FREE Sample From YES! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive : Introduction
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There’s an old joke told by the nightclub
comic Henny Youngman, who referred to his accommodations from the previous
night by saying, “What a hotel! The towels were so big and fluffy
I could hardly close my suitcase.”
Over the last few years, the moral
dilemma facing hotel guests has changed. These days, the question of
whether to remove the towels from their room has been replaced
by the question of whether to reuse the towels during the course
of their stay. With the increasing adoption of environmental programs
by hotels, more and more travelers are being asked to reuse their towels
to help conserve environmental resources, save energy, and reduce the
amount of detergent-related pollutants released into the environment.
In most cases, this request comes in the form of cards placed in guests’
bathrooms — cards that provide some surprising insights into the remarkable
science of persuasion.
A survey of the persuasive messages
conveyed by dozens of request cards from a wide variety of hotels around
the globe reveals that these cards most commonly attempt to encourage
towel recycling efforts by focusing guests almost exclusively on the
importance of environmental protection. In other words, guests are almost
invariably informed that reusing their towels will conserve natural
resources and help spare the environment from further depletion, disruption,
and corruption. To further draw guests’ attention to the impact of towel
recycling on the environment, this information is often accompanied
by various eye-catching, environment- related pictures in the background,
ranging from rainbows to raindrops to rainforests…to reindeer.
This persuasion strategy generally
seems to be an effective one. For example, one of the largest manufacturers
of these signs, whose messages focus entirely on the importance of environmental
protection, reports that the majority of hotel guests who have the opportunity
to participate in these programs do reuse their towels at least once
during their stay. But could the results be improved?
Researchers are often on the lookout
for ways to apply their scientific knowledge to make existing policies
and practices even more effective. Much like a highway billboard that
reads, “Place your ad here,” these little towel recycling
cards spoke to us, practically pleaded with us, to “Test your ideas
here.” So we did. And in doing so, we showed that just by making
a small change to the way in which the request is made, hotel chains
can do much, much better.
As this book will reveal, starting
with our towel experiments, small, easy changes to our messages and
to our requests can make them vastly more persuasive. In fact, we’re
going to claim that everyone’s ability to persuade others can be improved
by learning persuasion strategies that have been scientifically proven
to be successful. We will report on dozens of studies, some conducted
by us, some by other scientists, that demonstrate this point in many
different settings. Along the way, we will discuss the principles behind
these findings. The central purpose of this book is to provide the reader
with a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying
our efforts to influence others to shift their attitudes or behavior
in a direction that results in positive outcomes for both parties. In
addition to presenting a variety of effective and ethical persuasion
strategies, we also discuss the types of things to watch out for to
help you resist both subtle and overt influences on your decision-making.
The studies discussed in this book
are scientifically rigorous, but they can also be fun. For example,
we’ll seek to provide insights about what single office supply can make
your attempts to persuade others significantly more effective, what
Luke Skywalker can teach us about being an influential leader, why people
named Dennis are disproportionately more likely to become dentists,
how slipping your audience the perfectly legal drug 1,3,7-trimethylxanthin
can help you become more persuasive, how inconveniencing your rivals
will make them more likely to do favors for you, and why people would
be more likely to buy a BMW just after giving reasons for preferring
a Mercedes.
We’ll also seek to answer a number
of other important questions. For example: What common mistake do communicators
often make that causes their message to backfire? Which one word will
strengthen your persuasion attempts? Is it better to start low or high
when selling items on eBay? How can you turn your weaknesses into persuasive
strengths? How can waiters increase their tips without changing the
quality of their service? And why can sometimes seeing yourself — or
being seen by others — as an expert result in one of the most dangerous
situations in which you could ever be placed?
Persuasion as Science,
Not Art
The scientific study of persuasion
has been continuing for over half a century now. Yet, the research on
persuasion is somewhat of a secret science, often lying dormant in the
pages of academic journals. Considering the large body of research that’s
been produced on the subject, it might be useful to take a moment to
think about why this research is so often overlooked. It’s no surprise
that people who are faced with choices about how to influence others,
including important program or policy choices, will often base their
decisions on thinking that’s grounded in the established theories and
practices of fields such as economics, finance, and public policy. However,
what’s puzzling is how frequently decision-makers fail to use established
psychological theories and practices to guide them in their choices.
One potential explanation for this
tendency is that, unlike the fields of economics, finance, and public
policy, which tend to require learning from outsiders to achieve even
a minimal level of competence, people believe they already possess an
intuitive understanding of psychological principles simply by virtue
of living life and interacting with others. As a consequence, they’re
less likely to learn and to consult the psychological research when
making decisions, setting policies, or generating solutions to problems.
This overconfidence inevitably leads people to miss golden opportunities
for psychologically informed social influence — or worse still, to
misuse psychological principles to the detriment of themselves and others.
