Speaker 1: Today. It's great to chat with doctor Robert Chialdini. Doctor
Speaker 1: Chilaldeini is the author of Influence and Persuasion and has
Speaker 1: recognized the foundational expert in the science of influence. His
Speaker 1: principles of persuasion have become a cornerstone for any organization
Speaker 1: serious about ethically and effectively increasing their influence. Doctor Childine
Speaker 1: has earned a global reputation for his ability to translate
Speaker 1: to scientific research into valuable and practical actions. He's a
Speaker 1: New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today best
Speaker 1: selling author with over seven million copies sold in forty
Speaker 1: four different languages. He's the President and CEO of Influence
Speaker 1: at work as a popwor keynote speaker, he also helps
Speaker 1: organizations in the US and abroad. Robert, what an honor
Speaker 1: it is to chat with you today. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to our interactions. Scott. Well, you're a
Speaker 1: as you know, you're a legend in this field. And
Speaker 1: this book is such a seminal book. I remember reading
Speaker 1: it in grad school and savoring every single word of it.
Speaker 1: Why do you decide to update it? Well, you know
Speaker 1: that there was a push and a pull there. To
Speaker 1: be honest, the previous version was still selling very well,
Speaker 1: and there's that if it ain't fixed, don't break it,
Speaker 1: an idiom that I had to confront. But it's also
Speaker 1: the case that there was a quote that my grandfather
Speaker 1: used to favor when I was a kid, and it
Speaker 1: just seemed to me that it had a lot of
Speaker 1: relevance for my situation. And he used to say, if
Speaker 1: you want things to stay the same, things are going
Speaker 1: to have to change around here. And it just struck
Speaker 1: me that that's exactly the situation I was, and things
Speaker 1: were going well, but if I wanted them to remain
Speaker 1: going well, I needed to align myself with the newest
Speaker 1: research in persuasion science that I hadn't addressed in previous editions.
Speaker 1: And I even had a new universal principle of influence
Speaker 1: I thought that had occurred to me in the interim
Speaker 1: that I needed to talk about. And besides that, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of readers who had written back to
Speaker 1: me about the content of the book Influence, which has
Speaker 1: universal principles of influence that define each of the chapters,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know your descriptions of those concepts,
Speaker 1: of those principles, we get it, and we see where
Speaker 1: they come from, and how they work, and why they
Speaker 1: work the way they do. But could you give us
Speaker 1: specific wordings that we could use to harness those principles,
Speaker 1: harness the power of them, unleash those principles in the
Speaker 1: situations that we're dealing with. So this new edition has
Speaker 1: a lot more of the specifics of how we trigger
Speaker 1: the power of those influences by what we say or
Speaker 1: do in a particular situation. Oh great, that's great, So
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. But first I wanted to just
Speaker 1: go over the original, the original sex. Do you mind
Speaker 1: telling me what the principles of the sixth Universal Principles
Speaker 1: are of influence? And then we'll talk about the seventh
Speaker 1: one you added not at all, I think that's all
Speaker 1: together appropriate. The first one is the principle of reciprocation
Speaker 1: that says that by the way in every human society
Speaker 1: we are obligated to give back to others who have
Speaker 1: first given to us. We just we just are obligated
Speaker 1: to do so by the socialization we have all undergone,
Speaker 1: so that we are taught from childhood you must not
Speaker 1: take without giving in return. You must not take without
Speaker 1: giving in return. For those people who break that rule,
Speaker 1: we have very nasty names. We call them moochers or
Speaker 1: ingrades or takers, and nobody wants to be labeled like that.
Speaker 1: So people will go to great lengths to give back
Speaker 1: to those who have given to them. There was a
Speaker 1: study done in McDonald's restaurants in Colombia and Brazil. In
Speaker 1: South America. The researchers arranged for every family to come
Speaker 1: into the location and for the children to receive a balloon.
