A vividly described outcome seems more likely than a blandly described outcome even if the vivid details have no real effect on probability of occurrence. The lizard, our automatic, nonconscious mental system, thinks in terms of vivid stereotypes and exemplars rather than statistics and percentages.
We worry a lot more about the possibility of being killed by a shark than the possibility of being killed by a falling airplane part. We think more about death by shark attack because it comes more easily to mind. Shark attacks get the attention of the press. The details are vivid and memorable. But, actually, being killed by a falling airplane part is 30 times more likely.
the typical woman who had fruit visible anywhere in her kitchen weighed 13 pounds less than the neighbor who didn’t. We can help control our weight by controlling the visibility of the options.
We can change behavior by changing circumstances instead of changing minds. If we make our preferred option more mentally available and make the other options less mentally available, our persuasion will be both more successful and easier to take.
We have all been told that actions speak louder than words. Certainly that’s the case for the lizard. Observers of a social scene pay close attention to the actions of participants, not their motivations. Research has shown that observers will judge the character of the participants on the basis of their actions alone, largely ignoring the constraints of the situation. Even if participants could hardly have acted any other way, observers will judge the participants by their actions. If a law student is assigned to defend a racist point of view, a point of view that observers know the law student does not hold, his defense of that point of view will still color observers’ opinion of him. This phenomenon is part of what psychologists call “the fundamental attribution error.”1
Parents instinctively use action to persuade toddlers to eat what’s good for them. Dealing with the lizard inside an adult is a lot like dealing with a toddler. Parents don’t try to explain to the toddler that the food is enjoyable. They know the toddler wouldn’t be convinced. Parents show the toddler that they themselves enjoy the food by eating some with obvious pleasure. They know that toddlers still won’t always be convinced, but they also know that action has a much better chance of persuading than explanation.
Mark Twain understood this.
Discouraged, Tom Sawyer sat down facing “the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence.” Aunt Polly wanted the fence whitewashed, and it looked to Tom like he had no way out. He wanted his friends to take over the job, but when he examined his pockets for toys and trash, he saw “not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom.”3 However, Tom had an inspiration. He would persuade his friends not with barter, but with action. Tom began to act as if he enjoyed whitewashing the fence and as if he took great pride in the finished appearance. Soon, rather than laughing at his predicament, Tom’s friends were lining up for a chance to take a turn at whitewashing.
“Behavior engulfs the field.” Toddlers don’t question their parents’ real motives for acting like they enjoy the food. Tom’s fictional friends didn’t question his real motives for acting like he enjoyed whitewashing the fence.
Action communicates with the lizard and the lizard ignores the motive behind the action.
Emotions
If we like an idea, a thing, or a person, we assume it possesses an abundance of positive qualities and a minimum of negative qualities, even if we don’t have good evidence one way or the other. Similarly, if we dislike an idea, thing, or person, we assume it possesses an abundance of negative qualities and a minimum of positive ones.6 As a result, we tend to see the world as much simpler and more coherent than it actually is. In the real world, ideas, things, and people tend to have both positive and negative qualities, but our feelings bias the way we perceive these qualities.
As Daniel Kahneman tells us, “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
The Preferences of Others
The power of the influence of others on our choices seems to lie deep in our evolutionary past. We, like many animals, copy.
A male’s mating success seems to depend not just on his own appearance and performance, but also on females copying each other. Females are more attracted to males that have other females close by.
At the human level as well, our automatic, nonconscious mental system uses the preferences of others to help us form our own preferences and even to help us evaluate how happy we are with a choice we have already made.
Proponents of laughter yoga claim all sorts of health benefits. The health benefits may or may not exist. But it is clear that the laughter of others can cause us to laugh even if we know that those others are not laughing at anything in particular.
One of the easiest ways to influence the behavior of others is to prominently act the way you would like them to act. Give your seat to an elderly person on the bus and others will also. Make it clear you are not drinking because you are driving and others are likely to join you in your abstinence. Don’t underestimate the urge to imitate.
We discovered that the impact of the preferences of others on us is particularly strong if we believe the number of people who feel that preference is growing. If we believe both that a lot of people recycle and that the number of people who recycle is growing, we are more likely to recycle ourselves. If we believe a lot of people recycle, but we believe the number of people who recycle is declining, we are not as motivated to recycle. It seems that the lizard responds to not just the preferences of others today, but what it senses the preferences of others are going to be tomorrow.
Why did the rational model of the mind so long dominate our thinking and our science even though our most important decisions, such as choice of spouse, or religion, or friends, are clearly not based on a rational consideration of pros and cons? Why do most definitions of persuasion speak of convincing by means of reasoned argument when most of our decisions are not reasoned decisions?
The rational model persists because decision-making feels rational.
Wilson describes the situation like this: “We often experience a thought followed by an action, and assume it was the thought that caused that action. In fact, a third variable, a nonconscious intention, might have produced both the conscious thought and the action.