Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Radio this weekend. On the podcast, I have an extra
Speaker 1: special guest. And for those of you who have enjoyed
Speaker 1: our prior conversations with UM the behavioral psychologists like Bob
Speaker 1: Schiller and Richard Taylor and Danny Kahneman and Meyer Stateman
Speaker 1: and any of the other folks who work in that space,
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna find this conversation to be absolutely delightful.
Speaker 1: Robert Schildini is a professor at Arizona. He is also
Speaker 1: the author of what everybody I know who works in
Speaker 1: any form of marketing or sales calls their Bible. UH.
Speaker 1: He wrote the book Influenced the Psychology of Persuasion, and
Speaker 1: he tells some just absurdly delightful stories of spending time
Speaker 1: working under cover at used car sales places and UM
Speaker 1: infomercial sorts of shops and UH fundraisers. UH. He also
Speaker 1: explains how Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway was so taken
Speaker 1: by the book UH that thirty years ago he sent
Speaker 1: Bob a single share of Berkshire Hathaway stock UH and,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, turned out pretty well when everything
Speaker 1: is said and done. I found the conversation absolutely delightful,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you will also. With no further ado
Speaker 1: my conversation with Bob Cheldoni. My extra special guest is
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Schildini. He received his PhD from the University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina and did some post stock work at
Speaker 1: Columbia uh. He is currently the region's Professor Emeritus of
Speaker 1: Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is perhaps
Speaker 1: best known as the author of the book Influence, The
Speaker 1: Psychology of Persuasion. That book has sold three million copies
Speaker 1: in over thirty languages. He is also a co author
Speaker 1: of fifty scientifically proven Ways to be Persuasive. His latest
Speaker 1: book is Persuasion, A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade.
Speaker 1: Robert Sheldini. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you, Barry. I'm very
Speaker 1: glad to be with you and your listeners. Same here.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk to you because everybody I know
Speaker 1: who works in the field of sales and marketing. When
Speaker 1: I just casually mentioned, oh, by the way, my guest
Speaker 1: this week is going to be uh Dr Sheldini, Professor Sheldini,
Speaker 1: they were like, what from Influence. So they were very
Speaker 1: excited to uh to hear we were having this conversation.
Speaker 1: And I have to begin with the story of the
Speaker 1: original research you did for the book Influence. It almost
Speaker 1: sounds like an urban legend. You spent three years undercover
Speaker 1: working as a used car salesman, a telemarketer, UM, a fundraiser.
Speaker 1: What what was that period like and how instructive was it?
Speaker 1: It was the most instructive and most entertaining research enterprise
Speaker 1: I've ever engaged in, because not only was it fun
Speaker 1: uh to mix up the idea mix up with the
Speaker 1: ideas of people who were actually practitioners who were in
Speaker 1: the business of getting us to say yes, not just
Speaker 1: the study of it, uh, but also I learned so
Speaker 1: much as a consequence of how they employed psychology, which
Speaker 1: is my field, uh, to move others in their direction.
Speaker 1: Did you go into that research expecting I'll get a
Speaker 1: book out of it or was it really let me
Speaker 1: get some practical grounding in the field before I become
Speaker 1: a pure academic. No, that's really a good question. I
Speaker 1: went in to it to get some ideas for doing
Speaker 1: research in my laboratories, UM, where I would say something
Speaker 1: this way versus that way and see how many people
Speaker 1: agreed with it. It was the same thing, I would
Speaker 1: just say it in different ways. But I realized that
Speaker 1: by staying located in a laboratory with college students as
Speaker 1: my subjects, I was missing the power of these techniques
Speaker 1: to really make a difference outside of the laboratory. In
Speaker 1: the real world. Well, there were professions dedicated to getting
Speaker 1: others to say yes to them, and it seemed to
Speaker 1: me there was a lot to learn if I infiltrated
Speaker 1: their training programs and learned what they were teaching their
Speaker 1: perspective professionals. When when did you decide, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there could be a book in this. You know. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened to me about three months in, because
Speaker 1: what I was learning was telling me there are universal
Speaker 1: principles of persuasion in a limited number, not just hundreds
Speaker 1: or thousands of tactics. They could be They could be
Speaker 1: categorized under six basic categories tendency, human tendencies that inclined
Speaker 1: people towards yes, And so I thought I could put
Speaker 1: each one as a chapter in a book and tell
Speaker 1: the story of what are the fundamental reasons that people
Speaker 1: say yes to requests? As as I was rereading influence
Speaker 1: and reading persuasion, I couldn't help notice the parallels to
Speaker 1: behavioral finance. So you were doing your work in the
Speaker 1: early eighties around the same time as some of the
Speaker 1: early work in behavioral finance. When you're doing your research
Speaker 1: or the academic side of it, did did you ever
Speaker 1: come across the works of comments Aversky, fail or Schiller,
Speaker 1: all the behavioral scientists of that era were these two
Speaker 1: completely different paths. They were parallel paths that converged about
Speaker 1: five or ten years later when I realized, oh wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the work that was coming out of the
Speaker 1: practitioners who were in the streets was comparable to the
Speaker 1: work that was coming out of the scholars who were
Speaker 1: in the avenues. What I did was to move from
Speaker 1: the from my university position the avenues into the streets.
Speaker 1: That was the smartest thing I ever did. So there
Speaker 1: are some examples that are just simply amazing, and I
Speaker 1: want to give a few examples. Can we increase voter
Speaker 1: turnout simply by surveying people and asking them not who
Speaker 1: they're going to vote, but asking them to make a
Speaker 1: prediction whether or not they're going to vote. What what's
Speaker 1: the impact of that. In fact, there is research to
Speaker 1: show that that's the case because people then set a
Speaker 1: path in their mind and a time in their mind,
Speaker 1: and they then use those features as cues that spur
Speaker 1: them into action. Or if it's just left ambiguous, there
Speaker 1: are really no cues in their mind that send them
Speaker 1: and into a behavior change. So simply asking people and
Speaker 1: when you ask people, hey, do you think you're going
Speaker 1: to vote this year? Most people are gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I expect to vote. That simple act then gets them
Speaker 1: committed to actually vote in And if you say where
Speaker 1: and when will you vote? Doubles it doubles it. So
Speaker 1: my local polling places, the library or the school around
Speaker 1: the corner, and just really and it's November six, hypothetically
Speaker 1: this year. That has an impact that does that. That's
Speaker 1: that's quite astonishing. So when you were writing the book,
Speaker 1: after your three year experience um in the trenches, did
Speaker 1: you have any idea how successful this was going to
Speaker 1: be as a book? Did you have any idea that
Speaker 1: sort of reaction this was gonna in gender? I could
Speaker 1: not have sensibly known Verry because there were no books
Speaker 1: like this, And did you have an So sometimes I'll wrap.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll write a column and I'll say, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the greatest thing ever, and it just lands and
Speaker 1: nobody cares. And every now and then I'll put something
Speaker 1: out and I'm like, oh, that's not bad, and it
Speaker 1: just goes. I'm curious if at a book length you
Speaker 1: have SIMI looks, do you have a sense at the
Speaker 1: very least this is very different than than the academic
Speaker 1: literature that's out that right, But I didn't know that
Speaker 1: it was going to be adopted um outside of the
Speaker 1: academic community, which it has. I was in Poland recently
Speaker 1: and I have a colleague from Poland, professor Vilamina Voisinska.