Speaker 1: Half of the families got the children got that balloon
Speaker 1: as the kids were leaving as a thank you to
Speaker 1: the family. The other half got the balloon as they
Speaker 1: came in, and those families bought twenty percent more food.
Speaker 1: Not only that, within that twenty percent more food, coffee
Speaker 1: orders went up by twenty five percent. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the gift to the children. The parents felt that
Speaker 1: anything you give to my child, you give to me.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in that section called unity, where
Speaker 1: we feel that about that those people inside our groups
Speaker 1: are essentially share our identity. You give to them and
Speaker 1: you've given to us. But I think it's instructive that
Speaker 1: the key was who went first. The rule for reciprocity
Speaker 1: doesn't say you use the typical economic exchange model where
Speaker 1: you say to people, look, if you'll buy my product,
Speaker 1: you'll use my service. I promise you will get the
Speaker 1: best possible outcome of your experience. That means the other
Speaker 1: person has to go first. But reciprocity says you go first,
Speaker 1: you give first, and then people want to give back
Speaker 1: to you. Second principle, changing the script. There a bob yes,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not just that McDonald's fails to do
Speaker 1: it properly. In this particular study, how many times have
Speaker 1: you been in a restaurant where as you leave, on
Speaker 1: the desk, the registration desk, there's a bowl of mints
Speaker 1: for you to take as you leave. There's a study
Speaker 1: of this shows that if the way instead of doing
Speaker 1: it that way, if the waiter puts a mint on
Speaker 1: the tray for each of the diners, his tip goes
Speaker 1: up three point three percent. If he puts two mints
Speaker 1: on the tray for each of the diners, his or
Speaker 1: her tip goes up for we're teen percent. So all
Speaker 1: in keeping with the rule for reciprocity, you just have
Speaker 1: to do it right, you know, I say to people,
Speaker 1: when you go into a room and you want to
Speaker 1: be influential. The first question you should ask yourself is
Speaker 1: not who can help me here? It is whom can
Speaker 1: I help here? That arranges for those people to want
Speaker 1: to help you when you need it. It's just a
Speaker 1: good system that in fact, most societies are based on.
Speaker 1: So that's reciprocation. Okay, that's number one. Yeah, that number
Speaker 1: two is liking. Nobody in your audience would be surprised
Speaker 1: to know that we prefer to say yes to those
Speaker 1: we like. What's interesting, though, is that there are two
Speaker 1: small things that are available for us to do to
Speaker 1: greatly enhance the rapport that people feel with us. One
Speaker 1: is to point to genuine similarities that exist between us,
Speaker 1: because people like those who are like them. The other
Speaker 1: is to point to genuine commendable aspects. In other words,
Speaker 1: to compliment people in some sort of warranted way for
Speaker 1: what they've done or who they are. And that I
Speaker 1: have to admit to something my greatest weakness, greatest weakness.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you've had this experience. I've been in a research meeting
Speaker 1: with my graduate students and I hear myself say, gee,
Speaker 1: what Scott just said? There was brilliant, and I say
Speaker 1: it to myself, and I miss all of the goodwill
Speaker 1: that would come from moving it from my mind to
Speaker 1: my tongue. So I scrupulously avoid that mistake now, and
Speaker 1: the results have been really outstanding. I mean, just the
Speaker 1: goodwill and the exchange. The welcomingness of having people give
Speaker 1: those kinds of comments is established, and we all like
Speaker 1: each other better. Great point, Bob, got it out of
Speaker 1: my tongue, supposedly keeping it in my head. No, great,
Speaker 1: great point, excellent. I love what you're saying. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: next principle is what we call social proof, the idea
Speaker 1: that one way we decide what we should do in
Speaker 1: this situation is not proof that comes from some empirical
Speaker 1: or logical information that we've received. It comes from social information.
