Social influence
BOOK ‘INFLUENCE’ OF CIALDINI
Chapter 1 weapons of influence
Fixed-action patterns
- Instincts of certain animals that are under automatic control
- They can involve sequences of behaviour (e.g. courtship or mating rituals)
- These behaviours occur in virtually the same fashion and order very time,
like a tape that gets triggered
- The trigger is often just one feature of for instance an enemy (like a colour,
or a sound) and not the animal as a whole
- These fixed action patterns work well most of the time
- Humans have similar pre-programmed ‘tapes’ that can be triggered by
specific cues
- We can trigger these tapes by using certain cues, in order to manipulate
people
Examples:
Providing a reason triggers compliance
An example how you can use this: people are more likely to do us a favour if we
provide a reason. The given reason can be stupid or nonsense, but the
mechanism will still work. Just the word ‘because’ is enough to trigger the right
response: compliance. Although this works with small requests, in case of a big
request, the reason that is provided has to be a good one.
Expensive = good, inexpensive = bad
Another example: we automatically link expensive to good, and inexpensive to
bad. You can use this for instance by increasing the price of a product that sells
too slowly, triggering people to think the value of that product is better, just
because it is more expensive. Usually this thinking process makes sense: when
the price goes up, most of the time the quality is better. So, without extra
knowledge of the to be purchased item, people rely on this heuristic (the one
feature that could tell something about the quality of the item the price).
In daily life, we often rely on these automatic stereotypes. Sometimes the
behaviours we produce, are not appropriate for the situation. But because these
heuristics serve most of the time as efficient and effective short cuts, it is the
price we are willing to pay.
These short-cuts in judgment are called ‘judgmental heuristics’, for instance:
‘If an expert said so, it must be true’ (without further thinking).
Not considering the arguments of the expert
Being convinced just by the status of the expert
The opposite of this automatic responding is called controlled responding ,
where all the information will be analysed thoroughly. Controlled responding only
happens when:
- People have the desire to analyse it (only when personally relevant)
- People have the ability to analyse it
So: personal relevance triggers controlled responding. But even when personal
relevance is strong, there are situations where we still rely on mental short cuts.
An example of this is Captainitis, which is the phenomenon when a flight
assistant doesn’t correct the flight captain when he or she sees that something
goes wrong, even when the cause of that mistake will make the plane crash.
, These short cuts are only known by a few people. This makes us, who don’t know
the principles, vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work. This is also
seen in the animal kingdom. ‘Mimics’ are organisms that copy the trigger
features of other organisms, getting them to behave how they want. Even as little
as bacteria and viruses act like this.
The point is, that people who know how to use social influence, can do this
without giving you the feeling that they are manipulating.
An example is the contrast principle:
This affects the way we see the differences between two things that are
presented after another, for instance: first a light weight, than a heavy weight,
the heavy weight will be perceived as more heavy than it actually is.
