Recently, Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House, declared there was only one thing available to change the course of the pandemic in the foreseeable future. Behaviors—behaviors that diminish activities, such as violations of social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines, that harm the general good in our battle against the COVID-19 virus. The problem is truly serious, and persuasion scientists like me ought to have something useful to say about it as we begin to emerge from lockdown status. I can offer a pair of recommendations.

AVOID THE BIG MISTAKE

First, communicators must stop highlighting accounts and images of undesirable behaviors on the part of some citizens: exercisers crowding hiking paths, revelers packing bars and beaches—many without face masks. Instead, they ought to be featuring the many more of us who are doing the opposite and acting thoughtfully on behalf of the larger community. Here’s my evidence.

Arizona, where I live, includes within its borders the Petrified Forest National Park–a geologic wonder containing hundreds of petrified logs, shards, and crystals—that receives nearly a million visitors a year. Some of the visitors steal petrified rock shards and crystals. The theft forms an ongoing, fundamental threat to the Park. In reaction, Park managers have placed a huge sign at the entrance to the site requesting visitors to refrain from removing fossils.

A while ago, one of my former graduate students decided to explore the Park with his fiancée, whom he described as the most honest person he’d ever known—someone who had never failed to replace a paper clip or rubber band she’d borrowed. Yet, at the Park entrance, as the couple read the large “no-theft-please” sign, something in its wording provoked her to respond so entirely out of character that it left her partner stunned. Within its plea, the sign declared:

YOUR HERITAGE IS BEING VANDALIZED EVERYDAY

BY THEFT LOSSES OF PETRIFIED WOOD OF 14 TONS

A YEAR, MOSTLY A SMALL PIECE AT A TIME.

Whereupon, the scrupulously honest new visitor whispered, “We’d better get ours, too.”

What was it about the sign’s wording that transformed an honorable young woman into an environmental criminal? It was the force of social norms, woefully mispurposed. The wording contained a mistake, a big mistake, often made by well-meaning communicators. To mobilize the public against an undesirable activity, they bemoan it as regrettably frequent. The mistake is not unique to environmental protection programs. Information campaigns stress that alcohol and drug use is intolerably high, that adolescent suicide rates are alarming, and that too few citizens exercise their right to vote. Although these claims may be both true and well-intentioned, the campaigns’ creators have missed something critically important: Within the lament, “Look at all the people who are doing this undesirable thing” lurks the undercutting message, “Look at all the people who are doing it.”  In trying to alert the public to the danger of a problem, these communicators can make it worse, by exaggerating its frequency.

To explore the possibility, my colleagues and I conducted an experiment at the Petrified Forest National Park, where on average 2.95 percent of visitors per day engaged in fossil theft. We alternated a pair of signs in high theft areas of the park. With the signs, we wanted to register the effects of anti-theft pleas informing visitors either that a lot of others steal from the Park or that that few others do. Echoing the message of the Park’s entrance signage, our first type of sign urged visitors not to take wood, while depicting a scene showing three thieves in action. It nearly tripled theft, to 7.92 percent. Our other sign also urged visitors not to take wood; but contrary to the counterproductive social proof message, it communicated, accurately, that few people steal from the Park by depicting a lone thief. This sign, which marginalized thievery (rather than normalizing it), reduced larceny almost by half, to 1.67 percent.

Other studies have documented the unintended negative consequences of trying to move people away from a detrimental action by lamenting its frequency. After an education program in which several young women described their eating disorders, audience members came to show increased disorder symptoms. After a suicide prevention program informing New Jersey teenagers of the alarming number of adolescents who take their own lives, participants became more likely to see suicide as a potential solution to their own problems. After exposure to an alcohol use deterrence program in which participants role-played resisting their peers’ repeated urgings to drink, junior high school students came to believe that alcohol use was more common among their peers than they’d originally thought.

In short, government depictions of citizens’ coronavirus-related actions should avoid employing information that normalizes undesirable conduct; instead they should normalize desirable conduct, such as is communicated in depictions similar to these: https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/coronavirus-quarantine-a-look-at-empty-streets-highways-and-bridges-from-paris-to-florida; https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/photos-of-italy-on-lockdown-from-a-vacant-colosseum-to-empty-churches-on-easter;  https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/photos-of-paris-during-coronavirus-from-empty-streets-to-messages-of-hope-on-the-eiffel-tower

FIND AND DELIVER THE RIGHT NAME

A few months ago, I received a request from the government of Italy for help with the dire situation its people were facing in their COVID-19 cataclysm. One important goal they had was “making sure people stick to the quarantine and to social distancing.”  They asked which psychological levers I would recommend pushing. The one I highlighted is communicated social disapproval, which I believe is enormously influential in directing human conduct. Once again, here’s my evidence.

During the most recent portion of my research career, I’ve focused on how to employ persuasion science to move people in more environmentally friendly directions. I’ve asked the “how” question in a variety of environmentally-relevant domains; but, my team and I began by trying to decrease littering in public places. Although we performed more than a dozen experiments, no matter what we tried, we were never able to eliminate littering completely in any condition of any experiment—except one. In the study, all participants returned to their cars in a parking lot to find a handbill attached to their vehicle’s windshield. We recorded whether they littered the handbill before driving away. If left to their own devices, they did so 33% of the time. In a different condition, on their way to the parking area, participants witnessed a man throw a bag he was carrying into a waste container, which knocked participants’ littering rate down to 17%. In a final condition, as they approached the parking area, we arranged for participants to see a man disapprovingly pick up litter from the ground and deposit it in a waste container.  Not one of them then littered the handbill on their vehicle, even after the man had long left the scene. To suppress the act of littering, displaying social disapproval of the act was exceedingly effective.

How could we harness the power of social disapproval to diminish the number of those who disregard proper-conduct recommendations in Italy…or here? Research by my colleague in the UK, Steve Martin, offers a hint. Steve’s team has done studies designed to reduce “fare dodging” on trains and subways in several cities. One strategy that has proved successful has been to do an initial online survey in which respondents were asked to list a word or words they would use to describe someone who didn’t pay his or her train fare. Then, an information campaign was created in which the public was told which name was nominated most often; it was “Cheater.” The campaign’s social disapproval message, appearing on signs at train stops and describing the survey’s finding, significantly reduced the problem.

Something like this could be done by government agencies of any nation fighting the COVID-19 outbreak. The campaign could honestly state that, on the basis of the survey, “This is the word people will say to themselves about you, or out loud to you, if they see you violating proper practice.” Although I would let the survey results determine the winner, in the war we are waging against an interspecies for, I have a hope for that word: “Collaborator” (with the enemy).

It might not bring violations to zero; that’s asking too much. But, I’m confident it would help.

The post Advice for Reducing Undesirable COVID-19 Behaviors appeared first on Influence at Work.

Today, I interview Richard Thaler, Economist and Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is the author of several books on the subject of behavioral economics, including Nudge and Misbehaving. 

It was a pleasure speaking with Richard for the Cialdini Asks Interview Series.

Read the transcript of this interview below.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Hello. I’m Bob Cialdini, a behavioral scientist and author of the book Influence as well as the new book Pre-Suasion. I’d like to tell you about a series of video interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who I admire and who have written about behavioral science not just for the academic community, but as well for the larger community, individuals such as Dan Ariely, Adam Grant, Amy Cuddy, and Richard Thaler.

In this series of interviews called Cialdini Asks, I try to get beneath the surface and behind the scenes, inquiring into the motivations that spurred the work of these individuals and their decisions to write about it for a popular audience. I also ask them about aspects of their work that exceeded their expectations in terms of impact as well as those aspects of their work they felt have been most underappreciated. I even ask them to tell us a funny story or revealing one that nobody knows about them and their work. I know that in the process, I have been surprised, fascinated, and informed by their answers. I hope that the same will be true for you. I do hope that you will look out for and tune in to the Cialdini Asks video series as we make it available online over the next several weeks. Thanks.

Welcome, everyone, to today’s installment of the Cialdini Asks interview series. My guest today is Professor Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, widely recognized as one of the founding figures of the tremendously influential field of behavioral economics. Hello, Richard.

Richard Thaler:                   

Hi, Bob. Great to see you.

Robert Cialdini:                  

You as well. I’m a big fan of your work, and that includes, of course, your concept of nudges, practices that influence people in directions that stand to enhance their lives. I was especially taken with your recent book, Misbehaving, which describes the beginnings of behavioral economics. Can you tell us what led to your decision to write that book? That is, what were the factors that nudged you to decide that the time was right for this account in this form, that is as a popular book?

Richard Thaler:                   

Well, let me answer that in two parts. First, why I decided it was time to write another book after Nudge, and then why I chose to write it the way I did. The first explanation of how I came to write another book comes from my literary agent, a notorious figure in the literary world, John Brockman, who is the agent to many academics turned authors, including Danny Kahneman and Dan Gilbert and many others.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yes.

Richard Thaler:                   

John has several what you would call pre-suasion techniques that he uses to nudge authors into writing a book. I got to know John through Danny and Dan Gilbert, and some time after Nudge came out, John started his routine. The first step of the routine is flattery. He tells you that you’re a great man and the world needs to hear from you. Now, I should say, John’s normal manner is … A kind way to put it would be gruff, and so all this flattery is a contrast to what you’re used to. “Oh, that book, a piece of crap. Oh, that …” You know. You have this curmudgeon who is telling you how great you are and how the world needs you to write a book. I’m telling him, “Look, John, that last book was a lot of work. I don’t even have time to think about what I would write a book about, much less write a book.”

