Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior (7 page)

We feel a strong desire to confirm our expectations because it feels upsetting when information disconfirms our expectations. Like most people, you probably cringe whenever you hear a recording of your own voice. The voice projecting from that device sounds so foreign that it can’t possibly be your voice. But wait. Is your distaste resulting from a poor recording device or is your distaste resulting from your expectations?

When we speak, our brain hears a voice that’s different from the voice that other people hear. When we project our voice, the muscles that produce our speech cause a vibration that runs from our neck to our brain’s auditory mechanisms, and those vibrations internally distort our voice. Because those vibrations occur internally, other people (including voice recorders) hear your voice without those distortions—i.e., your true external voice. Over time, you become so familiar with your internally distorted voice that when you hear your true voice from a recorder, your voice sounds very different, and those incongruent expectations are the culprit behind your distaste toward the sound of your voice. The best way to develop an appreciation for your voice is to become accustomed to the way it truly sounds. People with a background in voice work (e.g., radio hosts) eventually grow to enjoy the sound of their voice because the frequent exposure helps them develop the appropriate expectations.

How do we overcome incongruent expectations in other situations? One popular technique is
selective avoidance
: we simply ignore information that disconfirms our expectations. Oftentimes, our brains can be a mystery. In fact, read the following statement:

OUR

BRAINS

CAN BE A

A MYSTERY

Read that statement again. Notice anything unusual? Chances are high that you missed the extra “A” before “MYSTERY.”

After I mentioned that “our brains can be a mystery” and asked you to read that additional statement, you encountered similar wording and probably expected that blurb to be the same as my original statement. Your expectations likely molded your perception of that blurb and caused you to skim over that discrepancy so that you could confirm your expectations. But now that your conscious mind is aware of that extra word, that discrepancy becomes so obvious that it can be amazing how you could have missed such a glaring error in the first place.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies.
In all of the previous explanations—anchoring, confirmation bias, and selective avoidance—the objective reality of an event never changed. The only thing that changed was our interpretation. However, our expectations can also change the objective reality.

Suppose that your friend Debbie is introducing you to her friend Emily. Before you meet Emily, Debbie describes her as cold, standoffish, and unfriendly, which causes you to develop the expectation that you won’t get along with her. And upon meeting Emily, you find that your expectation is met: her personality seems very distant and unapproachable, and you can’t seem to connect with her. When the conversation ends, you leave with no future intention of interacting with Emily again because of her unfriendly demeanor.

But let’s backtrack for a second. Rather than Debbie describing Emily as cold and unapproachable, suppose that she described her as friendly, kind, and light-hearted. This description would cause you to develop a completely different set of expectations about Emily’s personality. Upon meeting her with those new expectations, you instead find that her personality is very warm, fun, and energetic. When the conversation ends, you leave with high hopes of interacting with her again.

Assuming that Emily was the same person in each scenario, were those outcomes due to your perception of Emily, or were they due to Emily’s actual behavior toward you? Trick question. Both your perception
and
Emily’s actual behavior changed because of your expectations.

Remember the opening anecdote with the violinist? In that situation, only your perception was influenced. You weren’t interacting with the violinist, so your expectations didn’t influence him or his musical abilities in any way. His musical abilities in the subway station and at the expensive concert were exactly the same; the difference in your perception occurred solely through your interpretation.

In the situation with Emily, however, you
did
interact with her, and so you
were
able to influence her reaction and behavior toward you. More importantly, your initial behavior toward Emily largely resulted from your expectations. When Debbie described her as cold and unapproachable, your expectations of Emily’s unfriendly attitude caused you to act in a negative fashion toward her. If Emily was an unfriendly person, why should you make an effort to extend a positive attitude toward her? Thus, it was
you,
not Emily, who became the first person to exude an unfriendly demeanor. As a result of
your
negative attitude, Emily reacted in a similar negative fashion (a typical response of any normal human being). When Emily matched your unfriendly demeanor, you misinterpreted that behavior as emerging solely from her. From your perspective, you were acting like your normal self, and it was Emily who was acting unfriendly.

On the flip side, when you discovered that Emily’s personality was fun and lighthearted, you were excited to meet her. When conversing with Emily, your personality was upbeat and energetic because you expected that you would get along with her. As a result of
your
friendly demeanor, Emily then acted in a similar fashion and extended a positive attitude toward you.

The previous illustration can be explained by a
self-fulfilling prophecy
(Rist, 1970). Our expectations for an event are often met because they can cause us to behave in ways that lead to the expected outcome, such as in the previous illustration with Emily. Even if your expectations are false or inaccurate, those expectations can alter your behavior in a way that will cause the expected outcome to occur, hence the term “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

We’re usually guided by self-fulfilling prophecies every day without realizing it. Imagine that you’re studying for an exam. If you expect to perform poorly, you might trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy and fail the exam because you’ll engage in behaviors to fulfill your expectations (e.g., not studying). Why would you bother studying if you’re just going to fail anyway? Studying would be useless. However, if you expect to perform well on the exam, you’ll be more likely to engage in behavior to fulfill those hopeful expectations, namely by studying more and doing the proper things to help you pass the exam (e.g., eating well, getting enough sleep, etc.).

