This Chapter Is an Excerpt from Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior Written by Nick Kolenda
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This chapter is an excerpt from Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior written by Nick Kolenda. You can buy the book here. For info about Nick, you can visit: www.NickKolenda.com CHAPTER 1 Prime Their Mindset It might seem like an odd request, but think of a lucky dwarf. Are you thinking of one? Good. Now go with your immediate gut reaction and think of a number between one and ten. Quick! Stick with the fi rst number that pops inside your head, and don’t change your mind. Are you thinking of a number? Although it’s far from foolproof, you were more likely to think of the number seven. And if you are thinking of seven and you’re somewhat freaked out, rest assured, this chapter will explain the psychological principle behind that phenom- enon. Specifi cally, you’ll learn why imagining that “lucky dwarf” made you more likely to think of the number seven, and you’ll learn practical techniques to apply that underlying principle in your own life (don’t worry, you won’t be asking people to think about dwarves, I promise). THE POWER OF MINDSETS Before I explain the exercise with the dwarf, let’s try something else. This time, think of your mother. Let that image of good ol’ mum sim- mer for a second or two, and then let it fade away. Now, read the following blurb about Mark and mentally rate his level of motivation on a scale from one to nine (1 = low motivation, 9 = high motivation): Mark is just entering his second year of college. In his fi rst year, he did very well in some classes but not as well in others. Although he missed some morning classes, overall he had very good attendance. His parents are both doctors, and he is registered in pre-med, but he 8 Methods of Persuasion hasn’t really decided if that is what he wants to do. (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p. 153) Do you have your rating? As you might have judged, all of the infor- mation about Mark in that passage was completely ambiguous; in other words, that information could be perceived either positively or negatively. Researchers presented that ambiguous blurb to people to examine how their perception of Mark would change depending on their mindset. To instill a certain mindset in their participants, the researchers asked people beforehand to complete an “unrelated” questionnaire. Some people completed a questionnaire about their best friend, whereas other people completed a questionnaire about their mother. Do you still remember the rating that you gave Mark? The people in the study who fi lled out the best friend questionnaire gave an aver- age rating of 5.56 for Mark’s level of motivation. Was your rating higher? According to the results, people who fi lled out the question- naire about their mother viewed Mark to be signifi cantly more moti- vated (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003). Why did people perceive Mark diff erently depending on the ques- tionnaire? Since nothing in the blurb changed, logic suggests that both groups should have given Mark the same rating. What was so powerful about the mother questionnaire that altered people’s per- ception of him? In general, people associate motivation and striving toward suc- cess more with their mothers than with their best friends. Because one of the driving forces behind many people’s pursuit toward success is a desire to make their mom proud, the concept of motivation became activated and more prevalent for people who completed the question- naire about their mother. Although the objective reality in front of them remained the same (i.e., the blurb was the same for each group), the idea of “mother” became a lens through which people perceived that ambiguous blurb. The next section will explain why that’s the case, and you’ll also learn why a “lucky dwarf” can make people pre- disposed to think of the number seven. Prime Their Mindset 9 WHY ARE MINDSETS SO POWERFUL? To understand why mindsets are so powerful, you need to understand three concepts: schemas, priming, and spreading activation. Schemas. For any general concept, you usually associate many other ideas with that concept. For example, your concept of mother would include the idea of motivation, along with many other ideas that you associate with your mother. Further, if that set of associations—known as a schema—becomes activated, it can alter your perception and behavior because it would make the other associated concepts more prevalent in your mind (e.g., activating a schema of mother made the idea of motivation more prev- alent, which infl uenced people’s perception of Mark). Though schemas can often result in positive perceptions, such as perceived motivation, schemas can also result in negative percep- tions, such as stereotypes. For example, under your schema of “Asian” is probably the idea of superior math skills. Even if you don’t believe that Asians are genuinely superior at math, the mere presence of that association is enough to infl uence your perception and behavior. Researchers from Harvard conducted a clever study to test that claim (Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999). Their study was particularly clever because they used a group of people who belonged to confl ict- ing stereotypes: Asian-American women. On one hand, there’s a com- mon stereotype that Asians are superior at math, but on the other hand, there’s a common stereotype that females are inferior at math. The researchers wanted to examine how activating those confl icting schemas could infl uence their performance on a math test. Before giving the test, the researchers asked two groups of Asian- American women some questions. Some women were asked questions that related to their sex (e.g., if the fl oors in their dorms were either co-ed or single sex). Other women, however, were asked questions that related to their race and heritage (e.g., the languages that they knew or spoke at home). Thus, one group had their schema of “female” 10 Methods of Persuasion activated, whereas the other group had their schema of “Asian” acti- vated. You can probably guess what happened when the researchers later presented those groups with a supposedly unrelated math test. Women who were primed with their schema for Asian performed signifi cantly better than a control group (women who were asked neu- tral questions), and women who were primed with their schema for female performed signifi cantly worse than the control group. There- fore, any idea that we associate with a particular schema—even if we don’t believe in that association—can still infl uence our perception and behavior if that schema becomes activated. But how does a schema become activated in the fi rst place? The answer lies in priming. Priming. Priming is the means by which you activate a schema or mind- set. In the previous study about stereotypes, the “prime” was the ques- tionnaire. When people fi lled out the questionnaire, their schema for either Asian or female became activated. Does that mean you need to ask people to complete a question- naire in order to prime a schema? Nope. Luckily, there are many eas- ier ways to prime particular schemas (though I suppose you could ask your target to fi ll out a questionnaire if you really wanted to). If not by questionnaire, how else can you prime a schema? Research shows that you can prime a schema by merely exposing people to cer- tain words or ideas related to a particular schema. To illustrate, the next study off ers a prime example (ha, get the pun?). Using the disguise of a word-puzzle task, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996) exposed people to words relating to the elderly (e.g., bingo, wise, retired, Florida). When the experiment was supposedly over, what do you think happened when people walked out of the room? Astonishingly, compared to a control group, people walked out of the room signifi cantly slower when they were exposed to the elderly related words. Those words primed a schema for the elderly, which then activated behavior that people associate with the elderly: walking slow. Prime Their Mindset 11 Not only can priming occur through subtle exposures to certain words, but priming can also be eff ective when it occurs entirely outside of our conscious awareness. Researchers in another study subliminally primed people with either the logo from Apple, a company with a very creative connotation, or the logo from IBM, a company with a very straightforward, noncreative connotation. The logos were only shown for thirteen milliseconds, so people weren’t consciously aware that they were exposed to those logos. However, people who were fl ashed with Apple’s logo exhibited higher creativity than did people who were exposed to IBM’s logo (Fitzsimons, Chartrand, & Fitzsimons, 2008). How was creativity measured? After subliminally priming people with the logos, the researchers asked them to list unusual uses for a brick. Yep . a brick. It might seem like a silly task, but people who were subliminally primed with Apple’s logo generated a signifi cantly longer list than those primed with IBM’s logo. Even the unusual uses themselves were judged to be more creative than the uses generated from the IBM group. Therefore, priming is very eff ective even when it occurs outside of our conscious awareness. Although it should be clear by now that priming a particular schema can infl uence our perception and behavior, why is that the case? The answer lies in spreading activation. Spreading Activation.