Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior (16 page)

You’ve probably experienced similar situations in your own life. Have you ever heard a song for the first time that you immediately disliked? Then, after listening to it a few times, you actually begin to enjoy it? How about when you meet someone for the first time? Maybe you dislike him at first, but after meeting him a few times, his personality starts to grow on you? These situations occur frequently, and they can be explained by a psychological principle.

The
mere exposure effect
, also known as the
familiarity principle
, suggests that we develop greater positive feelings toward a stimulus if we’re repeatedly exposed to it. The more often you encounter a stimulus (e.g., beer, song, person), the more appealing and likable that stimulus generally becomes. Though it may appear counterintuitive to our current beliefs (such as the popular phrase, “familiarity breeds contempt”), ample evidence has shown that repeated exposures to a stimulus lead to a more favorable perception of that stimulus. This chapter sheds light on why that’s the case.

THE POWER OF REPITITIONS

Now back to my original question: do you think that you would prefer an actual picture of yourself or a picture of your mirrored reflection? Researchers conducted this experiment and found that, if presented with both options, you’re more likely to prefer a picture of your mirrored reflection, whereas your friends are more likely to prefer the actual picture of yourself, even when those two images are virtually identical (Mita, Dermer, & Knight, 1977).

If you understand the mere exposure effect, you can understand why those results occurred. Think about it. Each day we wake up, walk into the bathroom, and what do we see? We see our reflection in the mirror. Each day we wake up, walk outside, and what do our friends see? They see us from their own viewing perspective. Therefore, when presented with those two images, people prefer the image that generates the most familiarity. We prefer the picture of our mirrored reflection, and our friends prefer the actual picture because those are the perspectives that generate the most familiarity.

Even if we fail to consciously notice a repeated stimulus, we’re still likely to develop positive feelings toward it through nonconscious exposures. In one study, researchers repeatedly flashed geometric shapes to participants, and these shapes were flashed so quickly (4 milliseconds) that participants failed to consciously process them. After those exposures, the researchers presented participants with two shapes: one shape that was previously flashed and one shape that was completely new. The researchers asked them which shape they preferred, and despite absolutely no conscious recognition for the original shape, people consistently chose the shape that the researchers flashed on a nonconscious level (Bornstein, Leone, & Galley, 1987).

In fact, the mere exposure effect is
stronger
when the exposures occur nonconsciously (Zajonc, 2001). How could something that we don’t even perceive create a stronger effect? The answer lies in the
affective primacy hypothesis
, a concept suggesting that our emotional responses can be triggered before our cognitive responses. Mere exposure becomes stronger for exposures that occur outside of our conscious awareness because those exposures trigger an emotional response without triggering a cognitive response. They enhance mere exposure because whenever we consciously evaluate something, we attach other meanings and associations to that stimulus, thereby altering (and possibly degrading) our evaluation of it. Nonconscious exposures prevent those potentially harmful associations, and so they often produce more powerful effects than conscious exposures.

Ever since Robert Zajonc proposed the mere exposure effect in the 1960s (Zajonc, 1968), extensive research has investigated this phenomenon, and the results show that this effect applies in many different contexts with many different stimuli. The researchers who conducted the experiment with the geometric shapes conducted a follow-up study and replaced the shapes with pictures of actual people. They found that the results were consistent: participants who were repeatedly exposed to photographs of people on a nonconscious level consistently preferred those photographs over new photographs (Bornstein, Leone, & Galley, 1987). The next section explains why this effect occurs, and the remainder of the chapter will teach you specific techniques to apply that principle toward persuasion.

WHY ARE REPITITIONS SO POWERFUL?

The previous chapter described how similarities are powerful because of evolution; we’re naturally drawn toward people who are similar because they pose less of a threat. The mere exposure effect works in a similar way, no pun intended. Repeated exposures can generate a positive attitude toward a stimulus because they promote a greater sense of familiarity with that stimulus, which makes that stimulus seem less threatening.

Besides evolution, however, there are a few other reasons why the mere exposure effect is so powerful. The two main explanations are classical conditioning and processing fluency (Zajonc, 2001). Because classical conditioning is described in the final chapter, this section will focus on processing fluency, a very interesting principle in psychology.

Processing Fluency.
It might seem like a strange request, but you’ll gain a much better understanding of processing fluency if you take a few minutes to write a list of 12 specific instances in your life where you acted assertively. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

Do you have your list? Like most people, you probably thought of a few instances very easily, but with each new example, you probably found it increasingly difficult to think of new instances. Surprisingly, that difficulty in retrieval influenced how you perceived your level of assertiveness. Researchers conducted that same exercise with people, except they asked one group to think of 12 instances, and they asked a different group to think of only 6 instances. What do you think happened when the researchers later asked those people to rate their own assertiveness? Though you might be inclined to think that people who listed 12 instances found themselves to be more assertive, the opposite actually occurred: people who listed only 6 instances viewed themselves to be significantly more assertive than people who listed 12 instances (Schwarz et al., 1991).

The answer to that odd finding can be found in
processing fluency
—the ease and speed with which we process information (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). If you followed the exercise and listed 12 instances of your assertiveness, you likely experienced difficulty in generating new instances the farther along you went. That perceived difficulty is the answer. The difficulty you experienced in generating new instances became a subtle cue that caused you to develop a congruent attitude that you must not be assertive. You nonconsciously said, “Hmm. If I’m an assertive person, then I should have no problem listing instances. But I
am
having trouble listing instances. Therefore, I must not be assertive.” The people who only listed 6 instances, on the other hand, didn’t experience as much difficulty generating examples, so their nonconscious developed the opposite attitude: “Hmm. If I’m an assertive person, then I should have no problem listing instances. I’m not having trouble listing instances. Therefore, I must be assertive.”

