Influence: New and Expanded

How to use the principles

Relationship Cultivation: Reciprocation, liking and unity

Reducing Uncertainty: Social Proof and Authority

Motivating action: Consistency and Scarcity

Intro: Levers of Influence

Principle: Humans have fixed action pattern, they often involve intricate sequences of behavior. The behaviors composing them occur in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time. It is almost as if the patterns were installed as programs within the animals.

Principle: The trigger features that activate them can dupe us into running the right programs at the wrong time

Principle: We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects of each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then respond without thinking when one or another of the trigger features is present.

Principle: Psychologists have uncovered a number of mental shortcuts we employ in making our everyday judgments. Termed judgmental heuristics, these shortcuts operate in much the same fashion as the expensive = good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well most of the time but leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes.

(Practice)

Principle: A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor, we will be more successful if we provide a reason.

Principle: Expensive = good. Research shows that people who are unsure of an item’s quality often use this stereotype. Thus the vacationers, who wanted “good” jewelry, saw the turquoise pieces as decidedly more valuable and desirable when nothing about them was enhanced but the price. Price alone had become a trigger feature for quality, and a dramatic increase in price alone had led to a dramatic increase in sales among the quality-hungry buyers. (Note: on the flipside, non-expensive= not good)

Principle: There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, which affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. If the second item is fairly different from the first, we tend to see it as being more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a heavy object, we estimate the second object as being heavier than we would have estimated it if we had lifted it without first lifting the light one.

Chapter 2: Reciprocation

Principle: We should try to repay what others have provided for us.

Principle: The rule of reciprocation was so strong it simply overwhelmed the influence of a factor—liking for the requester—that normally affects the decision to comply.

Paradigm: Because there is a general distaste for those who take and make no effort to give in return, we will often go to great lengths to avoid being considered a freeloader

Practice: Although obligations extend into the future, their span is not unlimited. Especially for relatively small favors, the desire to repay seems to fade with time. But when gifts are of the truly notable and memorable sort, they can be remarkably long-lived.

Practice: Sometimes upon receiving a thank you, it is good to retain that (earned) influence by saying something such as, “Listen, if our positions were ever reversed, I know you’d do the same for me.”

Practice: Free samples are powerful marketing tools. The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule. In true jujitsu fashion, a promoter who provides free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent in a gift, while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.

Practice: Besides customizing a gift to a recipient’s preferences, customizing it to the recipient’s current needs can also supercharge the gift’s impact.

Principle: A person can trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor. It does not require us to have asked for what we have received in order to feel obligated to repay.

Paradigm: A responsibility to receive reduces our ability to choose those to whom we wish to be indebted and puts the power in the hands of others.

Practice: Think how many organizations used this principle by giving us keychains, greeting cards, etc from the mail to entice donations? 

Principle: A small initial favor can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a substantially larger return favor. Because, as we have already seen, the rule allows one person to choose the nature of the indebting first favor and the nature of the debt-canceling return favor, we could easily be manipulated into an unfair exchange by those who might wish to exploit the rule.

Paradigm: Moocher, taker, and ingrate are unsavory labels, to be scrupulously shunned. So undesirable are they that people will sometimes agree to an unequal exchange to dodge them.

Practice: rejection then retreat technique is so effective because it avtivates the perceptual contrast principle highlighted in the introduction

Note: The requester’s concession within the rejection-then-retreat technique caused targets not only to say yes more often but also to feel more responsible for having “dictated” the final agreement. Thus the uncanny ability of the rejection-then-retreat technique to make its targets meet their commitments becomes understandable: a person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.

Note: Even though, on average, they gave the most money to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final arrangement.

Defense

Practice: accept the offers of others but to accept the offers only for what they fundamentally are, not for what they are represented to be. If a person offers us a nice favor, we might well accept, recognizing that we have obligated ourselves to a return favor sometime in the future.