Speaker 1: What are the people around us like us doing in
Speaker 1: this situation that allows me to reduce my uncertainty about
Speaker 1: what I should do in this situation. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a study done in Beijing shows you the cross cultural
Speaker 1: reach of the restaurant managers at one string of restaurants
Speaker 1: in China put a little asterisk next to certain items
Speaker 1: on their menu, and each one immediately became thirteen to
Speaker 1: twenty percent, depending on the item more likely to be purchased.
Speaker 1: So what did the asterisk stand for. It wasn't what
Speaker 1: we normally see, which is this is a specialty of
Speaker 1: the house, or this is the chef's selection for this evening.
Speaker 1: It was this is one of our most popular items,
Speaker 1: and each became thirteen to twenty percent more popular. It's popularity.
Speaker 1: So one way, as a communicator of genuine information that
Speaker 1: we can give to other people is to say we
Speaker 1: have a lot of popularity for what we are doing
Speaker 1: and give them examples of that, or percentages or market share,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. And that always is an easy
Speaker 1: way for people to take the shortcut to yes, Oh okay,
Speaker 1: then I don't have to continue to calibrate and think
Speaker 1: about the pros and cons of this. The majority of
Speaker 1: people like me like it, so that's a shortcut t yes.
Speaker 1: But there's some new research now my team is responsible
Speaker 1: for some of it that takes the principle of social
Speaker 1: proof to another level, and it is that suppose you
Speaker 1: have a startup, or you have a new product or
Speaker 1: service or an idea, a new initiative you would like
Speaker 1: people to join you in, but because it's new, you
Speaker 1: don't have, you can't point to social proof. The social
Speaker 1: proof is minimal. I mean it's actually negative. Not a
Speaker 1: lot of people are doing it. Is there anything you
Speaker 1: can do under those circumstances, It turns out it is.
Speaker 1: There is even if you don't have even if you
Speaker 1: only have a minority or a small minority of people
Speaker 1: who have adopted it, because it's a good idea. You
Speaker 1: have to have a good idea. But if it's a
Speaker 1: good idea, you get to show a trend to that
Speaker 1: minority position. If it's only twenty percent of the market
Speaker 1: that's interested in. If you just say twenty percent, that's
Speaker 1: a statistic. If you said six months ago it was
Speaker 1: ten percent, that's a difference, and that's much better. But
Speaker 1: if you say six months ago it was ten percent,
Speaker 1: three months ago it was fifteen percent. This month it's
Speaker 1: twenty percent, the same. Twenty percent is the endpoint of
Speaker 1: a trend, and people project the function of a trend
Speaker 1: into the future, so that for the first time you
Speaker 1: have the leverage of something we didn't know the label
Speaker 1: of before. Future social proof. In the research that we did,
Speaker 1: showed that if you give people a trend to twenty percent,
Speaker 1: they are more likely to say yes to it right,
Speaker 1: because they expect in the future it will be more
Speaker 1: than twenty percent. If you've got a good idea with
Speaker 1: that kind of ability to move people upward in a trend,
Speaker 1: you'd be a fool of the influence process not to
Speaker 1: honestly give them three data points. One data point is
Speaker 1: a statistic, two data points a difference, three data points
Speaker 1: a trend. Next principle also helps you. You're on a roll,
Speaker 1: you're on fire. Ah, you know it's got a love
Speaker 1: this stuff. I can tell you all my life, I've
Speaker 1: been curious about human behavior, and I have a job.
Speaker 1: We have a job where the job is to find
Speaker 1: out what we're curious about, find out to solve the
Speaker 1: things were interested in and curious about. What a job?
Speaker 1: How did you get what a job is? Right? But
Speaker 1: how did you get how did you get interested in
Speaker 1: this topic to begin with? Like? Were you even fascinated
Speaker 1: with the idea of influence when you were like a
Speaker 1: little kid? Yes, well, partially when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: but also a little bit older when I recognized that
Speaker 1: I was a patsy. I was a pushover for the
Speaker 1: appeals of various salespeople or fundraisers, and I would find
Speaker 1: myself in unwanted possession of these things or giving the
Speaker 1: causes I hardly heard of. And it occurred to me
Speaker 1: that there must be something other than the merits of
Speaker 1: the case that got me to say yes, because I
Speaker 1: didn't really want these things inherently. I didn't really want
Speaker 1: to give my money to this cause I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about because of the features of it that had
Speaker 1: been that it seemed to have. It was because of
Speaker 1: the way the merits and the features were presented to
Speaker 1: me that made the difference. There was a psychological dimension.