Then he uses the Cialdini master trick of the foot in the door. So he says, “Look, look, you know …” I said, “I don’t have time to write a book proposal.” He says, “No, no, no. Don’t worry about a book proposal. Just write me a letter. Just send me a two-page letter on what you might write a book about.” He keeps pestering me about this, and finally, really just to get rid of him, I send him a two-page letter about an idea, a glimmer of an idea I had for a book, the title of which was Snags. The idea was this is … I kind of thought of it as a prequel to Nudge. Here are the things we trip on for which we could use help.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yeah.

Richard Thaler:                   

I wrote up a couple of pages with some examples and sent it to him and figured that would be that. It would be the last I would hear of that. The next thing I knew, there was a book auction going on. I said, “What happened? John. Wait. What? What? What? What is this auction?” Then somebody is waving some amount of money in front of me to write a book about which I’ve thought very little and I’ve written two pages. Okay. Then how did Snags turn into Misbehaving?

Robert Cialdini:                  

All right.

Richard Thaler:                   

I worked on Snags off and on for two years. As I said, I was busy, but I had a research assistant work for me full-time two summers investigating various snags and their origins and how we got into this. I had sort of this pile of stuff, and it just didn’t work. What I realized is that what made Nudge work was two organizing principles. One was the idea of libertarian paternalism, that you could help people without forcing them to do anything. The other was choice architecture, that by creating the environment in which people choose, you can help them navigate better. I think of GPS as the ultimate nudge. So I had those two organizing principles, and I had Cass Sunstein, who can write 100 pages a day, so that made book writing easy.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yeah.

Richard Thaler:                   

This book just had … It was a collection of things that … I was getting frustrated. I was ready to send the money back, and then I decided all right. What I’m going to do is just write a few chapters that are fun for me to write and see what happens. There’s a chapter in that book. My favorite chapter in the book is the story of how faculty members at the Chicago Booth School of Business chose offices in our new building. You can see my office here in the background. Well, spoiler alert. Mayhem ensued. Now, that was a lot of fun to write that chapter. I got to make fun of my colleagues.

Robert Cialdini:                  

It was fun to read it, I have to say …

Richard Thaler:                   

Yeah. Every academic can relate to that. Now, that chapter actually fit into Snags, right? I thought I was still writing Snags, and the next chapter in the book, which goes with it, is a chapter about the NFL draft and some research I had done showing that teams put way too high a value on picking early in the draft. This is something I had continued to work on, and I was working with some NFL teams. So that was fun, and I wrote up a few more of these. I showed them to Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, and who recently has written a book about Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Terrific book.

Richard Thaler:                   

Terrific book. Yeah. I’d become friends with Michael over the years, partly helping him with the research on that book. I sent him this bundle of chapters and said, “How much of a book could be like this?” He said, “All.” He encouraged me to make the structure of the book not exactly autobiographical, but chronological. Now, my publisher … Let’s just say the publisher was not completely enthusiastic about this. The reason is that the book ends up being in a non-existent niche, because it’s one-third memoir, one-third history of a field, and one-third primer of that field, with lots of stories. The model I had in my head was if Feynman had written Surely You Must Be Joking … Mr. Feynman, one of my favorite books of all time. If that book had included physics, that’s the book I wanted to write.

Now, I kept asking, “Is there any book like that?” No. My publisher told me we’re not allowed to mention the word memoir anywhere when we talk about this book, because people don’t buy memoirs of obscure academics or even academics like us that are not quite obscure, but we’re not movie stars and we’re not superstar athletes. It’s not like that book is about my life. It’s more kind of me as a spectator and somewhat of a participant in something interesting that was happening.

Anyway, as you know, I start the book by telling this story about Danny Kahneman getting a phone call. I’m sitting in his living room. He gets a phone call from a reporter who is writing a story about me. This is about 15 years ago. Danny says, “Oh, this is embarrassing,” he says to me, because I’m just sitting in Danny’s living room, and we’re schmoozing as we always do. He says, “Oh, I forgot. I have this phone call from this reporter. He wants me to talk about you. I don’t know. Maybe you should leave.” I said I could go to another room. He says, “No, no. You can stay. Maybe it will be amusing.”

I’m sitting there in his living room, and he’s talking to the reporter, and at one point, I hear him say, “The best thing about Thaler, what really makes him special, is that he’s lazy.” Danny. Danny. This is my best friend, right, and he’s telling me that my outstanding attribute is my laziness. I can’t say anything, right? I’m bound to silence, but I’m waving at him. To this day, he insists that this is a compliment. He has to do a little dancing to insist on that. He says that my laziness means that I only work on things that are interesting and important. Now, I think there’s a better way of phrasing that, though, but Danny is wise in all matters, so I wrote this book because I’m lazy. I only wrote chapters that were amusing for me to write. If it wasn’t amusing, I left it out.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Fascinating. Great story. Let’s talk about the flip side of that question. Of all your work, what has most surprised you in terms of its big impact? What has had oversized effect relative to your expectations for it?

Richard Thaler:                   

Well, that would have to be the book, Nudge. Now, I told the story of Misbehaving. We set out to write Nudge. We didn’t have a title. Our working title was Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron. Publishers thought we might sell tens of copies, if we had big families. We knew that wasn’t going to be the title, but we didn’t have … We figured we’d think of the title later. Previously, I told you that Misbehaving used to be Snag. It’s not like we didn’t realize we needed a title, but anyway, that book proposal … Maybe partly because of absence of a title … landed with a thud. No one wanted it.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Really?

Richard Thaler:                   

No one wanted it. We ended up publishing it with an academic press. They did want it, but they were used to selling tens of copies of books. They didn’t know how to market it. No one expected anything from that book, including us. Well, it’s sold nearly a million copies now.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Richard Thaler:                   

More importantly, it led to the introduction of behavioral science into public policy-making through a series of happenstances. When David Cameron was the Chair of the Conservative Party in the UK and preparing to run for election, he had a group of young people surrounding him, one of whom bought a copy of Nudge and thought this was something that the Tories could use. He bought a pile of them and left them as a nudge in the little offices where they used to hang out. David Cameron picked one up and read it, and he said, “Oh, yeah. Maybe we could use this.”

Then when the election came … Their elections, we could learn something. Their elections take about two months, where this one felt like two decades for us. They have something they call a manifesto. It’s kind of equivalent to our platforms. In their manifesto, they said, “If elected, we’re going to use behavioral science to help inform public policy.” I know how unimportant party platforms are in the US, so I thought nothing of this, but a couple of weeks after the election, I get a call. “Okay. We’re doing this thing. How do we do it?” I flew over to London, and they were lucky enough to have just the perfect guy to start this team, David Halpern. They had about five people, and started doing things. A few of them worked, and there was great … I should say, the initial reaction of the media to this idea in the UK was extremely hostile. There were lots of jokes about the Monty Python routine, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right. I remember that.

Richard Thaler:                   

Lots of people … We had a famous example in that book about the urinals in the Amsterdam Airport, where they etched the image of a fly near the place you’re supposed to aim. The claim was that it reduced spillage, a great euphemism. It reduced spillage by 80%. I’ve never been able to get that data, but anyway, lots of people thought that this was about the most important problem that we would be able to tackle. Well, that team now has close to 100 people. There is a similar team in the White House, 50 other countries, The World Bank.

For a book that nobody wanted to publish and that we didn’t think anybody would read … When we wrote the book … It’s interesting. Whenever I write anything, academic article or op ed or a book, I try to have a couple of real people in mind that I’m imagining I’m writing it for them. For academic articles, it’s usually for my biggest critic. Like my finance articles, I have my now golf buddy, Gene Fama, whose office is around the corner. I’d often think about him and say, “All right. What’s he going to say about this, and how can I preempt that?”

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yeah.

Richard Thaler:                   

When we were writing this book, I told Cass I had this approach, so we picked two people as our imaginary readers. One was David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, and we picked him because he was a thoughtful conservative, and we were trying to devise policies that would be attractive to conservatives as well as progressives, and say, “Okay, he would be one.” The other was we had this new Senator in Illinois who was a former colleague of Cass. A skinny black guy called Obama.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Oh, Geez.

Richard Thaler:                   

We thought it would be good if he read it, because he looks like an up and comer. When we were writing the book, he was in the first year of his in the Senate. Those are the two people. We thought if we got those two people to read the book, it would be a success. We did get those two people to read the book, and some more.

Robert Cialdini:                  

And it was a success.

Richard Thaler:                   

And it was a success.

Robert Cialdini:                  

It’s such a success that it’s now an approach. It’s known as an orientation to decision making and choice rather than just a collection of stories. Remarkable. Remarkable. By the way, do David Brooks and Barack Obama know that they were over each of your shoulders as you wrote?

Richard Thaler:                   

David knows. Cass worked for the President the first four years of the administration, and they were friends. Obama used to be an adjunct professor at the law school here, and he had an office somewhere near Cass’s. They were good friends, and that’s why he took him to the White House. I don’t know whether Cass ever told him that story.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right. Fascinating, though. I do the same thing. When I write a particular … Even down to a particular paragraph, I will put over my shoulder an academic who is a specialist in that particular area that I’m writing about, and over my other shoulder, a neighbor, someone who is just interested in information about how we work as a species. I don’t allow myself to proceed to the next paragraph until I think I’ve satisfied both. That’s my green light. Now I’m finished and I can go on to the next.

Richard Thaler:                   

Yeah. Well, of course, the third person I had in mind is my wife France, who you’ve met.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yes.