Besides being overly reliant on their
personal experiences with others, people also rely too much on introspection.
For example, why would the marketing practitioners charged with the
task of designing the hotel towel reuse signs focus almost exclusively
on the impact of these programs on the environment? They probably did
what any of us would do — they asked themselves, “What would motivate
me to participate in one of these programs by recycling my towels?”
And by examining their own motives, they would come to the conclusion
that a sign that tapped into their values and identity as environmentally
concerned people would be particularly motivating. But in doing so,
they would also fail to realize how they could increase participation
just by changing a few words in their request.
Persuasion has often been referred
to as an art, but in a sense, this is a misclassification. Although
talented artists can certainly be taught skills to harness their natural
abilities, the truly remarkable artist seems to possess a certain level
of talent and creativity that no instructor is capable of instilling
in another person. Fortunately, this isn’t the case with persuasion.
Even people who consider themselves persuasion lightweights — people
who feel they couldn’t convince a child to play with toys — can learn
to become persuasion heavyweights by understanding the psychology of
persuasion and by using the specific persuasion strategies that have
been scientifically proven to be effective.
Regardless of whether you’re a salesperson,
manager, marketer, negotiator, educator, policymaker, lawyer, health
care worker, food server, eBayer, or parent, this book is designed to
help you become a master persuader. We’ll describe certain techniques
that are based on what one of us (Robert Cialdini) explored in the book
Influence: Science & Practice as the six universal principles
of social influence: reciprocation (we feel obligated to return favors
performed for us), authority (we look to experts to show us the way),
commitment/consistency (we want to act consistently with our commitments
and values), scarcity (the less available the resource, the more we
want it), liking (the more we like people, the more we want to say yes
to them), and social proof (we look to what others do to guide our behavior).1
We’ll discuss what these principles mean and how they operate in some
detail throughout the book, but we won’t limit ourselves to them. Although
the six principles act as the foundation for the majority of successful
social influence strategies, there are also many persuasion techniques
that are based on other psychological factors, which we’ll cover.
We’ll also place a special emphasis
on how these strategies operate in a number of different contexts –
both within and outside the workplace — and provide practical and action-oriented
advice for how to maximize your persuasive prowess in those settings
and beyond. The advice we’ll provide will be ethical and easy to follow,
will require very little additional effort or cost on your part, and
should pay big dividends.
With apologies to Henny Youngman, we
fully expect that by the time you finish this book, your persuasion
toolbox will be packed with so many scientifically proven social influence
strategies you’ll hardly be able to close it.
1
How can inconveniencing your audience
increase your persuasiveness?
Colleen Szot is one of the most successful
writers in the paid programming industry. And for good reason: In addition
to penning several well-known “infomercials” for the famed
and fast-selling NordicTrac exercise machine, she recently authored
a program that shattered a nearly twenty-year sales record for a home-shopping
channel. Although her programs retain many of the elements common to
most infomercials, including flashy catchphrases, an unrealistically
enthusiastic audience, and celebrity endorsements, Szot changed three
words to a standard infomercial line that caused a huge increase in
the number of people who purchased her product. Even more remarkable,
these three words made it clear to potential customers that the process
of ordering the product might well prove somewhat of a hassle. What
were those three words, and how did they cause sales to skyrocket?
Szot changed the all-too-familiar call-to-action
line, “Operators are waiting, please call now,” to, “If
operators are busy, please call again.” On the face of it, the
change appears foolhardy. After all, the message seems to convey that
potential customers might have to waste their time dialing and redialing
the toll-free number until they finally reach a sales representative.
Yet, that surface view underestimates the power of the principle of
social proof: When people are uncertain about a course of action, they
tend to look outside themselves and to other people around them to guide
their decisions and actions. In the Colleen Szot example, consider the
kind of mental image likely to be generated when you hear “operators
are waiting”: scores of bored phone representatives filing their
nails, clipping their coupons, or twiddling their thumbs while they
wait by their silent telephones — an image indicative of low demand
and poor sales.
Now consider how your perception of
the popularity of the product would change when you heard the phrase
“if operators are busy, please call again.” Instead of those
bored, inactive representatives, you’re probably imagining operators
going from phone call to phone call without a break. In the case of
the modified “if operators are busy, please call again” line,
home viewers followed their perceptions of others’ actions, even though
those others were completely anonymous. After all, “if the phone
lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this
infomercial are calling, too.”
Many classical findings in social psychology
demonstrate the power of social proof to influence other people’s actions.
