Hints and tips: Be more persuasive – bonus Tip No 7

A Harvard Professor in the 70’s, called Ellen Langer, conducted an experiment, in which she got an actor to barge into a queue of people waiting to make photocopies.  In the first experiment he said “Excuse me, I have 5 pages, may I use the copier?” and 60% of the time he was successful.  When he added the following phrase “Because I need to make some copies”  he was allowed to do it 93% of the time.  Why?  Because we need a reason, even if it is a very poor one.  A reason allows us to give our permission to something (even when we are programmed to say “No”) as it enables us to better maintain our self-respect.  We don’t want confrontation, but neither do we wish to appear powerless.  This social device enables us to pretend that it was ok to accede to something which transgresses our social code. 

Pushing in is an alpha behaviour, and we have to choose whether we want to challenge this alpha claimant or not, effectively we are being offered a choice between fight and flight.  Fight is always risky; flight is damaging to our egos and status.  The device of a ‘reason’, the use of the word “because..” enables us to escape from the twin evils of flight or fight with our dignity intact.  So if you want to be more persuasive, give people a reason to go along.  This lack of challenge disarms people’s instinctive resistance, and is another application of Aikido.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2015 at 08:00 and is filed under Communication, Hints, Tips & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.