Richard Thaler:                   

When we finished, I was afraid to show any part of Nudge to France, but when we had a manuscript, I gave it to her, and she started reading it. We set aside a weekend, where she had marked it up, and I can tell you, it was a brutal weekend. She says, “First of all, you don’t even define nudge,” and it went from there. The best set of comments we got on the book came from her. It was painful, but in the back of my mind, and certainly when I was reading this, but when I was writing Misbehaving, I knew the day was going to come when I had to hand her this manuscript. She sets a high standard.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right. Well, this has been a terrific set of answers to a set of questions I always thought I would like to be asked. I appreciate that very much. It was very revealing, and I think there’s some nuggets in here that no one has ever heard about. I’m glad to be able to make them available to people. Thank you again, Richard.

Richard Thaler:                   

Bob, it’s a pleasure, as always. I hope to see you in the flesh some time soon.

Robert Cialdini:                  

I as well. So long for now.

Richard Thaler:                   

Bye, Bob.

Robert Cialdini:

Bye.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining.

Learn More

Pre-Suasion:  A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Cialdini Asks: Richard Thaler appeared first on Influence at Work.

Today, I interview Adam Grant, Professor of Management at the Wharton University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Originals and Give and Take, and he recently published Option B with Sheryl Sandberg. Adam’s 2016 TED Talk was watched almost 6 million times, and he has been recognized as one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers.

It was a pleasure speaking with Adam for the Cialdini Asks Interview Series.

Read the transcript of this interview below.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Hello, I’m Bob Cialdini, a behavioral scientist and author of the book Influence as well as the new book Pre-Suasion. I’d like to tell you about a series of video interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who I admire and who have written about behavioral science not just for the academic community but as well for the larger community. Individuals such Dan Ariely, Adam Grant, Amy Cuddy and Richard Thaler. In this series of interviews called Cialdini Asks, I try to get beneath the surface and behind the scenes, inquiring into the motivations that spurred the work of these individuals and their decisions to write about it for a popular audience. I also asked them about aspects of their work that exceeded their expectations in terms of impact as well as those aspects of their work they felt have been most under appreciated. I even asked them to tell us a funny story or revealing one that nobody knows about them and their work. I know that in the process, I have been surprised, fascinated and informed by their answers. I hope that the same will be true for you. So I do hope that you will look out for and tune in to the Cialdini Asks video series as we make it available online over the next several weeks. Thanks.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Hi, Adam.

Adam Grant:                   

Hey, Bob. Great to see you.

Robert Cialdini:                      

You as well. One of the basis I employ to select people for this interview series involves not just the contributions they’ve made to behavioral science with their research but also how they’ve extended the reach of behavioral science beyond the academic community to the larger community. You’ve done that with a pair of terrific books, Give and Take, first, and then more recently, Originals, both of which I read cover to cover at one sitting.

Adam Grant:                   

Oh no, I’m so sorry.

Robert Cialdini:                      

I couldn’t get enough of it, really. I have my own reasons for wanting to share behavioral science with the nonacademic reader and I wonder what yours might be. That is what were the factors that spurred you to take that particular direction?

Adam Grant:                   

Well, let me start by taking it back to 1999. I was a freshman in college. I was taking a writing seminar on social influence. The assigned reading for the seminar was a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I think you might have read it a few times because you wrote it. I was just riveted that you could take all of these principles that I didn’t realize had affected my life over and over again and explain them using social science. I started telling all my friends and my family about the book and they got tired of it at some point and at the same time I was taking an Intro to Psychology class and your book was assigned for that class too and I loved it so much that I read it both times. I was just hooked. I mean, honestly, your work was what first piqued my interest in social science and I love the way that you combined the ability to explain the weird things that had happened in our lives and the barriers to our own success and happiness but also we’re able to teach us how to do better. I thought that the greatest social science ought to live in … And both generate fundamental understanding but also real applied insight and I decided I was going to do that. Really, when I got to grad school, I forgot about it because I got busy with publishing and a few weeks after getting tenure, started realizing that I had a responsibility to live up to to try to share these ideas outside the Ivory Tower. So it’s all your fault, here we are.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Well, you know, I didn’t expect that but that’s very gratifying to hear. That’s terrific. But let me ask the first substantive question that I like to ask in these interviews. Once again, let me begin by saying that I’m a big fan of your research but I was especially taken with the study of yours showing that putting a small sign in examination rooms reminding doctors that washing their hands would reduce their chance of getting an infection had no effect on their hand washing but a sign reminding them to wash their hands because it would reduce their patient’s chance of getting an infection increased hand washing by 45%. What was the impetus for that study? That is, what was the insight or experience that lead you to want to do that particular study?

Adam Grant:                   

It was a combination of things. So one of the ways, Bob, that your work has really influenced me is it’s showed me the power of small interventions to have a large impact. When I started graduate school, I knew I wanted to do field experiments where we could make relatively minimal changes to people’s environments but produce a pretty dramatic effect on behaviors that matter. I’d been working on this on a couple of settings and then my wife was pregnant, we were expecting our first child and we went into the hospital and I saw these signs on the wall that said things like gel in, wash out. Even worse, here are the 12 steps to wash your hands, and I’m thinking, this is not a how-to problem, it’s a why-to problem, especially doctors and nurses and anybody who’s been trained as a healthcare professional, they know how to wash their hands. The problem is they’re busy and they’re not sufficiently motivated to do it. A colleague of mine, Dave Hoffman have been studying safety behaviors like this and we’ve been looking for an excuse to do a project together. So while we’re waiting for our daughter to arrive, I shot him a quick email and said, “I think these signs are terrible. We ought to do something about it.” Part of the instinct was that people obviously are willing to do a lot of things for others that they wouldn’t do for themselves. You’ve observed this your whole career, that there are times when immediate self interest is not sufficient but knowing the consequences of your actions for others is something that focuses your attention and brings you a sense of meaning. But we also thought that we have this basic assumption, that people are unwilling to hear that their own health is at risk. There’s a lot of research on the defensive processing of health messages and how people would say, “No, no, no. But I’m a doctor. I’m protected.” Or, in some cases, “Well, I’m in a hospital a lot. I’m exposed to a lot of diseases but I rarely get sick so either I had a superior immune system to begin with or now I’ve acquired one.” Either way, it’s going to fall on deaf ears.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Yes.

Adam Grant:                   

You can’t deny that a patient is vulnerable and so we thought maybe if we posted a sign reminding people that patients could get sick, they would stop and wash.

Robert Cialdini:                      

What I love about that is that it’s a reminder, that recognition that patients can get sick and that commitment to the welfare of the patients was in there all along. What you did with that sign was simply bring it to consciousness and that was the trigger for this remarkable 45% increase in hand washing, something that had been a barrier in hospitals that various administrators were trying to climb because physicians weren’t washing their hands. This one little thing that you touched on made that difference. I thought that was really instructive.

Adam Grant:                   

Thank you. I never quite thought about it that way. But you’re right, in some sense, it’s just … It’s another example of consistency and commitment, that it’s a group of people who have a core set of values around protecting patient health and preventing diseases and we’re just calling that to attention and making it salient for them again. I don’t think it’s unique though at all to that setting. We’ve seen for years that some of the most effective ads to get parents to buckle up when driving cars are not the ones that remind them to buckle up for themselves, are the ones that say buckle up for your kids.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Right, right. Terrific. Let me move onto another question that is one that somebody once asked me and it produced what I thought was instructive reflection on my part. It was, of all the work you’ve done, what would you say has been most under appreciated? Why do you think that is?

Adam Grant:                   

My instinct is to reject the premise of the question because it assumes that there’s some work that deserves to get more attention that it has. Honestly, I don’t think it’s my place to judge whether that’s true. I do think though that you’ve experienced this for a long time that there are certain ideas that catch on and when they become popular. Sometimes that does obscure other ideas that you might think are equally important. I guess, as I think about that, I think that the one that stands out for me is my favorite experiment that I’ve done in my whole career is one where I was working with a university fund raising callers and trying to get them to actually continue making calls and harassing alums during their dinner and get them to make donations that are so important for student scholarships and occasionally faculty salaries and buildings. Their five-minute interaction with one scholarship student was enough to increase time on the phone by 141% for the average caller per week and money raised by 172%. I love that intervention because nobody ever expected that this one five-minute interaction would make such an impact and like the hand washing experience, it was just a small reminder of the good that your work can do that seem to really boost people’s motivation. I think a lot of people have maybe overlooked that because it’s hard to relate to being a fund raiser. But I think it speaks to something really fundamental about what motivates people and how meaningful it is to know that your work has an effect on the lives of others.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Right, right. Meaning, meaning. Very important. That small intervention, hooked to this big motive inside people. It’s like flipping a switch in a stadium that suddenly all the lights go on. That flip of the switch just engaged the power of something that was already there in the bowels of the stadium, the utility system there. But the small thing that closed the circuit and made that thing viable now and motivating was the key, it was a trigger.

Adam Grant:                   

It’s a wonderful metaphor and there’s one little puzzle that comes after it which I’d love to actually get your take on which is so we got the big behavioral change. You see the caller is working harder, making more calls, spending more time on the phone. They also tend to use more effective influence strategies like they’re more likely to tell the stories of the scholarship students on the phone when they’re allowed. That translates into more donations raised. The odd thing though was I did pretest and post-test surveys of the callers. I didn’t get significant changes in a series of these experiments on their own reports of meaning or impact or their sense of being valued. It was almost like that light bulb went on but they never connected. The interaction they had with the scholarship students to the change they experienced in motivation, it was like too small for them to admit or notice that that was why they were working harder. I was curious of whether you’ve seen this as well that you get people’s behavioral to change but sometimes the attitude doesn’t follow or at least people aren’t aware of it.