Hopefully my high expectations for this book have me helped write a book that you find interesting and informative. While writing this book, I developed the expectation that this book was going to be great, and though I can’t be the one to judge, I
can
tell you that I’ve been spending nearly 15 hours every day for the past few months slaving over this book. My expectations were so high that I even quit my consulting job to finish writing it, and I’ve been surviving on a ramen noodle diet for the past few months so that I could afford to finish it. If my expectations were low, I wouldn’t be pushing myself to the brink of mental and physical exhaustion to write this book.

Why did I just reveal that to you? You should know the answer by now: to convey high expectations for this book, of course.

PERSUASION STRATEGY: CONVEY HIGH EXPECTATIONS

If you want people to perceive something more favorably, you should convey high expectations because those expectations will become a lens that will mold their perception. Although that’s a clear implication from this chapter, this section will explain another key facet of that strategy.

First Impressions.
Quick. Take five seconds to estimate the value of the following equation:

1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8

Now that you have your answer, do you think that your answer would have been different if instead I asked you to calculate the following equation:

8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1

Both equations are essentially the same; the only difference is the order of the numbers. Because both equations produce the same results, it’s safe to assume that your guess would have been the same, right?
Au contraire
. Research shows that your guess would have been very different if I asked you to estimate the second equation instead of the first.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1973) conducted that study and found that people who were shown the first equation estimated a median of 512, and people who were shown the second equation estimated a median of 2,250.

Logic and rationale suggest that people’s answers should have been the same, so what sparked that difference? The answer can be found in the
primacy effect,
which describes how information presented earlier in a sequence can produce a greater impact than information presented later in a sequence (Murdock, 1962). You can think of the primacy effect as a type of anchor. Those initial numbers set a specific anchor (either high or low depending on the equation), which influenced people’s estimates.

To understand how that relates to expectations, consider an experiment where two groups of people were told that they would soon interact with another person. The first group learned that this person was “intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious,” whereas the second group received that same information in the reverse order (i.e., “envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent”). Therefore, both groups received the same information, except the first group received the information with positive traits appearing first, and the second group received the information with negative traits appearing first.

Now that you understand the primacy effect, you can probably guess what happened. The group that was exposed to the initial positive traits had developed a much more favorable impression of the person with whom they interacted (Asch, 1946). Those initial traits molded participants’ expectations for the remainder of the information in that sequence. Once they formed that initial impression, they devoted less attention to the remainder of the sequence because they assumed that their initial impression was accurate enough.

What’s the practical takeaway? First impressions are absolutely critical. People’s initial exposure to your message will mold their perception for the remainder of your message. In order to maximize your persuasion, you need to create a strong initial impression so that you convey high expectations for the rest of your message. As you’ll learn in Chapter 11, this principle applies whenever you sequence multiple forms of justification, such as supporting arguments in a school essay or business proposal.

A HYPNOTIST’S PERSPECTIVE: WHY HIGH EXPECTATIONS CAN MAKE SOMEONE A SUPERB HYPNOSIS SUBJECT

In addition to possessing a strong background as a mind reader, I also have a background in hypnosis. However, I choose not to perform hypnosis for entertainment because I don’t want to tarnish people’s perception of it. While hypnosis can be very entertaining, people often develop misconceptions about it because they only know it through the lens of entertainment. In reality, hypnosis is a very powerful clinical technique that can treat a wide range of conditions and habits (some common uses are smoking cessation and weight loss).

Nonetheless, one interesting facet about hypnosis is that expectations largely determine the extent that someone can be hypnotized. To understand that notion, you should first know that nearly every single person can be hypnotized. More importantly, research has found that there are very few distinct characteristics of people who
are
highly hypnotizable. In other words, the types of people that can easily be hypnotized can possess a wide range of personality traits; there is not
one
type of hypnotizable person.

Further, the few things that
do
determine if someone is hypnotizable can be controlled by the individual. For example, people are more likely to be hypnotized if they
expect
that they will by hypnotized or if they believe that they are the type of person who can easily be hypnotized (Gandhi & Oakley, 2005). Therefore, to successfully hypnotize someone, you need to convey the expectation that you
can
hypnotize them.

I still remember the first person that I ever tried to hypnotize. My friend desperately wanted to quit smoking, and I really wanted to help him. I had been studying hypnosis at the time, so I decided to put my knowledge to the first official test. Even though my inside thoughts were still somewhat skeptical of hypnosis (I honestly didn’t think that it would work), I recognized that I should still convey the appropriate expectations.

Rather than outwardly state my skepticism, I projected a fake air of confidence to assure my friend that it would work. My friend witnessed my confidence and assurance in the hypnosis, and he then became more confident and assured in my ability to hypnotize him. As a result of his heightened expectations, I was able to guide him into a deep state of hypnosis, and after 10 minutes of giving him a few helpful suggestions toward his smoking habit, I guided him out of hypnosis, and he’s been smoke-free to this day.