Speaker 1: She said to me, you know, Bob, your book Influence
Speaker 1: is so famous in Poland. My students think you're dead.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. You wrote the book in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: How has the state of the art on psychology and
Speaker 1: persuasion changed since then? The tendencies that people employed to
Speaker 1: decide whether to say yes have not changed. Those were
Speaker 1: evolved over eons. They're still in US hardwired. What's changed
Speaker 1: is the channels available for using or tapping those tendencies.
Speaker 1: And the biggest change is the Internet We now have
Speaker 1: available to us information about what other people like us
Speaker 1: have done, are choosing to do, have opinions about from
Speaker 1: around the world, chat rooms, interest groups, various kinds of
Speaker 1: review sites, and so on. We know what thousands of
Speaker 1: people who have similar interests as us are thinking and
Speaker 1: doing and reacting. And if we follow that lead, which
Speaker 1: is what I call the principle of social proof, we
Speaker 1: are much more likely to be successful because we've essentially
Speaker 1: beta tested with all these people the proper response. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go on a limb here and say, of
Speaker 1: all people, you're probably not very surprised about the role
Speaker 1: of Facebook and fake news possibly having an influence in
Speaker 1: in the last election. I am not surprised because of
Speaker 1: that principle of social proof. We look around us, what
Speaker 1: are the people around us doing? And then there's a second,
Speaker 1: uh dimension, whether the people around us like us doing well?
Speaker 1: That's Facebook. So you talk about social proof. There's an
Speaker 1: example in several of your books that I'm just tickled by.
Speaker 1: Somebody was selling something on an infomercial and they changed
Speaker 1: three little words on the tagline, uh what what you
Speaker 1: normally here operators are standing by please call now. It's
Speaker 1: almost a throw a line. They changed it to if
Speaker 1: operators are busy, please call again, and that simple change
Speaker 1: broke all sorts of sales records going back twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Is that simply a case of social proof that, oh,
Speaker 1: the lines are going to be busy, lots of people
Speaker 1: are buying it, therefore I should buy it. Is it?
Speaker 1: Are we that easily manipulated? It can't be anything else,
Speaker 1: very because think about it. To say, if a lot
Speaker 1: of people to say you might be inconvenienced if you
Speaker 1: try to call us is like death in almost any
Speaker 1: other sense. Right, don't don't try to access our product
Speaker 1: because you might not be able to get access to
Speaker 1: This is saying if a lot of people, if if
Speaker 1: if the lines are busy, call again, that means a
Speaker 1: lot of people just like me are doing this. I
Speaker 1: better get on this train. Do you think they had
Speaker 1: any idea in advance how successful that simple little change
Speaker 1: was gonna be. It just they just got lucky. This
Speaker 1: is what they do with with with what. They try
Speaker 1: out a lot of different things, and then when they
Speaker 1: hit on one, they realize, oh, this works, but they
Speaker 1: don't realize why it works. It's not their job to
Speaker 1: know why it works. That's my job, that's what I
Speaker 1: do for a living. So so let me bring up
Speaker 1: one of my favorite stories from influence that just cracks
Speaker 1: me up. There are these two old tailors, Sid and
Speaker 1: Harry drew Back, one of whom is hard of hearing,
Speaker 1: and uh. The first one he's has a customer trying
Speaker 1: on a suit, and he asked the other one, who's
Speaker 1: across the room stitching something up, how much is this
Speaker 1: is this suit? And the answer comes back, forty that's
Speaker 1: a very fine will suit. It's forty two dollars. This
Speaker 1: is during the depressure right way back when, and the
Speaker 1: heart of hearing. One turns to the customer and says,
Speaker 1: he said it's twenty two dollars, and the customer thinks
Speaker 1: he's getting a deal immediately buys it again. Is it
Speaker 1: that easy to fool our wet wear that just oh,
Speaker 1: it's a forty two dollars suit, I'm getting it twenty
Speaker 1: dollars off. Let me get it before anybody realizes it
Speaker 1: is that easy? Because we are so hardwired for these principles,
Speaker 1: they just cause us to leap into a choice when
Speaker 1: one or another of them is present. Let me give
Speaker 1: you a quote from the book, which I find fascinating.
Speaker 1: We all fool ourselves from time to time in order
Speaker 1: to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we
Speaker 1: have already done. Why is the desire for consistency such
Speaker 1: a motivator of behavior? Two reasons. One is, we prefer
Speaker 1: to have our for reasons of self concept, to be
Speaker 1: consistent within ourselves, right. We want to see ourselves as
Speaker 1: reasonable as logical and rational individuals. Who would be who
Speaker 1: would say one thing that would fit with the next
Speaker 1: thing we say. The other is the people around us
Speaker 1: want us to be consistent too, And so for both
Speaker 1: of those reasons internal UH status and external status, we
Speaker 1: want to be consistent and appear to be consistent in
Speaker 1: our environments. So so let's talk about the status of
Speaker 1: social primates in a group. Why is reciprocity such a
Speaker 1: strong influencer. Is this just the result of our evolutionary
Speaker 1: biology uh becoming the dominant species as part of a
Speaker 1: social group of primates that lived and worked in in
Speaker 1: teams or what? How do you explain that? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think it's both hardwired in us over a
Speaker 1: long period of time. If we back to those who
Speaker 1: give to us first. That's the rule of reciprocity, and
Speaker 1: we have to do that. Uh. Then people will want
Speaker 1: to be with us, will want to work with us,
Speaker 1: will want to exchange with us. If we don't do that,
Speaker 1: we have very nasty names for people who take without
Speaker 1: giving in return. We call them moochers or takers or
Speaker 1: teenagers actually, and nobody wants to be labeled like that.
Speaker 1: So we will go to great lengths to give back
Speaker 1: after we have received. I just saw a study, uh,
Speaker 1: in a candy shop. If a if a manager greets
Speaker 1: um people who come into the store warmly and then
Speaker 1: invite invites them to the counter, that's the control group.
Speaker 1: If instead he and gree greets them warmly and gives
Speaker 1: them a piece of chocolate, they buy forty more candy. Really,
Speaker 1: that's amazing that they're giving back. The other reference you
Speaker 1: make is um in one of the books, and they're
Speaker 1: all kind of a blur in my head. But if
Speaker 1: when you hand the check to somebody at a restaurant,
Speaker 1: when the waiter brings the check, if you include a
Speaker 1: mint or a chocolate with the check, what does that
Speaker 1: end up doing versus having a mint at the desk
Speaker 1: on the way out. It means the server has given
Speaker 1: you something personally, and the server's tip goes up three
Speaker 1: point three percent if there's a mint on the tray.
Speaker 1: Now here's the interesting thing. If there are two mints
Speaker 1: on the tray, his tip goes up fourteen points. Really,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Um, let's do another social proof, which is
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with what's a simple way to avoid hung juries? Ah,
Speaker 1: don't let people vote preliminarily by raising their hands. Can't
Speaker 1: be in public in other ways, you need a secret.
Speaker 1: You write the vote down, you take a test straw poll.
