59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot (7 page)

“Yes, yes, yes.”
Research conducted in the 1980s, by psychologist Daniel Howard from Southern Methodist University, supported the persuasive impact of positive utterances. Howard arranged for researchers to telephone randomly selected people and ask whether a representative of the “Hunger Relief Committee” could visit their home and try to sell them some cookies for charity.
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Half of the researchers started their conversations with a simple question designed to get a positive answer, asking “How are you feeling this evening?” As expected, the vast majority of people responded favorably (“Great,” “Fine, thanks”). More important, this act had a dramatic influence on whether they would allow a salesperson into their house. Of those who were in the “How are you feeling?” group, 32 percent accepted the offer, compared to just 18 percent in the control “no question” group. The message is that people are more likely to agree with you when they have already said something positive.

“Let me get this.”
In a series of studies during the 1930s, psychologist Gregory Razran discovered that people developed a special fondness for other people, objects, and statements if they were introduced to them while eating a meal.
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The effect may be attributable to the fact that good food puts people in a happy mood and can cause them to make faster, and more impulsive, decisions.
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More recently, researchers discovered that people who have just consumed caffeinated drinks were more likely to be swayed by arguments about various controversial topics.
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In short, it’s good evidence that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, or an innocent cup of coffee.

Save Your Time, Persuade by Rhyme
. In his influential book
The Gay Science
, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that rhyming poetry originally appealed to the primitive mind because it appeared to have magical connotations and represented a way of speaking directly with the gods. Although this view has not been universally accepted, recent research does suggest that rhymes can be surprisingly effective. Psychologists Matthew McGlone and Jessica Tofighbakhsh (try finding a rhyme for that) showed people well-known rhyming sayings (“Caution and measure will win you treasure” and “Life is mostly strife”) and some non-rhyming counterparts (“Caution and measure will win you riches” and “Life is mostly a struggle”) and instructed the readers to rate how accurately they described human behavior.
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The rhymes were viewed as significantly more accurate than the non-rhyming statements. The authors suggested that this was the outcome because they were more memorable, likeable, and repeatable. The effect is frequently used in advertising (“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup”) and has even made its way into the courtroom, as when attorney Johnnie Cochran defended O. J. Simpson by using the phrase “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.”

Peas in a Pod
. For persuasion, the research points to a simple fact: similarity works. For example, Randy Garner, of Sam Houston State University, mailed surveys, varying the information on the cover sheet to ensure that the first name of the addressee either matched or didn’t match the experimenter’s first name.
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So in the “matching name” group, a participant named Fred Smith might receive a survey from researcher Fred Jones, while in the “non-matching name” group, participant Julie Green might get a survey from Amanda White. This remarkably simple manipulation affected the response rate, with 30 percent in the non-matching name condition returning the survey, compared to 56 percent returned from those who saw their own first name on the cover. Other work suggests that people are far more likely to support, and agree with, those who appear to be like them. In one study, more than six thousand American voters rated their own personalities and how they perceived the personalities of John Kerry and George W. Bush.
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Both sets of voters agreed that Kerry was far more open to new ideas and concepts than Bush, but they thought that Bush was more loyal and sincere than Kerry. However, exactly the same pattern of traits emerged in the voters’ assessments of themselves, with those who voted for Kerry rating themselves as more open-minded than the Bush voters and Bush supporters seeing themselves as more trustworthy than those who voted for Kerry. Regardless of whether the similarity is in dress, speech, background, age, religion, politics, drinking and smoking habits, food preferences, opinions, personality, or body language, we like people who are like us, and we find them far more persuasive than others.

Remember to Mention Your Pet Frog
. When it comes to persuading others, try lightening up. In a study conducted by Karen O’Quinn and Joel Aronoff, participants were asked to negotiate with a seller over the purchase price of a piece of art.
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Toward the end of the negotiation, the seller made a final offer in one of two ways. Half of the time they said that they would accept $6,000, while the other half of the time they gave the same final price but also added a little humor (“Well, my final offer is $6,000, and I’ll throw in my pet frog”). Those few moments of attempted humor had a large effect, as participants made a much greater compromise in their purchase price when they heard about the frog. The effect worked just as well with men and women, regardless of the degree to which the seller’s final price was above the amount originally offered by the participant. It seemed that the brief humorous aside momentarily put the participant in a good mood and encouraged them to be more giving. So, next time you’re trying to get what you want, remember to mention your pet frog.

WHY TOO MANY COOKS LEADS TO NO COOKING AT ALL, AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT

On March 13, 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was returning to her apartment in New York City’s borough of Queens when she was the victim of a random and vicious attack. Although she parked her car less than a hundred feet from her door, she was overpowered by a total stranger during the short walk to her apartment and repeatedly stabbed. Despite the ordeal, Genovese managed to scream for help and stagger toward her apartment. Unfortunately, her attacker caught up with her and inflicted a second set of injuries that proved fatal.

