Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior (2 page)

OVERVIEW: MOLD THEIR PERCEPTION

Reality is objective, but our perception of reality is subjective. What the heck does that mean? Even though there’s only one reality surrounding us, people perceive and interpret that reality differently. Essentially, our perception is a lens through which we interpret reality; if you know how to alter that lens, you can change how people view and interpret reality.

That notion leads to the most common error in persuasion. When people need to persuade someone to comply with a request, they usually jump straight to the request without devoting attention to possible strategies leading up to that request. People start relentlessly hammering away, trying to extract their target’s compliance, unbeknownst to them that they could have used a few psychological tactics to change how their target would perceive their request.

Accordingly, the chapters in this first step will teach you how to alter the lens through which people perceive the world around them, and you’ll learn how to mold their perception so that it becomes more conducive to your situation. Once you alter that lens, any additional persuasion tactics will become much more powerful and effective because of their new perception. The first chapter starts by describing one of the most important factors that dictates our perception: our current mindset.

CHAPTER 1

Prime Their Mindset

It might seem like an odd request, but think of a lucky dwarf. Are you thinking of one? Good. Now go with your immediate gut reaction and think of a number between one and ten. Quick! Stick with the first number that pops inside your head, and don’t change your mind.

Are you thinking of a number? Although it’s far from foolproof, you were more likely to think of the number seven. And if you
are
thinking of seven and you’re somewhat freaked out, rest assured, this chapter will explain the psychological principle behind that phenomenon. Specifically, you’ll learn why imagining that “lucky dwarf” made you more likely to think of the number seven, and you’ll learn practical techniques to apply that underlying principle in your own life (don’t worry, you won’t be asking people to think about dwarves, I promise).

THE POWER OF MINDSETS

Before I explain the exercise with the dwarf, let’s try something else. This time, think of your mother. Let that image of good ol’ mum simmer for a second or two, and then let it fade away.

Now, read the following blurb about Mark and mentally rate his level of motivation on a scale from one to nine (1 = low motivation, 9 = high motivation):

Mark is just entering his second year of college. In his first year, he did very well in some classes but not as well in others. Although he missed some morning classes, overall he had very good attendance. His parents are both doctors, and he is registered in pre-med, but he hasn’t really decided if that is what he wants to do. (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p. 153)

Do you have your rating? As you might have judged, all of the information about Mark in that passage was completely ambiguous; in other words, that information could be perceived either positively or negatively. Researchers presented that ambiguous blurb to people to examine how their perception of Mark would change depending on their mindset.

To instill a certain mindset in their participants, the researchers asked people beforehand to complete an “unrelated” questionnaire. Some people completed a questionnaire about their best friend, whereas other people completed a questionnaire about their mother.

Do you still remember the rating that you gave Mark? The people in the study who filled out the best friend questionnaire gave an average rating of 5.56 for Mark’s level of motivation. Was your rating higher? According to the results, people who filled out the questionnaire about their mother viewed Mark to be significantly more motivated (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003).

Why did people perceive Mark differently depending on the questionnaire? Since nothing in the blurb changed, logic suggests that both groups should have given Mark the same rating. What was so powerful about the mother questionnaire that altered people’s perception of him?

In general, people associate motivation and striving toward success more with their mothers than with their best friends. Because one of the driving forces behind many people’s pursuit toward success is a desire to make their mom proud, the concept of motivation became activated and more prevalent for people who completed the questionnaire about their mother. Although the objective reality in front of them remained the same (i.e., the blurb was the same for each group), the idea of “mother” became a lens through which people perceived that ambiguous blurb. The next section will explain why that’s the case, and you’ll also learn why a “lucky dwarf” can make people predisposed to think of the number seven.

WHY ARE MINDSETS SO POWERFUL?

To understand why mindsets are so powerful, you need to understand three concepts: schemas, priming, and spreading activation.

Schemas.
For any general concept, you usually associate many other ideas with that concept. For example, your concept of mother would include the idea of motivation, along with many other ideas that you associate with your mother.

Further, if that set of associations—known as a
schema
—becomes activated, it can alter your perception and behavior because it would make the other associated concepts more prevalent in your mind (e.g., activating a schema of mother made the idea of motivation more prevalent, which influenced people’s perception of Mark).

Though schemas can often result in positive perceptions, such as perceived motivation, schemas can also result in negative perceptions, such as stereotypes. For example, under your schema of “Asian” is probably the idea of superior math skills. Even if you don’t believe that Asians are genuinely superior at math, the mere presence of that association is enough to influence your perception and behavior.

Researchers from Harvard conducted a clever study to test that claim (Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999). Their study was particularly clever because they used a group of people who belonged to conflicting stereotypes: Asian-American women. On one hand, there’s a common stereotype that Asians are superior at math, but on the other hand, there’s a common stereotype that females are inferior at math. The researchers wanted to examine how activating those conflicting schemas could influence their performance on a math test.

Before giving the test, the researchers asked two groups of Asian-American women some questions. Some women were asked questions that related to their sex (e.g., if the floors in their dorms were either co-ed or single sex). Other women, however, were asked questions that related to their race and heritage (e.g., the languages that they knew or spoke at home). Thus, one group had their schema of “female” activated, whereas the other group had their schema of “Asian” activated. You can probably guess what happened when the researchers later presented those groups with a supposedly unrelated math test.