Speaker 1: But no, once you raise your hand in public, you're
Speaker 1: now you're You're committed for for now. Is that social
Speaker 1: proof or is that consist It's consistency. You will now
Speaker 1: resist changing your mind, even in the face of evidence,
Speaker 1: because you've made a public commitment to that choice. Quite
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. The example of the smoker who hand wrote
Speaker 1: a bunch of notes I promise you I will never
Speaker 1: smoke another cigarette, and gave them out to co workers
Speaker 1: and friends and a now former boyfriend, but at the
Speaker 1: time a serious boyfriend that that smoker said the only
Speaker 1: thing that prevented her from ever smoking again where those
Speaker 1: notes is that commitment and consistency or social approval and
Speaker 1: social proof its commitment and consistency because of social approval,
Speaker 1: Violating your promise in the face of the people you
Speaker 1: care about means you lose their approval. And so that's
Speaker 1: the thing that people don't want to do. So if
Speaker 1: they make a public commitment to people they really care about,
Speaker 1: that will hold them steady to their choice more than
Speaker 1: making that a private commitment to themselves. So I thought
Speaker 1: about doing when I read that in the book, I
Speaker 1: thought about doing that exact thing, And I have to
Speaker 1: tell you, honestly, it really scared me because once you
Speaker 1: write it down and commit to five or ten people,
Speaker 1: that's a powerful, powerful thing hanging over your head. You
Speaker 1: have to decide do I really want to fill in
Speaker 1: the blank, go to the gym, lose weight, whatever. Once
Speaker 1: you once you make that commitment, that is just really strong,
Speaker 1: and it's remarkable how small the commitment can be. There's
Speaker 1: a study done in Chicago. Buy our restaurant owner he
Speaker 1: had his receptionists changed two words and what she said
Speaker 1: when she took an order a reservation excuse me from
Speaker 1: please call if you have to change or cancel your
Speaker 1: reservation too. Will you please call if you have to change,
Speaker 1: And then she waited for people to say yes, I
Speaker 1: will it reduced no shows by Wow, that's amazing. I
Speaker 1: have to ask you about the way you use the
Speaker 1: term um compliance officials and compliance agents. It really is
Speaker 1: a question of getting people to comply with your goals, desires,
Speaker 1: or requests. And it's different from persuasion. I don't have
Speaker 1: to persuade somebody that we should see this movie that
Speaker 1: I prefer if I just say, you know, you chose
Speaker 1: the movie last time. So I've I've changed them, I
Speaker 1: influenced them, I've gotten them to comply with my request
Speaker 1: without changing their opinion about the movie at all. Very interesting.
Speaker 1: So there was a thirty year period between Influence and
Speaker 1: then Persuasion, which is almost like a prequel to that book.
Speaker 1: I know you've done other writings in between, but really
Speaker 1: focusing on a big, bold idea and expanding it to
Speaker 1: a full book. Why why did you take three decades
Speaker 1: and what motivated this book? I think the the key
Speaker 1: is that these are my only two solely authored books.
Speaker 1: First Influence thirty years later pre Suasion, And the reason
Speaker 1: I waited is that I. I didn't want to just
Speaker 1: plant a series of bushes around the tree that influence
Speaker 1: had become. I wanted to wait till I had the
Speaker 1: seed for another tree, and that didn't come along till
Speaker 1: the idea for pre suasion and and influence is a
Speaker 1: giant redwood. We were discussing earlier. This is a tremendously
Speaker 1: influential book amongst marketing and sales professionals. Who do you
Speaker 1: think the audience for pre Suasion is going to be
Speaker 1: similar or different? Possibly differently? It will also be influence professionals,
Speaker 1: but I hope it will also be UH citizens who
Speaker 1: want to know that UM, they can resist certain kinds
Speaker 1: of influence that they never recognized before. It's the influence
Speaker 1: that comes before they receive a persuasive appeal. And you
Speaker 1: give a number of examples of that, including UM. Some
Speaker 1: of my favorites were a little bit infuriating. The minor
Speaker 1: commitment for something small and then later they asked for
Speaker 1: something big, or the underpricing of something. You get somebody
Speaker 1: to agree to buy something for much less money than
Speaker 1: it perhaps should have been, or a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: bucks off a car or something, and then by the
Speaker 1: shockingly when oh, somebody caught it, my manager, the bank,
Speaker 1: somebody caught the mistake. Hey, this car is in twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand, it's twenty five thousand. They still seem to
Speaker 1: go along with the purchase. I can't imagine tolerating that.
Speaker 1: Do most people put up with that? Or it's I
Speaker 1: would lose my mind. In a car dealership, it's so
Speaker 1: common it's called the lowball to technique. It actually has
Speaker 1: a label in car sales. This is not an accident.
Speaker 1: This is done on purpose. This is done on purpose.
Speaker 1: They do it, and very often it's done where they
Speaker 1: will give you a price on your trade in that
Speaker 1: that's way too high, and then the used car manager
Speaker 1: comes in with the blue book and says, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: our salesperson made a mistake. It's really doesn't He shows
Speaker 1: you the real price and you say, okay, caught me.
Speaker 1: You never realize that they caught you. What what other
Speaker 1: things can we do to to shield ourselves from these
Speaker 1: sorts of techniques other than read the book. If you
Speaker 1: read the book, and by the way, if that ever
Speaker 1: happens to you, use the term lowball, call it a lowball.
Speaker 1: That's against the law. In most yes, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: against ray regulations. State in state state rules, they will
Speaker 1: start backpedaling like a cornerback fly route. Really, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So you also mentioned um, the scannily clad, lovely woman
Speaker 1: who came to your house trying to sell you the
Speaker 1: book of entertainment stuff, and you said, if only I
Speaker 1: had revealed that I understood the technique and called her
Speaker 1: out on it, she would have been out of their
Speaker 1: fastest as can be. Is it Are these techniques that
Speaker 1: effective that as soon as people know you're using these
Speaker 1: techniques they back away from them. Well, that's a crucial question,
Speaker 1: because if they're being used dishonestly, yes, then when we
Speaker 1: call them on them, we've caught them in the lie,
Speaker 1: and then they back away. But if they're being used honestly, if,
Speaker 1: for example, the last time I brought a television set,
Speaker 1: I was in a play in store I was really
Speaker 1: looking for when the salesman came up to me, So,
Speaker 1: I see you're interested in this set over here that
Speaker 1: I was looking at, But it's our last one, really,
Speaker 1: And I just got a call from a woman who
Speaker 1: said she might come by this afternoon to buy it,
Speaker 1: right Barry. Twenty minutes later, I'm wheeling out of the
Speaker 1: store with that television said in my cart. And I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be the doctor of influence. If you get
Speaker 1: suckered by these things, what helped you the rest of us? Well,
Speaker 1: here's the key. Was I a sucker? I went back
Speaker 1: the next day to see if that if there was
Speaker 1: an empty spot on the shelf, and there was, And
Speaker 1: so I went back to my office and I wrote
Speaker 1: a glowing review of that store and that salesperson. But
Speaker 1: if there had been another one, I would written a
Speaker 1: very negative review. That's how we have to defend ourselves.
Speaker 1: Not just look at reviews from others who have experienced
Speaker 1: this store or that salesperson. We have to contribute to
Speaker 1: that so that they don't get away with it in
Speaker 1: the future. I have to ask you about a Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin quote that you reference that I'm also tickled by quote.