However, if the initial favor turns out to be a device, a trick, an artifice designed specifically to stimulate our compliance with a larger return favor, that is a different story. Our partner is not a benefactor but a profiteer, and it is here that we should respond to the action on precisely those terms. Once we have determined the initial offer was not a favor but a compliance tactic, we need only react to it accordingly to be free of its influence.

Chapter 2: Liking

Principle: We are more influenced by the people we liked, ie friends. 

Practice: Friendship doesn’t have to be present to be effective. The mere mention of a friend’s name more often than not is enough to induce influence. Arm your friends with the name of a friend who suggested I call on you

Principle: Attractive individuals are more persuasive than non attractive ones. They have a halo effect- a halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person dominates the way he or she is viewed in most other respects.

Paradigm: Attractive individuals are more likely able to attain help when in need and are more persuasive in changing the opinions of an audience

Principle: We like people who are like us

Practice: Another way requesters can manipulate similarity to increase liking and compliance is to claim that they have interests similar to ours.

Practice: Use the language of your audience. Using words, phrases, and slang common to the group will work even better. On the other hand, if you use words that your audience doesn’t use or doesn’t understand, you are creating a distance between you and giving them nothing to relate to.

Principle: We like people who complimented us

Practice: Give a compliment behind a deserving person’s back.

Practice: Find and give genuine compliments you want the recipient to live up to. People feel good about themselves after a compliment and proud of whatever trait or behavior produced the praise. Accordingly, one particularly beneficial form of sincere flattery would be to praise people when they’ve done a good thing we’d like them to continue doing. That way, they would be motivated to do more of the good thing in the future in order to live up to the admirable reputation we’ve given them.

Practice: I’ve recognized how the altercasting technique can be successfully combined with a genuine compliment. That is, rather than just assigning a role to another, such as protector or teacher, we could honestly praise another who exhibited a commendable trait such as helpfulness or conscientiousness. We could then expect to see more of the trait from the other in the future.

Principle: The more frequently we are exposed to certain pleasing objects/individuals, the more persuasive they will be. Note: becoming familiar with something through repeated contact doesn’t necessarily cause greater liking. In fact, continued exposure to a person or object under unpleasant conditions such as frustration, conflict, or competition leads to less liking.

Principle: Successful joint efforts toward common goals steadily bridged the rift between the two groups.

Practice: attempt to establish that we and they are working for the same goals; that we must “pull together” for mutual benefit; that they are, in essence, our teammates.

Practice: Good Cop/Bad Cop works as well as it does for several reasons: the fear of long incarceration is quickly instilled by Bad Cop’s threats; the perceptual contrast principle (see chapter 1) ensures that compared to the raving, venomous Bad Cop, the interrogator playing Good Cop seems like an especially reasonable and kind person; and because Good Cop has intervened repeatedly on the suspect’s behalf—has even spent his own money for a cup of coffee—the reciprocity rule pressures for a return favor. The main reason the technique is effective, though, is that it gives the suspect the idea that there is someone on his side, someone with his welfare in mind, someone working together with him, for him. In most situations, such a cooperator would be viewed very favorably, but in the deep trouble our robbery suspect Kenny finds himself, that person takes on the character of a savior. And from savior, it is but a short step to trusted father confessor.

Principle: There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news. The simple association is enough to stimulate our dislike. The opposite is also true. As for the positive associations, it is compliance professionals who teach the lesson. They are incessantly trying to connect themselves or their products with the things we like.

Paradigm: Merely communicating negative news affixes to the communicator a pair of devil’s horns that, in the eyes of recipients, apply to various other characteristics.

Practice: the presence of credit-card insignias in a room only facilitates spending by people who have had a positive history with credit cards.

Practice: According to the association principle, if we can surround ourselves with success we are connected with in even a superficial way (for example, place of residence), our public prestige should rise.

