How to Be More
Persuasive
A new book explains how our attempts to influence others work (or
don’t work) in the brain—and how to avoid being manipulated.
Where
there is communication, there is influence—and today we’re communicating constantly.
We have access to more information than ever before, and would-be influencers
have more and more access to us.
But how
do people influence others, for good or for ill? That’s the subject of the new
book The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About
Our Power to Change Others by neuroscientist Tali Sharot. She argues
that we’re full of misconceptions about how minds get changed, which means that
we often fail to influence others—our kids, our students, our coworkers, our
patients, and our loved ones.
“Many of
our instincts about influence…are ineffective because they are incompatible
with how the mind and brain operate,” she writes.
How influence works in the brain
By
explaining how the brain responds to attempts at influence, Sharot aims to help
us become better at persuading and motivating others.
Research
suggests that people don’t always act to avoid negative consequences. In
one study illustrating
this tendency, participants viewed a series of pictures and had to act (press a
button) or not act (not press a button) when a certain one appeared. In some
games, the correct response would earn them a reward; in other games, the
correct response would save them from a loss.
Ultimately,
participants performed better when they had to act to earn a reward and not act
to avoid a loss, rather than vice versa. In other words, it’s counterintuitive
to the brain to do something to avoid a
negative outcome (or to not do something to gain a
positive reward). That’s why getting family members to exercise isn’t as simple
as citing the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle or subtly pointing out their
weight gain.
What
could you do instead? While negative emotions and images encourage inaction,
research also suggests that positive ones tend to inspire people to act. So you
might try raving about your fancy gym and its sauna rooms, or offering to do a
fun fitness activity together.
In the
same vein, one study out of Stanford University found that
microlending campaigns are more likely to receive funding when the photographs
of borrowers display more positive emotion. In fact, researchers could predict
which campaigns lenders would want to fund based on how much activity they
showed in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is implicated
in motivation and reward. If we exhibit positivity, the people around us may be
naturally inclined to act.
When
we’re communicating negative information, listeners will be particularly
susceptible when they’re stressed. Sharot’s research team showed people
statistics about the likelihood of undesirable events—car accidents or robbery,
theft or credit card fraud—and they were more likely to believe them when they
were under pressure, about to give a speech or fight a fire. That might be
helpful if you’re a doctor trying to communicate disease risk to a stressed
patient, but less helpful when you’re being misled—like when your competitors
at work or in a sports game are trying to psyche you out.
People
also have a tendency to tune out negativity or avoid it altogether, Sharot
writes. “All else being equal, people tend to ignore negative information,
which can make them feel bad, and seek positive news, which can make them feel
good.” For example, research suggests
that people are more likely to check on their stocks when the market is
flourishing and avoid logging in when things are looking grim.
That
means that communicating bad news and hard truths can be tricky—it’s difficult
to talk to an ostrich with their head in the sand. In that case, it might be
better to wait until people are more relaxed or to frame things in a positive
way. Some airlines do this, Sharot explains, by making their safety videos (a
somewhat unnerving communication) funny or musical.
While
highly positive or negative communication can be influential, another effective
way to exert influence is to give people control, Sharot writes.
When you
tell someone they’re about to make a choice, another part of the brain’s reward system lights up—before they even
know what the choice is. And that makes sense: They’re anticipating a good
outcome that they’ll get to select for themselves. If you’re a parent, you may
have discovered that kids are much more accommodating if you let them pick
between two healthy snacks or after-dinner chores. On a societal level, simply
asking people how tax dollars should be allocated subsequently makes them less
willing to exploit a tax loophole.
“Giving
away control, even a little, even just the perception of it, is a simple but
hugely effective way” to influence people, writes Sharot.
How to protect yourself from
manipulation
The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About
Our Power to Change Others (Henry Holt and Co., 2017, 244 pages)
Although The
Influential Mind is full of insights about influence, it can also be
read as a guide to avoiding manipulation. If our intuitions about how to
influence others tend to be off, that also means we don’t understand the
tactics others are using to influence us.
Take the
anti-vaccination movement, Sharot writes: In the face of all the
anxiety-provoking stories about what could go wrong vaccinating kids, the brain
is hard-wired to want to do nothing. In other areas of life, we can be deceived
by feel-good positive emotion: by the diet coach who always praises our eating
habits or the real estate agent who always shows us perfect homes in perfect
neighborhoods.
We can
also be manipulated by the illusion of control. In some situations, we’re given
a choice that isn’t really a choice—would you prefer the blue Jaguar or the
red one? Or we feel we have control when we actually don’t: In
experiments that enforced a “lab tax” (on money earned from participating in
the study), people complied with the tax more after expressing their opinion
about how the money should be spent, even though the lab made no promises about
listening to their feedback.
The
Influential Mind is
the kind of book you don’t want to end up in the wrong hands, because these
tactics can be used for good or evil: to get patients to exercise or to recruit
terrorists. It’s up to us to use them for good—and to combat the voices out
there who have less noble ends.
BY KIRA M.
NEWMAN
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_be_more_persuasive?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=b015905b3f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-b015905b3f-51482775
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