The ease and speed with which we process information largely influences our perception of that information, including how much we like it. Generally, the faster we’re able to process information, the more we tend to like that information. Why? When we’re able to quickly process information, that ease of processing feels good, and we misattribute the root cause of those positive feelings. When we experience those positive feelings, we mistakenly believe that they are resulting from our fondness for the information, rather than our ease of processing (which is the actual cause).

How does that relate to repetitions? Repetitions are powerful because they increase processing fluency; each time that we view a repeated stimulus, we’re able to process that stimulus more quickly the next time we encounter it.

It’s like sledding down a snow-covered hill. The first time you try sledding down a hill, you might not slide very fast because the snow won’t be compacted. However, each time that you slide down the hill, those repetitions compact the snow and make a smoother pathway down the hill. As the snow becomes more compacted, the smoother your path becomes, and the faster you’ll slide down the hill (and the faster you travel, the more you enjoy sledding down the hill).

Think of a time when you might’ve had the following experience. You start writing an essay and you immediately hate your writing. But after working on it for a few hours, you finally reach a point where you’re pleased with it, and so you take a break for the rest of the day. When you return to it the next day, however, you find that you hate it again. Why is that?

The answer lies in processing fluency. You disliked the writing initially because your processing fluency was low; it was still foreign to you. But the more you worked on it, the more familiar it became, and the easier it became to process. You then misattributed the ease with which you processed it with your fondness for the writing. When you took a break from it, your processing fluency decreased, and because it wasn’t as familiar to you when you returned to it, you weren’t able to process it as easily. You then misattributed that difficulty in processing to a poor essay.

Now that you understand processing fluency and why repetitions are so powerful, the next section explains how you can use that concept to enhance your persuasion.

PERSUASION STRATEGY: USE REPEATED EXPOSURES

How can you take advantage of repetitions? This section offers a few suggestions.

Prime the Context.
How pleasant do you find the word “boat”? It may seem like a weird question, but when researchers in one study asked people that same question, they found some interesting results. Compare the following two sentences that the researchers presented to two groups of people:

• He saved up his money and bought a boat.
  
• The stormy seas tossed the boat.
  

The researchers presented those two sentences to people and asked them to focus solely on the last word (i.e., “boat”) and rate it on a pleasantness scale. Even though the question was essentially the same, people who were exposed to the second sentence rated “boat” to be significantly more pleasant (Whittlesea, 1993).

That result occurred because of
conceptual fluency
, a type of processing fluency related to how easily information comes to our mind (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). Generally, the faster a concept enters our mind, the more we tend to like it. Because the second sentence used particular words to prime the context, this heightened predictability caused the concept of “boat” to enter people’s minds more easily, and that ease of processing produced a pleasant feeling that became misattributed to the word “boat.”

Top-level marketers spend millions of dollars each year trying to take advantage of conceptual fluency. If we’re deciding between two possible brands to purchase, we’re likely to base our decision on how easily each brand comes to mind. When our opinion of two brands is the same, we’re more likely to purchase the brand that comes to our mind more easily because that heightened conceptual fluency feels pleasant, and we mistakenly attribute that pleasantness to the brand (Nedungadi, 1990).

Marketers can take advantage of conceptual fluency and enhance the effectiveness of their advertisements by strategically positioning their ads in predictive contexts. For example, one study showed that consumers found a ketchup ad more favorable when the ad was presented after an ad for mayonnaise (Lee & Labroo, 2004). The mayonnaise ad primed consumers’ schema for condiments, and when the ad for ketchup was presented afterward, the idea of ketchup came to their minds more easily. As a result of that heightened conceptual fluency, consumers developed a more positive attitude toward the ketchup advertisement.

How can you apply that technique in your own life? You can increase your chances of persuading someone to comply with a request by casually mentioning the topic of your request immediately prior to making it. Similar to the mayonnaise ad, the general topic will increase your target’s conceptual fluency for your request, and as a result, your request will seem more appealing because it will come to your target’s mind more easily. Your target will then misattribute that ease of processing with a desire to comply with your request.

Suppose that your favorite band is coming to town, and you want to persuade your friend to go to the concert with you next month. However, your friend doesn’t really like the band, so you expect to encounter some resistance. In this situation, don’t rush and hastily make your request now; instead, periodically bring up the idea of concerts in general for the next few days. With repeated exposure to that general topic, your friend will gradually develop a more positive attitude toward concerts in general, and he will be less resistant when you make your actual request. Also, because of conceptual fluency, the idea of accompanying you to the concert will enter his mind more easily when you eventually make your request, and he will mistakenly attribute that higher conceptual fluency with a desire to go to the concert.

Use Any Repetitions.
In addition to influencing our perception and behavior, repeated exposures by themselves enhance our general mood. Monahan, Murphy, and Zajonc (2000) subliminally exposed a group of participants to 25 Chinese ideographs (symbols and characters used in Chinese writing), and they exposed each ideograph only once. However, with a different group of participants, they exposed only 5 Chinese ideographs, but they repeated the exposures five times. Remarkably, compared to participants who were subliminally exposed to 25 different ideographs, participants who were exposed to the repeated ideographs were in better moods after the exposures.