Light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can help influence an audience.
Light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can help influence an audience.
Lack of passion can be fatal to our attempts to persuade others of our point of view. Even if all the right facts are trotted out in an intelligible order, even if the argument is unassailable, when the speaker doesn’t appear to believe it themselves, why should anyone else bother?
Show your passion, however, and people have one more emotional reason to come around to your point of view.
But how can we convince others of our conviction?
Up the intensity
One unconventional way is by using a little light swearing. The problem is that we run the risk of losing credibility and appearing unprofessional.
To see whether swearing can help change attitudes, Scherer and Sagarin (2006) divided 88 participants into three groups to watch one of three slightly different speeches. The only difference between the speeches was that one contained a mild swear word at the start:
“…lowering of tuition is not only a great idea, but damn it, also the most reasonable one for all parties involved.”
The second speech contained the ‘damn it’ at the end and the third had neither.
When participants’ attitudes were measured, they were most influenced by the speeches with the mild obscenity included, either at the beginning or the end.
It also emerged that the word ‘damn’ increased the audience’s perception of the speaker’s intensity, which was what lead to the increased levels of persuasion. On the other hand, swearing did not affect how the audience perceived the speaker’s credibility.
So it seems that light swearing can be useful, even in a relatively formal situation like a lecture. When you show some feeling, the audience notices, credits you with sincerity and takes your message to heart.
How far you can go is difficult to know. Certainly things have changed a lot. In the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, after Rhett Butler’s famous line “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”, the producer, David Selznick, was fined $5,000 for this ‘shocking’ outburst.
That was a long time ago but audiences are diverse and will respond in different ways. It’s likely that stronger or more persistent swearing would adversely affect credibility. But a little damn and blast is more likely to be seen as a genuine display of emotion, which is refreshing. If nothing else, swearing is persuasive because it’s human.
Central to the art and science of persuasion is understanding the unconscious goals for which everyone is aiming.
Central to the art and science of persuasion is understanding three goals for which everyone is aiming.
The art and science of persuasion is often discussed as though changing people’s minds is about using the right arguments, the right tone of voice or the right negotiation tactic. But effective influence and persuasion isn’t just about patter, body language or other techniques, it’s also about understanding people’s motivations.
In the scrabble to explain technique, it’s easy to forget that there are certain universal goals of which, at least some of the time, we are barely aware. Influence and persuasion attempts must tap into these to really gain traction.
Techniques of persuasion
To illustrate these universal goals, let’s have a look at six common techniques of influence that you’ll have come across either explicitly or implicitly (from Cialdini, 2001):
Liking: It’s much easier to influence someone who likes you. Successful influencers try to flatter and uncover similarities in order to build attraction.
Social proof. People like to follow one another, so influencers imply the herd is moving the same way.
Consistency. Most people prefer to keep their word. If people make a commitment, particularly if it’s out loud or in writing, they are much more likely to keep it. Influencers should try to gain verbal or written commitments.
Scarcity. Even when companies have warehouses full of a product, they still advertise using time-limited offers that emphasise scarcity. People want what they can’t have, or at least what might be running short.
Authority. People are strongly influenced by experts. Successful influencers flaunt their knowledge to establish their expertise.
Reciprocity. Give something to get something. When people feel indebted to you they are more likely to agree to what you want. This feeling could arise from something as simple as a compliment.
There are many more, but these six are often quoted, especially in business circles. The reason these work is that they tap into three basic human goals, and it’s these goals that are the key to understanding how to influence and persuade people (from Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004).
1. Goal of affiliation
In the most part humans are social so they want to be liked. Rejection is no fun and we’ll do almost anything to avoid it.
We reciprocate because it sends a message about our sociability. We try to elicit liking from other people by behaving in ways we guess will be attractive, like agreeing with them or complimenting them.
Not only do we want approval from specific people, we also want it from society at large (see this article on conformity). We want the things we do, think and believe to be broadly in line with what others do, think and believe. It’s not impossible to be different, but it is difficult.
The techniques of liking and reciprocity mentioned above both clearly play on our desire for affiliation, as do many other techniques of persuasion and influence. Most people are joiners and followers so influencers like to give us something to join and someone to follow.