Speaker 1: He that has once done you a kindness will be
Speaker 1: more ready to do you another than he who whom
Speaker 1: you yourself as obliged. Tell the story if you would,
Speaker 1: about the person Franklin was having a hard time UH
Speaker 1: with who had a fairly substantial library. What what happened? Now,
Speaker 1: So this was a guy that Franklin was in conflict
Speaker 1: with regularly on a lot of political issues. They didn't
Speaker 1: like each other, and so Franklin asked this guy to
Speaker 1: lend him a book. The guy did. Now, the guy
Speaker 1: had a fairly substantial library of ram manuscripts, and of
Speaker 1: course was deeply proud of of that library. Correct, And
Speaker 1: he gave Franklin the book. And Franklin said in commentary,
Speaker 1: now he has to think of me differently. He has
Speaker 1: to think of me as someone who's worthy of receiving
Speaker 1: one of his prize books. I've changed his conception of
Speaker 1: me now. And he sends the book back with a note,
Speaker 1: I'm deeply obliged, and if you ever need a favorite,
Speaker 1: please never hesitate to ask. The dynamic completely flips, completely
Speaker 1: fix even though he's the one who's obligated, the person
Speaker 1: who was so difficult to him suddenly become as much
Speaker 1: more flexible, malleable, pleasant. He did a friendly thing, and
Speaker 1: he becomes a friend as a consequence. Is act the consistency?
Speaker 1: What is the consistency principle? Because you wouldn't have lent
Speaker 1: that book to him, right, But it was the ego
Speaker 1: and the pride in the library that's sort of you know,
Speaker 1: there's a way to compliment people that fits with this
Speaker 1: compliment people, to give them reputations to live up to
Speaker 1: give them a compliment. So, for example, I've I've got
Speaker 1: a guy who who delivers my newspaper every morning, and
Speaker 1: I want him to put it in the center of
Speaker 1: my driveway so it doesn't get wet when the sprinklers
Speaker 1: sprinkler systems. So I wrote him a little note, thank you,
Speaker 1: Carlos for putting my my paper in the center of
Speaker 1: the driveway, which he would do of the time. Thank
Speaker 1: you for that. That's very conscientious of you. Since then one,
Speaker 1: so you must be a dangerous person to be a
Speaker 1: neighbor with people who don't even realize what they're what
Speaker 1: what they're dealing with. Let's let me give you another
Speaker 1: quote of the from the book that I really like. Quote.
Speaker 1: People seem to be more motivated by the thought of
Speaker 1: losing something than by the thought of gaining something of
Speaker 1: equal value. That's kind of intriguing. Why Why is that?
Speaker 1: Is that simply the endowment effect? We put more value
Speaker 1: on that which we already have. Why is the prospect
Speaker 1: of a gain of equal value versus a loss it
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like risk aversion. But why is that? Well,
Speaker 1: you use the right term prospect, because prospect theory, developed
Speaker 1: by Daniel Konneman won him the Nobel Prize in Economics
Speaker 1: a few years ago for the idea that the prospects
Speaker 1: of losing something are psychologically much more potent than the
Speaker 1: prospects of gaining that very same thing. He demonstrated it
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And the reason I think
Speaker 1: is evolutionary. If we gain some unit of value, let's
Speaker 1: say we're on we're you know here we are, we're
Speaker 1: doing okay, alright, we gained something, now we're doing better.
Speaker 1: If we lose something, we might be gone. It's an
Speaker 1: existential threat as opposed to a temporary increase in we
Speaker 1: might be below the subsistence level. We might lose the
Speaker 1: ability to carry on. So we're much more interested in
Speaker 1: being sure we don't lose. And you're right about loss
Speaker 1: of version as the proper label for this. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about authority a little bit. There are some interesting
Speaker 1: things happening in in that space. Where does authority come from?
Speaker 1: And why is it so influential over us? It normally
Speaker 1: makes sense. Now I'm thinking of authority as being an
Speaker 1: authority rather than being in authority. Right, somebody who's an expert,
Speaker 1: somebody who's knowledgeable, somebody who's an authoritariative voice on a
Speaker 1: particular topic. It makes great sense to follow the lead
Speaker 1: of the people who know the most about that topic.
Speaker 1: It reduces our uncertainty as to what we should do,
Speaker 1: and it allows us to get off the fence, stop
Speaker 1: dealing and and dithering, and move forward to something valuable
Speaker 1: because it is associated with the views of the true
Speaker 1: experts on the topic. So here is another quote. Nothing
Speaker 1: in life is as important as you think it is
Speaker 1: while you were thinking about it. Uh, And that comes
Speaker 1: from pre suasion. Why why is that the case? This
Speaker 1: is actually a quote from Daniel Kaneman, And it has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that when we focus our
Speaker 1: attention on something, we typically assign it more value as
Speaker 1: a result of that focus. And here's why. If if
Speaker 1: you go into a new situation, you know what you're
Speaker 1: going to do. You're going to size up that situation
Speaker 1: and look to the feature in it that is most
Speaker 1: important to you. All Right, So if a community, but
Speaker 1: there's a loophole in this system, if a communicator can
Speaker 1: get you to focus on some element in that situation.
Speaker 1: You presume that because you are focusing on it, it's
Speaker 1: more important to you. So, in other words, by redirecting
Speaker 1: people's attention, you automatically get them to raise the priority
Speaker 1: level of what you're what you're looking at or focus. Yes,
Speaker 1: because you've hijacked a normal, a typical system that that
Speaker 1: works most of the time. You focus on the most
Speaker 1: important things. So if I can get you to focus
Speaker 1: on something, I will have caused you to miss judge
Speaker 1: its importance upward, What is it about writing something down
Speaker 1: that has a similar effect, Even if it's a minor thing.
Speaker 1: Once you put pen to paper, suddenly it becomes a
Speaker 1: bigger priority. Is that again, back to just consistency, It
Speaker 1: is it is consistency. But also when you write things down,
Speaker 1: they typically become public. They're available for other people to see.
Speaker 1: So you want to be consistent in yourself, but you
Speaker 1: also want to be consistent in the eyes of the
Speaker 1: people whose regard you care about. You tell the story
Speaker 1: and in influence about the Chinese um interrogators in the
Speaker 1: North Korean Conflict of American servicemen, and they weren't brutal.
Speaker 1: They weren't torturing people. They were doing these very very
Speaker 1: subtle psychological um nudges for lack of better word, How
Speaker 1: does a small little thing writing down something like America
Speaker 1: isn't perfect become something as significant as it looks like
Speaker 1: you're uh spouting communist propaganda? How how do you go
Speaker 1: from that little thing to something as giantist? So let
Speaker 1: me say what they did in in Korea in the
Speaker 1: prison camps. So this, So they would say, so you
Speaker 1: would agree that America isn't perfect, right, it's nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll agree Americans. And then they'd say that's the stepping stone.
Speaker 1: And then they'd say how is it? How is it imperfect?
Speaker 1: Can you tell us some of the ways? And then well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got some economic ups and downs, we
Speaker 1: don't do the greatest thing with all of the members
Speaker 1: of our community and so on. And then they say, well,
Speaker 1: this is your idea. Could you write it down now
Speaker 1: for us? And then after you've ridded it down, they say,
Speaker 1: now would you be willing to speak to this this
Speaker 1: thing that you wrote on the camp Um broadcasting system
Speaker 1: and now you are giving aid and comfort to the
Speaker 1: enemy in public. It's that it's that subtle, it's that nuanced,
Speaker 1: and the next thing you know, just by admitting the
Speaker 1: country is imperfect, suddenly you go down a slippery slope
Speaker 1: to where your borderline violating used to be. Name ranking,
Speaker 1: serial number. Yeah, that's right, used to be that's all
Speaker 1: you could give. But sure, I mean everybody, no, no,
Speaker 1: society is perfect. If you agree to that, that's the
Speaker 1: first step down that slippery slope. So let me ask
Speaker 1: something a little more pleasant. Um, The number one rule
Speaker 1: for salespeople is to show customers they genuinely like them.
