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Regardless of if you're pitching orpresenting, teaching orsharing, at itscourse, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona StateUniversity, his research and coaching focus on persuasion and socialinfluence.
He's the author of two amazingly popular and impactfulbooks, Influence andPre-Swashing.
And I have toadmit, Bob is one of my academicheroes.
As anundergrad, Bob was a guest lecturer in Phills Embardo's popularclass, The Psychology of MindControl.
And after hearing Bob'slecture, I chose a graduate school program where I could do research into socialinfluence.
Welcome Bob and thanks for pointing me to a field of study that I have continued to be fascinatedby.
Well, I'm looking forward to ourinteraction,Matt, and look forward to spending some time with you and yourlisteners.
Great. Let's jump rightin.
To getstarted, can you define and distinguish between persuasion and what you callpre-swashing?
And what role does attention and motivation play in theseconcepts?
Oh, goodquestion. Let's start with motivationfirst, which is the functional component ofpersuasion.
Persuasion involves putting into a message factors that motivate people to sayyes, such as the quality of an item or its attractive price or its fit with the recipient's values or self-image or the fact that it's the most popular choice among theirpeers, those kinds ofthings.
If you put those into amessage, they motivate people toward ascent.
Attention on theother, the functional component ofpersuasion.
It involves focusing peopleon, that is putting them in mind of one of those motivators before they encounter it in the communicator'smessage.
Let's take anexample. There was a study done with a furniture store that had its specialtysofas.
And for half of the visitors to thestore, researchers arranged for them to go to a landing page that had as its background fluffyclouds.
The other half of the visitors went to a different landingpage.
The content wasidentical, but its background was small coinspennies.
Then the researchers gave the visitors options of various sofas tochoose.
What they found was that those who encountered fluffy clouds were more likely to choose for purchase comfortablefurniture.
Whereas those who were exposed to pennies were more likely to prefer for purchase inexpensivefurniture.
So whichever motivator ofbehavior, in this case quality or price was madesalient, was brought to consciousness before they ever encountered the requests to choose one or another of the kinds ofsofas, directed the visitors to the one that was high in consciousness was most accessible to them at thetime.
And there's an interesting mediator of all ofthis.
And that is that not only did these visitors choose more high quality furniture or less expensive furniture depending on which landing page theysaw, those people who saw clouds rated comfort as more important to them in deciding what to choose in asofa.
Whereas those who saw the pennies rated cost as more important to them in theirdecisions.
This is absolutely fascinating tome.
So what you can do in advance of actually even issuing your message can influence people by managing theirattention.
In some ways it's priming andframing, isn'tit?
Itis. It's what I call using anopener, bringing people's focus of attention onto something that is nested in the message that is yet to come before that message isdelivered.
So they have been ready for theconcept, it's become more cognitively accessible and more important in theirminds.
Here's an example that reinforced thisidea.
There was a study of a wine shop in which the proprietor played either German or French music on the music system as visitors camein.
Those who heard French music were more likely to buy a Frenchvintage.
Those who heard German music were more likely to buy a bottle of Germanwine.
Because things German or things French had been made more accessible in consciousness and made to seem more significant or have greater import for their decision because it was high in consciousness at thetime.
This to me really expands what we as communicators should be thinking about when we are crafting our influentialmessages.
So I'm thinking things like the room in which wespeak, how we organizeit, the images we put on the slides that we mightuse.
Are these the sort of things you're thinking about that can really influence people before the messagesarrive?
Exactly. Let's say you have a meeting of people who are on your team and you're trying to break through with a problem that just has just resisted your attempts to solveit.
You need to think broadly aboutit.
You need to think expansively about this topic rather than stay located in the frames of the approach you weretaking.
It turns out if you go into a room with high ceilings and bigwindows, that expanse of the environment causes people to think more expansively andcreatively.
That'sgreat. I wonder now that we're all virtual or many of us are stillvirtual.
If the background image we put behind us might beinfluential.
I think there's just so many things that we could play with now and you've opened up a sandbox here that we can be thinking about thesethings.
Wonderful. That'sgreat.
Pre-swashing isreally, really fascinating to me and I appreciate you illuminating that forus.
I shared that you had a big impact on my choice when I went to graduate school but my interest in persuasion actually started when I was a youngboy.
I vividly remember my father reading a newspaper back in the day when people actually read newspapers in paper and he was laughing from behind the paper and I asked him what he was laughingat.
He showed me a comic strip and in the comic strip there was a picture of a father with his arm around his son pointing at a store that the father clearly owned and across the store was the sign going out of businesssale.