2. Goal of accuracy
People who don’t care about doing things correctly never get anywhere in life. To achieve our goals in what is a complicated world, we have to be continually trying to work out the best course of action.
It could be accuracy in social situations, such as how to deal with the boss or how to make friends, or it could be accuracy in financial matters like how to get a good deal, or it could be accuracy in existential matters. Whatever the arena, people are always striving for the ‘right’ answer.
Influencers understand our need to be right and so they try to offer things that appeal to our need for accuracy. For example, experts or authority figures influence people heavily because they offer us a ‘correct’ view or way of doing things, especially one that we don’t have to think too carefully about.
The techniques of social proof and scarcity both nag at our desire to be accurate because we assume other people are likely to be right and we don’t want to miss out on a bargain.
3. Goal of maintaining positive self-concept
People want to protect their view of themselves because it takes a long time to build up a semi-coherent view of oneself and one’s place in the world.
We work hard to keep our world-views intact: we want to maintain our self-esteem, to continue believing in the things we believe in and to honour whatever commitments we have espoused in the past. In an inconsistent world we at least should be self-consistent.
Persuaders and influencers can leverage this goal by invoking our sense of self-consistency. A trivial but instructive example is the foot-in-the-door technique. This is where an influencer asks you to agree to a small request before asking for a bigger one. Because people feel somehow that it would be inconsistent to agree to one request and then refuse the next one, they want to say yes again.
People will go to surprising lengths to maintain their positive view of themselves.
Unconscious motivators
Everybody wants to be accurate, to affiliate with others and to maintain their concept of themselves, however little awareness we might have of these goals. Effective persuasion and influence attempts can target one or more of these goals.
With these goals in mind it is possible to tailor persuasion attempts to the particular characteristics of an audience, rather than relying on transparent generic techniques. Whether it’s at work, dealing with your boss, or at home negotiating with a neighbour, we can all benefit from thinking about other people’s unconscious motivators. Then we can work out how to align our message with their goals.
Three classic experiments show how stereotypes can influence our behaviour without our knowledge.
Three classic experiments show how stereotypes can influence our behaviour without our knowledge.
Despite their bad name, stereotypes can be handy short cuts that give us useful information about the world and other people. For example the stereotype of psychologists is that they are going to analyse you, then start meddling. There’s certainly some truth to that, after all that is their job.
When stereotypes are dangerous is when we automatically draw conclusions about individuals that aren’t accurate and may even be insulting to them. So the question is: when a particular stereotype is activated — say we see an old person, a French person or a psychologist — can we avoid thinking, respectively, ‘slow’, ‘rude’ and ‘nosy’?
Until the classic social psychology study I’m about to tell you about, it was thought that we didn’t automatically act on stereotypes, that we were able to consciously discard them. But, asked Yale Professor John Bargh and colleagues, how can we consciously discard a stereotype if we’re not even conscious that it has been activated? And will this unconscious stereotype have any effect on our behaviour?
To find out Bargh et al. (1996) conducted three experiments, starting with an attempt to make some people ruder and others more polite, using a very simple cue.
Polite or rude?
In the first experiment 34 participants were divided into 3 groups with each group unconsciously cued into a different state: one ‘rude’, one ‘polite’ and one neither. This had to be done in a roundabout way so that the participants didn’t suspect they were being manipulated. What the experimenters did was give them a word puzzle to unscramble. To activate the idea of rudeness in one group it contained words like ‘bother’, ‘disturb’ and ‘bold’. To activate the idea of politeness the next group unscrambled words like ‘courteous’, ‘patiently’ and ‘behaved’. The third group unscrambled neutral words.
After finishing the unscrambling participants left the room to track down the experimenter but found them deep in conversation with someone, forcing them to wait. The question the researchers wanted to answer was what percentage of people would interrupt if the experimenter kept ignoring them by talking to the other person for 10 minutes.
In the group cued with polite words, just 18% of participants interrupted with the rest waiting for the full 10 minutes while the experimenter continued their conversation. On the other hand, in the group cued with impolite words, fully 64% interrupted the experimenter. The neutral condition fell between the two with 36% interrupting.