Robert Cialdini:                      

That’s right. Because I think there are so many things going on. They don’t recognize that you’ve changed just one and that was the key. That’s why the behavioral science orientation to the larger community allows us to tell people what works in them even if they’re not recognizing those dimensions that are so powerful, those vectors that are so powerful. We can show them what they are and allow them to undertake behaviors that optimize those particular vectors in their own behavior. Yeah. Well, let me ask a follow up question. Feel free to reject the premise if you wish. It’s the flip side of the earlier one. Of all your work, what has most surprised you in terms of its big impact? Has there been anything that has produced oversized impact relative to your expectations?

Adam Grant:                   

Yeah, I think there probably … One of the core ideas in Give and Take, I didn’t expect it to take off the way that it did. But I went in thinking that this framework is obvious, right? The idea that some people are givers, they’re generous. Some are takers, they’re more selfish and most of us are in the middle as matchers, playing it safe and following the norm of reciprocity. That to me was really clear from the day I started doing this work and part of that was just from interacting with different kinds of people over the course of my life and part of it was from reading a lot of social science with different labels that essentially was describing these same differences and value orientations. The thing that most surprised me about this is how many people have come up with a version of growing up, my grandmother always told me there are givers and there are takers in the world but she forgot to tell me about the matchers and that’s actually the majority of people, the default instinct is to be fair and reciprocal. I just found that so odd, that people would live in an understanding … And people are at the extremes of anything but especially that people are either generous or selfish as opposed to just saying, “Look, most of the time, people approach their interactions and say, ‘I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.” I just took for granted that everyone knew that. It turns out they didn’t.

Robert Cialdini:                      

It strikes me that that’s probably because of the conspicuousness of the extremes. Those are the things that we remember because those are the things that draw our attention. The things that are in the middle that we do most of the time, we kind of gloss over as if they’re not really having the biggest impact.

Adam Grant:                   

Yeah, I think you’re right. I guess part of the reason that I found the style of matching so interesting is I’ve had a few conspicuous experiences with matchers that were almost more standout than the givers and the takers. I think, I guess when that happens it resets your expectations about what’s going to be selling it for other people.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Right, right. Okay, another question, in your experiences as researcher or author, is there a revealing or humorous story you can tell us that very few people know?

Adam Grant:                   

Well, actually yes. One of the matcher stories fits that perfectly. So I was in grad school. I think it was about halfway through my first year. I was writing a paper on a topic that was a little bit outside my comfort zone and I had another student in the program who knew that area extremely well. I sent an email and said, “Look, this is an area of your expertise, I was wondering if you’d be willing to take a look at this paper and maybe send me a few comments or suggestions, even some literature to read.” Three days later, I got an email back, two pages of detailed comments, extremely insightful and I was blown away but how responsive and how generous he was, until I saw the rest of his message which said, “Attached is a paper I’ve written. You have three days to send me your comments.” It was one of the oddest, I guess you would call it one of those click were responses like he helped me and I had activated this primal instincts that now I owed him not only an equal favor but in the same exact amount of time. It was so uncomfortable because I would have been perfectly happy to help but the fact that he felt that there was some obligation that he was now entitled to my help, it really kind of … It extinguished my motivation to help him at some level. I still did it. But it felt very transactional. I felt like he didn’t care about me. He just wanted something from me. It made me realize that the same behavior guided by different motives can have very, very different affects on us.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Right. I’ve always remarked when I speak about the principle of reciprocity and someone has said thank you to us, what we don’t ever want to say is, “Yeah, and you owe me one now.” Because that’s going to explode that goodwill that goes with the gratitude associated with having received a generous act.

Adam Grant:                   

I’m going to have to try this now just to see what the reaction is, right? I can’t imagine anyone ever saying that unless you’re the Godfather.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Here’s the last question. As you know, I’ve recently written a book called Pre-Suasion which explores what communicators do before delivering a message to increase its acceptance. I wonder, can you describe a situation in which you have seen a communicator and it could be you who said or did something first that lead to the success of an immediately subsequent request?

Adam Grant:                   

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot in part because one of the things that Pre-Suasion really caused me to reflect on is all the things that we do to set the stage for the moments that we want to have influence. I’ll tell you that actually the example that’s really stuck with me is a mistake that I made in my own career which was I was called in by a financial services company to try to help them attract and motivate and retain their junior people. Investment bank, people were treated very poorly and the stars who had lots of other options were jumping ship pretty quickly. I went in and spent a couple of months doing interviews and surveys and proposed a field experiments where we could really try to test what worked. They started arguing about whether they should just change compensation and offer more bonuses which of course they’ve done at least nine times before and haven’t done any good. It was like I was having a conversation with a Homo Economicus. “People are only motivated by incentives. That’s all there can be,” never mind the data I had collected showing that the desire to learn and the chance to help clients were the two factors that most motivated the majority of the bankers. I think I just, I lost it. I just blurted out, “I’ve never seen smart people act so dumb,” and it was one of those moments like what was I thinking, I clearly wasn’t thinking. I immediately regreted it. I got a call about seven months later from one of the head bankers and he said, “We’ve been implementing six of the 20-some recommendations that you gave us and I wanted you to know that the single most important thing that you did was you called us a bunch of idiots.” “I’m sorry. Literally, I’ve lost sleep over this. How is this possible?” He said, “You earned our trust that you’re willing to be honest with us in that situation and now we want to come back to you and do some work together.” I guess it’s a little bit like the court jester who doesn’t get his head cut off but it was good lesson and the fact that there was a time and a place to speak really candidly and maybe even a little bit too directly because it lead this group of people to believe that I was not just giving them platitudes. That I was willing to call a spade a spade and that was a big aha for me. But I don’t know that I’m ever going to word it quite like that again.

Robert Cialdini:                      

No, but I think what you revealed here anything you can do that winds up establishing your trust in the eyes of your audience is going to elevate your subsequent influence over that audience. This isn’t unusual, when I agree, [inaudible 00:22:01] use this in many other kinds of situation but there are all kinds of ways to elevate trust that people don’t think of, admitting a weakness for example, early on in their presentation which we’re schooled never to do. We’re always schooled to lead with our strengths, get people leaning in our direction before we ever mention a drawback or weakness in our case. It’s just not what the research shows. There are things that we can do that we wouldn’t expect which establish our trustworthiness and leveraged our influence subsequently.

Adam Grant:                

I’m in complete agreement on that. I will say that one of those “oh shoot” moments afterward was what would Bob tell me to do in this situation where I’m trying to have influence. I’m pretty sure you would tell me not to insult the guy that I’m trying to persuade.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Right.

Adam Grant:                   

But I guess I got lucky in that situation.

Robert Cialdini:                      

That’s right. I would have been wrong, it turns out. But this was great. I genuinely enjoyed our time interacting and learned a bunch of things that I didn’t know about you that I think the behavioral scientists and both our followers, sets of followers would be interested in knowing. So thank you very much for taking the time, Adam.

Adam Grant:                   

No, it’s a real honor that you asked and if I can turn the tables on you with one question for you.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Sure.

Adam Grant:                   

I would love to know, since writing Pre-Suasion, how has the way that you’ve lived your own influence attempts changed? I feel like we rarely get to hear the author’s own experience of what they do differently as a result of what they learned from writing the book.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Yeah. Here’s the one that stand out for me. In the book, Pre-Suasion, I also talk about the seventh principle of influence, the thing that had eluded me in my recognition of the major motivators that move people in our direction and I call it unity, the idea that if we can establish for an audience that we are of them, we are one of them, then everything inside the influence process gets easier. So I had a particular situation, I had read this research and I was ready to write about it and I was also preparing a report that needed to be done the next day and I had a hole in my data. I didn’t have data to make a particular point I wanted but I knew that a colleague of mine did have those data from a study that he had done. So I called him. He was a sort of a [inaudible 00:24:57] guy on my faculty in the psychology department and I said, “Tom,” not his real name, “Tom, I’m going to call you. I’m going to call you.” I sent him an email to this effect, “I’m going to call you and ask you for these data because I’m behind and I have a deadline for tomorrow.” So I called him and he said, “Bob, I know why you’re calling and I’m not going to be able to help.” He said, “Look, I’m a busy man too. I can’t be responsible for your poor time management skills so I’m not going to be able to help.” Before I read this research about what you do first to establish a sense of unity, I would have said, “But Tom, I really need this. This is important to me. Could you help me out?” Here’s what I said instead, “Tom, you know we’ve been in the same department now for 12 years. I really need this. It would really help me out,” and I had the information that afternoon.

Adam Grant:                   

Wow.

Robert Cialdini:                      

I did something first just as we started our interaction with, something that was in there. He knew it, that we were part of the same unit but it wasn’t top of consciousness. I just had to establish that first, make that a Pre-Suasive context in which to make my request that I really need this, “Tom, it would really help me out,” and then I got a yes. I don’t think I would have gotten a yes otherwise.

Adam Grant:                   

Wow, that’s fascinating. So you reminded him of his identification with the group and that made you someone that he actually did feel responsible for.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Exactly. We were colleagues. We were partners. We were part of the same unit and there were obligations and expectations associated with that that made him want to say yes.

Adam Grant:                   

It’s fascinating.

Robert Cialdini:                      

Yeah. Great. Okay, well, I appreciate the insightful question that you asked me. Got me to remember this particular instance and I’m glad we’ve had the chance to spend some time together. It was terrific.

Adam Grant:                   

Me too, thanks Bob.

Robert Cialdini:                      

All right. So long for now.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy

Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces.

Learn More

Pre-Suasion:  A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Cialdini Asks: Adam Grant appeared first on Influence at Work.