Speaker 1: It had to do with the delivery system that was
Speaker 1: employed to give me the merits or the features, and
Speaker 1: I was swept by those. Those things enthralled me, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking to myself, now, that's that's interesting. That's
Speaker 1: worth studying, and not just out of self defense, right,
Speaker 1: but because I thought, well, a lot of people would
Speaker 1: be interested in that. So that was the beginnings. Your
Speaker 1: intuition was right, Okay, so where are we now? Are
Speaker 1: we're up to the fifth principle? Well, we were up to.
Speaker 1: The fourth principle was authority. That says, another way people
Speaker 1: reduce their uncertain and p is to is to make
Speaker 1: themselves available to information from authorities, and if a communicator
Speaker 1: provides that information, they significantly increase the likelihood that people
Speaker 1: will say yes to them. Some people ask me, well,
Speaker 1: how do I how do I amplify the principle of
Speaker 1: authority if I've got if I've got an authority voice
Speaker 1: who is aligned with what I am suggesting, is there
Speaker 1: a way to Well, there are two things. First, you
Speaker 1: make that authority testimonial. First, make it first so that
Speaker 1: that aura of expertise and authority applies to everything you
Speaker 1: say after that, don't put it, don't bury it in
Speaker 1: the body of your materials. The second thing is you
Speaker 1: enhance authority by multiplying it clear research. If you have
Speaker 1: multiple experts taking a position, it's significantly more persuasive than
Speaker 1: a single expert to So your job is to is
Speaker 1: to marshal that information so that where it exists honestly,
Speaker 1: if it truly exists, you get to use that multiplier.
Speaker 1: Next principle is commitment and consistency. People want to say
Speaker 1: yes to those things that are consistent with commitments they've
Speaker 1: already made, and commitments in the form of what I've
Speaker 1: already said or done on a topic. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research on this. But let me give
Speaker 1: you an example that has worked very well for an
Speaker 1: acquaintance of mine who says that he was having trouble
Speaker 1: getting jobs. He would get into these job interviews and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't go especially well, but then he hit upon
Speaker 1: something that has gotten him three better jobs in a row.
Speaker 1: That he says at the start of an interview where
Speaker 1: he's in a room with an evaluator, sometimes a team
Speaker 1: of evaluators, and he always would say, what we're trained
Speaker 1: to say, thank you for inviting me here. I very
Speaker 1: much want to answer all of your questions. And then
Speaker 1: he says, but before we begin, I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could answer a question for me. Why did you invite
Speaker 1: me here today? What was it about my resume, about
Speaker 1: my background and experience that made you think I was
Speaker 1: a good candidate for the job. And he said, you
Speaker 1: will hear these people committing themselves to your strengths and
Speaker 1: your candidacy out loud, actively, voluntarily, And he said, you
Speaker 1: now experience that not only have you heard the things
Speaker 1: that they consider the strongest elements that of your case,
Speaker 1: then you can embellish on those and zero in on those.
Speaker 1: But they've made a commitment to you, and he says
Speaker 1: three better jobs in a row. Okay, so that comment inconsistency.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, like how small things can have such big effects,
Speaker 1: you know, just I'm amazed all these things you're saying.
