6 unethical Psychological tricks that should be illegal //Robert Cialdini - PRE - suasion

today I'm going to summarize another book on psychology called persuasion honestly the more books I read on psychology the more I get scared because it makes me realize how easy it is to manipulate someone the scariest part is that most of these tactics you will hear in this video are so hidden that your conscious mind can't catch them it happens subconsciously they are a bit like a magic pill you give it to someone before you talk to them and they start believing you or behaving differently they feel like they are in control and made a

conscious decision but they are not for example in an experiment they sent a very good looking guy a model type of guy to approach a random woman in the shopping mall and ask for their number on a date now giving your phone number to a complete stranger is a risky thing to do and of course the guy got a lot of no's but he got quite some yeses whenever he approached a woman in front of a particular store can you guess what type of store it was no it wasn't a perfume store or a chocolate

store it was a flower store if you look at it flowers are related to romance and it subconsciously impacted their behavior and caused them to give out their number after the experiment they asked the participants who gave their numbers if the store had anything to do with their decision all responded of course not I made a conscious decision to give my number in a similar experiment again a guy approached a woman on the street asking for a date this time researchers were testing how the results would change depending on the object the guy was carrying

in his hand at the time he approached the women there was one particular object that brought a lot of yeses can you guess what that object was well it was a guitar case let's look at another example from the business world there's an interesting experiment with an online furniture store researchers directed half of the buyers to a landing page that had soft clouds on the background image and half of the buyers were directed to a page that had pictures of coins people who had clouds as a background picture focused their attention on choosing Furniture based

on softness and comfort and the people who saw coins is the first thing when they visited the page focused on price and tried to find the cheapest options after the experiment when they were asked if the coins or clouds played a role in their decision all of them laughed and said no they said they are all independent and conscious people clouds or coins had absolutely no impact on them okay so far both of the experiments were related to some visual objects how about using words can we create the same effect but with words the answer

is yes and here's how A salesperson was failing to sell his 75 000 product whenever he would mention the price many clients would try to negotiate and when they couldn't get the lower price they wanted they would just walk away this way the salesperson would lose a lot of clients then he made a small change during his presentation before mentioning the price he would jokingly say well obviously I can't charge you a million dollars for this product whenever he mentioned this sentence almost no one tried to negotiate the price or complained that 75 000 was

a lot of money why because 75 000 seemed quite a small amount compared to a million dollars and yes I absolutely agree with you that jokingly mentioning a million dollars has nothing to do with the 75 000 product and it shouldn't change people's behavior but that's not the reality the reality is that subconsciously it impacted people's perception of the price in an experiment marketers wanted the customers to test a new energy drink to give them feedback many people didn't agree which is kind of understandable because the product was new and this could create resistance so

marketers tried another tactic this time before making the request they asked people if they considered themselves to be adventurous people many of them said yes they were adventurous and then when they were offered to try out the new energy drink they agreed I would like to give you an example that happened to me personally once I was meeting with a banker and somehow we ended up talking about the investment products they were offering he described a few products but none of them got my attention so I was half listening and half thinking about when I

was going to leave but then before describing the next product he said something that made me wake up lean forward and listen carefully he said the next product I'm going to talk about is the one that I would recommend even to my mother to invest in as soon as I heard this sentence I felt strong trust towards him and the product probably not on purpose but he activated one of the most powerful persuasion principles that Robert cialdini calls Unity Unity refers to a shared identity that both the influencer and the influency are part of the

idea that we share an identity with someone else causes us to want to say yes to them to a much greater extent than to someone who's outside that unit if a communicator can show that he or she belongs to the same group as we are before delivering the message then we are much more open to cooperating with that person or believing him or her let me give an example a big concern of investors has always been what happens to Buffett's firm Berkshire Hathaway when he's no longer in charge in a letter to shareholders regarding succession