Speaker 1: Why is this so much more important than the product
Speaker 1: they're actually trying to sell? Well, if you see I
Speaker 1: know for myself, if I see that a salesman likes me,
Speaker 1: I exhale a breath. Oh good, this person is going
Speaker 1: to take care of my interests. My flanks are protected.
Speaker 1: It's somebody who likes me. It used to be that
Speaker 1: they said the number one rule of sales was to
Speaker 1: get your customer to like you. I've revised that to no. No,
Speaker 1: come to like your customer so that when they see
Speaker 1: that you like them, they will feel comfortable, and they
Speaker 1: will be right to feel comfortable if you have really
Speaker 1: come to like them, you will take care of their interests.
Speaker 1: So my last question, how can we work to protect
Speaker 1: ourselves from unscrupulous users of these various techniques. You use
Speaker 1: the right term unscrupulous, right. We don't want people not
Speaker 1: to tell us when there's true scarcity, when there's true
Speaker 1: social proof, when there's true, true authority to move in
Speaker 1: a particular direction. Those things have become hardwired because they
Speaker 1: actually serve a purpose. That's a great insight. That's why
Speaker 1: they're hardwired. They typically lead us in positive directions. But
Speaker 1: if somebody counterfeits them, those are the unscrupulous operators. Those
Speaker 1: of the people we have to watch out for. And
Speaker 1: we can do it uh sometimes by looking at the
Speaker 1: u the message that they present. If they're fast talking,
Speaker 1: for example, that's good. But I like the idea of
Speaker 1: looking at reviews and contributing to reviews for any organization,
Speaker 1: any individual that is trying to move us in a
Speaker 1: particular direction, we have to provide evidence of whether they
Speaker 1: were honest and genuine or whether they were duplicitous. Quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: Can you stick around a little bit. I have a
Speaker 1: ton more questions for you. I can We have been
Speaker 1: speaking with Professor Robert Chaldini of Arizona State University. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, be sure and come back for
Speaker 1: the podcast extras, where you can hear where we keep
Speaker 1: the tape rolling and continue discussing all things persuasion and compliance.
Speaker 1: You can find that wherever your final podcasts are sold.
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can
Speaker 1: check out my daily column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at Riholts. I'm Barry Riholts. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast, Bob. It seems so funny, Colin Bob. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. I have been looking
Speaker 1: forward to this for a while. I didn't really mention yes,
Speaker 1: fifty scientifically proven ways to be persuasive. But this is
Speaker 1: one of those books that you could just randomly pick up,
Speaker 1: open it to any page and there's a two or
Speaker 1: three page vignette that is so informative, and and oh
Speaker 1: it just crystallizes something. So I have to go I
Speaker 1: I just find it fascinating. I have to go back
Speaker 1: to the early days when you were undercover. So, so
Speaker 1: you worked at at fundraising organizations and infomercials and use
Speaker 1: card dealers. Who do you think was the best at
Speaker 1: applying the techniques of persuasion? And who do you think
Speaker 1: you learned the most from watching of those professionals, both
Speaker 1: those professions and individual you referenced Jim Uh, the guy
Speaker 1: was selling them the alarm fire alarm systems, who had
Speaker 1: a wonderful little technique, Oh, I left something in the
Speaker 1: car or whatever, would it be okay if I leave
Speaker 1: and let myself back in? And just that subtle little
Speaker 1: thing of you're now imbuing him with trust to come
Speaker 1: back into the house. He said to me, Bob, who
Speaker 1: do you allow back into your house with your key?
Speaker 1: Who do you give your own key to get back
Speaker 1: into your house? It's somebody you trust, right man? And
Speaker 1: he said, I want those couples trusting me before I
Speaker 1: ever begin my sales pitch. That's so. So that was
Speaker 1: the alarm business. Uh, the used car or new car
Speaker 1: business is one of the most frustrating shopping experiences of everything.
Speaker 1: What is that about? And and what did you learn
Speaker 1: from that group? You know, what I learned is that
Speaker 1: they recognize over many, many years. They found out what works, right,
Speaker 1: but they really don't understand why it works. Conceptually, what
Speaker 1: or psychologically? What are the factors that make this thing work.
Speaker 1: When I would ask them about it, they would just
Speaker 1: give me a circular answer, Uh, you know, it works
Speaker 1: because they like it, or they you know, they've come
Speaker 1: to like because I've made them like it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: they don't know what they did in some kind of
Speaker 1: psychological sense. That was the most fun for me was
Speaker 1: to take something that really worked and unpacked it. Unpack
Speaker 1: it in terms of the drivers of it, not just
Speaker 1: the procedures that produced it, but the psychological tendencies that
Speaker 1: accounted for it. And what about some of the infomercials.
Speaker 1: The examples you've given the book are just it's a
Speaker 1: The takeaway I constantly come back to is are we
Speaker 1: really that easy to manipulate? And I keep coming back
Speaker 1: to the answer, Yeah, I guess we are. We are
Speaker 1: because these things are hardwired in us, and we get
Speaker 1: we get cues that trigger those responses that are essentially unthinking.
Speaker 1: Because most of the time, if one or another of
Speaker 1: these principles is really their authority social proof, they do
Speaker 1: steer us correctly. So these people are essentially hijacking are
Speaker 1: our natural tendencies by by counterfeiting the cues for when
Speaker 1: we should undertake action that's consistent with those tendencies. You
Speaker 1: use the example of the female predator firefly using a
Speaker 1: certain set of illuminations and dances that to a slightly
Speaker 1: different male firefly species appears to be a mating dance,
Speaker 1: and instead they come to them, at which case they're devoured.
Speaker 1: Um So if that was too successful, they'd eliminate their
Speaker 1: food supply and p and the other fireflies would eventually
Speaker 1: learn not to respond to that. Apparently this can work
Speaker 1: just when it's on the margins. You can't overreach as
Speaker 1: a species or as a salesperson precisely, right, Huh, that's
Speaker 1: quite interesting. Um. The other thing that really stood out
Speaker 1: in the book, and I mentioned this during the broadcast portion,
Speaker 1: it is the overlap in the parallels to some of
Speaker 1: the behavioral finance things we've seen. What do you find
Speaker 1: in that space to be interesting and do you ever
Speaker 1: go there thinking, Hey, that's something I should research or
Speaker 1: this is an area I might want to experiment with,
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of interesting academic work done on
Speaker 1: that side of the There is, and of course people
Speaker 1: like Daniel Kneman First Key and Richard Taylor are um
Speaker 1: are superstars in that area, and I certainly want to
Speaker 1: pay attention to what they've done. UM. But there's another
Speaker 1: couple of guys who are not in that space, not
Speaker 1: academics Buffet and Monger, who have taught me. Because about
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five years ago, I went to my mailbox
Speaker 1: and opened an envelope. It was a share of Berkshire
Speaker 1: Hathaway stock, right, which, by the way, this is another
Speaker 1: urban legend which it turns out to be true about
Speaker 1: you and Charlie Manga tell us. It was sent to
Speaker 1: me by Charlie. He said, I read that book that
Speaker 1: you wrote, and it's been so gainful for us here
Speaker 1: that by the rule of reciprocation, you're entitled to a
Speaker 1: share of stock. It was about seventy five thou dollars
Speaker 1: then back then then, and that that what year was
Speaker 1: at It was years ago, so years ago seventy is
Speaker 1: real money. Well, it's three hundred and twenty dollars, not
Speaker 1: to chavvy. But the thing is, because I had that
Speaker 1: share of stock, I was able to get the Berkshire
Speaker 1: Hathaway shareholders letter and it is brilliant psychology. It is brilliant.
