While reading this book, there are already several interesting concepts shared in the first part. I will share some of the more enlightening information below.
Turkeys
Animals respond and behave according to what feels like a tape-recorder, a primitive programming within them that surpasses any sort of conscious decision-making when the appropriate action is triggered.
A mother turkey that hears a certain sound (chirping) from any entity, including a robot with a tape-recorder, will respond warmly and attempt to nurture the object. That same object, if it makes no sound and looks like an enemy, will be faced with violence. The same turkey will behave both ways toward the same object based on the sound (or lack of sound) that accompanies it.
Humans have this kind of programming within them as well.
The three following statements had a significant difference in results:
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?” 60%
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” 93%
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” 94%
The word “because” followed by a reason, made the results 94% “Yes”, and they were otherwise in the 60% range.
They repeated the experiment for a request to copy 20 pages rather than five. In that case, only the “because I’m in a rush” reason resulted in heightened compliance.
So what does this all mean? When the stakes are low people will engage in automatic behavior. If your request is small, follow your request with the word “because” and give a reason—any reason. If the stakes are high, then there could be more resistance, but still not too much.
Another game:
Selling suits. One person pretends to be hard of hearing, then shows a suit to a customer. The customer is repeatedly told to talk louder. When it’s time to discuss price, he shouts to the other store clerk, and says how much is this suit? The clerk says $42. The hard-of-hearing acting clerk says “it’s $22.” The customer buys it and rushes out.
The Contrast Principle
If the second item is fairly different from the first, we assume the second item is more different than it really is. Lifting a light object and then a heavy one, we assume the heavier object is more heavy than if we had only lifted that object.
Someone wants to buy a suit and a sweater: show the suit first, because even the expensive sweater shown afterward will appear cheaper than it is. Customers almost always pay more for accessories bought afterward than if they buy them first.
Real Estate
Start with “setup properties”, undesirable houses at inflated prices. These houses are never sold, but are always shown before good houses to take advantage of the principle.
When items are shown to a car buyer, the additional features are presented separately so they look small, next to the high cost of the main purchase.
Reciprocation
Pay every debt as though God wrote the bill. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we owe someone a favor, we are much more likely to give them extra the next time they ask for something.
The rule of reciprocity is so strong that it overrides the feeling of liking/disliking the person that you do a favor for.
Lyndon B. Johnson had a ton of motions passed through Congress in his early presidential career. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, who campaigned saying he is indebted to no one in Washington, struggled to get bills passed despite having a democratic majority.
Free samples
One company gave customers the opportunity to cut slivers off of a block of cheese for themselves, and then sold thousands of pounds of cheese in a short period of time. Another gave potential customers a tray of various household cleaning products, to use for free. Then, they came to pick it up later, and took orders. The sales were staggering, and the tray of products could be reused on multiple people because no one would use a lot of one.
Rejection and Request
Make a large request that is likely to be refused, and then a smaller, more desired request after the rejection. A boy scout offers $5 tickets that the customer doesn’t want, and then asks if they’ll buy $1 candy bars. The customer doesn’t want either but agrees to the candy bars, thinking it’s a concession after refusing the $5 tickets.
The request doesn’t have to be small – it just has to be framed as a concession.
If the initial request is too much, the concession is not viewed the same way and seems to be in bad faith. Then, this backfires on the requester.
When bargaining, the victim who is presented with an unfair bargain and then negotiates his way to a more acceptable (and desired by the other party) deal, the victim feels more responsible for arriving at the new conclusion and complies easier.
How to Escape Reciprocity
Change the definition in your mind to a “sales strategy” rather than a favor. Define the stepping back as a compliance tactic, and not a real concession. This will free you from the obligation of returning any favors.
Racetrack Bettors
We behave in ways that justify previous decisions we’ve made. Bettors on racehorses feel uncertain and hesitate before betting, and then feel confident and optimistic once they have. Once they take a stand, they feel like they need to act in line with what they had already done. They feel better as well.
Inconsistency is felt to be an undesirable personality trait. Those who are very inconsistent are often mentally ill. The ones who are consistent are strong, stable, honest, etc. Being consistent is more approved than being right.
Unrelated Compliance
After asking people to sign a petition about “state beautification”, they showed up 2 weeks later asking people to allow them to use their lawn to display a sign that said “Drive safely”, even if the sign was ugly and obstructed view. Something like 80% of the people agreed to the sign after having signed the earlier petition despite the two being unrelated.
People shift their view of themselves based on their compliance to seemingly unimportant things. They try to behave differently to remain consistent with what they did earlier, even if they never really cared about the thing to begin with.
The Chinese/Korea
People tend to believe that statements made by an individual reflect their true beliefs, even more if it’s written. The Koreans exploited this heavily with prisoners of war, promoting communism through subtle psychology.
Observers automatically assume that you mean it. A writer who was ordered to write pro-Castro was guessed to have liked Castro.
The Chinese knew that prisoners were eager to let families know that they were alive. Men knew that their captors censored the mail, and only some letters were let out. Prisoners began including peace appeals, claims of kind treatment, and statements sympathetic to Communism, to get their mails sent out.