This is quite a dramatic effect because participants were unaware of the manipulation yet they faithfully followed the unconscious cues given to them by the experimenters. One group became bold and forthright simply be reading 15 words that activated the concept of impoliteness in their minds, while the other group became meek and patient by reading words about restraint and conformity.
Old and slow?
In the second experiment the researchers turned their attention to the stereotype of age. They used the same trick as before of splitting 30 participants into two groups and cueing stereotypes in their minds by getting them to unscramble words. One group unscrambled words associated with being old like ‘Florida’, ‘helpless’ and ‘wrinkled’ while another group unscrambled words unrelated to age.
This time the experimenters wanted to see how fast participants would walk down a 9.75m corridor after they had completed the task. Would cueing people with words about age actually make them walk slower? Yes, indeed it would; participants primed with old age took, on average, a full extra second to cover the short distance to the elevator. That was some pretty slow walking!
African American and aggressive?
In both the previous experiment the researchers checked with participants whether they had noticed any connection between the words they were unscrambling and what was going on. Although only one did, the experimenters then changed their method in a third experiment to make the cueing of participants completely subliminal (below the level of conscious awareness). In the previous experiments participants had been mostly unaware of the connection between cueing and what was being measured but in this experiment they wouldn’t even be aware of the cue.
This time 41 participants were given a very boring computer-based task to do. While doing it a picture of either a young Caucasian male or a young African American male was periodically flashed up on the screen so quickly that it was impossible to consciously apprehend (for about one-fiftieth of a second). They did this because previous research had shown that people generally stereotype African Americans as being more aggressive than Caucasians. After they had finished, the experimenter told the participants (none of whom were African American) that the computer had failed to save their data and they’d have to do the task again.
What the experimenters were interested in was the participant’s reaction (which they recorded) to the possibility of doing the whole boring study over again. Directly after their facial reaction, the experimenters told participants it was OK, the computer had saved their data and they didn’t actually need to do the study again; they had what they needed: that crucial first flicker of emotion to a frustrating event.
So, did the subliminal primes of either Caucasian or African American faces have the expected effect? Participants primed with the Caucasian face were rated by independent observers as showing hostility of just over 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. Participants shown the African American faces were rated as showing hostility of almost 3 out of 10. This suggested the African American faces had activated the stereotype and made people react more aggressively to the frustrating situation. As a side-note, the experimenters also measured the racist attitudes of the participants and found that even participants who were low in racism were still likely to behave in a more hostile manner if cued with the African American face.
Buy Pepsi Cola!
The authors of the paper draw the parallels between their own work and the supposed power of subliminal advertising. As you may know subliminal advertising generally doesn’t work in the way advertisers would hope by causing a stampede for their products. But in these experiments the researchers do seem to be subliminally influencing people to act in pre-defined ways, so how can these opposing findings be resolved?
In fact there’s a subtle difference because in each of the situations in these experiments the response that was primed was absolutely appropriate in each of the situations. Getting angry when your time has been wasted is perfectly normal. It was just the scale of the reaction that was affected by the experimental manipulation. Advertising, however, can prime certain ideas in our minds and associate them with products but the leap to parting us with our cash is much bigger than that in the current experiment, and so more difficult to achieve.
What this study demonstrates very neatly is just how sensitive we are to the minutiae of social interactions. Subtle cues from the way other people behave and more generally from the environment can cue automatic unconscious changes in our behaviour. And by the same token signals we send out to others can automatically activate stereotypes in their minds which are then acted out. As much as we might prefer otherwise, sometimes stereotypes can easily influence our behaviour and our conscious mind seems to have no say.
New psychology research demonstrates a direct effect of snack food adverts on increased consumption for both adults and children.
New psychology research demonstrates a direct effect of snack food adverts on increased consumption for both adults and children.
Nowadays the word ‘obesity’ is rarely seen in print without its partner-in-crime, ‘epidemic’. The developed world seems to be intent on eating itself to death and no small proportion of the newly obese are children: one-third in the US, with a further third at risk.
Do people really lie 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone new?
Do people really lie 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone new?
It’s a statistic often quoted to show how callous and heartless people are. It’s the kind of number the misanthrope TV doc Gregory House (played by Brit Hugh Laurie) should have tattooed across his forehead.
Research suggests unreasoning hostility to newcomers clearly exists in groups, even when their suggestions are sound.