Speaker 1: And so that's where I've been exposed to some of
Speaker 1: the connection between this stuff and finance by reading that
Speaker 1: letter and seeing how Buffett, who's not just um a
Speaker 1: brilliant investor, he's a brilliant communicator about being a brilliant investor.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask the a little bit about
Speaker 1: the Monger story. Your your home and a letter comes.
Speaker 1: What's going through your mind when you open up this
Speaker 1: package with a stock certificate? And I assumed there was
Speaker 1: a cover letter from what was that moment? Like? It
Speaker 1: was disbelief. It was because as you say, years ago,
Speaker 1: that's it. That was a lot to me. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: and I think this is this is a joke. One
Speaker 1: of my friends has done this because they know how
Speaker 1: much of a fan I am of Berkshire Hathaway. I
Speaker 1: never could afford it at that point to buy. But
Speaker 1: it turns out I checked it out and it wasn't
Speaker 1: And then there was a phone number there come on,
Speaker 1: you know, and Charlie said, could you give me a
Speaker 1: call because we I'd like to And then he asked
Speaker 1: me to do some things for him and with him
Speaker 1: and now, um, we're friends. That's a that's an amazing story.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of their work they're writing. And
Speaker 1: I always use Monger's admonition to invert. Anytime you're looking
Speaker 1: at something and it's a little perplexed, ask yourself, well,
Speaker 1: what would happen if the counter facts? What would happen
Speaker 1: if the opposite were drew? What does that mean? And
Speaker 1: very often it's pretty clear that, oh, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: this from the wrong angle. Once I flip it, it
Speaker 1: becomes very very easy to uh to do and perhaps
Speaker 1: the greatest a little bit of social proof. Right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the financial crisis, and oh, eight oh nine,
Speaker 1: Buffett pens a op ed and I don't remember it
Speaker 1: was the New York Times of the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: but it was one of the bigger mainstream papers saying, um,
Speaker 1: by America, I know I am and said, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: a long term investor even at eighty four whatever he
Speaker 1: was back then, late late seventies. Uh, and I'm buying
Speaker 1: stock here and you should also. That's potentially enormously influential.
Speaker 1: Another example of social proof, Yes, coupled with authority, huge authority.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the most successful investor of all time. He's got
Speaker 1: an advance. Him and Charlbabe have an advantage that good
Speaker 1: genetics and longevity allow compounding. And the last couple of
Speaker 1: decades certainly hasn't hasn't hurt their uh their reputations. What
Speaker 1: what else have you done with Monger and of it?
Speaker 1: It seems like that's an interesting crew to hang with. Well,
Speaker 1: you know they Charlie has a dinner every um every
Speaker 1: weekend before the Berkshire Hathaway annual event. And uh this
Speaker 1: z an omaha. My wife and I are invited along
Speaker 1: with other people. Um, and what we get to hear
Speaker 1: his latest piece of wisdom, you know. And he said
Speaker 1: something a couple of years ago. I really like it,
Speaker 1: he said. The way I help myself avoid mistakes is
Speaker 1: I keep a list of inanities, the things not that
Speaker 1: I have done wrong, because I will protect myself from
Speaker 1: believing they were mistakes, you know, just human psychologist. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I keep a list of the inanities of the
Speaker 1: people around me who have made terrible mistakes. And before
Speaker 1: I make any choice, I consult that list and make
Speaker 1: sure I'm not falling into the same mistake territory that
Speaker 1: they They strode through in making that mistake. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Figure out what somebody you don't respect would do and
Speaker 1: then just do the opposite that that that's fascinating, That
Speaker 1: their body of work and there philosophy is going to
Speaker 1: live on for for a long long time. Before I
Speaker 1: get to my favorite questions, I just wanted to go through,
Speaker 1: um the other questions to see what I might have missed.
Speaker 1: There were two in particular, UM I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about, and then we'll jump to our favorites. So
Speaker 1: you have consulted on several political campaigns as a behavioral
Speaker 1: scientist over the past a couple of decades. I have
Speaker 1: a couple of questions on this. The first is have
Speaker 1: the modern techniques of of political campaigning? How much better
Speaker 1: have we has this group gotten at figuring out what
Speaker 1: voters really want, what motivates them, and how to reach them?
Speaker 1: Is that now dark art? Or is it becoming a
Speaker 1: science or somewhere it's it's a science. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: big data and big data churning and crunching and and
Speaker 1: extracting that kind of information. But what we've learned I
Speaker 1: think the biggest difference in modern life is that here
Speaker 1: in the United States we've become partisan. We we we
Speaker 1: are not really susceptible to persuasion attempts anymore to change
Speaker 1: our opinions or our beliefs or or attitudes towards various candidates.
Speaker 1: What they have focused on is getting out the vote
Speaker 1: from your base. If you do that, you win. Whoever
Speaker 1: gets more of their base out right is the victor. Now.
Speaker 1: I remember reading a Wired magazine article about the former
Speaker 1: Google employees who had joined the Obama campaign, and apparently
Speaker 1: the iteration and the big data analysis that you're referring to,
Speaker 1: they became tremendously successful at knowing how to word the
Speaker 1: request for donations. Where to put it is at the top, left,
Speaker 1: is at the bottom right, the even the font and
Speaker 1: the color and the size. They just test. They had
Speaker 1: so many paige us. They would just test in A B,
Speaker 1: A B, A B, test over and over again. Eventually
Speaker 1: they just kept tacking towards what worked. That's that's the
Speaker 1: big data. So that that's right. So now you're not
Speaker 1: really talking about persuasion. You're talking about influence, getting people
Speaker 1: to donate, getting people to register, getting people to vote.
Speaker 1: To the choir that you're preaching to as opposed to converting.
Speaker 1: That's right, you're not converged. And but they've figured out
Speaker 1: ways to make that more successful. So, for example, during
Speaker 1: a campaign, there will be a lot of volunteers who
Speaker 1: are hand fassers they call it, try to get people
Speaker 1: to donate or or or or register. What they have
Speaker 1: found is if that person can say to the uh,
Speaker 1: to the recipient of the message, I'm your neighbor or
Speaker 1: I live here in town two. So it's not like
Speaker 1: bringing people in from out of state isn't as successful
Speaker 1: as saying, hey, I live in the same town as you.
Speaker 1: And here's why this is important. That's what they've learned.
Speaker 1: You bring in these people from someplace else because you
Speaker 1: need to staff a particular office, and you're not nearly
Speaker 1: as effective. It's the connection that allows you to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this person is like me. I can move in this direction.
Speaker 1: So so let me um reference the current White House
Speaker 1: occupant and you said something now that puts Donald Trump
Speaker 1: into a little more better context. I always thought that
Speaker 1: he was a very un persuasive sort of politician, because
Speaker 1: we know he has a tendency to not tell, be
Speaker 1: a straight shoot, to not tell the truth. He kind
Speaker 1: of makes stuff up on the fly. But what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing from you is he's not trying to persuade me
Speaker 1: to switch a vote, or to come to go from
Speaker 1: a center left progressive New York or to let me
Speaker 1: support someone who's very right of center. What you're suggesting
Speaker 1: is he wants to motivate his base. He wants to
Speaker 1: take the people who um believe as he does and
Speaker 1: get them out to vote. While we're having this conversation, uh,
Speaker 1: there's the caravan from Guatemala he's talking about. He's talking
Speaker 1: about tax cuts, he's talking about our friends, the Saudis,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff that I would imagine the opposing
Speaker 1: party and even people in the middle would disagree with.