Defense: The time to call up the defense is when we feel ourselves liking the practitioner more than we should under the circumstances. By concentrating our attention on the effects rather than the causes, we can avoid the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many psychological influences on liking. Instead, we have to be sensitive to only one thing related to liking in our contacts with compliance practitioners: the feeling that we have come to like the practitioner more quickly or more deeply than we would have expected.

Paradigm: “In the forty-five minutes I’ve known this guy, have I come to like him more than I would have expected?”

Chapter 3: Social Proof

Principle: We view an action as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. The principle of social proof works best when the proof is provided by the actions of many other people.

Paradigm: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the idea to be correct.

Principle: Social proof works best in times of uncertainty. In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to accept the actions of others—because those actions reduce our uncertainty about what is correct behavior there.

Paradigm: In the process of trying to resolve our uncertainty by examining the reactions of other people, we are likely to overlook a subtle, but important fact: especially in an ambiguous situation, those people are probably examining the social evidence too. This tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance.

Practice- Breaking Prulalistic Ignorance: When they are confident of their responsibilities for intervening in a clear emergency, people are exceedingly responsive.Here’s how: 

• Use the word “Help” to show your need for emergency aid, and don’t worry about being wrong. Embarrassment in such a situation is a villain to be crushed.
• you must also remove their uncertainties about how that assistance should be provided and who should provide it.
• Be as precise as possible about your need for aid. Do not allow bystanders to come to their own conclusions because the principle of social proof and the consequent pluralistic-ignorance effect might well cause them to view your situation as a nonemergency.

Principle: the seeming appropriateness of an action is importantly influenced by the number of others performing it

Paradigm: the more people we see doing something, the more valid, feasible and socially accepted we will feel

Principle: The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us.

Paradigm: People will use the actions of others to decide how to behave, especially when they view those others as similar to themselves.

Practice: The effects of distinct regions were so large that the researchers questioned the concept and relevance of “national brands.” Marketing managers might want to consider decentralized strategies targeting separate regions to a greater extent than they currently do, as research indicates people are regionally similar on attitudes, values, and personality traits—probably due to contagion effects.

Principle: When we notice a change, we expect the change will likely continue in the same direction when it appears as a trend.

Paradigm: trends don’t just tell us where others’ behaviors have been and are now; we think they also tell us where others’ behaviors will be. Thus, trends give us access to a special and potent form of social proof—future social proof.

Practice: Rather than urging them away from the principle of social proof and toward one of the other principles, I ask if over a reasonable period of time, they have honest evidence of growing popularity. If yes, I recommend making that fact the central feature of their messaging—because, as their audiences will presume, such evidence will be an indicator of genuine worth and future popularity. If over that reasonable period of time, the answer is no, I ask them to rethink what they have to offer and, perhaps, change it significantly or step away from it altogether.15

Defense: Recommendations to reduce our susceptibility to faulty social proof include cultivating a sensitivity to counterfeit evidence of what similar others are doing and recognizing that the actions of similar others should not form the sole basis for our decisions.

Chapter 4: Authority

Principle: Information from a recognized authority can provide us a valuable shortcut for deciding how to act in a situation.

Paradigm: conforming to the dictates of authority figures has always had genuine practical advantages for us. From the start, these people (parents, teachers) knew more than we did, and we found taking their advice beneficial—partly because of their greater wisdom and partly because they controlled our rewards and punishments. As adults, the same benefits persist for the same reasons, though the authority figures are now employers, judges, and government leaders. Because their positions speak of greater access to information and power, it makes sense to comply with the wishes of properly constituted authorities. It makes so much sense that we often do so when it makes no sense at all.

Practice: There are three symbols of authority, they are: 

1. Titles: Titles are simultaneously the most difficult and the easiest symbols of authority to acquire. To earn a title normally takes years of work and achievement. Yet it is possible for somebody who has put in none of the effort to adopt the mere label and receive automatic deference.
   
2. Clothes: A second kind of authority symbol that can trigger our mechanical compliance is clothing. Though more tangible than a title, the cloak of authority is every bit as fakeable.
   
