Welcome to the 1st edition of year 2024 and 9th edition the Influence Insights newsletter.

Wish you all happy new year 2024.

In today's newsletter you discover 3 powerful ideas all research backed that can transform your influence success at business and personal lives.

3 Ideas of Influence & Persuasion

Today we learn what science teaches about what we know when making decisions and how mental shortcuts works.

1

People Don't Know What Influences Them

We make hundreds of decisions daily for ourself and also we attempt to influence others.

But how well we know what influenced our decisions? We go to a mall and buy a new dress? Do we know what in that dress really influenced us to buy?

Is it color, brand, pattern, price, or some memory of the dress.. There can be many factors and this is where behaviour science says people don't know what influences them.

To prove this, a science based test was done,

Home owners were asked what message would most influence them to reduce their energy consumption.

These were the four messages they could choose from:

1. Conserving energy helps the environment
2. “Conserving energy helps future generations”
3. “Conserving energy saves money”
4. “Your neighbors are already conserving energy”

This was the message homeowners thought would most influence them to conserve

Fortunately, the researchers also measured which message really influenced homeowners the most. They did so by placing door hangers containing one of the messages each week for a month on residents’ door's and then measured actual energy consumption during the month.

This was the energy reduction result:

More than 80% who conserved energy had followed the message of Your neighbors are already conserving energy.

So, the messages that the homeowners rated as most important had hardly any impact. The only message with real impact was the one they dismissed, the one describing their neighbors’ conservation efforts.

The message here, People don't know often what influences their decision.

It’s often safer to rely on what behavioral science tells you rather than on what people tell you themselves.

In this case, a persuasion scientist might well have predicted which message would be most influential, because it harnesses the power of social proof.

So what this means is many times, as influencer having the knowledge of influence principles is critical to get YES for your request.

2

Mental shortcuts in the age of information overload.

Today more than ever, our brains are comprehending information overload that is never experienced. So the naturally our brain instead of processing all the information, it wants to do a shortcut.

This saves energy and also when we lack time, overwhelmed shortcuts is what we prefer than doing complex analysis of information. Cialdini Principles are to leverage this nature of brain shortcut to take advantage and ethically influence others.

But it is important to know sometimes shortcuts serve us poorly. Consider a classic 1966 study by psychiatrist Charles K. Hofling and his colleagues on how things can go terribly wrong when people rely on the title “Dr.” as a cue to an individual’s authority.

In the study, nurses working on a busy hospital ward received a phone call from a man who identified himself as the physician of a patient on their floor.

The stranger on the phone asked the nurses on duty to go to the medicine cabinet and retrieve an unfamiliar drug called Astroten and to administer a dose twice as high as the daily maximum, violating not only the boldly stated guidelines on the label but also a hospital policy requiring handwritten prescriptions.

Did the nurses balk?

Ninety-five percent obeyed the unknown “doctor” without raising any questions. Indeed, they had to be stopped on their way to the patient’s room with the potentially dangerous drug in hand.

The nurses had unknowingly applied what is known as the authority heuristic, trusting too readily in a person in a position of responsibility.

So if you are in power, or authority position, it is important to know some people under you might follow blindly your words even if you are not that serious!. Hence it becomes more important for people in power to act responsibly

3

Influencing others on complex/complicated evidence

We know people use shortcuts to make decisions. When people are under shortage of time, they take shortcuts which can erroneous.

For example, a medical rep visits a doctor. He has great scientific evidence to showcase. But doctor says only he has few minutes. Medical rep dilutes the features to explain which makes Doctor to ignore message or compare the latest evidence with his earlier findings.

What should be done?

If you want people to think and make right decision, then it is important to make sure you gain their time.

In one experiment by market researchers Joseph W. Alba and Howard Marmorstein, subjects considered information about a dozen separate features of two cameras.

Brand A was superior to brand B on just four of the features, but these were features critical in considering camera quality—the exposure accuracy, for instance.

Brand B, on the other hand, came recommended as superior on eight features, all of which were relatively unimportant—having a shoulder strap, for example.

Some subjects examined each attribute for only two seconds; others had more time to study all the information

When they had only two seconds to evaluate each feature, only a few subjects (17 percent) preferred the higher-quality camera, most opting instead for the one with a greater number of unimportant functions.

When the subjects were given sufficient time and allowed to directly compare the two cameras, however, more than two thirds favored the camera with the few features key to its overall quality.

These results suggest that when communicating complicated evidence, sufficient time is needed to switch from a heuristic to a systematic mode of thinking that allows for better overall evaluation.

2 Quotes of Others

• We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments. - Danial Kahneman
• “Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities. Dan Ariley

1 Question for You

● It is estimated in 2024, with AI, there will be explosion of Information created. How do you plan to manage information overload in 2024?

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Best regards,

From,

Krishna G

GrowthAspire Academy For Cialdini Influence & Persuasion

P.S: On December 31st we conducted webinar on Big Wins With Small Changes. If you could not attend, here is chance to watch on-demand webinar. Click here and watch now​