Today, I interview Dan Ariely, who is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight and also the co-founder of BEworks. He is the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which are New York Times bestsellers, as well as The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. His newest book is titled, Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations. His 2008 TED Talk has been watched almost 5 million times.

It was a pleasure speaking with Dan for the Cialdini Asks Interview Series. 

Read the transcript of this interview below.

Robert Cialdini: 

Hello. I’m Bob Cialdini, a behavioral scientist and author of the book Influence, as well as the new book Pre-Suasion. I’d like to tell you about a series of video interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who I admire and who have written about behavioral science not just for the academic community, but as well for the larger community. Individuals such as Dan Ariely, Adam Grant, Amy Cuddy, and Richard Thaler. In this series of interviews called Cialdini Asks, I try to get beneath the surface and behind the scenes, inquiring into the motivations that spurred the work of these individuals and their decisions to write about it for a popular audience. I also ask them about aspects of their work that exceeded their expectations in terms of impact, as well as those aspects of their work they felt have been most underappreciated. I even ask them to tell us a funny story or revealing one that nobody knows about them and their work.

I know that in the process, I have been surprised, fascinated and informed by their answers. I hope that the same will be true for you, so I do hope that you will look out for and tune in to the Cialdini Asks video series as we make it available online over the next several weeks. Thanks.

Hi, Dan.

Dan Ariely:

Hey. Good to see you again.

Robert Cialdini:

It’s good to see you.

Dan Ariely:

Last time we met, was it in London? In the BIT Conference?

Robert Cialdini:

It was. I was impressed by that event. In the extent to which behavioral science had become not just trendy, but a thing. A real thing that attracted a lot of people from a lot of different domains so I was encouraged by that.

Dan Ariely:

Yeah. No, it is great. For you I think it’s extra special because for how many years have you been trying to get people to use psychology to drive behavioral change?

Robert Cialdini

Too many years for me to admit, but it’s been a sizeable number yeah.

Dan Ariely:

Also, the way that they’re using social proof so effectively in so many different areas is just wonderful. You’ve been knocking on doors for lots of years and all of a sudden, boom.

Robert Cialdini:

That has been heartening to me. I think the key was to get it out of the academic domain where we found solid evidence of it to places where people who are using it are now seeing that they’re getting positive outcomes for their own goals.

Dan Ariely:

Yep. It was great. I think we’re all riding on your coat tails in this happiness of taking basic findings and trying to make an impact, so thank you.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah. Well, that leads directly into my first question for you. I’ve always been a big fan of your work but I was especially taken by your most recent book, Payoff. In fact, I read it twice. Once for content, once for style and was impressed by both times. I wonder if you can tell us about the series of events that led to your decision to write that book. That is, that made you decide to turn the research and ideas that you covered there into something directed not just to the academic community, but to the large community.

Dan Ariely:

Yep. My first attempt to write something beyond academic community was when I wrote Predictably Rational almost 10 years ago and that was an interesting exercise because I took a lot of myself. I put a lot of myself into that book. Not in the sense of working hard, but in the sense of describing some of my challenges and personality and struggles. It was very … I remember sending it off to the publisher and saying, “What have I done?” It’s a book that talks about my burns and removing bandages and it’s a social science book but it was about my journey through life and how it led me to think.

The reaction I got was relatively positive. I remember sitting on the flight next to a woman who was a diabetic patient and she was so happy I was sitting next to her because she said she read Predictably Rational. She said she was debating whether to have an insulin pump installed or whether to keep on taking injections and in her mind she had to debate with me about what I would say. She decided I would say go ahead and install an insulin pump and that’s what she did. She asked me if that’s true so we went through the arguments and I said yes.

It was incredibly gratifying to talk to somebody who read, who took some of the findings, internalize it to their own life and thought about this.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah.

Dan Ariely: 

When I wrote my second book The Upside of Irrationality, I was a bit more courageous even in the things I described. I described the first [inaudible 00:05:58] hospital, but this book I think for me is even a stronger deviation. It doesn’t start from research. It starts from my own questioning about how I spend my time.

Robert Cialdini:

Right.

Dan Ariely:

Because I was badly injured and because I wrote about it in a very personal way, I get lots of people with injuries write me. Maybe a couple times of week I get people to write me. All of those discussions are difficult and painful. I’ll tell you one example. Not one that is in the book but about a year and a half ago, I get a very short email from somebody and said, “I’m injured badly. Please call me.” I call this guy in the evening and it turns out it was about a year after he became paralyzed from the neck down.

At that point, he got to the realization he was not going to get better and he wanted to figure out what he could do. How he can find happiness and meaning and contribution and so on. We talk about all kinds of ways to do it. We decide on two paths. One was that he hated all of these books that said that injury was the best that ever happened to me so we decided he was going to write something on his beliefs and then he was going to help his uncle with a project he was working on. Then he asked me what do I think about committing suicide.

Robert Cialdini: 

Wow.

Dan Ariely:

I said I’m not against it. I’ve thought about it myself at times, but I said, “We just have two other paths. Let’s explore them first.” He agrees and we talk once a week for the next few months about different progress and he submit an outline and all kinds of things like that and I try to help him out. Then at the end of those four months, he did commit suicide. There’s lots of things about that case and many other cases, but I have lessons about him and why I think he decided to commit suicide and so on, but if I think about … He’s not the only person I talk to.

I talk to lots of people with these kind of things and none of those are what you would call fun.

Robert Cialdini:

Right.

Dan Ariely:

I don’t have these discussions and burst into laughter. There’s nothing about them that is joyful. In fact, if you looked at me from the outside, you would say I’m suffering and I am. It’s painful and difficult and sometimes I cry and I have nightmares and it’s a engaging experience that you would not say it’s pleasurable, and nevertheless I find myself spending a lot of my time on those things. The question I started asking is why. We have this idea of pursuing happiness. It’s not a definition of pursuing happiness. I’m kind of pursuing misery.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah.

Dan Ariely:                             

You can say maybe I’m an S&M kind of a person and what I’m really after is misery, but that’s not the case. I think what’s the case is; is that happiness, there’s kind of two types of happiness. There’s the type of happiness that you get from sitting on the beach drinking mojito, watching a sitcom or something light and fun and on a daily basis, but the type of happiness we should really pursue is the type of happiness that gives you meaning and satisfaction and oddly, it doesn’t come with daily happiness. It comes with daily misery.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah.

Dan Ariely: 

Think about something like running a marathon. If you came from outer space and you recorded people running a marathon, you looked at them, you would say these are terrible people. They must have done something terrible, decide to punish them with this cruel punishment and hopefully they will pay their debt to society when they finish and they’ll forgive them. It’s true that there’s not a second in a marathon that somebody say, “This second is more pleasurable than watching YouTube.”

Robert Cialdini: 

Yeah.

Dan Ariely: 

The experience as a whole gives people a sense of meaning and progress and achievement and overcoming and so this book is really my … Started with my struggle to figure out what kind of things drive me that seem on the surface to be so antagonistic to happiness but in fact give me so much more of other things. I have some answers, but it’s such a big open question. I took this book as an opportunity to explore it.

Robert Cialdini:  

Yeah. It seems to me that the choice of the concept of motivation fits very well with the opportunity to explore on a lot of levels something that is central and incessantly part of what we do every day. When I first wrote my book Influence, it turns out that that concept has a lot of tendrils, it reaches all through our lives and so it’s turned out to be something that people have been interested in. The idea of motivation struck me when I read this. Oh yes. Another one of those fundamental undergirding constructs that allow us interesting thinking and ways of behaving inside its borders.

Dan Ariely:                          

Yep and much like Influence, I think it’s going to be multi-determined and there are many things going on at the same time and there are many paths to the same aspect so we’re not going to have a simple fun answer, but the exploration is wonderful.

Robert Cialdini:            

Right. Well, let me go on to the next question. That was a great answer. This is a little more of a fun question. Of all the work you’ve done, what would you say has been most underappreciated and why do you think that is?

Dan Ariely:  

Okay. Underappreciated by who? I’ll just take academics.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah.

Dan Ariely:

We had this paper in which we tried to get very poor people in Kenya to save money and we created this system where people could text money into their M-PESA account, their online phone account and every night the money would move to an investment bank so it would be easy to put the money in, but taking it out would be hard. Then we added all kinds of things to it. Some people just got that condition. Some people got a text message once a week. Try and save 100 schillings. About a dollar. Some people got a text message from their kids. Try and save 100 schillings for the family. Some people got a 10% match. Some people got a 20% match.Some people got

Some people got match with loss aversion so we gave them the match in the beginning of the week and if they saved they got to keep it. If not, we took it back. Some people got the coin. The coin was golden color. It had 24 numbers on it. We asked them to put it somewhere in their hut and we asked them every week to scratch the number for that week. One, two, three, four, five, and so on to indicate if they saved or not. Because we don’t have much time, I’ll just tell you that when we asked people to predict the results, people think that 20% will get people to save a lot, 10% less, and zero doesn’t matter. Message, message from kids, coin, doesn’t matter.What happened was that reminders help, text help. Adding money to it 10% helped. By the way, 10 and 20% no difference. Loss aversion help some more but again 10, 20% don’t matter. Kids were just like 10 or 20% plus loss aversion. It means that the kids are incredibly powerful.

What happened was that reminders help, text help. Adding money to it 10% helped. By the way, 10 and 20% no difference. Loss aversion help some more but again 10, 20% don’t matter. Kids were just like 10 or 20% plus loss aversion. It means that the kids are incredibly powerful.

Robert Cialdini:

Yeah.