· Groups resist criticism—especially from newcomers.
Picture this: you’ve just started a new job and you’re sat nervously in your first meeting. You look around, still trying to match names to faces. Early on a problem is discussed you know all about from a previous job. Putting aside nerves, you hop right in and start to explain just how it was dealt with at that previous company.
If you want someone to comply with a random request for a cigarette, you should speak into their right ear.
If you want someone to comply with a random request for a cigarette, you should speak into their right ear, according to a new study by researchers in Italy.
Marzoli & Tommasi (2009) had a female confederate visit a disco and approach 176 random people asking for a smoke. Clubbers were about twice as likely to hand one over if the request was directed at the right ear, whether or not the clubber was male or female. Whether these findings will hold good for other types of request is unknown.
Urban dwellers cite incivility as their top urban stressor.
Whenever I see someone drop litter in a public place I feel bad not once, but twice. First all sorts of angry questions surge through my mind: didn’t your family teach you any manners? Who do you think has to clear that up? Don’t you care about your environment?
Second I feel guilty because I don’t say any of these things out loud, instead wandering off grumbling impotently to myself.
Psychology studies that rely on deceiving participants have shown we often have little clue what’s going on in our own minds. But what about in everyday situations where trickery isn’t involved?
Here are four everyday situations – shopping, reading, watching TV and judging other people – and four experiments that show how little we know in each situation about what’s really going on in our minds (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).
The psychological techniques of persuasion used by Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11.
The psychological techniques of persuasion used by Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11.
Back in the Summer of 2004 outspoken documentary-maker Michael Moore brought out ‘Fahrenheit 9/11‘, his personal view of how the terrorist attacks in the US were used by George Bush to pursue illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The response to the film was huge, but rarely ambiguous – audiences either loved it or loathed it.
Some saw it as a brilliant indictment of the lead-up to an unjust war. Others saw it as unfounded liberal/left-wing propaganda designed to give the Democrats a boost in the lead-up to the 2004 US presidential elections.
At the time Dr Kelton Rhoads, an expert in the psychology of persuasion, wrote a piece detailing the psychological techniques of persuasion used by Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11, and it provides a good introduction to propaganda techniques.
Each psychological technique is explained with one example from the film. For a full explanation of the techniques and a fuller list of examples go directly to the document on his website.
Omissions
Psychology: One of the most obvious techniques of any propaganda is not presenting the whole truth. As Dr Rhoads points out, “What gives omissions their power is that often not recognised as missing by their audience.” By leaving out important information people are allowed to jump to conclusions about the evidence that is presented. The propagandist has, at no point, failed to tell the truth, they’ve just failed to tell the whole truth.
Example: One of the largest omission is the failure to show footage of the terrorist hijacked planes hitting the twin towers.
Explanation: Showing this would have provoked the viewer’s anger and turned their thoughts to retribution. Instead Moore shows the aftermath, which provokes the emotion of sorrow.
Contextualisation
Psychology: Moore is keen on juxtaposition. This uses an effect psychologists call ‘structure activation’. Simply put if you feel sad at any particular moment, that tends to colour how you interpret whatever happens to you next. In propaganda this can be used by creating a bleed-through effect from one scene to another. The emotion from one scene is used to colour how you interpret the content of the next scene.
Example: Contextualisation often makes Bush look foolish
Explanation: First scene: we see the unbelievable grief and suffering of witnesses to 9/11. Second scene cut into this: we see Bush ‘happy, smiling and confident’. How could he be smiling at a time like this? The answer is, of course, that he’s not, it’s just the way the film has been cut together to make him look foolish.
Ingroup/outgroup manipulations
Psychology: This comes down to preferring ‘people like us’ over ‘people who aren’t like us’.
Example: The Saudis are represented throughout the film as being part of the ‘outgroup’ along with Bush.
Explanation: Moore shows Bush to be close to the Bin Laden family by repeated association. Then he shows the Bin Laden family to be close to Osama Bin Laden again by association. Whether these associations are really this close is a point for discussion but the thing to notice is that the only connection is association. Because a policeman tends to be near criminals, does that make him a criminal?