Speaker 1: But his base just eats up. He does a couple
Speaker 1: of things very well. Is to speak with confidence and certainty,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether or not it's deserved or not. And
Speaker 1: that does move people into saying, oh, well, here's an authority.
Speaker 1: This person must know what he's talking about. Look at
Speaker 1: the confidence the certainty with which he speaks. All right,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. The other thing is he uses social
Speaker 1: proof brilliantly in his um. Everybody knows his people, that everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody I talked to, he says. But then in his
Speaker 1: campaign rallies he has he he has the cameras, he
Speaker 1: says to the camera, Turn the cameras around. Take a
Speaker 1: look at this big room filled with people. Social proof.
Speaker 1: If all these people think I'm legitimate, of all these
Speaker 1: people think I'm right, I must be right. I have
Speaker 1: had the debate with friends who think he's dumb, and
Speaker 1: I argue with them. You have to acknowledge his street smarts.
Speaker 1: You have to acknowledge, all right, he's not read, and
Speaker 1: we can't call him a great communicator, but he's an
Speaker 1: incredibly effective communicator to that group of people, the people
Speaker 1: he wants to motivate to get out and voted. It's
Speaker 1: I'm always I'm an independent. I'm always astonished how the
Speaker 1: partisanship on the left, how the Democrats, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't really mean partisanship. How the faith in your own
Speaker 1: political beliefs can obscure some truths out there that would
Speaker 1: make you a more effective party candidate, ideology, whatever. But
Speaker 1: people have a hard time seeing pest the end of
Speaker 1: their nose. Yeah, once, once you've got a hard position.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to move away from it, especially if
Speaker 1: you've made it in an active public way. If if
Speaker 1: you're going to give advice to either political party about
Speaker 1: either getting their base out to vote or persuading the
Speaker 1: independence in the middle. A lot of states are purple
Speaker 1: um and if we hold a side the Gerryman's their districts,
Speaker 1: what advice would you provide to try and UM win
Speaker 1: that great purple middle. It's something that for some reason,
Speaker 1: the two major parties have not employed systematically. It's something
Speaker 1: called the convert communicator, which is what somebody who used
Speaker 1: to believe the other side and now testifies, Oh no,
Speaker 1: and then I realized or I saw something, or this
Speaker 1: happened to me. It could be, for example, in a
Speaker 1: healthcare issue. You know, I was an opponent of this,
Speaker 1: and then I got sick or my son got sick,
Speaker 1: and then they say, I used to be in your shoes.
Speaker 1: You can't reject somebody who was like you, right, And
Speaker 1: then they say, but I flipped, and you you're willing
Speaker 1: to be open to this guy even though this person
Speaker 1: is saying something that is not what you currently believe
Speaker 1: because he or she used to believe. That's quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's too late, but hopefully people will pay attention to that,
Speaker 1: so I know I only have you for a finite
Speaker 1: amount of time. Let me get to my favorite questions
Speaker 1: that I ask all my guests. Um. These are always
Speaker 1: interesting because I end up finding out a lot about
Speaker 1: people that that I wouldn't have found out otherwise. And
Speaker 1: let me start with what's the most important thing that
Speaker 1: people don't know about your background? I had a chance
Speaker 1: to play minor league baseball instead of go to school.
Speaker 1: Really it was a center fielder, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. Uh. And the scout
Speaker 1: who was going to sign me said to me, tell me,
Speaker 1: are you could. Are you any at school? I said yes?
Speaker 1: He said good. You go to college? Yes? Could you
Speaker 1: finish college? Yes? Go to school kid, really, go to
Speaker 1: school kid. He recognized something that I couldn't hit a slider.
Speaker 1: Truth is, I couldn't hit a slider. And he knew
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna go up very high in the mind.
Speaker 1: All right, um, And he said go to your strength. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he didn't say it in those words. Go to your strength.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're really good at school, go to
Speaker 1: your strength. Kid and Barry. If I hadn't taken that advice,
Speaker 1: I don't know where i'd be right now, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be in this room with you. It would you
Speaker 1: would have taken a very different path on your career.
Speaker 1: I had tremendous accuracy as a pitcher in high school,
Speaker 1: and I could throw a wicked fastball, no breaking ball
Speaker 1: that you can't throw a curve. You're done so similarly. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's interesting. I know, I what were you a
Speaker 1: decent hitter? I was a good hitter and I could
Speaker 1: get a jump on the ball, and but I, you know,
Speaker 1: couldn't hit a slider. So tell us about some of
Speaker 1: your early mentors who influenced you, either academically or professionally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, once again, I've got academic mentors. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to go again to Buffet and Monker, who has
Speaker 1: just just been um, breathtaking lee good at showing me
Speaker 1: how uh success can be maintained and and augmented. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's that's fantastic. Um. What about psychologists? What psychologists influenced
Speaker 1: your approach to thinking about academics, behavioral psychology, sociology. I'm
Speaker 1: going to say condomen divers Key and Taylor. Could you
Speaker 1: could do worse? Um, I've had condiment in here. He's
Speaker 1: delightful and nobody is more amusing than Dick Taylor. He's
Speaker 1: just resolutely charming. UM. Also a previous guest, we'll get
Speaker 1: a little social proof going. UM, tell us about books.
Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books, be they fiction
Speaker 1: non fiction. I'm going to stay in the category of
Speaker 1: of of of persuasion, social influence, compliance. Um. I would
Speaker 1: start with Aristotle's rhetoric. First, anybody took a systematic look. Now,
Speaker 1: he was talking about orators. How do you make your
Speaker 1: case convincingly as an orator? That's all they had? Then
Speaker 1: you know? Uh? And then do you remember a book
Speaker 1: in the fifties by a guy named Vance Packard, Hidden Persuaders.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that book, but I'm familiar with the title. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember me it was I was a kid
Speaker 1: at the time, but I remember reading it in college
Speaker 1: and thinking, this is the first time this guy really
Speaker 1: looks at the advertising industry and why makes these commercial successful? Psychologically?
Speaker 1: What is it about the psychological buttons that are being pushed?
Speaker 1: I remember something from that book, choosing mothers, Choose Jeff,
Speaker 1: that was one of the examples, and I have to imagine, um,
Speaker 1: there are tons of other examples. Nobody systematically had looked
Speaker 1: at the psychology behind that within the industry, not within no,
Speaker 1: not within the advertising against the wall. They were doing
Speaker 1: the version of the A B tests without really controlling them,
Speaker 1: but just trying things out to see what worked. And
Speaker 1: any other books, well, you know, I like Dan Arielli's
Speaker 1: Predictably Irrational, you know, terrific insight that even though we
Speaker 1: seem to be irrational, it's in a predictable way because
Speaker 1: these irrationalities are built into the way we function in
Speaker 1: modern life. You keep naming, um, some of my white
Speaker 1: whales who I would love to get on. And then
Speaker 1: there's Nudge. I love he Uh, that's a that's another
Speaker 1: interesting book. Nudge, speaking of influence apparently, has become very
Speaker 1: influential around the world. A lot of governments have adopted
Speaker 1: the precepts for that. Not only that, but so has
Speaker 1: so has corporate America recently, fundraisers, NGOs, even ordinary citizens
Speaker 1: because we've developed, um, this this new category called popular
Speaker 1: behavioral science. So we're speaking to the people who's whose
Speaker 1: tax money has paid for the research they're entitled to
Speaker 1: know what we found out about them with their money, right.
