Short but wide-ranging conversation with Robert Cialdini on using “pre-suasion” to influence others. Some notes below (for personal reference only, any mistakes in transcription are my own).
On persuasion vs. pre-suasion, and what role does attention and motivation play in these concepts? Motivation is the functional component of persuasion. Persuasion involves putting into a message the factors that motivate people to say yes, such as the quality of an item or its attractive price, or its fit with the recipient’s values or self-image etc. Attention is the functional component of pre-suasion. It involves focusing people on (putting them in mind of) one of those motivators before they encounter it in the communicator’s message.
Example #1 – there was a study done with a furniture store that had as its specialty sofas. For half of the visitors to the store, researchers arranged for them to go to a landing page that had as its background fluffy clouds. The other half went to a different landing page – the content was identical, but the background was pennies. Then the researchers gave the visitors options of various sofas to choose. What they found was those who encountered fluffy clouds were more likely to choose for purchase comfortable furniture, whereas those who were exposed to pennies were more like to prefer for purchase inexpensive furniture. So whichever motivator of behavior (i.e. quality, price) was made salient or brought to consciousness before they encountered the requests to choose types of sofas directed the visitors to the one that was high in consciousness at the time. In fact, not only did visitors choose more high quality or less expensive furniture based on which landing page they saw, the people who saw clouds rated comfort as more important to them in their decisions, whereas those who saw the pennies rated cost as more important to them in their decisions.
Is this priming and framing? What he calls using an opener – bringing people’s focus of attention to something that is nested in the message that is yet to come, before that message is delivered. So they have been readied for the concept, it is more cognitively accessible and more important in their minds.
Example #2 – there was a study of a wine shop in which the proprietor played either French or German music as visitors came into the store. Those who heard French music were more likely to buy a French vintage. Those who heard German music were more likely to buy a bottle of German wine. This was because things French or German had been made more accessible in their consciousness and made to seem more significant or have greater import for their decision.
Example #3 – say you have a meeting of people on your team where you are trying to breakthrough with a problem that has resisted your previous attempts to solve it. You need to think broadly and more expansively about this topic rather than stay located in the frames of the approach you were previously taking. Turns out if you go into a room with high ceilings and big windows, that expanse of environment causes people to think more expansively and creatively.
On scarcity as a technique of persuasion – people want more of the things they can have less of. The thing that is scarce, rare or dwindling in availability becomes more attractive. One major reason for this is loss aversion. The prospect of losing something of value is twice as potent and motivating than the prospect of gaining that very same resource. Loss is the ultimate form of scarcity, it means you can’t have it anymore. FOMO is a major part of why scarcity works as powerfully as it does.
On unity, which is the newest of his principles of persuasion – people say yes to you if you can show them that you share with them an important personal or social identity. That is, you are a member of one of their “we” groups, the groups that they use the term “we” to describe. In other words, that you’re not just like them, which is similar, but that you’re of them. In the boundaries of those “we” groups, all resistance to influence declines.
Example #4 – study done on a university campus. Researchers took a young woman who was about college age, dressed like a college student etc. Asked her to set up a table for the United Way on a heavily trafficked area of campus and request people who were walking to by to donate to the United Way. Because she looked similar, she was getting some contributions. But if she added one sentence to her request, she got ~4.5x the number of contributions. That sentence was “I’m a student here too.” People don’t reject people who are of them nearly as much as the people who are outside those boundaries. These categories of personal, social identities can be ethnic, political, religious or community or workplace etc.
On how studying hotel towel use and stealing from national parks helped him identify how social norms can be used to influence people?
He remembers being in a hotel room and seeing one of these cards that asked guests to reuse towels and linens for the sake of the environment. Often has a picture of some endangered woodland species. He saw the opportunity to test all kinds of appeals (besides do this for the environment) and see which was most powerful. Did this with several hotels, went into rooms and randomly assigned various kinds of cards that were the same except for the appeal (please do this for X). The one that made the most difference was saying the majority of guests who stay in this hotel have reused their towels. That produced a significant increase in the willingness of people to reuse their towels. Got an even more significant effect if they said not just the majority of guests who stay in this hotel but the majority of guests who have stayed in this room. The principle he is talking about is that of social proof – if a lot of other people are doing something, it validates the behavior. But if the people are comparable to us that makes their behavior even more diagnostic of what we should do.
Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona – there is a big sign as you enter the forest that uses the principle of social proof but in an entirely wrongheaded way. It says so many people have been stealing petrified wood from the forest floor that it is endangering the integrity of the forest. The producers of that sign made a serious mistake in telling people that all their peers steal. So what they did was go into the park at different pathways and put up one sign that said so many people have been doing this, it is problematic for the forest, please don’t be one of them. And on the sign, there were pictures of 3 people picking up wood from the forest. That sign nearly tripled theft. Then, they put up another sign that instead of normalizing theft, marginalized it. That sign said if even one person steals from the forest, it undermines the integrity of the park. Showed a picture of a single person picking up petrified wood. That sign halved theft compared to a control group.
Thoughts on the role of language and wording and how they play out in persuasion, does word choice really matter? Let’s say you have an idea that you would like to move up the ladder in your organization because you think it’s a terrific initiative. But to do that, you need to get the buy-in of your colleagues before you can move it up the ladder. What you will often do is show them a summary of your idea and ask for their opinion to get their input. Getting their input is the right thing to do, but the wrong thing to do is to ask for their opinion. When you ask for opinion, you get a critic, someone who steps back from you and introspects the pros/cons and critique they can deliver for your idea. If instead you activate the principle of unity by asking for that person’s advice rather than their opinion, you are now getting someone who is a partner and collaborator with you. Research shows if you use the word advice rather than opinion, not only do you get more favorable evaluations of your idea, but you also get better input from them as to how to modify and improve your idea. It all has to do with the associations to the word opinion vs. advice.
What are the first 3 ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Credibility, ethics and application. Credibility – you have to be seen as someone who knows what you are doing, have the background, experience, credentials to be someone to listen to. Ethics – you can’t fool people, they won’t come back. Part of a successful communication recipe is it is not just about the moment but over the long-term. How do we maintain relationships in which people are willing to listen to us and follow our recommendations? Application – we have to give people a reason to listen to us, that there is something they can now do with this piece of information we have given them that will be of benefit to them.