Essay contests for a few cigarettes got prisoners to write things down. Prisoners voluntarily participated writing pro-US essays, but sprinkled pro-Communism in it to get a better chance, which the Chinese welcomed.
The Chinese chose to offer very small rewards rather than more motivational rewards. This is because they could not risk the person shrugging off their commitment based on “it was for a large reward.” They had to be made to take inner responsibility for their actions. Fraternities haze people using this same process.
Customers and Products
Having customers sign a customer agreement greatly reduces their returning a product.
Companies also give large prizes to 100-word submissions of “Why I like __”, requiring no purchase. The purpose behind the testimonial contest is the same as the political essay contest of the Chinese communists. The aim is to get as many people as possible to go on record as liking the product. This forces them to believe what they have written, worth far more than the prizes given out for “free”.
Public Commitments
The more public the stance taken, the more reluctant we are to act against it, once we’ve committed.
Students did 1 of 3 things: Wrote their early judgments and submitted them, wrote their judgments and erased the pad, and kept judgments in mind.
Even the ones who wrote them down secretly were less willing to change their beliefs afterward, while the submitted responses were stuck to most strongly.
Hung juries are more likely to happen when people show hands for which side they’re on, rather than keep a secret ballot.
Respecting the Grind
People who went through a rigorous initiation ceremony to join a worthless discussion group respected the value of the opinions despite them being rehearsed to be garbage.
People with less effort or no initiation at all had less respect for their group.
How to get Commitment
We accept inner responsibility when we feel that we did not act based on a strong outside force. A strong threat might invoke immediate compliance, but not as effective for long-term commitment.
We should never heavily bribe children to get them to do things. We need to get them to accept this responsibility for these actions.
Low balling
Offering a car at $400 off has myriad effects. Sometimes dealers will say “drive it for a day, get the feel of it, show it off at work and around the neighborhood”. As they do this, they come up with more reasons to support the choice they made of agreeing.
When the time comes, the deal doesn’t go through due to “calculation error.” Or the bank rejects it. Or the boss rejects it.
Sometimes the customer is offered a generous trade and buy offer, and the used car manager then says the estimate was too high, reducing it to the blue book offer. Sometimes the customer even feels guilty for trying to take advantage of the lowball offer.
Advantage is offered. Then, some time later, the advantage is deftly removed.
Those with only poor choices to offer are fond of this strategy.
Natural Gas Savings
To save natural gas during the winter, a newspaper promised some families that they would get their names publicized in a newspaper if they tried to save gas. Then, they sent them a letter later saying they would not be getting publicized after all. The families ended up saving even more gas (15.5%) vs. what they were saving while thinking they’d be publicized (12%).
These people were low-balled, and as they stayed convinced of the publication, they began picking up new habits and feeling good about their decisions. When the reward was removed, they had new reasons. They viewed themselves as conservation-minded, so the commitment remained firm even after the original reason was removed.
How to get People to say “Yes”
Instead of asking for an opinion or feedback or expectations about a product or service, ask for advice. They are more favorable to the idea, they give better input, more constructive opinions. They feel like they are now your partner in this and they want you to be successful.
“Influence” involves pointing to these things where they naturally exist. Informing people into ascent by raising the profile of that principle in your communication.
Manipulation is fabrication/manufacture of those principles, like lying with statistics to get you to believe something is happening.
Reciprocation
We are obligated to give back to others who have first given to us.
McDonalds
Every family that came in, the children got a balloon from the manager as a “thank you for coming.” Half the time, the balloon was given as they entered, half the time it was given after. When given first, the families spent 25% more.
Concessions: You have to get them to say no first.
We are obligated to give back at the same level. If the only option is to give back more, we will do that, to avoid being seen as a freeloader.
When you give them something that is tailored to their needs, it is much stronger.
Liking
When dealing with negotiations, offer information about your own interests and background. The stymied negotiations dropped, and it’s not because of offering information, but because of commonalities found by the new information.
When you’ve been excluded or feelings are hurt or something, you’re looking for that connection more.
Joe Girard: Whoever bought a car from him, they’d receive a greeting card. Valentine’s, Christmas, etc. “I like you. Joe Girard”
Just having that message, people felt it was important that he liked them, and he sold significantly more cars/trucks daily than anyone for 12 years.
If you find yourself liking someone a lot, step back and ask yourself, what have they been doing that’s making me feel that way? Separate the salesperson from the car.
Social Proof
Restaurants put an asterisk on some meals. *=This is one of our most popular items.
These items became 13-20% more popular just for being popular. First time visitors were far more affected by this.
Authority
Playing “I’m the boss” has costs, and people don’t like it. They find ways to finesse the system, because it’s about power instead of influence. This is “in authority.”
Being “an authority” is more powerful, being more informed. Providing testimonials from experts, etc.
Scarcity
Items that are rarer are always more attractive.