To take just one, in an experiment conducted by scientist Stanley Milgram
and colleagues, an assistant of the researchers stopped on a busy New
York City sidewalk and gazed skyward for sixty seconds. Most passersby
simply walked around the man without even glancing to see what he was
looking at. However, when the researchers added four other men to that
group of sky gazers, the number of passersby who joined them more than
quadrupled.2
Although there’s little doubt that
other people’s behavior is a powerful source of social influence, when
we ask people in our own studies whether other people’s behavior influences
their own, they are absolutely insistent that it does not. But social
psychologists know better. We know that people’s ability to understand
the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor.3 Perhaps
this is one reason that the people in the business of creating those
little cards encouraging hotel guests to reuse their towels didn’t think
to use the principle of social proof to their advantage. In asking themselves,
“What would motivate me?” they might well have discounted
the very real influence that others would have on their behavior. As
a result, they focused all their attention on how the towel reuse program
would be relevant to saving the environment, a motivator that seemed,
at least on the surface of it, to be most relevant to the desired behavior.
In our hotel experiment, we considered
the finding that the majority of hotel guests who encounter the towel
reuse signs do actually recycle their towels at least some time during
their stay. What if we simply informed guests of this fact? Would it
have any influence on their participation in the conservation program
relative to the participation rates that a basic environmental appeal
yields? With the cooperation of a hotel manager, two of us and another
colleague created two signs and placed them in hotel rooms. One was
designed to reflect the type of basic environmental-protection message
adopted throughout much of the hotel industry. It asked the guests to
help save the environment and to show their respect for nature by participating
in the program. A second sign used the social proof information by informing
guests that the majority of guests at the hotel recycled their towels
at least once during the course of their stay. These signs were randomly
assigned to the rooms in the hotel.
Now, typically, experimental social
psychologists are fortunate enough to have a team of eager undergraduate
research assistants to help collect the data. But, as you might imagine,
neither our research assistants nor the guests would have been very
pleased with the research assistants’ sneaking into hotel bathrooms
to collect our data, nor would our university’s ethics board (nor our
mothers, for that matter). Fortunately, the hotel’s room attendants
were kind enough to volunteer to collect the data for us. On the first
day on which a particular guest’s room was serviced, they simply recorded
whether the guest chose to reuse at least one towel.
Guests who learned that the majority
of other guests had reused their towels (the social proof appeal), which
was a message that we’ve never seen employed by even a single hotel,
were 26 percent more likely than those who saw the basic environmental
protection message to recycle their towels.4 That’s a 26 percent increase
in participation relative to the industry standard, which we achieved
simply by changing a few words on the sign to convey what others
were doing. Not a bad improvement for a factor that people say has no
influence on them at all.
These findings show how being mindful
of the true power of social proof can pay big dividends in your attempts
to persuade others to take a desired course of action. Of course, the
importance of how you communicate this information should not be underestimated.
Your audience is obviously unlikely to respond favorably to a statement
like, “Hey you: Be a sheep and join the herd. Baaaaaaaah!”
Instead, a more positively framed statement, such as, “Join countless
others in helping to save the environment,” is likely to be received
much more favorably.5
Besides the impact on public policy,
social proof can have a major impact in your work life, as well. In
addition to touting your top-selling products with impressive statistics
conveying their popularity (think the McDonald’s sign stating “Billions
and billions served”), you’d do well to remember to always ask
for testimonials from satisfied customers and clients. It’s also important
to feature those testimonials when you’re presenting to new potential
clients who may be in need of some reassurance about the benefits that
your organization can provide. Or better yet, you can set up a situation
in which your current clients have the opportunity to provide firsthand
testimonials to prospective clients about how satisfied they are with
you and your organization. One way to do this is to invite current and
potential customers to a luncheon or educational seminar and arrange
the seating charts so that they can easily commingle. In this setting,
they’re likely to naturally strike up conversations regarding the advantages
of working with your organization. And if, while taking RSVPs for the
luncheon, your potential attendees tell you they’ll have to call you
back to let you know, just be sure to tell them that if your phone line
is busy, they should keep trying…
Copyright © 2008 by Noah J. Goldstein,
Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini
Posted on: Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 6:12 am 
Dr. Cialdini, Influence, Persuasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I finally decided to write a comment on your blog. I just wanted to say good job. I really enjoy reading your posts.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:24 amOn the recommendation of a successful business colleague I purchased Cialdini’s book. So far it is a fascinating [ and no doubt very worthwhile], read!
June 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm[...] Source: An experiment on hotel guests towel recycling habits related in Yes!, the blog promoting “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive” by Noah J. Goldstein, [...]
June 18th, 2008 at 4:16 pmYou spelled persuasive incorrectly in the title. But i got over it. Enjoyed the summary.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:36 amThe writing above (the ceaseless boring referrals to the hotel towels) did not persuade me to want to read this book.
Robert Cialdini is a good researcher. I’ll just refer back to his earlier material…
Couldn’t they come up with better anecdotes showcasing this book?
June 25th, 2008 at 4:00 amIf not this must be a stinker…