Dan Ariely:

The big surprise in that a paper was the coin. The coin dramatically increased savings compared to everything else. By the way, when you look at the results over the week, we texted everybody on a particular day. The coin did not have much benefit on that day. The benefit of the coin came from all the other days of the week. We suggest that from time to time, people saw the coin and from time to time they remembered and from time to time they took an action. Now, here’s the thing. The coin, we’re not sure what’s going on there. We can speculate and we can say, “Oh, we think it’s about reminders,” or we can say, “We think about all of a sudden the family understands that there are savings because usually when you save, the only visible thing for the family is that you take things away from them.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yep.

Dan Ariely:                             

[inaudible 00:15:11] on the table by insurance, you’re taking away from the family in the most direct way. All of a sudden the family could see that they’re getting something back but academics don’t like it and maybe for a good reason. Certainly not all papers should have this character that says, “Hey we had this really surprising result. We don’t exactly know where it’s coming from.” I think as academics, we have this mistake where we think that every paper should be somewhat complete. I think we don’t appreciate saying, “Hey this is puzzling. Maybe we’ll deal with it at another time,” and it’s enough to basically show the puzzle to stimulate more research and to show that it’s working.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Dan Ariely:                             

I think if I wrote that paper without the coin condition, loss aversion, 10%, 20% it’s a package but you add the condition that is much more interesting and all of a sudden rather than making the paper more interesting, it makes it less interesting. That I think is a little bit of my frustration with how we think about papers and I don’t think we think enough about the accumulation of science as a process.

Robert Cialdini:                  

I don’t think there are outlets specifically for those kinds of papers although it would be very valuable if we had intriguing results and we don’t quite know the way to explain them. What do you think folks? Why can’t we build a platform of research on this question because it exists as a phenomenon.

Dan Ariely:                            

Yep. In medicine, they have case studies.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yeah.

Dan Ariely:                             

Side by side, they publish papers with the scientific method and they also say, “Hey. Here’s a bizarre thing I observed. Let’s think about it.”

Robert Cialdini:                  

Great. Well, next question has to do with the flip side of the last question. Of all your work, what was most surprising to you in terms of its big impact? It was more than you expected in terms of its impact.

Dan Ariely:                             

Okay. You mean impact in terms of experimental, not in terms of the effective-

Robert Cialdini:                  

What I’m going to allow you to move around categories. Where did you get oversized impact?

Dan Ariely:                             

Effect.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Yeah.

Dan Ariely:                             

As you know, we do all of these experiments to tempt people to steal money from us.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Dan Ariely:                             

We have all kinds of ways that people can exaggerate the results and get more money than they deserve. In one experiment, we described the experiment to people and we say, “Hey we have these two methods here. Two version of the experiment.” In one of them the payment is up to $4. Another one is up to $40. Why don’t you flip a coin and we’ll see if you get the $4 experiment or the $40 experiment. People flip the coin. No matter what they got, we said, “Oh. You got the $4 version.” Now the research assistant looks around and he says, “Listen. My boss is not here today so I’ll tell you what. You got $3 to show up to the experiment. If you give me the money, I will pretend you got the other coin flip.”

It’s basically asking him for a bribe. What percentage of people bribed him? 90%. 90% bribed him which is shocking. What did they do after the bribing? They moved from a $4 condition to a $40 condition. They’re going to make much more money. They also increased their cheating and they started stealing. What do I mean by stealing? After they failed the task, they wrote down how much money they deserve. Let’s say $23 and they circle it. Instead of paying them, we give them an envelope with $50 and we say, “Why don’t you pay yourself the amount of money you deserve. The amount of money you don’t deserve, leave in the envelope and as you leave the room, drop it in a big box of envelopes.”

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Dan Ariely:                             

This was the first time we saw people stealing. Usually people write $23. They cheat on the reporting but once they write $23, they take $23. Here we saw stealing. The effect of course is something that social psychologists would predict which is that if the person running the system is corrupt, people switch very quickly and become corrupt. The magnitude of the people who are willing to pay the bribe and the ease in which they started stealing is incredibly disturbing. It’s incredibly disturbing if you look at the politics around the world.

You say, “Can you think about countries where the leadership seems to be corrupt or dishonest?” What are the odds that when people encounter that system they will not become corrupt and dishonest themselves.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right. That’s reminiscent of an old set of studies I saw. Not on cheating, not on stealing, on aggression. There’s research by a sociologist that show that after a war, after a country has engaged in warfare, whether they’ve won or lost, violence increases inside the country. There are more armed robberies-

Dan Ariely:                             

And domestic violence as well.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Domestic. It’s not just from veterans who’ve returned from the wars. No. It’s people who were never in war. When someone in charge endorses aggression as a way to solve problems, that has this trickle down effect similar to what I think you saw for lying and cheating being endorsed by someone in charge. Next question.

Dan Ariely:                             

Can we make a happier question? I’m a little depressed now.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Oh okay. Yes there is a happier question. In your experience as a researcher or author, I’m going to give you some latitude here. Is there a revealing or humorous story you can tell us that only a few people know?

Dan Ariely:                             

Okay. I’m not sure how humorous this is. I grew up in Israel. I came to the US and the first study I did was on beer. I basically got undergrads to taste beer either in the blind tasting condition or when they could see the beer. I did it to freshman, I did it for seniors. What I found was that freshman when they tasted the beer while seeing the cans said they liked the heavy German beers more and the light American beers less, but when they drank without knowing what it is, they like the light American beers first and the heavy German beers less.

By the time people were seniors, they said they liked German beers more than they liked American beers and that’s also how they like them. My conclusion was that the goal of college is … You have the goal of thinking that you want to learn how to like heavy German beers and through college, you learn how to do it. The problem with that study was that I had no idea about drinking age.

Robert Cialdini:                  

A ha.

Dan Ariely:                             

I didn’t understand the IRB so it was an illegal study in many ways. I was just a grad student in the first semester. I worked in the lab of Tom Walton and I just kind of did this on the side for fun and I basically got freshman to drink. I could never publish these results so basically nobody knows about it but I think it’s a really fun interesting result.

Robert Cialdini:                  

I think it is funny so great. Then there’s a last question. As you know I’ve written a book recently called Pre-Suasion that explores what communicators do before delivering a message to increase its acceptance. I wonder can you describe a situation in which you’ve seen a communicator, it could be you who said or did something first that led to the success of an immediately following appeal.

Dan Ariely:                             

Yep. I’ll tell you what one of the things I do. When I present, I always run the risk that people say, “Oh but people are rational”, or, “I am rational,” and so on. What I now do and I think it’s successful is before I talk about rationality and irrationality, I get the audience to admit some of their own mistakes. I start by saying how many of you in the last month have eaten more than you think you should? I ask people to raise their hands and virtually everybody raises their hand. Then I said how many of you in the last month have not exercised as much as you … Have eaten more than you think you should. How many of you have ever texted and driving? Texting and driving is a clincher because most people admit that they do it and then there’s just after people admit that they over eat, under exercise, and text and drive, what can they say?

“Oh, yes I am rational?” You can always say, “But listen. Don’t you know that texting and driving is stupid? Haven’t you just admitted that you said it?” I get people to admit that they fail and because of the hand raising that everybody around them fail and that basically I think creates an openness to it.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Dan Ariely:                             

The one thing I tried once that doesn’t succeed is to ask people how many of them in the last month have not always washed their hands when they left the bathroom. The reason that one is not successful is not because people don’t do it. It’s because they don’t admit it.

Robert Cialdini:                  

They don’t want to admit it. Especially if they’re going to be shaking hands with certain people in the audience.

Dan Ariely:                             

Now, if I use that example I say, “Look. You’re all lying. There’s no chance that you’re all doing it.” What I want to do is I want people to go through a few things where they admit, they’re willing to admit publicly and they see everybody around them behaving this way and after that, you can’t really have arguments. Yes, but people are rational.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Right.

Dan Ariely:                             

You’ve established that up front and I think they’re resistant because when you talk about being rational, it’s an abstract idea. When you’re translating specific behavior that you say nobody is doing or everybody is behaving badly, now we’re starting the discussion in a very different state.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Brilliant I thought. That’s great. Well thank you very much for taking time with us today. I enjoyed it. I always enjoy our interactions. This one especially. Thank you and congratulations on Payoff. It’s really terrific.

Dan Ariely:                             

Thank you very much and I’m looking forward to our next interaction.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Good. So long for now.

Dan Ariely:           

Take care. Bye.

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Bestselling author Dan Ariely reveals fascinating new insights into motivation—showing that the subject is far more complex than we ever imagined. Payoff investigates the true nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and how we can bridge this gap.

Learn More

Pre-Suasion:  A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Cialdini Asks: Dan Ariely appeared first on Influence at Work.

Today, I interview Amy Cuddy, bestselling author of Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, known around the world for her 2012 TED Talk, which is the second-most viewed talk in TED’s history. A Harvard Business School professor and social psychologist, Cuddy studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments influence people. Her research has been published in top academic journals and covered by NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Wired, Fast Company, and more. Cuddy has been named a Game Changer by Time, a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, one of 50 Women Who Are Changing the World by Business Insider, and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

It was a pleasure speaking with Amy for the Cialdini Asks Interview Series. 

Read the transcript of this interview below.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Hello, I’m Bob Cialdini, a Behavioral Scientist, and author of the book, Influence, as well as the new book, Pre-Suasion. I’d like to tell you about a series of video interviews I’ve conducted with individuals who I admire, and who have written about behavioral science, for the academic community, but as well for the larger community. Individuals such as Dan Ariely, Adam Grant, Amy Cuddy, and Richard Thaler.