3. Trappings: Aside from its function in uniforms, clothing can symbolize another type of status. Finely styled and expensive clothes carry an aura of economic standing and position.

Methods and Outcomes of Becoming an Authority

1. Expertise: A credible authority possesses two distinct features in the minds of an audience: expertise and trustworthiness. Expertise creates a halo effect to those who posses it
   
2. Trustworthiness: Besides wanting our authorities to give us expert information, we want them to be trustworthy sources of the information. We want to believe they are offering their expert advice in an honest and impartial fashion—that is, attempting to depict reality accurately rather than to serve their self-interests.
   
   Practice: Rather than succumbing to the tendency to describe all the most favorable features of a case upfront and reserving mention of any drawbacks until the end of the presentation (or never), a communicator who references a weakness early on is seen as more honest.
   
   Practice: Online, there are three findings that can boost your trustworthiness: (1) Five stars are too good to be true (2) Negative reviews establish credibility (3) Verified buyers are gold as reviewers

Defense: 

• The first question to ask when confronted with an authority figure’s influence attempt is, Is this authority truly an expert? The question focuses our attention on two crucial pieces of information: the authority’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic at hand. By turning to the evidence for authority status in this simple way, we avoid the major pitfalls of automatic deference.
  
• Before submitting to authority influence, we should ask a second simple question: How truthful can I expect the expert to

Chapter 5: Scarcity

Principle: when a desirable item is rare or unavailable, consumers no longer base its fair price on perceived quality; instead, they base it on the item’s scarcity.

Paradigm: the scarcity principle trades on our weakness for shortcuts. The weakness is, as before, an enlightened one. We know that things that are difficult to get are typically better than those that are easy to get. As such, we can often use an item’s limited availability to help us quickly and correctly decide on its higher quality, which we don’t want to lose.

Paradigm: as opportunities become less available, we lose freedoms. And we hate to lose the freedoms we already have; what’s more this is principally true of important freedoms. 

Optimum Condition: 

• The recently reduced/restricted: Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight
• Competition or perceived competition to attain certain items
• We prefer to be seen as possessing features that make us special.

Practice: Limited Number

• The simplest manifestation would be to inform a customer that a certain product is in short supply that cannot be guaranteed to last long.
• The solution is to recognize that scarcity applies not only to the count of items but also to the traits or elements of the items. First, identify a feature of your product or service that is unique or so uncommon that it can’t be obtained elsewhere at the same price or at all. Then, market honestly on the basis of that feature and the attendant benefits that will be lost if it is missed.

Practice: Limited Time

• This tendency to want something more as time is fading is harnessed commercially by the “deadline” tactic, in which some official time limit is placed on the customer’s opportunity to get what the compliance professional is offering. As a result, people frequently find themselves acquiring what they don’t much favor simply because the time to do so is dwindling.
• Customers are often told that unless they make an immediate decision to buy, they will have to purchase the item at a higher price later or they won’t be able to purchase it at all.

Practice: Limited Freedom

• When increasing scarcity—or anything else—interferes with our prior access to some item, we will react against the interference by wanting and trying to possess the item more than we did before.
• Psychological reactance has caused us to want the item more; all we know is we want it. To make sense of our heightened desire for the item, we begin to assign it positive qualities.
• The tendency to want what is banned, and, therefore, presume it more worthwhile, is not confined to commodities such as laundry soap; it also extends to restrictions on information.
• Making an information exclusive has also proven to boost sales
• In a set of forty-two separate experiments, adding to a request the words “But you are free to decline/refuse/say no” or a similar phrase, such as “Of course, do as you wish,” significantly increased compliance.