Speaker 1: They're just like you know, like social psychology, minor tweaks
Speaker 1: can cause huge changes. It's amazing, Scott. That is a
Speaker 1: bullseye observation. How would this be you because we had Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I heard it in my head and you
Speaker 1: got it out. Yeah. We have this idea that this
Speaker 1: law of proportionality where we think that in order to
Speaker 1: get big changes, we need to have big inputs we
Speaker 1: need to make, you know, to have big outcomes, we
Speaker 1: need to have big changes, big steps that we take
Speaker 1: to produce those, not if there are big motivational systems
Speaker 1: that we can simply trigger with a small word or
Speaker 1: deed of some sort. Imagine you're in a stadium and
Speaker 1: it's for a night event, a game or a concert
Speaker 1: or something like this, and you're in charge of lighting
Speaker 1: this stadium before the event. You don't go around to
Speaker 1: each one of these You flick one switch and that
Speaker 1: minor amount of effort engages of powerful system that's already
Speaker 1: installed there in the in the stadium. That's how it
Speaker 1: is with these principles, things like authority or social proof
Speaker 1: for you know, liking those are big, big power sources
Speaker 1: inside of people, and all we have to do is
Speaker 1: activate them. We flip the switch that harnesses the power
Speaker 1: that they that's already been installed there. So I think
Speaker 1: that's why it works. It's not that these strategies require
Speaker 1: a lot of muscle. They just require the knowledge of
Speaker 1: what what already exists muscularly inside people's motive motive systems.
Speaker 1: Here have any of these findings not replicated over the years,
Speaker 1: because I know there was this big social psychology replication crisis,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering how your the Influence research has
Speaker 1: kind of stood with that. Yeah, so this is really
Speaker 1: a timely issue for us. Fortunately, in the book Influence,
Speaker 1: I don't talk about any single study that may or
Speaker 1: may not replicate because of some issues. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't even have to go with statistical power and all
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that may lead observers astray. I
Speaker 1: talk about concepts where in each concept of commitment and
Speaker 1: consistency or liking or authority. There are multiple studies that
Speaker 1: you couldn't claim were errors in some way. They're just
Speaker 1: too many of them, and they all cohere in some
Speaker 1: sort of way that makes it more convincing, more compelling that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that works, and here's the other side
Speaker 1: of it that I think gives me some confidence that
Speaker 1: these principles are major drivers of change. In order to
Speaker 1: uncover these principles, I got outside of my laboratory at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of my investigation and engaged in something
Speaker 1: called participant observation research, where I became something of a
Speaker 1: spy of sorts and infiltrated the training programs of various
Speaker 1: professions dedicated to getting others to say yes to them, sales, marketing, advertising, recruiting,
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. Fundraising It was easy. They were
Speaker 1: just they would put ads asking for recruits to be
Speaker 1: in there, and I would and I would enter undercover,
Speaker 1: disguised in identity. And what I looked for was the commonalities,
Speaker 1: which were the things that they said worked for them
Speaker 1: across all of those different settings, those different arenas where
Speaker 1: people were getting others to say yes to them and
Speaker 1: whose livelihoods depend on it. Depended on it, so they
Speaker 1: had to have beta tested these things over trial and error.
Speaker 1: And there were just six of them. There were hundreds
Speaker 1: of individual tactics practices, but I thought I could characterize,
Speaker 1: categorize the great majority of them in terms of these
Speaker 1: just the six categories, these six principles. So that helps
Speaker 1: me feel that the studies were talking about they reflect something,
Speaker 1: uh of the results of a much larger experiment than
Speaker 1: we could ever conduct, sure in the laboratory, or that
Speaker 1: it's it's what has proven to be successful for people
Speaker 1: who's whose livelihoods depend on the success of the strategies, right,
Speaker 1: it would be I'd be shocked to find out that
Speaker 1: that someday it turns out that that if if you
Speaker 1: don't like the person, that's better than if you like
Speaker 1: the person, like like you know, like that'll overturn that one,
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, some of these seem like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's a universal principle there, yeah, of human nature. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's what's the are we on number six? Well, Well,
Speaker 1: we've got one last one and another one. You people,
Speaker 1: all your your your followers will agree scarcity. People want
Speaker 1: more of those things they can have less of and
Speaker 1: one reason that is the case I think applies to
Speaker 1: what Daniel Konnoman has won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating,
Speaker 1: and that is the power of loss aversion as opposed
Speaker 1: to so that we are more in his prospect theory says,
Speaker 1: the prospects of losing something are more motivating to us
Speaker 1: than the prospects of gaining that same thing under conditions
Speaker 1: of risk and uncertainty. Not all. Yes, he was just
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Oh he was. That was a good get.
