoo experiment”. The zoo example is one of my favorites because it’s so nakedly obvious that there’s cognitive bias at work here. This piece of research highlights something that’s called the rejection and retreat technique. Cialdini and a group of researchers conducted an experiment where they approached college students and asked them to volunteer, and take juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo. Okay, in that study, that was kind of the control case, 83% of the students said ‘no’. I mean, I don’t really blame them. I probably would have said no myself. Next they changed things up just a little bit. They did the same experiment on a different set of college students, but they tweaked it just a tiny bit. They added one question before they asked the students to take the juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo. Before they asked that, they asked the students, “Would you like to volunteer two hours a week, for a minimum two year commitment, to be a counselor for juvenile delinquents?” 100% of the people said ‘no’, but they then followed up with the same request, “Would you like to take juvenile delinquents just on a single day trip to the zoo?” In that instance 50% of the people said ‘yes’. That’s a tripling of the compliance rate simply by including a question that every single person said ‘no’ to at the beginning. That’s pretty wild when you think about it. They went form a 17% yes rate to a 50% yes rate without changing the question. All they did was add another question at the beginning that triggered the cognitive bias because they conceded and backed away from their position, and then the other person felt, “Okay, well they made a concession to me. I’ll make a concession to them,” and that’s why it’s called the rejection and retreat technique. Now, the rejection and retreat technique is something that everyone on some level or another is probably familiar with. That’s just kind of a piece of research that really validates that, and everybody’s heard the- when you’re dealing with negotiations, or whatever, that you should ask for more than you want, and blah, blah, blah, but it’s not just hearsay, it’s not just folk wisdom, it’s actually validated research.  

One of the even more interesting findings is that they did a very similar study, but what they really wanted to understand is: Is this so nakedly obvious that it works on the front end, but then as soon as people realize that they’d been taken advantage of, they lose the buy in and they don’t care anymore, and they’re not going to continue to kind of comply with your requests?  So, they did an experiment with blood donations. Another fascinating example of the rejection and the retreat technique is how it can create longer lasting effects, and is nearly immune to the idea that people would refuse in the future because they feel like they were taken advantage of. So, in this experiment, in the blood donation experiment, they had college students who were asked to give a pint of blood as part of the annual campus blood drive. Then they had another group of students who were asked first to give a pint of blood every six weeks for a minimum of three years, and then they backed down to: “Okay, well would you just give a pint of blood once?” So, it’s the same kind of thing with the juvenile delinquents, the same strategy. You have one control group and you have one group where you ask a ridiculous request and then follow it up with: “Okay, will you just do something a little simpler?” The results were replicated. Of course the people were more likely to comply when they first offered them the really tough question, but the fascinating thing was the students who actually went to the blood center were then asked if they would be willing to give their phone numbers so that they could be called upon again to donate blood later in the future. So, the finding was, or what they were testing for was: Okay, the people who we essentially tricked, or used these weapons of influence on, are they going to be bitter, and are they going to say, “Well, they tricked me into going here?” or whatever, and thus be less likely to give their phone number to donate in the future? What actually happened is the students who had the rejection-then-retreat used on them, 84% of the students gave their phone number and said they would be willing to donate blood again. The students who were just in the control group, who were only asked, “Hey, will you donate a pint of blood?” only 43% of those students said that they would be willing to give their phone number and be a donor in the future. So, even for future favors, even when somebody might know, or feel like, they’ve been taken advantage of, the rejection-then-retreat technique proved superior, and the reciprocation bias is so strong that it can carry through something like that weeks later.

So, now that we’ve looked at some of the research, what are the practical implications of this? How can we use this in our everyday lives? Again, as a refresher, the reciprocation bias is the tendency to reciprocate when someone does something for us. Sounds really simple, but what are the practical implications of that? What are the takeaways from the research, and how can we apply this stuff to our everyday life? The first major lesson is that reciprocation supersedes our wants and our likes. The effect still holds even when the gift is unwanted, and even if you don’t like the person giving you the gift. The Hari Krishna example, and the Coke bottle experiment, and the blood donation research all point to that conclusion, and all demonstrate that conclusion. That’s why it’s so powerful. The person doesn’t even have to like you. The person doesn’t even have to want the gift. If you give it to them, it will trigger this innate subconscious desire, need, obligation to reciprocate. Similarly, reciprocation can trigger unequal exchanges. A small initial favor can trigger the psychological response to do a much larger favor. The Coke bottle experiment’s a good example, where Joe had more than a 500% return on his gift, but there are countless examples of this in real life. 

The third lesson is that this applies to concessions in a negotiation. Think about the zoo experiment and the rejection and retreat technique. If you make a bigger ask, and then you give the concession to the other person, they feel this deep subconscious obligation to make a concession also. There is a little bit of a caveat there because subsequent research has shown that if your initial ask is too big, or too ridiculous, over a certain threshold, people will see right through it and they’ll basically… they won’t get caught in the reciprocation trap, but as the blood donation research showed, as the zoo trip showed, it can be a pretty hefty request. As long as you concede and back down, you can double or triple your compliance rate simply by adding another request in at the beginning that’s a little bit more burdensome, a little bit more onerous.
So, how do you defend yourself against reciprocation tendency? How do you stop somebody from exploiting you by using this strategy? Cialdini says that knowledge and awareness are the best offenses, and that you should steal yourself against the feeling of having to reciprocate a gift. One of the best ways he suggests combatting the reciprocation bias is by reframing in your mind, from a gift to a trick. Here’s what he says in Influence, “If gifts were used not as genuine gifts, but to make a profit from you, then you might want to use them to make a profit of your own. Simply take whatever the compliance practitioner is willing to provide, thank them politely, and show them out the door. After all, the reciprocity rule asserts that if justice is to be done, exploitation attempts should be exploited.” I talked about that briefly earlier when I gave the example of including the shipping labels in the mailer nearly doubling the effectiveness of that fundraising campaign. That’s why when you get those free shipping labels, you should steal those things and don’t worry about even replying to the rest of the mail. Just throw it out because exploitation attempts should be exploited. 

So, that’s reciprocation bias. It’s something that’s incredibly powerful. It’s something that I hope this research demonstrated to you, shapes and impacts our lives in a number of ways. Now that you’re aware of it, not only can you use it for good, and use it for your own benefit, but now you can stop people from exploiting you by using the reciprocation tendency.