And the captionread, someday son this will all beyours.
And I wasbefuddled. I didn't understand why my father found that so funny and he explained it to me that the store was perpetually going out of business that it was a marketing ploy to get people to comein.
And that was my first introduction to the idea ofscarcity.
And in your book influence you identify scarcity as a technique among others and I'm wondering if you can take a moment to explain how that technique works and how you've seen it usedtoday.
People want more of those things they can have lessof.
Something that is scarce rare dwindling and availability becomes more attractive and one major reason is loss ofversion.
The prospects of losing something of value are twice as potent in motivating action than the prospects of gaining that very sameresource.
So in the case ofloss, loss is the ultimate form ofscarcity.
It means you can't have itanymore.
So people want those things that are dwindling and availability or scarcity where the acronym Phomophere of missingout.
That's essentially what I think is a major part of why scarcity works as powerfully as itdoes.
So people can manufacture scarcity to motivate action in the direction that theywant.
And companies can aswell.
Imean, if you look ateBay, most of the exciting action happens as those auctions are coming closer and closer toending.
That allcorrect? That's exactlyright.
In addition toscarcity, you highlight six other principles ofpersuasion,reciprocation, commitment andconsistency, socialproof,liking,authority, andunity.
And we'll provide some links in our show notes to help everybody explore those in moredetail.
But I'd like to ask you to talk more aboutunity, which is the newest of yourprinciples.
And one that I think is particularly salient in our current cultural and politicalclimate.
What is the unityprinciple?
And how does it workexactly?
People say yes to you if you can show them that you share with them an important personal or socialidentity.
That is that you're a member of one of their wegroups, the groups that they use the term we todescribe, tocharacterize.
In otherwords, that you're not just likethem, that issimilar, but you're ofthem.
Or one ofthem. And in the boundaries of those wegroups, all resistance to influencedeclines.
Let me give you anexample.
There was a study done on a universitycampus.
Researchers took a young woman who was about college age dressed like a college student asked her to set up a table for the United Way on a heavily trafficked area ofcampus.
And request people who were walking by to donate to the UnitedWay.
And because she looked similar tothem, she was getting somecontributions.
But if she added one sentence to herrequest, she got four and a half times as manycontributions.
So what was thesentence?
Itwas, I'm a student heretoo.
I'm one ofyou. And people don't sayno, theydon't, they don't reject the people who are of them nearly as much as the people who are outside of thoseboundaries.
And I'll tellyou, thesecategories, these personal or social identities can beethnic, shared ethnic or political or religious or community or workplace or even athletic teamidentities.
I'll give you a personalexample.
I grew up in the state of Wisconsin where the NFL football team there is the Green BayPacker.
So I grew up a Green Bay Packerfan.
And a while ago I saw an article in the newspaper that said that two musical artists Justin Timberlake and little Wayne were both having Green Bay Packerfans.
AndMatt, I immediately thought better of theirmusic.
A more importantway, I wanted them to succeedmore.
I'd like to moveon. And I have always loved your creative research methodologies that you'veused.
Can you explain for our listeners how studyinghoaches, snow owls or something like this and asking us to reuse our towels for the sake of theenvironment?
And youknow, I'm a persuasionresearcher.
I'm a social influence researcher and I'm always looking for places to study socialinfluence.
And I remember looking at this card and saying tomyself, you know how there are these signs you see that say this space available for rent or this space available for lease on buildings and soon.
Same except for therecommendation.
Please do thisfor. Allright.
And the environment wasone.
Please do this for future generations wasanother.
What the one that made the most difference was the majority of guests who stay in this hotel have reused their towels and that produced a significant increase in the willingness of people to reuse theirtowels.
But even moreinteresting, we got a more significant effect if we said not just the majority of visitors to our hotel have reused theirtowels.
The majority of visitors who've stayed in this room every yeartowels, we got significantly more now because the principle we're talking about is the principle of social proof that if a lot of other people are doingsomething, it validates thebehavior, it makes it morecorrect.
But if those people are comparable tous, staying in the same room now that's notunity, that's just similarityhere.
They'recomparable. They're likeus,right?
Well that makes their behavior even more diagnostic of what we shoulddo.
I have seen those signs in in hotelrooms.
Infact, just recently and every time I think of you in thatresearch, every time I put my towel back up rather than put it on the floor to goout, I think of thatresearch.
How is this related to work you did in the petrified forests inArizona?
So the petrified forest that is in Arizona is a nationaltreasure.