Defense

• By learning to flag the experience of heightening arousal in a compliance situation, we can alert ourselves to the possibility of scarcity tactics there and to the need for caution.
• The joy is not in the experiencing of a scarce commodity but in the possessing of it. It is important that we not confuse the two. Whenever we confront scarcity pressures surrounding some item, we must also confront the question of what it is we want from the item. If the answer is that we want the thing for the social, economic, or psychological benefits of possessing something rare, then, fine; scarcity pressures will give us a good indication of how much we should want to pay for it—the less available it is, the more valuable to us it will be. However, often we don’t want a thing for the pure sake of owning it. We want it, instead, for its utility value; we want to eat it or drink it or touch it or hear it or drive it or otherwise use it. In such cases, it is vital to remember that scarce things do not taste or feel or sound or ride or work any better because of their limited availability.
• Should we find ourselves beset by scarcity pressures in a compliance situation, then, our best response would occur in a two-stage sequence. As soon as we feel the tide of emotional arousal that flows from scarcity influences, we should use it as a signal to stop short. Panicky, feverish reactions have no place in wise compliance decisions. We need to calm ourselves and regain a rational perspective. Once that is done, we can move to the second stage by asking ourselves why we want the item under consideration. If the answer is that we want it primarily for the purpose of owning it, then we should use its availability to help gauge how much we would want to spend for it. However, if the answer is that we want it primarily for its function (that is, we want something good to drive or drink or eat), then we must remember that the item under consideration will function equally well whether scarce or plentiful.

Chapter 6: Commitment

Principle: Once we make a choice or take a stand, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to think and behave consistently with that commitment.

Paradigm: Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable personality trait. The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match is seen as confused, two-faced, even mentally ill. On the other side, a high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is the heart of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty.

Paradigm: Stubborn consistency has its attractions. First, like most other forms of automatic responding, consistency offers a shortcut through the complexities of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us an appealing luxury: we don’t have to think hard about the issue anymore.

Paradigm: Secondly, sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize. Because it is a preprogrammed and mindless method of responding, automatic consistency can supply a safe hiding place from troubling realizations.

Practice: If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly aligned with the stand.

The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique.

Such an agreement can not only increase our compliance with very similar, much larger requests but also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger favors that are only remotely connected to the little favor we did earlier.

Further, once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit the new image.

Practice: There are certain conditions that should be present for commitments to be most effective in this way: they should be active, public, effortful, and freely chosen.

• Active: Our best evidence of people’s true feelings and beliefs comes less from their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what people are like look closely at their actions. People also use this evidence—their own behavior—to decide what they are like; it is a key source of information about their own beliefs, values, attitudes, and, crucially, what they want to do next.
• Active commitments give us the kind of information we use to shape our self-image, which then shapes our future actions, which solidify the new self-image.
• Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to adjust this image according to the way others perceive us.
• Public Eye: Whenever one takes a stand visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.
  
• The Effort Extra: the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater its ability to influence the attitudes and actions of the person who made it.
  
  Paradigm: “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”

Principle: Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressure.

Paradigm: There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner change—they “grow their own legs.” There is no need for the compliance professional to undertake a costly and continuing effort to reinforce the change; the pressure for consistency will take care of that. After people come to view themselves as public spirited, they automatically begin to see things differently.

Practice: After the decision has been made, the individual can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs. Car dealers frequently try to benefit from this process through a tactic they call “throwing a low-ball.”

Paradigm: There is an added advantage to commitment-based compliance procedures. Mere reminders of past commitments can spur individuals to act in accord with those earlier positions, stands, or actions. Bring the commitment back to top of mind, and the need for consistency takes over to align related responding once again.

Reminders of existing commitments possess yet another bonus. They not only restore the commitment but also appear to strengthen it by augmenting one’s related self-image.

Paradigm: we found that a preference for consistency increased with the years and that once beyond the age of fifty, people displayed the strongest inclination of all to remain consistent with their earlier commitments.

Paradigm: In individualistic nations, such as the United States and those of Western Europe, the focus is on the self, whereas, in more collectivistic societies, the focus is on the group. Consequently, individualists decide what they should do in a situation by looking primarily at their own histories, opinions, and choices rather than at those of their peers, and such a decision-making style causes them to be highly vulnerable to influence tactics that use as leverage what a person has previously said or done.