In this series of interviews called, Cialdini Asks, I try to get beneath the surface and behind the scenes. Inquiring into the motivations that spurred the work of these individuals, and their decisions to write about it for a popular audience. I also ask them about aspects of their work that exceeded their expectations in terms of impact, as well as those aspects of their work they felt have been most under-appreciated. I even ask them to tell us a funny story, or a revealing one, that nobody knows about them and their work.

 I know that in the process, I have been surprised, fascinated, and informed by their answers. I hope that the same will be true for you. So, I do hope that you will look out for, and tune in, to the Cialdini Asks video series, as we make it available online over the next several weeks. Thanks.

Hi Amy.

Amy Cuddy:                          

Hi, thank you for having me.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Well I’m looking forward to the opportunity to chat a little bit. You know I’m a big fan of your research, but I was especially taken with your book, Presence. Can you tell us about the series of events that led up to your decision to write that book. That is, what made you decide to turn the research covered there, into something directed not just to the academic community, but to the larger community?

Amy Cuddy:                          

Yeah. It’s funny, I always thought that if I wrote a book it would be … First of all, I’d have to wait for the book to exist in my head before I would sign any kind of contract to write it. I would not say, “This is an interesting idea, I’m going to explore it.” I had to really feel ready to write it. And that is what happened with Presence. But it was a kind of unusual path for an academic, because my TED Talk which I gave in 2012, became very popular before I had a book, and while I was a very junior faculty member.

So I really wasn’t ready. Of course I had a lot of people saying, “Oh, write a book on Power Posing.” And I thought I don’t want to write a book just on Power Posing. So what happened was I allowed the people who had watched the talk, and who had reached out to me, either over email, or old hand-written letters which are so beautiful to get … or people that I’d meet at airports, or on the street or shops, it’s amazing, from all over the world. They, in an unexpected way, guided me to this topic of Presence.

What I found is that these, literally tens of thousands of people, didn’t write and say, “Oh, I Power Posed, and I felt my hormones change.” They talked about challenges that they had faced in their lives. I’m talking about a 13-year-old girl in Mainland China who was working up the courage to speak up in class, or one who wanted to learn English. Or an elderly man in Florida, a retired Word War II veteran who said he had lost his sense of pride, and he needed to gather the courage every time he went to talk to his doctor, in order to be treated like a human, and not be dehumanized. But the challenges seemed very different, but there was a thread through them. It was that people felt that the stakes were high in these challenges. They really cared about it, and the outcome mattered to them. And they also felt this profound sense of being socially judged. The thing that helped them get there was to feel personally powerful. Not to feel power over others, but to feel the power to do things. And something about the talk had helped them move in that direction. But they were doing it in all different ways.

What would happen in those moments when they felt powerful, is that they felt they could actually connect with the person who they had seen as threatening. The person that they had seen as threatening no longer became threatening. They became a possible ally, or a peer. And they were able to leave those challenges feeling a sense of satisfaction instead of regret. That became the book I wanted to write. Not just a book about body language, but a book about how we face these daily small challenges that we face whether we have very little formal power, or a lot of formal power. I just felt so much connection with people as a result of giving the TED Talk. I realized that that was my place, in a way. I really wanted to connect more outside of academia.

I grew up in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania. In a place where very few people went to college. So I never felt fancy. I never have felt like I belonged in these places like Princeton and Harvard. I want to talk to people outside those places.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Well, it’s interesting that those accounts that you describe, made you feel ready to write the book. But it seems to me, they also make people ready to read it by experiencing those accounts. People outside of the academic community want to know about that kind of connection. There’s meaning there besides whether the data are significant beyond .05. There was something there about that set of accounts that gave you the ability to know what you were doing, and then to do it in a way that was truly able to touch people.

Amy Cuddy:                          

Thank you.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Which I accounts for a lot of the success of that book.

Amy Cuddy:                          

Thank you. I do think people see themselves in these stories, and they feel less alone. One of the things I hear most often from people who write to me, is that they didn’t realize other people felt like imposters. And just learning … For me, and you know how huge a fan I am of your work, and everything related back to it in a way. So I always think it’s social proof. Right? For people to just learn that others feel like an imposter, in a way allows them to feel less frightened by the idea that they feel like an imposter. So I think that that’s part of the ability to connect is to share vulnerabilities. Thank you.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Well let’s go on to the next questions that’s proven to me … Someone once asked me this question, and I thought it was revealing when I reflected back on the answer to it, for myself. But here’s the question to you. Of all the work you’ve done, what would you say has been most underappreciated, and why do you think that is?

Amy Cuddy:                          

That’s interesting. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this. You know, I can think of it on paper, but also a larger phenomenon. I think … You know, I’m actually by training a stereotype and prejudice researcher. Most of my research is on how we mis-perceive other people. The biases that we have in our perceptions of others. And so, although I do think that work is appreciated in the social psychology community, I think people are less aware of it outside. That’s just sort of a function of having an idea that became really popular.

One of the papers on stereotyping that I have been working on for years, and thought would be more impactful than it was, is a paper on how culture shapes the content of gender stereotypes. That paper, from beginning of data collection to publication, took 10 years. It was a cross-cultural paper. We collected data in Korea and the US. We ended up running many many studies, and then doing a huge re-analysis of 27 countries … data from 27 countries. The takeaway is that people believe the stereotype that women are more interdependent and collectivistic. They think that that is a universal stereotype. That men are everywhere seen as more independent. And women as more interdependent. That’s not the case. It turns out where interdependence is valued, like East Asian cultures, men are seen as more interdependent, and women as less interdependent.

That was such a big project, I thought it was a very big theoretical contribution to understanding gender stereotypes and how culture interacts with them. I think in the wake of the Power Posing work, it just went under the radar. But I’m still very interested in that idea, and understanding how as cultures change, gender stereotypes will change as well.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Fascinating. As I say, I’m a big fan of your work. And as you say, that particular study is not one I had on my radar screen. But I see now that you’ve mentioned it, how insightful that conclusion is for understanding how the stereotype process works. So I’m glad we had the chance to bring some prominence to it.

Amy Cuddy:                          

Me too, thank you.

Robert Cialdini:                  

So let’s ask the flip side of that question. Of all your work, what has surprised you most, in terms of its big impact. That is, beyond your expectation?

Amy Cuddy:                          

Yeah. It has to be the Power Posing idea. There are two sides of that coin. On the one hand, I love the simplicity of … I love the idea of giving people self nudges, ways to improve their own lives. As opposed … I like the nudge idea, of changing people’s behavior in a healthier way. Sort of, one person changing another person’s behavior. But there’s something a little paternalistic about it. So I prefer the idea of giving people evidence-based tools to change their own lives. Right? That they can apply when they need them.

I certainly, when I gave that talk, had no idea. You don’t even know if your talk will be posted. So you certainly have no idea if 500,000 people will watch it. And that seems terrifying. And certainly not 38 million. That just went way beyond my wildest expectations.

The unfortunate thing about it is that when you give a talk like that, you’re stuck … you’re suspended in time. I gave a talk on what we knew in 2012, and now we know a lot more. I also understand the phenomenon to be much broader than ‘stand like Wonder Woman for two minutes.’ One thing is that the hormones findings are really fragile. We’ve seen … There are three studies that show them, and two that don’t … show the effects on hormones. I didn’t realize how sticky the hormones findings would be for people. People really find that interesting. To me, the fact that it changes the way you feel, is more important.

If hormones are the mechanism, okay, maybe that’s interesting, but not the most important piece. But the other is that it’s a much bigger idea. The idea is that how you carry yourself, you choose to carry yourself with grace and poise and pride, than you carry out your interactions with grace and poise and pride. It’s not just about standing with your hands on your hips for two minutes. It’s about standing up straight … There’s a great Maya Angelou quote, “Stand up straight, and realize who you are. That you tower over your circumstances.” To me, that captures it. So I wish I had been able to communicate that broader idea. I am able to do that now. But the talk that people watch from four and a half years ago will always be limited.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Here’s another question that I think your followers would love to know. In your experience, as either a researcher or as a book author, is there a revealing or humorous story you can tell us that only a few people know?

Amy Cuddy:                          

Yes. I was getting my hair cut, I was going to be doing this interview for a television show. I was talking about … I was a little bit nervous about this interview. It was something I cared about quite a bit, and I was telling the hair stylist about it and she said, “Oh, well you have to … There’s a way that you can get ready to do this.” And she’s like, “I’m also a yoga teacher, so I know about this stuff.” And she said, “OK, I watched this talk, and if you’re nervous about something like this, you gotta put your hands on your hips, and stand there for two minutes. We all have these experiences, so don’t feel bad.” And I said, “I know. I’m her.” And she goes, “I know, aren’t we all?” So she thought I was saying “I am the person who needs this.” But I was trying to say, “No, that’s my talk.” And then she goes, “Oh my God. Oh, shoot. You are that person, literally,” and I said, “Yeah.” But I thought it was great. I was like, thank you, it is good advice. Thank you for reminding me of my own advice.

Robert Cialdini:                  

As you know I’ve written a book Pre-suasion. You actually were kind enough to offer an endorsement of it. It explores what communicators can do before delivering a message to increase its acceptance. For my final question, can you describe a situation where, as a communicator … now it could be you, or it could be somebody else … when that communicator said or did something first, that led to the success of an immediately subsequent appeal?

Amy Cuddy:                          

I have to tell this story about someone else who has really influenced me, and how he approaches things. What I love … You know again, I love your work. And this idea is so consistent with my idea that we build trust before we deliver information. That you have to build trust as a conduit of influence, and if you don’t do that, it’s nearly impossible to influence anyone. I mean, if they don’t think that you understand them, why would they listen to you? Why would they take your prescription?