There's a big sign that appears as you enter the forest that uses this principle of social proof in an entirely wrong-headedway.
Itsays, so many people have been stealing petrified wood from the forest floor that's endangering the integrity of theforest.
I know what thegenerators, the producers of that sign wereintending, but they made a serious mistake in telling people that all of their peerssteal.
Right.Right. So what we did was to go into the park at different pathways and put up a sign that essentiallysaid, so many people have been doingthis.
It's problematic for theforest.
Please don't be one ofthem.
And on thesign, there were a picture of three people stealingwood, picking up wood from theforest.
That sign nearly tripletheft.
You were teaching them how tosteal.
That'sright. That it was a legitimate thing todo.
It wasokay. Everybody doesthis.
Right. We had another sign that instead of normalizingtheft, marginalizedit.
That signsaid, if even one person steals from theforest, it undermines the integrity of thepark.
And we showed a single person picking up petrifiedwood.
That sign have theft compared to a controlgroup.
I find both those studies veryfascinating.
And they highlight how we can leverage social proof and norms to increase the likelihood of our persuasivesuccess.
It leads me to my nextquestion, because inessence, the manipulations you were doing in both of those studies was changing wording andimages.
I'm curious to learn your thoughts about the role of language and wording and how they play out inpersuasion.
Does word choice reallymatter?
Let's begin withlanguage.
It works forpersuasion.
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 that would help allconcerned.
But to dothat, you need to get the buy-in of yourcommon, the pros and cons and the critique that he or she can deliver for youridea.
Ifinstead, you activate the principle of unity by changing oneword.
Instead of asking for that person'sopinion, you ask for that person's advice on youridea.
Now instead of getting acritic, you get apartner.
You get somebody who's in it withyou.
You get somebody who's acollaborator.
And research shows that if you use the word advice rather thanopinion, not only do you get more favorable evaluations of youridea, you get better input from them as to how to modify and improve youridea.
Just by simply changing oneword, you change the entire interaction and actually get more of what you were really lookingfor.
That isfascinating. And it all has to do with the associations to thatword.
The associations to opinion arecritique, the associations to advice or partnershipbased.
So we really do have to be mindful of the words we choose to help drive in the direction we are trying to achieve with our persuasion or ourinfluence.
So before we endBob, I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone who joinsme.
Are you up forthat?Excellent.
Okay. If you were to capture the best communication advice you have ever received as a five to seven word presentation slidetitle, what would itbe?
Don't have a favorite go to persuasiveapproach.
Don't thinkoh,scarcely, I'm always going to usecare.
Don't thinkoh, I'm always going to use socialproof.
No. I'm going to use the one that's inthere.
It's a fool's game to think that the same approach will be optimal across settings and circumstances andpopulations.
No, itwon't. The way to be ethical and effective is this is there truly scarcityhere?
Then I get to useit. Is there true authorityhere?
Science-based information that Ihave.
Bring that to thesurface.
Is there true popularity or social proofinvolved?
Mention that inside yourmessage.
There are several components of what I heard yousay.
One is be aware of your circumstance and adjust toit.
Understand which of these tools is available to you ethically in the moment and then don't rigidly lock into just one way of doingit.
Part of it is awareness and then part of it is making use of what is available to youthere.
Let me move on to my secondquestion.
Who is a communicator that you admire andwhy?
Right now I'd say GretaThunberg.
She's overcome certain cognitive and affectiveabnormalities,aspergers, depression to become a powerful communicator for the environment and she lives her commitment to it leading byexample.
And her messages are very clear and moving aswell.
Right. He really understands what gets through by stripping away the message to its purestform.
And my finalquestion. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communicationrecipe?
Ethics andapplication.
Credibility, ethics andapplication.
Can you give us a sentence or two on each of those because those seem so foundational andimportant?
Credibility. You have to be seen as someone who knows what he or she isdoing.
Has the background experienced absolutelynot?
And infact, I'd actively warn people againstit.
Yeah. So part of a successful communication recipe is not just in themoment, but in the longterm.
How do we maintain relationships in which people are willing to listen to us and follow ourrecommendations?
And thenfinally,application.
We have to give people a reason to listen to us that there's something that they can now do with this piece of information that we've given them or this product or service that will be of benefit tothem.
We'll lead to positive outcomes forthem.
We have to show themthat.
Well, thankyou,Bob. It has been a great pleasure to chat with you and to learn from you and receive youradvice.
And thank you again for the influence you've had personally on my academic career and for helping all of us to become better at understanding the elements that go into successful persuasion andpersuasion.