Defense: 

• The first signal is easy to recognize. It occurs right in the pit of our stomachs when we realize we are trapped into complying with a request we know we don’t want to perform. Whenever my stomach tells me I would be a sucker to comply with a request merely because doing so would be consistent with some prior commitment I was tricked into, I relay that message to the requester. I don’t try to deny the importance of consistency; I just point out the absurdity of foolish consistency.
• Psychological research indicates that we experience our feelings toward something a split second before we can intellectualize about it. I’d guess the message sent by the heart of hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train ourselves to be attentive, we should register the feeling slightly before our cognitive apparatus engages. Hear your heart of hearts 

Chapter 7: Unity

Principle: Those within the boundaries of “we” get more agreement, trust, help, liking, cooperation, emotional support, and forgiveness and are even judged as being more creative, moral, and humane.  People are inclined to say yes to someone they consider one of them. 

Paradigm:The experience of unity is not about simple similarities (although those can work, too, via the liking principle). It’s about identities, shared identities. It’s about tribe-like categories that individuals use to define themselves and their groups, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and family, as well as political and religious affiliations.

Paradigm: A key characteristic of these categories is that their members tend to feel “at one” with, merged with, one another.

Paradigm:
First, members of “we”-based groups favor the outcomes and welfare of fellow members over those of nonmembers—by a mile.

Second, “we”-group members are highly likely to use the preferences and actions of fellow members to guide their own, which is a tendency that ensures group solidarity.

Finally, these partisan urges to favor and follow have arisen, evolutionarily, as ways to advantage our “we” groups and, ultimately, ourselves.

Practices: 

• Deception that strengthens a “we”-group is viewed by members as morally superior to truth-telling that weakens their group.

• “All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality . . . and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he [or she] wins, you win.”
• By referencing shared feelings and time together or by simply using the pronouns we, our, and us—in such statements as “You know, we’ve been together for a long time, and we care for one another; I’d appreciate it if you’d do this for me”—only these persuaders obtained the change they desired. There’s a worthy question here: Why would the appeal end with the seemingly selfish request to “do this for me”—rather than with the collective request to “do this for us”?

• Practices: In the process, they’ve uncovered two main categories of factors that lead to a feeling of unity—those involving ways of belonging together and ways of acting together.

Belonging Together- Kinship

• From a genetic point of view, being in the same family—the same bloodline—is the ultimate form of self–other unity.
• Collectives that create a sense of “we”-ness among their members are characterized by the use of familial images and labels—such as “brothers,” “sisterhood,” “forefathers,” “motherland,” “ancestry,” “legacy,” “heritage,” and the like—which lead to an increased willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests for the welfare of the group.

• Belonging Together- Place
  – It is the perception of being of the same place as another, and its impact on human behavior can be arresting.

– For them, “we”-ness should reach beyond their immediate or extended family and apply to the human family as well. When parental figures treat guests like family, not guests, their children will apply we ness to human family

• Belonging Together- Localism
  – Because humans evolved from small but stable groupings of genetically related individuals, we have also evolved a tendency to favor and follow the people who, outside the home, live in proximity to us.
  
• Belonging Together- Region
  – Even being from the same general geographical region can lead to feelings of “we”-ness and its striking effects.

• We ness can also be manufactured
  
• Acting Together- Liking
  – When people act in unison, they not only see themselves as more alike but also evaluate one another more positively afterward. Their elevated likeness turns into elevated liking.
  