On March 27, the
New York Times
ran a front-page article about the attack, describing how a large number of respectable,
law-abiding citizens” had either witnessed or heard the attack but had not telephoned the police during the assault. The detective in charge of the case reportedly could not understand why so many witnesses did so little. The story was quickly picked up by other media, and most journalists concluded that Genovese’s neighbors simply didn’t care enough to get involved and characterized the incident as damning evidence of how modern-day American society had lost its way. The tragic story caught the public imagination, and it has since inspired several books, films, and songs, and even a sensitively titled musical drama
The Screams of Kitty Genovese
.
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The witnesses’ lack of involvement also puzzled two social psychologists working in New York at the time. Bibb Latané and John Darley were unconvinced that the apparent widespread apathy reflected a lack of empathy, and they set about investigating some of the other factors that could have caused the witnesses to turn their backs rather than pick up the telephone. The two researchers reasoned that the large number of witnesses may have played a pivotal role, and they carried out a series of ingenious experiments that have since been described in almost every social psychology textbook published in the last thirty years.
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In their first study, Latané and Darley had a student fake an epileptic seizure on the streets of New York and observed whether passersby took the time to help. As they were interested in the effect that the number of witnesses might have on the likelihood of any one of them helping, the researchers staged the fake seizure again and again in front of different numbers of people. The results were as clear as they were counterintuitive. As the number of witnesses increased, the chances that any one of them would help decreased. The effect was far from trivial: the student received assistance 85 percent
of the time when there was one other person present but only about 30 percent of the time when five others were present.

In another study, the researchers moved off the streets and turned their attention to groups of people sitting in a waiting room.
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Rather than faking an epileptic seizure, they created another apparent emergency: smoke seeping under the waiting room door, suggesting that a fire had broken out in the building. Once again, the larger the group, the smaller the chance of anyone raising the alarm. Of people sitting on their own, 75 percent reported the smoke, versus just 38 percent when there were three people in the room. Other work revealed exactly the same effect, regardless of whether the need for assistance was large or small. For example, the team arranged for 145 stooges to take 1,497 elevator rides, in each of which they dropped some coins or pencils. A total of 4,813 people shared the elevators with them.
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When accompanied by just one other person, the researchers’ coins and pencils were picked up 40 percent of the time, whereas when they were sharing the elevator with six others, the rate of assistance went down to just 20 percent.

From helping a stranded motorist to donating blood to reporting a shoplifter or making an emergency telephone call, exactly the same pattern has emerged time and again. It seems that the witnesses to the Kitty Genovese attack were not especially uncaring or selfish—there were just too many of them.

Why should the urge to help others decrease as the number of people in the room increases? When faced with a relatively uncommon event, such as a man falling down in the street, we have to decide what’s going on. Often there are several options. Maybe it really is a genuine emergency and the man is having a real epileptic fit, or maybe he has just tripped, or perhaps he is faking it as part of a social psychology experiment,
or maybe he is part of a hidden-camera stunt show, or perhaps he is a mime just about to start his street show. Despite the various possibilities, we have to make a quick decision. But how do we do that? One way is to look at the behavior of those around us. Are they rushing to help, or are they continuing to go about their daily business? Are they telephoning for an ambulance or still chatting with their friends? Unfortunately, because most people are reluctant to stand out from the crowd, everyone looks to everyone else for pointers, and the group can end up deciding to do nothing. Even if a clear and present need for help exists, there is still the issue of responsibility. In most everyday situations, there is no clear chain of command. Is it your job to help, or should you leave it to the guy over there (not him, the guy behind him)? Everyone in the group thinks in the same way, which can result in no one helping at all.

The situation is very different when you are on your own. Suddenly you are carrying all the weight on your shoulders. What if the guy who has just fallen over really is in need of help? What if the building really is on fire? What if that woman in the elevator really does need that pencil to put between her teeth before a particularly gloomy meeting? Are you prepared to be the person who turned their back and walked away? Under these circumstances, most people are far more likely to find out if there is a problem and, if necessary, provide a helping hand.

Latané and Darley’s groundbreaking studies of what has become known as the “bystander” effect were initiated by the behavior of thirty-eight witnesses who saw or heard the tragic murder of Kitty Genovese but didn’t lend a helping hand. Interestingly, recent work suggests that the original media reports of the murder may have exaggerated the alleged apathy, with one of the attorneys involved saying that they could
find only about half a dozen good witnesses, that none of them actually reported seeing Genovese being stabbed and at least one claimed that the incident
was
reported to the police while it was happening.
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Regardless of the reactions that took place on that particular night, however, the experiments that followed from the media reports of the murder provide compelling insight into why being surrounded by strangers in a moment of need provides no guarantee of receiving help.

IN 59 SECONDS

The message from the bystander effect is clear—the more people who are around when a person is apparently in need of assistance, the lower the likelihood that any one person will actually help.

So, if you are unfortunate enough to require assistance in the street, what can you do to increase your chances of obtaining help? According to persuasion expert Robert Cialdini, the answer is to pick out a friendly face in the crowd and clearly tell them what is happening and what they need to do. It might be a question of saying that you think you are having a heart attack and that they need to call an ambulance, or that you are diabetic and need sugar as soon as possible. Do anything that short-circuits the diffusion of responsibility underlying the problem and helps transform a bystander from a faceless member of the crowd into a fully functioning human being.