When advertising with “new” it says “uncertain.” With Bose headphones, they changed “new” to “hear what you’ve been missing out.” This implements FOMO because people don’t want to risk losing even being part of something.
This FOMO increased 45% of sales, and then adding testimonials added another 15%.
“We only have X left at this price.” There is a trend to the number of people too. If you say we had 30% people buying this 2 years ago, and 45% now, it also affects customers as it’s a way to project its demand in the future.
Scarcity of product, social proof, scarcity of time, were the top 3 influences. Uniqueness of offer is a 4th influence.
Commitment & Consistency
Change: Please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation? to Will you please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation? This dropped cancels by 60% as it was a verbal commitment.
During meetings, don’t let people out without asking “Will you be able to have this done before the next meeting?”
To get people to change their mind, don’t say their decision was wrong because they will want to stand by it and maintain consistency. Instead, say that there is new information and as they may have made a good decision with the old information, now the new information will help people get detached from their old information.
“If I knew this when I made my choice…”
Unity
If a communicator can arrange for himself to be seen as “one of us”. “I’m one of you.” People will say yes easier if they believe you are like them.
A lost wallet with a note resembling a foreigner was returned at 33% rate. A wallet with a note sounding like an average american was returned at 70% rate.
When people think you’re familiar, they will quickly act more like you as social proof. Kids who refuse to swim without a floatation device will quickly fall in line when seeing kids their age swim without it.
Suicide
When publishing a famous suicide story of one victim, there was an increase in accidents resulting in 1 victim. With a suicide/murder story of multiple victims, there were more accidents with multiple victims. This is caused by suicidal tendencies being more powerful after reading of another suicide story. These people crash their vehicles to not look like a suicide, while others just kill themselves straightforward.
In social sciences and in medicine, the term “Werther-effect” is used as a synonym for media induced imitation effects of suicidal behavior.
The victims are also more likely to be similar to the one in the story that’s published.
Thus, we should be extra careful with traveling when there’s a publicized suicide story, and perhaps avoid flying.
Widely publicized aggression (like a boxing match) has the same effect, with a beaten black man causing more aggression toward black men, and same with white.
Cooperative Learning
When Carlos was struggling to speak or is getting outcast by his peers and made fun of, a teacher said “you can tease him if you want but that’s not going to help you learn about __”. Instead of continuing to tease Carlos, the group began to ask him different questions so he could share his segment and they could all learn for the test.
When a group stands to lose a lot by not working together, they quickly get into cooperation and work together despite differences and even a past of disagreement/hate.
But more study is needed for what age group/demographic this is more effective with.
Association
Weathermen giving bad news, coaches “responsible” for losses, etc. have powerful effects on observers, who associate them like Pavlov’s experiment of positive conditioning with his dog.
Respecting Authority
Milgram experiment: People respected authority and continued to shock the victim in an experiment testing memory and delivering shocks from the person A (teacher) to the person B (learner).
Feigning being on your side
Man goes to dealership to ask for $3000 for his car, dealer says he should ask for at least $3500. This gets him on his side. Then dealership says knock off $200, man agrees. Deal falls through, repeat, until it’s more than $600 off of $3500. This ends up giving the dealership more money while the man is happy to sell with them.
Withholding Information/Censorship
Withholding products makes them desired more. But with information it’s even more intricate.
Without even hearing a speech, people are more sympathetic to its content when it’s withheld. The most effective strategy to getting views shared is not to publicize them, but get them censored, and then publish the views.
Students in Purdue were sent advertisements for a novel. “Adults only” were shown to half, the other half were not. The ones who learned of the age restriction wanted to read it more, and believed they thought they’d like it more than the ones who didn’t think their access was limited.
Judges censoring evidence by declaring it inadmissible has a boomerang effect.
When saying that a car accident victim was struck by a driver who had insurance, juries awarded $4,000 more when the driver was insurance.
If the judge said he was insured, but said that evidence was inadmissible, they increased the damage payment by $13,000.
Information doesn’t need to be censored; it only needs to be scarce. Exclusive information is more persuasive information.
Newly determined scarcity has more effect than known scarcity. Freedoms once given will not be relinquished without a fight. If people never tasted that freedom/higher rights, they are less likely to rebel when pushed. This works even more when people are pitted in competition against other people who want the same scarce resource.
Chocolate chip cookies that were made scarce were rated as more desirable even if they tasted no different. We experience joy in obtaining and having what is scarce, rather than any satisfaction it provides from itself.
The Car Seller
A man sold cars by putting out newspaper ads, and telling people to show up at a certain time, the same time. When the second, third, etc. buyer showed up, the pressure/agitation on the first buyer’s face was noticeable. The second buyer felt relief when the first left, along with agitation about the third buyer.
By forcing them to deal with emotions on the spot, their rational thinking was suppressed.
The Shortcut
We tend to use an isolated piece of information to make judgments (long hair on a man).
Animals display this tendency. They cannot process/register all the information, so animals typically queue an appropriate response and it works for most situations.
When stressed, tired, fatigued, etc. this causes us to rely on this simple mechanism more.