Women who were primed with their schema for Asian performed significantly better than a control group (women who were asked neutral questions), and women who were primed with their schema for female performed significantly worse than the control group. Therefore, any idea that we associate with a particular schema—even if we don’t believe in that association—can still influence our perception and behavior if that schema becomes activated.

But how does a schema become activated in the first place? The answer lies in priming.

Priming.
Priming
is the means by which you activate a schema or mindset. In the previous study about stereotypes, the “prime” was the questionnaire. When people filled out the questionnaire, their schema for either Asian or female became activated.

Does that mean you need to ask people to complete a questionnaire in order to prime a schema? Nope. Luckily, there are many easier ways to prime particular schemas (though I suppose you
could
ask your target to fill out a questionnaire if you really wanted to).

If not by questionnaire, how else can you prime a schema? Research shows that you can prime a schema by merely exposing people to certain words or ideas related to a particular schema. To illustrate, the next study offers a prime example (ha, get the pun?).

Using the disguise of a word-puzzle task, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) exposed people to words relating to the elderly (e.g.,
bingo, wise, retired, Florida
). When the experiment was supposedly over, what do you think happened when people walked out of the room? Astonishingly, compared to a control group, people walked out of the room significantly slower when they were exposed to the elderly related words. Those words primed a schema for the elderly, which then activated behavior that people associate with the elderly: walking slow.

Not only can priming occur through subtle exposures to certain words, but priming can also be effective when it occurs entirely outside of our conscious awareness. Researchers in another study subliminally primed people with either the logo from Apple, a company with a very creative connotation, or the logo from IBM, a company with a very straightforward, noncreative connotation. The logos were only shown for thirteen milliseconds, so people weren’t consciously aware that they were exposed to those logos. However, people who were flashed with Apple’s logo exhibited higher creativity than did people who were exposed to IBM’s logo (Fitzsimons, Chartrand, & Fitzsimons, 2008).

How was creativity measured? After subliminally priming people with the logos, the researchers asked them to list unusual uses for a brick. Yep . . . a brick. It might seem like a silly task, but people who were subliminally primed with Apple’s logo generated a significantly longer list than those primed with IBM’s logo. Even the unusual uses themselves were judged to be more creative than the uses generated from the IBM group. Therefore, priming is very effective even when it occurs outside of our conscious awareness.

Although it should be clear by now that priming a particular schema can influence our perception and behavior,
why
is that the case? The answer lies in spreading activation.

Spreading Activation.
Our brains have a semantic network, a giant interconnected web of knowledge containing everything that we’ve learned over time. Each concept in that network, referred to as a “node,” is connected to other concepts that are related in some aspect (the more related they are, the stronger the connection that exists between them). Due to those connections, whenever a node in our semantic network becomes activated (via some type of prime), all other nodes that are connected become activated as well, a principle known as
spreading activation
(Collins & Loftus, 1975).

Remember the lucky dwarf from the beginning of the chapter? Spreading activation can explain why thinking about that statement can make people more likely to choose the number seven. Essentially, the number seven is a node in our semantic network, and it has connections to other nodes. For most people, a node of the number seven would have connections to things like seven deadly sins, 7-UP soda, the Seven Wonders of the World, and an unfathomable number of other related associations. But why does a “lucky dwarf” activate the idea of seven? It combines two other ideas that are heavily associated with seven: “lucky number seven” and
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
.

Due to the connections that exist between those two concepts and the number seven in our brain’s semantic network, mentioning those concepts can trigger spreading activation. When those two nodes become activated, the activation spreads to the number seven node, which makes it more readily available on a nonconscious level. If you’re forced to choose the first number that pops into your head, you’re more likely to choose the number seven because it will come to your mind more easily.

Further, you would have been even more likely to choose the number seven if I had casually mentioned other concepts relating to the number seven, perhaps about a “deadly sin” or lemon-lime soda. Those comments would have activated more concepts connected to the node of the number seven, which would have increased the strength of the spreading activation. At the end of this chapter, I’ll describe how I accomplish some of my mind reading feats using that same principle.

But first, the next section will teach you how to take advantage of schemas, priming, and spreading activation to prime a favorable mindset in your persuasion target (the terms “schema” and “mindset” are fairly similar, so they’ll be used interchangeably throughout this chapter).

PERSUASION STRATEGY: PRIME THEIR MINDSET

Up to this point, the chapter has explained how priming a particular schema can trigger spreading activation. This section will expand that knowledge by describing some specific schemas that
would
be favorable for you to activate in your target.

Prime Their Perception.
Our perception of the world is largely dictated by the primes in our surrounding environment. For example, experienced advertisers realize that choosing when and where to air a television commercial is an extremely important choice because of priming effects. When viewers watch the last scene before a commercial break, that last scene can activate a certain schema, which can then influence how people perceive the next commercial. Similar to how activating a schema of mother can influence how people perceived an ambiguous situation, certain scenes before a commercial break can activate schemas that will influence how people perceive commercials.