Speaker 1: So the one of the interesting things that we use
Speaker 1: from NUDGE. Anytime there's a four oh one K account
Speaker 1: that's opens, anytime a new hire happens, they automatically get
Speaker 1: a four oh one K and the choices for what
Speaker 1: they're invested has already set to a default. So the
Speaker 1: money comes out of the paycheck automatically, it's invested automatically.
Speaker 1: If they want to change it, they have to actively
Speaker 1: go out and change it. Because what we used, what
Speaker 1: Corporate America used to do is, yeah, you're eligible for
Speaker 1: a four one K, fill out this paperwork. Once you
Speaker 1: do that, go pick some funds and some ungodly and
Speaker 1: there's a match. It's free money. Here's six percent or
Speaker 1: four and half the I think it's fifty something percent
Speaker 1: of the employees wouldn't do the paperwork. Who turns down
Speaker 1: free money? It's it's shocking. Any other books before I
Speaker 1: move on to my new That's a that's a nice collection,
Speaker 1: to say the least. Um, what has changed in psychology
Speaker 1: since you started the profession? What do you think is
Speaker 1: the most significant um breakthroughs that have taken place? I'm
Speaker 1: going to go back to my previous answer and say
Speaker 1: that behavioral science now, behavioral scientists and psychologists are now
Speaker 1: speaking to the public about their findings, the things that
Speaker 1: actually could influence the outcomes of the everyday person, as
Speaker 1: well as the corporate bottom line, the government's likelihood of
Speaker 1: getting a good a good policies, and fundraisers getting more donations.
Speaker 1: So so you can so we're speaking with books, blogs,
Speaker 1: um uh, YouTube channels were now speaking to the people
Speaker 1: who paid the bills for this research in the first
Speaker 1: place and are entitled to know how this can benefit them.
Speaker 1: Tell us what you're really excited about right now. I
Speaker 1: just UH with some colleagues, um answered a question that
Speaker 1: I've always had about so shill proof. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the idea that if the majority of people are
Speaker 1: doing something that this is the largest selling uh product,
Speaker 1: it causes people to want to say yes uh to
Speaker 1: the opportunity. There was this study in in in China.
Speaker 1: If you put an asterisk next to the items on
Speaker 1: a Chinese menu right that says this is one of
Speaker 1: our most popular items. Each one immediately becomes more popular,
Speaker 1: whether or not it was beforehand or not. Right, you
Speaker 1: just tell people, it becomes more popular. Now, what if
Speaker 1: you're not the most popular. What if you're a startup,
Speaker 1: What if you don't have market share yet? But you've
Speaker 1: got a great idea, right that UH is getting some traction,
Speaker 1: but it's far away from being social proof like UH idea.
Speaker 1: Here's what we found. If you describe a trade end
Speaker 1: in it, even though it's in the minority, if only
Speaker 1: thirty percent of people are choosing this right, and you
Speaker 1: tell people that are doing this, we find you actually
Speaker 1: get them less likely to choose it because they can
Speaker 1: do the math. That means seventy percent are not. But
Speaker 1: if you say trending now, twelve months ago were six
Speaker 1: months ago this month now, they jump on the bandwagon
Speaker 1: because they see the trend is continuing. So that's how
Speaker 1: we defeat the problem of low social proof by giving
Speaker 1: them evidence of future social proof. That that is quite fascinating. UM,
Speaker 1: tell us about a time you failed and what you
Speaker 1: learned from the experience. When I was first learning UH
Speaker 1: the strategies of influence professions and I was taking training,
Speaker 1: at the end of the training, I would say, look,
Speaker 1: I am not actually applying for a job at your place. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book, and I would like for you
Speaker 1: to allow me to use the data that I uh
Speaker 1: that I acquired in your training programs. They kicked me
Speaker 1: out the door. I'm not surprised. This is proprietary information,
Speaker 1: and they thought I was an investigative reporter was going
Speaker 1: to reveal all right. So after that I decided to
Speaker 1: use my principles in making that request. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not um actually a prospective employee of your company. I'm
Speaker 1: writing a book, and I promise you that I will
Speaker 1: send you an early copy of the book. I will
Speaker 1: pay you in the coin you are paying me. That
Speaker 1: is information, so you know not only what works in
Speaker 1: your industry, you'll know what works at all kinds of
Speaker 1: industry before any of your rivals will. Right, That's one thing.
Speaker 1: The other thing I said was and I'm not just
Speaker 1: writing a book. I'm a university professor and I'm learning
Speaker 1: from you. And they would look at me and say,
Speaker 1: you're a professor and your our student. You mean we're
Speaker 1: teaching you And they would puff up their chests and say,
Speaker 1: of course you get so. The quid pro quo and
Speaker 1: the appeal to ego and appeal to what is it
Speaker 1: if you're the teacher. Teachers don't have proprietary information. What
Speaker 1: the role of teacher is is to dispense information, and
Speaker 1: so they did. That's fascinating. What do you do, uh
Speaker 1: for fun out of the office? What do you do
Speaker 1: to relax or for enjoyment? I have three grandchildren who
Speaker 1: are the light of my life, and I spend time
Speaker 1: with one. One is a dancer, one's a soccer player,
Speaker 1: and one's loves horses, and so I go with them
Speaker 1: to all of their activities, and I couldn't be happier.
Speaker 1: What sort of advice would you give to a millennial
Speaker 1: or someone just beginning their career in psychology and a
Speaker 1: recent college graduate? What what would you suggest to them? Anyone?
Speaker 1: Here's what I would say, Going to every new situation
Speaker 1: where you don't know people and expect the best from them.
Speaker 1: What that will allow you to do is to be generous.
Speaker 1: And there are two enormously consequential downstream effects of being generous.
Speaker 1: One is people are generous back to you, right. The
Speaker 1: other is they like you and they want to do
Speaker 1: business with the people they like. Hmm. Interesting. And our
Speaker 1: final question, what do you know today about psychology that
Speaker 1: you wish you knew thirty years ago before you were
Speaker 1: had written Influence. You know, I'm gonna answer that by
Speaker 1: telling you a story of a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: had the question that I didn't know thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: He decided to study it as a marketing professor, and
Speaker 1: he said he wanted to find the single most effective
Speaker 1: influence approach, the one that would he should use in
Speaker 1: the situations that faced him, because that was the one
Speaker 1: that was most powerful. And he went on two year
Speaker 1: search for this, and I saw him at a conference.
Speaker 1: He caught me by the elder. He said, Bob, I
Speaker 1: found it. I found owned the single most effective influence approach.
Speaker 1: It is not to have a single influence approach. That's
Speaker 1: a fools game to think that the same approach is
Speaker 1: gonna work for all audiences and all circumstances at all times. No,
Speaker 1: you have to you have to size up that situation,
Speaker 1: those conditions, and then you move with the appeal that
Speaker 1: best fits the circumstances. Quite quite fascinating. Thank you, Bob
Speaker 1: for being so generous with your time. This was really,
Speaker 1: um quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Professor Bob Chaldini,
Speaker 1: author of Influence and Persuasion persuasion and Yes, and numerous
Speaker 1: other papers about the fields of psychology, influence, and compliance.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation and I have to think
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Speaker 1: these weekly conversations. Attica val Brunn is our project manager,
Speaker 1: Medina Parwanna is our producer, Taylor Riggs is our booker.
Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Ridholts.
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