• Acting Together- Support
  – groups can promote unity, liking, and subsequent supportive behavior in a variety of situations by first arranging for synchronous responding.
  – Music: Music possesses rare coordinating power. Listeners can easily become aligned with one another along motoric, vocal, and emotional dimensions—a state of affairs that leads to familiar markers of unity such as self–other merging, social cohesion, and supportive conduct. 
• Music and jingles create emotional responses, where rational thought were not necessary adding catchy music and jingles can boost persuasiveness. Recipients with nonrational, hedonistic goals should be matched with messages containing nonrational elements such as musical accompaniment, whereas those with rational, pragmatic goals should be matched with messages containing rational elements such as facts.
• Repeated reciprocal exchange: the procedure of exchanging questions with increasing intimacy can better foster rapport. First, the items escalate in personal disclosiveness. When responding, participants increasingly open themselves to one another in a trusting way, representative of tightly bonded pairs. Second, and in keeping with the overarching theme of this section of the chapter, participants do so by acting together—that is, in a coordinated, back-and-forth fashion, making the interaction inherently and continuously synchronized.
• Suffering together: Throughout human history, shared pain has been a bonding agent, fusing identities into “we”-based attachments.
• Co creation: If co-creation causes at least a temporary merging of identities, then what applies to one partner also applies to the other, distributional logic notwithstanding.
• Asking for advice is a good advice: Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s. “When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.” I’d only add on the basis of scientific evidence that if we get that advice, we usually get that accomplice. And what better abettor to have on a project than someone in charge?
  
• Getting together- Fostering We-Ness to the Human Family

1. The first—providing long-term domicile residence for cross-group children—although admirable, is not feasible for most households. The requirements, costs, and commitments necessary for adoptive or foster parenthood are often too great. 
2. However, a second implication—providing family-like experiences in the home to cross-group children—is much more manageable. It involves a two-step process in which parents identify cross-group children in their kids’ classrooms, sports teams, or dance troupes and then invite one (with parental approval) to come to the house for a playdate or sleepover. Once there, the key in my view is not to afford the visitor guest status. 
3. The family’s children should see the visitor treated as one of them. If the kids have chores to do, the visitor should be assigned to help.
4. It strikes me as crucial that the visiting children not be favored—something fair-minded parents may be tempted to do to model their lack of prejudice.

• Getting together- kindling the feelings of unity 

1. Constituents of one group often justify prejudice toward, discrimination against, and mistreatment of another group by dehumanizing its members—denying them full possession of fundamental human feelings and qualities such as sympathy, forgiveness, refinement, morality, and altruism. These embittering beliefs can be countered with evidence of elemental human emotion that is experienced similarly. It becomes difficult to hold a dehumanized view of an out-group member who sheds tears with us at the same tragic scene or laughs with us at the same clever joke or becomes equally irate at the same government scandal.
2. A last variety of unity-producing connection worth highlighting involves the act of taking another’s perspective—of putting ourselves in another’s position to imagine what that person must be thinking or feeling or experiencing. In an interesting twist, knowing someone else has tried to take our perspective in an interaction leads us to greater perceived self–other overlap with our perspective-taker, along with more liking and goodwill; apparently, the consequences of perspective-taking can be mutual.

Defense
(1) recognize that its corrupt actors presume they are protected by “we”-groups’ willingness to excuse members who breach ethical rules, (2) announce to all concerned that such leniency will not be forthcoming in this particular “we”-group, and (3) establish a consequent no-tolerance policy of dismissal for proven abuses.

Chapter 8: Instant Influence

Principle: when we make a decision about someone or something, we don’t use all of the relevant available information. We use only a single, highly representative piece of the total. An isolated piece of information, even though it normally counsels correctly, can lead to clearly stupid mistakes—mistakes that, when exploited by clever others, leave us looking silly or worse.

Principle: We are likely to use these lone cues when we don’t have the inclination, time, energy, or cognitive resources to undertake a complete analysis of the situation. When rushed, stressed, uncertain, indifferent, distracted, or fatigued, we focus on less of the available information.

Paradigm: The use of these levers by practitioners is not necessarily exploitative. It only becomes so when the lever is not a natural feature of the situation but is fabricated by the practitioner. In order to retain the beneficial character of shortcut response, it is important to oppose such fabrication by all appropriate means.