Speaker 1: I know, I got him in you I can retire now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I was on at a conference where I
Speaker 1: was in the program to be interviewed with Richard Thaylor
Speaker 1: and Daniel Konnoman. Me right, And I said to the interviewer,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I'm in a Nobel laureate sandwich.
Speaker 1: I'm lettuce. That's hilarious. I mean those are big hitters.
Speaker 1: Those are those are big hitters. Anyway, Yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: so thank you. But what Knoman says is there's lost
Speaker 1: a version. Well, that's what's scarcity. The basis of scarcity
Speaker 1: is you're if something is scarce or rare or dwindling
Speaker 1: an availability availability, you're afraid that it will be lost
Speaker 1: to you, And so that's the reason people want those
Speaker 1: things that have those characteristics. And there was a study
Speaker 1: done of six thousand, seven hundred e commerce websites and
Speaker 1: they looked at ab tests within them to see which
Speaker 1: were the factors that if they included it or withdrew
Speaker 1: it had made the biggest difference in a conversion from
Speaker 1: prospect to customer. It was scarcity. It was scarcity if
Speaker 1: you could honestly say that we have a limited number
Speaker 1: of these at this price, or with these features, or
Speaker 1: with this payment plan or whatever it was, you got
Speaker 1: significantly more conversions than any other feature. They looked at
Speaker 1: at twenty nine of them. By the way, the next
Speaker 1: five were the other principles of influence nice, but scarcity
Speaker 1: was at the top of those principles, provided that it
Speaker 1: was scarcity of number, not scarcity of not limited time.
Speaker 1: So it was a limited number of items rather than
Speaker 1: oh you can only get this for one week. If
Speaker 1: you can get it for one week, that means you
Speaker 1: can decide to get at anytime in that week. If
Speaker 1: it's a limited number and there's competition for it, therefore
Speaker 1: you better move now. And that's the reason limited number
Speaker 1: is more successful than limited time offers makes sense. So
Speaker 1: those are the original sixth principles. Now you added one
Speaker 1: that is very very relevant to the world today. It's
Speaker 1: the principle Yeah, preez, I'm doing a drum roll. I'm
Speaker 1: doing a drum And the seventh one is unity, And
Speaker 1: essentially it's membership in a group that you use to
Speaker 1: define your identity in some important, meaningful way. And if
Speaker 1: a communicator can arrange for me to believe that this
Speaker 1: individual is one of us inside that group, inside that
Speaker 1: category that I use to define myself, then I'm significantly
Speaker 1: more likely to say yes to that person. Because the
Speaker 1: research shows you trust those people inside your wei groups more,
Speaker 1: you believe them more, you're more persuaded by them, you're
Speaker 1: more willing to cooperate with them, and you're more willing
Speaker 1: to comply with their requests. So there is a lovely
Speaker 1: study done on a college campus where researchers took a
Speaker 1: young woman who college aged, had to stand in a
Speaker 1: heavily trafficked area on campus and with a canister asking
Speaker 1: for donations through are legitimate charity. She was getting some contributions,
Speaker 1: but if she added one more sentence she more than
Speaker 1: doubled contributions, and the sentence was I'm a student here too.
Speaker 1: In other words, I'm one of you. And all the
Speaker 1: barriers to change came down, and she didn't say I'm
Speaker 1: a student like you. We're not talking about similarity in
Speaker 1: a broad kind of sense. There's certainly not similarity of
Speaker 1: pastes or style preferences or you know, these kinds of inclinations.
