The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold - by Robert Levine

Date read: 201-03-05
How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)

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Details into how advertising and sales can influence your decision-making abilities and ways to watch out of being negatively persuaded.

My Notes

The psychology of persuasion emanates from three directions: the characteristics of the source, the mind-set of the target person, and the psychological context within which the communication takes place. Think of it as them, you, and the between. Any or all of the three can tilt the power balance either toward or against you. If the latter occurs, you're vulnerable.

Studies have shown that people generally approach the threats of life with the philosophy that bad things are more likely to happen to other people than to themselves.

If we can convince ourselves we're immune to natural events like disease and earthquakes, it should be no surprise we also believe ourselves capable of controlling mere psychological forces like social influence and persuasion.

Situation - the particulars of the time, the place, and the social context - are often better predictors of how people will act than is the type of person they are.

Effective salespeople I've encountered in my research, it's that they almost never look like "real" salespeople. They have the ability to first set you at ease about their motives, then they sell.

TYPES OF PERSUASION
Three characteristics are related to persuasiveness: perceived authority, honesty, and likability. When someone has any or all of these characteristics, we're not only more willing to agree to that person's request, willing to do so without carefully considering the facts.

TYPE OF PERSUASION - AUTHORITY
Americans are particularly susceptible to three types of authority symbols: titles, clothing, and luxury cars.

People are perceived as more credible when they make eye contact and speak with confidence, no matter what they have to say.

Technical jargon can be similarly persuasive. If you're out to give the impression of special expertise, jargon often works. Experts are sometimes most convincing when we don't understand what they're talking about. For example: When the witness spoke simply the jurors could evaluate his argument on its merits. But when he was unintelligible, they had to resort to the mental shortcut of accepting his title and reputation in lieu of comprehensible facts.

You'd be well advised to question authority and situations in which you unexpectedly find yourself in subordinate power relationships. Look critically at symbols of authority-titles, uniforms, claims to special powers. Monitor your willingness to obey people of higher status, especially when they encourage you to believe they're too harmless to be worth your worry.

TYPE OF PERSUASION - HONESTY
Researchers demonstrated that whether a child cheated in one situation was a poor predictor of whether he'd cheat in an even slightly different one.

Because moral trustworthiness is perceived as relatively unwavering, a little of it goes a long way.

Once the halo is attached, we do our best to ignore and explain away indiscretions that might compromise our impression. However, a good reputation is less durable than a bad one. Good reputations are difficult to acquire but easy to lose. Bad reputations are easy to acquire and difficult to lose.

Another route to believability is to disguise propaganda as objective information. Communicators who present both sides of an argument - both for and against their agenda-are perceived as less partial and more trustworthy.

Kissinger liked to say that his solution was to always present three or four choices to Nixon, but to "color the choices" and frame them so his own preference always stood out as the best.

The best way to overcome objections is to address them before they occur. When someone says, "You're not going to believe this," he's trying to defuse your disbelief in what he's about to say. If someone says, "This may sound silly," it establishes license to say something silly.

Mavens: (1) know a lot of people; (2) communicate a great deal with people; (3) are more likely than others to be asked for their opinions; and (4) enjoy spreading the word about what they know and think.

TYPE OF PERSUASION - LIKEABILITY
Reciprocity can be a dictatorial force. But avoid creating an obligation that's too burdensome for their target to repay. For example, employers sometimes give substantial raises to workers with the intention of reinforcing their hard work and motivating them to work even harder. Studies show that if the raise is large enough, it does activate a brief feeling of obligation to please the employer. In the long run, however, it rarely leads to more output. Instead, it encourages the workers to rationalize why they deserve the raise. They might, for example, tell themselves that their job is more difficult than they'd previously thought, or dwell on how little they'd been paid in the past. As a result, if the raise is too steep, and the justification leak isn't plugged, the initial favor can backfire. The persuader may create new standards of entitlement, subsequent disgruntlement, and, ultimately, lower production than before.

Gifts of time are less transparent and more readily accepted than tangible commodities. The reciprocity pressure is a function of the perceived value of the other's time.