Cynicism
Psychology: People tend to attribute selfish motivations to other people, and altruistic motivations to their own behaviour. On average we have a tendency to be cynical about the reason other people do what they do. It is easy to make people suspicious about someone’s motivations by simply questioning them. Intelligence operatives have an acronym: ‘F.U.D.’ which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Example: Bush is acting in his own self-interest rather than in the interests of the US.
Explanation: Bush is shown sitting reading “My Pet Goat” to school children for seven minutes after the Secret Service operative has whispered the news of the terrorist attack into his ear. The cynical assumption is that he is possibly: confused, doesn’t care, didn’t know what to do, etc.. In reality any President movements are completely controlled by the Secret Service for security reasons. Presidents are trained to wait to be told where to go by them. In this situation Bush would probably have been told to stay put while they got information on the best place to go.
Traps
Psychology: Dr Rhoads refers to this as the E.W.Y.G.Y.S. effect or: Either Way You Go Your Screwed.
Example: Bush is presented both as a bumbling fool and as a master manipulator.
Explanation: Bush is shown primping his hair at the start of the film in the moments before broadcasting to the nation. Here he, and indeed the rest of the administration, are seen as master manipulators. The points in the film were he is made to look foolish are almost endless so take your pick.
Modelling the convert communicator
Psychology: People copy each other all the time, it’s human nature. If you stand in the middle of the street and stare up at nothing, before long you will have gathered a small crowd of people all straining their neck backwards to see the object of your fascination. If you imagine this situation in terms of people’s political point of view, then a similar transformation can be observed. If people are to watch someone else changing their point of view about something it influences them in the same fashion.
Example: One convert communicator in this film is Lila Lipscomb, a mother grieving for the loss of her son in Iraq. She appears to complete a full 180° turn in the course of the film, from supporting Bush to opposing him. From supporting the war in Iraq, to opposing it.
Explanation: Dr Rhoads uncovers evidence that there was no U-turn and it has been manufactured to aid our persuasion. She in fact voted for Al Gore in the last election and has been quoted as saying that: “Bush stole the presidency.”
Pacing and distraction
Psychology: Dr Rhoads: “Distraction keeps us from thinking.”
Example: It is difficult to process some parts of the film whereas others such as the parts with Lila Liscomb seem only too clear.
Explanation: Those parts of Moore’s arguments that may be perceived as ‘weaker’ fly by with blaring music playing over the top. The strong parts of his argument (Lila Lipscomb) have no blaring music or fast cuts to cause distraction.
Associations
Psychology: This is an effect that psychologists often talk about in relation to Pavlov’s dog. When Pavlov fed his dog, the dog salivated and he rang a bell. After a while the dog began salivating when he rang the bell, despite the fact there was no food in sight. So the dog associated the bell with being fed.
Example: Moore shows members of the Taliban visiting Texas. The automatic assumption is that he was invited by Bush.
Explanation: Bush is shown in association with the Taliban despite the fact that Bush hadn’t in fact invited them to Texas. They were there to discuss an oil pipeline with the previous permission of the Clinton administration.
Numeric deceptions
Psychology: People like statistics, they sound good. It’s been found by psychologists that people are happy to believe them and don’t bother checking them. Sounds perfect for the propagandist doesn’t it?
Example: Bush was on vacation for 42% of the time during his first 229 days in office.
Explanation: What the original statistics are referring to is the time that Bush spent not in Washington. And the implications is that, if he’s not in Washington he’s not doing any work and is therefore on vacation. Obviously not true. I’m sat at home in the UK, sitting back on the sofa as I write this so how can I be working? Perhaps I need to move to Washington for this to count as real work? This discussion is facile, but parts of Moore’s arguments revolve on this pivotal point.
Dr Rhoads finishes his article by saying:
“…is Fahrenheit documentary, or is it propaganda? Call it as you will. For my part, I see a consistent, effective, and clever use of a range of established propaganda tactics. If only a few of these tactics were used, or if the attempt to deceive weren’t as apparent, I might equivocate…I feel safe in applying the rule: if it flies, walks, swims, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
[Disclaimer: personally I make no political judgement on Moore’s film. It is covered here purely as an interesting study of persuasion techniques. All these techniques could just as easily be used to support precisely the opposite case.]
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