The greatest example that I have come across is from a Baptist minister named Jeffrey Brown, who was part of a movement called the Boston Miracle in the early ’90s. Where gang violence had escalated beyond where it had ever been. There were more than a hundred youth deaths in one year, and no one knew what to do. Everyone kept bringing in experts. People had good intentions, they wanted to change things. But they would bring in experts, they would have lock-down, they’d have after school programs, they tried community policing … all of these things didn’t work. Finally these three young black Baptist ministers, who had been going to these meetings to talk about what to do, realized that what they needed to do was to listen to the young people. To the gang members themselves.

This is a longer-term process, but there are also many short-term examples of how this worked. What Jeffrey and these two other young ministers did, is they would walk the streets from 10 pm to 2 am every Saturday night. And they would just sit and listen. They would listen. They had no agenda. So the action, was to listen, rather than to talk. And by listening, it immediately opened up these young people to them. They trusted them. So when they then requested information … Jeffrey and these two other young men, the kids were much more likely to offer the information, to tell them how they felt. So it’s listening first. Listening as an action.

I tell my students all the time, listen first. You don’t have to take the floor right away. It’s okay. It’s not going anywhere. By just simply listening you are immediately opening people up to you. Right? You’re also collecting information. I have so many examples, for me it would be listening as the action immediately before the request. Is incredibly powerful.

Robert Cialdini:                  

I think what you said is really insightful. That while we may think that the primary benefit of listening … genuinely listening … is to collect the requisite information to allow us to move forward with some kind of a plan. It’s something more primitive than that.

Amy Cuddy:                          

I absolutely agree.

Robert Cialdini:                  

It’s the willingness to be open. To accepting the information that the other individual is providing that’s so beneficial to what’s next.

Amy Cuddy:                          

I agree. The outcome of this approach, of listening to these young people, to these gang members, was that gang violence dropped dramatically in Boston. Many economists and sociologist have studied this thinking, “It can’t be.” But actually, it is. That’s what happened. It was that approach of listening first that helped them solve the problem.

Robert Cialdini:                  

Great example.

Amy Cuddy:                          

Thank you so much, bye.

Robert Cialdini:                  

So long for now.

Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret.

Learn More

Pre-Suasion:  A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Cialdini Asks: Amy Cuddy appeared first on Influence at Work.

But recently, behavioral research has shown that, by concentrating so intently on the message, the messengers have missed something crucial. Optimal persuasion is achieved through pre-suasion: the practice of arranging for people to agree with a message before they know what’s in it. Although this may seem like some form of magic, it’s not. It’s established science. In my new book “Pre-suasion,” I describe the psychology behind what pre-suaders say or do immediately prior to a persuasive communication to elevate its effect, often dramatically.

Now, in conjunction with PBS NewsHour, I’ve developed a quiz from material in the book to introduce the concept and allow you to test your understanding of how pre-suasion operates, as well as to improve that understanding. With a better awareness of pre-suasion, you should be able to:

1. harness its power to boost your own persuasive success and
2. deflect that power when it’s used on you in an unwelcome way.

In school, I never much liked quizzes. The answers so rarely seemed useful to anything but scoring well on the test (did I really need to know which state was the No. 1 apple producer in the U.S.?). The PBS Pre-Suasion Quiz is designed to be different in that regard by describing a historically little-recognized, yet potent, form of social influence that even persuasion scientists have only recently come to appreciate. If the quiz delivers valuable life lessons, that will be my reward. No need to send an apple to the teacher.

So how did you do?

If you got less than 60 percent, don’t fret. Most of us are unaware of pre-suasion in ads and marketing. This quiz was meant to introduce you to the concept, so you can be more alert to it in the future.

If you got between 60 percent and 85 percent, you have a good initial grasp of pre-suasion and how it works.

If you got above 85 percent, you’re a rare pre-suasion expert. Count me impressed.

This article was previously published on PBS.

AVAILABLE NOW

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Influenced or Influencer? Take This Quiz to Find Out. appeared first on Influence at Work.

A Happier You in 2017

My new book, Pre-Suasion, explains what a communicator can do first to increase the chance an audience will move in a desired direction.  A useful aspect of the power of pre-suasion is that we can use it on ourselves, to achieve our personal goals.  And, if there’s one personal goal we likely all share, it’s to be happier.  So, let’s take a look at how we can take certain steps in a pre-suasive fashion—at the start of our day—to give ourselves a gladness upgrade for 2017.

Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky has made especially noteworthy contributions to the study of happiness by choosing to investigate a key question more systematically than anyone else:  Which specific activities can we perform to increase our happiness?  At the top of her list is a simple step that involves counting our blessings/gratitudes at the beginning of every day and writing them down.  Although it’s a relatively easy action to take, many people report that, after a while, they stop performing it.

As one of those people, I think I know why.  It gets old.  Within this practice, we typically rely on the big reasons to feel blessed/grateful—such as the presence of family, friends, and health.  Although it’s emotionally fortifying to review these reasons each morning, it’s not intellectually engaging to do so.  After a while, it’s easy to become bored with the process and to give little concentrated attention to those (same) items on our list.

Fortunately, a pair of solutions to the problem can come to the rescue.  I heard of the first from Dean Graziosi, a fellow speaker at a conference:  Lower the bar for acceptable gratitudes.  Give yourself permission to identify all sorts of little blessings first thing in the morning—a good night’s sleep, the comfortable pillow that allowed it, the hot shower or fresh cup of coffee waiting, the lunch appointment later in the day at a favorite restaurant or with an always-funny coworker, and so on.  This kind of search for and recognition of the many small joys in our lives—that will differ from day to day—makes the process more interesting (and fun, actually), which makes us more likely to stick with it.

The second solution requires us to overcome a standard human bias—the tendency to pay greater attention to the presence of consequential things in our lives than to the absence of such things.  In many situations, this is a mistake, as the lack of something can be tellingly important.  Consider, for instance, how this truth is conveyed in a line from a Jimmy Buffett song in which he pointedly informs a former lover, “If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me.”  What’s the implication of all this for how we structure our morning gratitudes?  If we read or see news accounts of people rendered homeless by a house fire or jobless by a factory closing or penniless by a financial fraud—along with feeling sympathy for the victims—we should be sure to say, gratefully, “It didn’t happen to me.”

If we all take these daily steps in 2017, I’ll get to add another gratitude to my morning list:  The ability to wish everyone more than a Happy New Year but a most likely happier one.

AVAILABLE NOW

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Make Yourself Happier Using Principles of Influence appeared first on Influence at Work.

By Dr. Robert Cialdini

In February 2015, Warren Buffett, widely considered the greatest financial investor of our time, had a problem. It was 50 years since he took control of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, guiding it to astounding levels of value, along with his partner Charlie Munger. Many investors were worried that these levels couldn’t be maintained in the future, perhaps making it time to sell Berkshire stock. To respond to these concerns, Buffett wrote a special letter to shareholders in which he recounted various reasons for confidence in Berkshire’s continuing profitability. But, before the description of strengths, he did something I had never seen or heard him do in any public forum, declaring that what he was about to assert was “what I would say to my family today if they asked me about Berkshire’s future.” The result was a flood of favorable reaction to the letter (with headlines like “Warren Buffett just wrote the best annual letter ever” and “You’d be a fool not to invest in Berkshire Hathaway”) and a per-share increase for the year of nearly five times that of the S & P. I can say that, as a Berkshire Hathaway stockholder myself, I have never since thought of selling any shares. After all, Warren Buffett had given me the same advice (to trust in Berkshire’s future profitability) he said he’d give to a family member!

AVAILABLE NOW

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

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The post Great Pre-Suasion Moments in History: Warren Buffett’s Genius Persuasive Tactic appeared first on Influence at Work.

Before uttering a single word in court, the legal team arguing for marriage equality to the US Supreme Court in 2013 undertook a months-long nationwide public relations campaign with one man as its primary target–Justice Anthony Kennedy, who they knew was likely to cast the deciding vote in the companion cases at issue. The PR campaign employed a set of concepts and specific wordings Kennedy had used in earlier court opinions– “human dignity,” “individual liberty,” and “personal freedom/rights”– and linked those concepts to the marriage equality position. The intent was to ensure that Kennedy would hear three of his prior opinions tied to the idea of marriage equality wherever he went in the months before court proceedings. Did this pre-suasive tactic work? The legal team members think so, pointing to an affirming piece of evidence: When explaining his tie-breaking votes in the cases, Kennedy leaned heavily on the same concepts of dignity, liberty, and freedom/rights the team had previously labored to associate with their position in his thinking.

AVAILABLE NOW

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Great Pre-Suasion Moments in History: The Perfect Persuasive Tactic appeared first on Influence at Work.

By Dr. Robert Cialdini

As National Security Advisor and US Secretary of State during the 1970s, Henry Kissinger was considered America’s greatest international negotiator. When asked who he considered the best such negotiator he had encountered, he nominated Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat because of a pre-suasive tactic he regularly employed that allowed him to get more from a negotiation than was warranted by his political or military position at the time. Before beginning negotiations, Sadat would attribute an admirable trait to the opposing side (perhaps a history of sympathy for the underdog or support for those in need or a tradition of fairness) that fit with what he wanted. In other words, Kissinger said, “Sadat gave his opponents a reputation to live up to”–something they then did remarkably often.

AVAILABLE NOW

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Learn More

The post Great Pre-Suasion Moments in History: Negotiate Yourself a Better Deal appeared first on Influence at Work.