"Good cop-bad cop" routine is most effective with women, teenagers, and timid men.

Reciprocity-of-liking rule: when people like us, we're inclined to like them back.

Chronic "Creditor": individuals who thrive on having others indebted to them. Much or their lives are spent on the twin tasks of assembling indebtedness from others and avoiding being in debt themselves.

Six characteristics that define the creditor type:

Creditors are great proponents of the principle that people are not only obligated to return a favor but should give back more than they receive.

Creditors work hard to stay on the dominant side of the reciprocity equation. Creditors don't like being on the receiving end unless they're in a position to quickly repay their debt anytime they want.

Creditors are uncomfortable when a debt is repaid and immediately search for ways to get the other person back in their debt again.

Even when others try to make repayment, creditors try to make it appear that it's not enough.

Creditors are suspicious of gifts and favors. They're wary of becoming victims of the reciprocity norm.

Creditors go out of their way to exploit the reciprocity norm. When they give to others, it's usually with the expectation of later receiving more in return. To a creditor, generosity is a manipulative scheme.

The closer the kinship between the person giving a gift and the one receiving it, the less scrupulously the reciprocity rule was enforced.

THE CONTRAST PRINCIPLE
The most fundamental of context effects is the principle of contrast. The principle relies on the fact that human minds magnify differences:
When two relatively similar stimuli are placed next to each other, they'll be perceived as more different from each other than they actually are.

How we respond to a person or a request - whether it seems reasonable or excessive, important or trivial - depends on what came before and what other information sits beside it in the picture.

In persuasion, contrast gets exploited in at least two ways: 1)To convince you that what a company is selling is a better deal than what the competition has to offer and 2)To alter your expectations, or what's known as your "anchor point."

Anchor points are remarkably malleable.

"There is a test we used to do in class to see how easily living things can adapt. You put a frog in a pail of water and gradually turn up the heat. The frog just keeps adjusting to the new temperature, until it finally boils to death, because it is so used to adjusting that it doesn't think to jump out of the pail. I feel like that frog."

Three traps to watch out for:

The anchoring trap - may be used to make a high price appear lower. Example: "Instead of your cable rate rising to an extra 30 per month it's only going up 10 per month."

The base rate fallacy - We sometimes use the wrong anchor completely. Example: Assuming a man is a librarian over a salesperson because he's described as meek and unassertive. Even though statistically there are so fewer male librarians than female (1% chance).

The decoy - Showing the customer options he won't buy but which will reset his base rate so that other products look more attractive. Example: A realtor might first show you a house that is similar but slightly inferior to one you're interested in - a little smaller or more expensive, perhaps.

PERSUASION AND MATH
Persuasion artists understand that in the buyer's mind, the value of an absolute number is arbitrary, ambiguous, and malleable and that as a result, consumers can be easily induced to pay more or less for the same product.

Ten rules of framing that salespeople may exploit you with:

Separate Gains Principle - To offer consumers a free gift with their product instead of just giving them more of the product itself. They want you to file the gift in your unexpected windfall account, where its perceived value is psychologically inflated, rather than mentally bunching it together with the other products into one big purchase.

Separate Small Gains from Larger Losses - Any profit is pleasant, of course, but it gets buried when it's filed alongside a bigger loss. To highlight their discounts, many markets now give you "savings" information separately. Example: When the cashier hands you your receipt they call out how much you saved to justify the total cost.

Consolidate Losses - The number of losses has greater impact than the actual amount of the loss. Effective marketers apply this principle by bundling losses whenever possible.

Bundle Small Losses into Larger Gains - If a small loss can be packaged with a larger gain, the loss will be less noticeable than if it stands by itself. Example: Employees to pay for items through automatic payroll deductions. It's been shown that people are more likely to buy savings bonds or contribute to United Way or pay for life insurance when it comes out of their monthly paycheck than when they're asked to write a big check for the year.

Appeal to Risk Taking for Losses, to Safety for Gains - The average person needs five good experiences to balance out a single bad one. People are more willing to gamble when they face a loss than when they risk giving up something they possess which can lead to distorted decision making.