Speaker 1: We're talking about commonality of membership in an existing meaningful
Speaker 1: group what commentators are calling our tribes these days, and tribalism,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I mean it's so obviously tied to tribalism.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a certain mentality going around of like, well,
Speaker 1: you can't understand, possible understand what I've been through because
Speaker 1: my own personal experience, that's right, So how can we
Speaker 1: You're not like me, you're not up yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know people have asked me, well, how do we
Speaker 1: get to those people, let's say, who are resisting getting
Speaker 1: a vaccine for COVID and uh, And it turns out
Speaker 1: there's a technique within persuasion science that allows us to
Speaker 1: get into their we group. And it's not just to
Speaker 1: have somebody who is similar to them in background or region,
Speaker 1: but who can honestly say I used to believe that too, right,
Speaker 1: and then I saw something happen, or something happened to me.
Speaker 1: There was a new piece of information that entered the system,
Speaker 1: and I changed right. And the title of this is
Speaker 1: called the convert communicator. The person who has been converted
Speaker 1: from who you were in this very relevant way is
Speaker 1: something else based on a new piece of information. It
Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to dismiss that person. Oh that's
Speaker 1: not me, that's not us. No, it was you. But
Speaker 1: there's something new that maybe you want to hear about,
Speaker 1: and you're more open to hearing about it under those circumstances. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's just double click on this topic because it's just
Speaker 1: going to be it's so important. So which types of
Speaker 1: recognized commonalities between different ethnic or racial groups lead to
Speaker 1: lasting reductions of prejudice and which only lead to very
Speaker 1: temporary reductions. Yeah, the temporary ones are the ones that
Speaker 1: get swept away easily by the passage of time or
Speaker 1: new situations that evolve where but those that are the
Speaker 1: are the more durable are those that are aligned with
Speaker 1: evolutionary forces. And there are two of them that are powerful.
Speaker 1: One is commonality of family and research indicating that we
Speaker 1: treat as family those individuals that we invite into the
Speaker 1: home and don't treat as guests, even those from out groups,
Speaker 1: because there's good evidence that children who view their parents
Speaker 1: treating outgroup members in the home as if they are
Speaker 1: family then feel a family like bond to those individuals.
Speaker 1: So one thing we can do as parents. Now this
Speaker 1: is a longer stage approach, but if we want our
Speaker 1: children to view the species as the group, the meaningful
Speaker 1: social identity, if we want them to see humanity as
Speaker 1: the group, should systematically invite into the home people from
Speaker 1: a variety of groups that are not our own. Right,
Speaker 1: And and and here's the key that my mother would
Speaker 1: criticize me for. If I can guess, I guess, don't
Speaker 1: treat them as though they're guests. That's exactly right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ask them to help set the table, ask them to
Speaker 1: help clean up, just like you would a family member.
