The Art of Manipulation

In his book Influence: Science and Practice, Robert Cialdini gives a lot of fascinating examples of how you can manipulate people. One of the best is the beggar experiment. If you approach people on the street and ask them for 5 dollars, your chances of getting them are fairly low. But what Cialdini found was that if you ask for a more unusual amount – say, 4 dollars and 50 cents – you are more likely to get it.

It doesn’t stop here, however. The researchers took the experiment further by asking for impossible amounts – “Excuse me, could you spare 4 dollars and 23 cents?” – and this increased the chances of getting money even more. Apparently, if you ask for normal numbers, people see it as begging, and will often wave you off – but if you ask for more odd numbers, people think you need the money for some specific purpose, and is more likely to give it to you.

This is in line with another experiment described by Cialdini, where the objective was to be allowed to skip the line in front of a photocopying machine. It turned out that if you simply ask “Can I jump in front of you?”, most people will say no, whereas if you ask “Can I jump in front of you, because I need to make some copies”, you will be allowed to jump the line far more often. Cialdini claims that the magical word ‘because’ triggers an automatic reaction in the listener, making cooperation more likely even if the reason is completely self-evident (why else would you be in line for a copier, if not to make copies?).

See my review of this book.

Memories: Good or Bad?

It seems that our memory is not entirely reliable when it comes to remembering whether a particular experience was good or bad. According to Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice, the quality of our memories of an event are determined by two things.

One thing is the most intense emotion you felt during the experience (whether good or bad). The other thing is how good or bad the experience felt when it ended. The last part is the fascinating one, and indicates that memories can be manipulated.

Schwartz tells of a specific experiment where doctors perform a so-called diagnostic colonoscopy on a number of male patients. This is medical speak for a pretty unpleasant exercise involving your rectum and a moving tube with a small camera attached. As you may imagine, patients habitually report the experience as highly unpleasant (I guess that it is not the favorite passtime of the doctors, either).

Interestingly, the researchers varied the setup: after performing the examination, the doctor left the tube in place for a little while. This was still unpleasant, but much less so since the doctor was not moving it around. Although this made the whole experience longer, the patients experienced the procedure as less unpleasant because of the relatively more pleasant ending.

Conclusion: If you want to influence people's memory of events, work on making the last part more pleasant.

See my review of Schwartz's book

Wedellsblog Fragments Goes Live

There are mountains of fascinating facts and research findings out there. The bad news is, it is dispersed all over the world, in tiny fragments of knowledge.

In this blog, I will try to collect all of the interesting facts that I encounter. My primary interests lie with human behaviour, but I stick to no central theme or topic. Most will be from the books and articles I read, others will be my own thoughts and musings.

Wedellsblog Fragments is a complement to my other blog, Wedellsblog Books.

Have fun exploring.