Let the Consumer Buy Now, Pay Later - Encouraging buyers to live with the product before making a commitment, to create the feeling of ownership, or allow consumers to delay payment for thirty days or ninety days or maybe to make "no payments this year." Salespeople hope that the trial period will stimulate our ever-eager juices of psychological ownership. We'll then assimilate the products or activities into our baseline of normal life, so that no longer having them would feel like a loss. These appeals put customers in the position of needing to exert more work to not own the product than to just give up and buy it.

Frame It as an Opportunity Forgone Rather Than an Out-of-Pocket Loss. Example: Ads appear for products you can buy with no-interest credit using your forthcoming income taq refund.

Emphasize Sunk Costs - Nonrecoverable investments of time or money. The trap occurs when your aversion to loss impels you to throw good money after bad because you don't want to waste your earlier investment. To avoid the trap, try not muddle your decisions by agonizing over what you spent in the past. Your sunk costs are irrelevant to your decision today. See it through fresh eyes.

List High, Sell Low - A high reference price not only makes a dealer's discount look more attractive, but even when people are skeptical about the suggested reference price they may remain more willing consumers.

Never Exceed the Reference Price.

To define your own criteria of fiscal sensibility, I suggest a two-question self-test: 1) Is it a good value NOW? and 2) Is it worth the cost to YOU?

COMPLEXITY
Too many choices can be overwhelming which leads to a desire for simplicity. Unfortunately, this can become an invitation for exploitation.

Six situations to watch out for:

When you believe the consequences of your actions aren't important - Why waste mental energy thinking through details?

When you're pressed to act quickly - If we can be persuaded that a product or service is difficult to attain, we want it more.

When there's too much information to process - The more information you're given, the more impressive it seems, and so the less carefully you evaluate its merits.

When you trust the person making the request.

When you're surrounded by social proof - If everyone's doing it, it must be right.

When you're uncertain and confused - Confusion can lead to helplessness, and helplessness breeds a desire for quick fixes-anything to get our bearings. This is the uncertainty principle.

We react to just a single, isolated piece of information. In persuasion, this can be a very dangerous shortcut. It exposes what's known in sales vernacular as the hot button.

ESCALATING COMMITMENTS
This method of cornering the customer is called the "Four Walls" technique. You're asked multiple rhetorical questions (classically, four) that wall you in, forcing the inescapable conclusion that you have no justification for not purchasing this product.

Some techniques bring a paradoxical approach to the escalation sequence by pushing a request to or beyond its acceptable limit and then backing off.

A door in the face method (aka "the reject-then-compromise-procedure") - The salesperson begins with a large request he expects will be rejected. He wants the door to be slammed in his face. Looking forlorn, he now follows this with a smaller request that, unknown to the customer, was his target all along. It activates the contrast effect and sets up the norm of reciprocity. "I've made this concession to you," the salesperson implies. "It's your turn to give something in return."

"And that's not all!" technique - Begins with the salesperson asking a high price. This is followed by a several-second pause, during which the customer is kept from responding. The salesperson then offers a better deal by either lowering the price or adding a bonus product.

The insidiousness of slowly escalating commitments is they put you in situations that catch you off guard. You don't recognize the
sum total of your actions until after the fact, by which time it may well be too late.

Warren Buffett: "When you find yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging." Practice saying, "I made a mistake." Or: "I was wrong. Thanks for the learning experience."

PERPETUAL PERSUASION
Eight general principles are good basic guides for what to watch out for:

Watch Out for the Invisible - The most dangerous mind controllers are a little like invisible umpires except they control events to meet their needs, not yours. They know how to pull the strings so subtly you don't realize they're doing it. Example: cult leaders will have their recruits do the majority of the persuading.

Force: Less Is More - Apply the least necessary force every step of the way - just enough to kindle the conversion process without dousing it with external justification.

Beware the Illusion of Choice - Persuasion that is exercised invisibly and with minimal force creates an illusion of choice.