Speaker 1: And now your kids are seeing you treat them just
Speaker 1: like family, not like somebody separate from us, not from
Speaker 1: somebody that we do something different for. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: one of them. The other is something that is much
Speaker 1: more easily done, but it's not it's not easy to
Speaker 1: undertake in the moment. But there's research to show that
Speaker 1: we feel more bonded to the people that we share
Speaker 1: a region or community or neighborhood with, because again, evolutionarily,
Speaker 1: we began as a species in E. Voultlets, that we
Speaker 1: evolved in small groups tribes and clans of one sort
Speaker 1: or another that were barely more than twenty five to
Speaker 1: fifty individuals at a time, and those individuals typically shared
Speaker 1: our identity, they shared our genetic identity. And so what
Speaker 1: we find now is evidence that people give favor to
Speaker 1: those inside their region. There's even a term for it
Speaker 1: called localism, where you find, for example, that if you
Speaker 1: receive a request to participate in a survey from a university,
Speaker 1: you're significantly more likely to comply with that request if
Speaker 1: it's a university in your state. There was a study
Speaker 1: done of people who reacted to a military death in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Let's say Afghanistan. So a soldier, a US military personnel
Speaker 1: was killed, they became significantly more against the war in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan if that soldier was from their state. So there's
Speaker 1: this regionalism there, and I'm going to tell a story
Speaker 1: I haven't told in any of the interviews that I've
Speaker 1: done on this book because it is it's appropriate, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a downer. Okay, let's hear it. During this
Speaker 1: during the Second World War, we know what happened when
Speaker 1: Nazi forces would command a region, country and so on,
Speaker 1: they would take the Jewish residence and put them in
Speaker 1: concentration camps, work camps, off in death camps and eliminate. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a practice. It really makes
Speaker 1: my skin crawl when I hear that if any in
Speaker 1: a work camp, if any one individual right violated a rule,
Speaker 1: everyone was lined up, and there was a guard who
Speaker 1: would go down the line, counting to ten and executing
Speaker 1: every tenth person. And the story was told to an
Speaker 1: anthropologist named Richard Ronald Cohen by a former Nazi guard
Speaker 1: who said he saw this happening again as it often had,
Speaker 1: but the same guard who was the bloodless killer in
Speaker 1: the past, and he came. He went went through the
Speaker 1: ten bang one through three, four, five, six, ten, and
Speaker 1: he stopped, raised his eyes brows, made a half turn,
Speaker 1: and executed the eleventh. And afterwards the second guard asked
Speaker 1: the killer, why did you not why did you kill
Speaker 1: the eleventh and said, was somebody you had noticed was
Speaker 1: especially a good worker, especially able to do the things
Speaker 1: that you wanted him to do. This guy laughed, He said, no, no,
Speaker 1: I recognized him. He was from my hometown. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the thing is inside our neighborhoods, inside our communities.
Speaker 1: So what we should be willing to do is to relocate,
Speaker 1: not get out of your house and go. But when
Speaker 1: you are deciding on a neighborhood to move to for
Speaker 1: your next relocation, one of the factors should be how
Speaker 1: many how many outgroup members live there? That should be
Speaker 1: a plus for you. That's going to reduce our sense
Speaker 1: of unity as this small nuclear group to something much
Speaker 1: larger than that that includes people from outside of our
Speaker 1: in groups. Yeah, that was a really powerful story, by
Speaker 1: the way, And you know, overgeneralize, generalizing from those principles,
Speaker 1: I mean, has a lot of deep implications for the
Speaker 1: way we treat each other these days, people that we
Speaker 1: think are in our out group. You talk in your
Speaker 1: book about the role of threat in undermining favorability and
Speaker 1: inciting hostility towards those outside of ones in group. What
Speaker 1: role does threat play there? Threat causes us to pull
Speaker 1: in the boundaries of we. We become protective, self protective, right,
Speaker 1: and so it turns out that the boundaries of our
Speaker 1: WE groups are relatively elastic. We can extend those to
Speaker 1: include other people under certain sets of conditions. When, for example,
Speaker 1: we when there is no threat, when we've been successful,
Speaker 1: when the environment seems to be welcoming and reinforcing, we
Speaker 1: are emboldened to allow a much larger tent to exist.
Speaker 1: But when things are threatening, then we become much more
Speaker 1: protective and and constrict those boundaries a way, and especially
Speaker 1: away from those individuals who are are not of us.
Speaker 1: We we start finding differentiations and reasons to put them
Speaker 1: outside of the tent. Threat is probably the biggest single
Speaker 1: uh motive for constricting art WE groups. This is so valuable. Well,
Speaker 1: you know your original book was incredibly timely, and this
Speaker 1: one is even more timely. I just want to say
Speaker 1: congratulations on this updated version, but just a huge thanks
Speaker 1: for for what you've contributed to the field of psychology
Speaker 1: throughout your whole your whole along and UH and UH
Speaker 1: and impactful and influential career natural career. I should say you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate hearing those kind words. Thanks for being on
Speaker 1: the podcast today. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's
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