Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior by Nick Kolenda
Authors: Nick Kolenda
Tags: Psychology, Self-Help, Human Behavior, marketing, Influence, consumer behavior, advertising, persuasion
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wrong? Solomon Asch, a prominent researcher in social psychology, conducted this groundbreaking study in the 1950s. Asch (1951) wanted to examine the extent to which people conform, and what he found sparked a new a sensation in psychology.
In the experiment, seven people were seated in a row, and they were shown the same lines that you were shown at the beginning of the chapter. The setup and seating arrangement resembled the following:
Imagine that you were the person seated in the 6th position. Starting with the person seated in the 1st position, the experimenter asked each of you to verbally answer the “simple” question (i.e., which line among the Comparison Lines is equal to the Standard Line),
Before the person in the 1st position answers, you immediately recognize that B is the correct answer. You might even think that the researcher is crazy for asking such a simple question. That’s why when the 1st person answers “C”, you’re caught off guard. Oh well. You’re not too worried because you’re confident that the person in the 2nd position will recognize that B is the correct answer.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. When the 2nd person confirms “C”, your small worry quickly turns to panic. What do you do now? Did you miss something? You scrutinize the lines again trying to spot something that you might have missed, but time is running out. Before you have time to rethink your answer, people seated in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th position all answer with a resounding “C.” Uh-oh. It’s now your turn. What would you do in this situation? Would you stick with your original answer, B? According to the results of the experiment, you probably wouldn’t.
In the actual study, the person seated in the 6th position was the only true participant in the study; everyone else was a confederate hired by Asch. The confederates were instructed to give incorrect answers to put social pressure on the person seated in the 6th position, and that social pressure was more powerful than many researchers had estimated. Despite a painfully obvious answer, an astonishing 76 percent of people conformed and gave the same incorrect answer to the question. The next section will expand on this psychological force and explain two reasons why it’s so powerful.
WHY IS SOCIAL PRESSURE SO POWERFUL?
This section will describe the two main reasons why we succumb to social pressure: informational influence and normative influence.
Informational Influence. First, we sometimes conform to the beliefs and behavior of others because we come to believe that our own beliefs are incorrect. If the crowd’s opinion contradicts our own opinion, then we start to question the accuracy of our own belief, a tendency that becomes even stronger when the correct answer is ambiguous.
Unlike Asch’s experiment where the answer was obvious (which triggered normative influence, to be explained next), situations that don’t offer a clear and definitive answer will trigger informational influence because we come to distrust our own belief.
Consider another classic experiment on conformity where the answer was more ambiguous. In the 1930s, Muzafer Sherif (1936) examined the influence of social pressure on people’s perception of the autokinetic effect, an optical illusion where a small light seems to move if the surrounding environment is completely dark (a stationary light in darkness will seem to move because there’s no reference point that people can use to keep track of it).
In the experiment, people were placed alone in a dark room, where a small light was presented 15 feet in front of them. The light flashed for two seconds, and people were asked to estimate how far it moved (even though it didn’t actually move). The estimates varied widely when people made those estimates alone.
But something interesting happened when people were put in groups of three to make their verbal estimate. When people announced their estimates in
In the experiment, seven people were seated in a row, and they were shown the same lines that you were shown at the beginning of the chapter. The setup and seating arrangement resembled the following:
Imagine that you were the person seated in the 6th position. Starting with the person seated in the 1st position, the experimenter asked each of you to verbally answer the “simple” question (i.e., which line among the Comparison Lines is equal to the Standard Line),
Before the person in the 1st position answers, you immediately recognize that B is the correct answer. You might even think that the researcher is crazy for asking such a simple question. That’s why when the 1st person answers “C”, you’re caught off guard. Oh well. You’re not too worried because you’re confident that the person in the 2nd position will recognize that B is the correct answer.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. When the 2nd person confirms “C”, your small worry quickly turns to panic. What do you do now? Did you miss something? You scrutinize the lines again trying to spot something that you might have missed, but time is running out. Before you have time to rethink your answer, people seated in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th position all answer with a resounding “C.” Uh-oh. It’s now your turn. What would you do in this situation? Would you stick with your original answer, B? According to the results of the experiment, you probably wouldn’t.
In the actual study, the person seated in the 6th position was the only true participant in the study; everyone else was a confederate hired by Asch. The confederates were instructed to give incorrect answers to put social pressure on the person seated in the 6th position, and that social pressure was more powerful than many researchers had estimated. Despite a painfully obvious answer, an astonishing 76 percent of people conformed and gave the same incorrect answer to the question. The next section will expand on this psychological force and explain two reasons why it’s so powerful.
WHY IS SOCIAL PRESSURE SO POWERFUL?
This section will describe the two main reasons why we succumb to social pressure: informational influence and normative influence.
Informational Influence. First, we sometimes conform to the beliefs and behavior of others because we come to believe that our own beliefs are incorrect. If the crowd’s opinion contradicts our own opinion, then we start to question the accuracy of our own belief, a tendency that becomes even stronger when the correct answer is ambiguous.
Unlike Asch’s experiment where the answer was obvious (which triggered normative influence, to be explained next), situations that don’t offer a clear and definitive answer will trigger informational influence because we come to distrust our own belief.
Consider another classic experiment on conformity where the answer was more ambiguous. In the 1930s, Muzafer Sherif (1936) examined the influence of social pressure on people’s perception of the autokinetic effect, an optical illusion where a small light seems to move if the surrounding environment is completely dark (a stationary light in darkness will seem to move because there’s no reference point that people can use to keep track of it).
In the experiment, people were placed alone in a dark room, where a small light was presented 15 feet in front of them. The light flashed for two seconds, and people were asked to estimate how far it moved (even though it didn’t actually move). The estimates varied widely when people made those estimates alone.
But something interesting happened when people were put in groups of three to make their verbal estimate. When people announced their estimates in
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