Rewards: Less Is More - Too much is not only ineffective at winning hearts and minds; it can also undo enthusiasm that already exists. Winning hearts and minds means propelling people from the inside. If we receive too much reward, we may do what's asked, but only as long as the goods are coming. To be captured for the long haul, we need to convince ourselves we're doing it because we want to.

Guilt and Shame Are More Powerful Than Rules and Laws - As with all profound persuasion, however, the key to effectively challenging a norm is avoiding the appearance of too much force.

Self-Justification: The Road to Perpetual Persuasion - If dissonance can be created between what you think and what you do, you'll try your best to change one or the other. And changing your thoughts is usually the easier way out.

When Behavior Is Controlled, the Mind Follows - When you play a part, it becomes that much likelier you'll play it again, and with greater intensity.

Failure May Persuade You More Than Success - Belief may actually get stronger when it's proven wrong. The more you stand to lose, and the more foolish you look, the greater the dissonance and, so, the greater the pressure to prove you were right in the first place. The more one endures, the greater the need to self-justify. Once the process begins, it becomes self-perpetuating. If I did it, I must believe it. And if believe it, I'm more likely to do it again, and more so.

ADVICE ON HOW TO DEFEND AGAINST PERSUASION
Sometimes people need more aggressive and specific intervention. Here are some techniques that have proved effective:

Stinging - Sometimes people need a good sting to push them out of their self-deluding comfort zone. They need a little of their susceptibility rubbed in their face. It breaks through the illusion of invulnerability which, in turn, motivates us to take preventative measures. Second, the poison serves as an inoculation.

The Inoculation Method - If you subject people to weak versions of a persuasive message, they're less vulnerable to stronger versions later on, in much the same way that being exposed to small doses of a virus immunizes you against full-blown attacks.

Scripts - Writing and rehearsing scripts can be a particularly valuable outcome of the inoculation process. When a voice inside you warns that something here doesn't feel right, you might, for example, train yourself to say: "I'm sorry, but my (husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/mother/father) and I have an agreement that we never make a significant (purchase/decision/commitment) before discussing it together at home."

Becoming a good critical thinker. Here are a few faculties you might work on:

Think Like a Scientist - Practice arriving at decisions through a logical, systematic, objective process. The scientific method consists of generating a hypothesis, gathering data that bears on your hypothesis, and then reconsidering your hypothesis in light of your data.

An eight-step decision-making strategy developed by cognitive psychologists known by the acronym of PROACT (problem, objectives, alternatives, consequences, and trade-offs):

PR - Clearly define your problem. What is it you're trying to decide?

O - Specify your objectives. Think through where you want this decision to take you.

A - Force yourself to consider alternative courses of action.

C - Evaluate the consequences of all possible decisions. Be imaginative here.

T - What are the trade-offs of each course of action? List the pros and cons of potential choices. Address uncertainties. What could happen in the future, how likely is it to occur, and how will it effect your decision? What is your risk tolerance? Plan ahead. How may this decision affect other decisions you make in the future?
Learn to Reframe Your Problem in Different Lights - There's an old joke about a young priest who asks his bishop, "May I smoke while praying?" The bishop answers emphatically that he may not. Later, the young priest encounters an older priest puffing on a cigarette while praying. The young priest scolds him: "You shouldn't be smoking while praying! I asked the bishop and he said I couldn't." "That's strange," the older priest answers. "I asked the bishop if I could pray while I'm smoking and he told me it was okay to pray any time."

Beware of exploitive professionals who frame their requests in misleading ways. Be especially on guard when they play to your fear of danger and loss. It's best if you can physically remove yourself from the context. When this isn't possible, try to remove yourself psychologically. Learn to watch yourself as an outsider would, from as detached a distance as you can.

Learn to Ask Disconfirming Questions - Invite information that will prove your initial judgment wrong. Abraham Maslow observed, "To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail."

Find a person to play devil's advocate and when seeking advice from others, be careful not to lead them on.

Groupthink - Be careful when the same people who want to fill your expectations are also in the business of creating them.

Contents:

My Notes