plans Buffett wrote I will tell you what I would say to my family today if they asked me about berkshire's future with that language Buffett was highly convincing because he said he was advising readers in the same way he would advise a family member the most powerful form of unity is in the family people go to Great Lengths even risking their lives to help close relatives Robert shows you how you can use family driven Unity even when you are trying to influence people who aren't your own relatives in one of his college classes Robert wanted

students and their parents to fill out a questionnaire student compliance was always very high but parents typically responded at a far lower rate often below 20 percent one small tweak increased the parent response rate to 97 percent what was the simple tweak Robert said he would give the students an extra point on one test if their parents completed the survey one point on one test in a semester-long course is an inconsequential benefit it would be unlikely to have any impact at all on the student's final grade but by invoking the concept of helping a family

member he increased the response rate five-fold from poor to nearly perfect implications of these studies and examples are huge this means if I can shift your attention to let's say helpfulness fairness or romance before I deliver my message then at that moment you become a helpful fair or romantic person in other words by using the persuasion tactics I can change your identity in that particular situation I can change who you are I can change how you perceive yourself and I can change how you perceive me and my message this next experiment is pretty impressive and

will explain why we get influenced so easily in Belgium researchers brought a group of people together and showed them a picture of a household object but with a different background image they divided the people into three groups in the background picture of the first group there was a single person standing alone the second group's background picture had two people standing next to each other separately finally in the third group's background picture there were two people standing shoulder to shoulder now during the experiment researchers stood up and accidentally dropped several items on the floor in order

to find out who of these three groups would get down on their knees and help both from the first and second groups only 20 percent of people helped but the results were three times higher in the third group who had a background image of two people standing shoulder to shoulder now this isn't the most interesting part of the experiment the most interesting part is that the subjects of this experiment were only 18 month old children who had no logical reasoning and could barely talk this experiment proves how primitive and fundamental this process is and why

subconsciously every single one of us can easily be influenced regardless of the level of logic or intelligence for example research shows that if you simply put a picture of a thinking man in the corner of the screen while they do a task they become more analytical and make fewer mistakes or if you put the picture of a person winning a race then they produce more it positively affects their results now let's see in real life how we can apply what we learned from these experiments I have six practical tips for you but first I'd like

to give you one analogy that will summarize everything we covered so far and also make it very easy for you to understand the central lesson of these experiments imagine you are planting a seed if you want the seed to grow and bear fruits you need to do two things right number one choose a good quality seed number two prepare the soil right if the soil isn't prepared well then the seed isn't going to grow regardless of how good quality your seed is using this analogy we can say that the seed is the message you use

to convince others and this book and all the experiments and examples you have heard so far are about preparing the soil what you say to persuade is important but what you put in front of your message before it's delivered is sometimes more important in other words your seed is important but first you have to make sure that the soil is brought to the right condition to grow that seed you saw this yourself in all the experiments there was always a sentence a request or a picture that came before the message was delivered which completely changed

people's behavior all right let's move on to those six tips I mentioned earlier number one if you are giving away a free product to your clients you might consider giving the product to their family members instead of the clients themselves that can be more effective remember the experiment with students and parents and how one point increased their response rate number two let's say you have a product and you need your clients help to improve it instead of saying what is your feedback or what is your opinion on this product you can say what's your advice

on this product the difference seems small but the effect is quite big because the word advice creates Unity it creates a togetherness effect the word advice makes people take one step forward towards you and the word opinion or feedback makes them take one step backward away from you as you have probably already guessed this one is related to the concept of unity remember the Warren Buffett example and my meeting with the banker number three if you're planning to ask for a salary raise at work then do it at a time when you have received nice

feedback from customers or when you have achieved something great at work this is the time when the results of your great work are in the center of attention this tip is related to the energy drink experiment number four if you're a student and trying to convince other students to donate to some cause you can mention that you are also a student and that would automatically activate the unity principle and increase donations again this one is also related to the unity principle number five decorate your environment according to your goals until reading books like this one

I used to believe that it was stupid to write motivational phrases or words on office walls you've probably seen such phrases such as courage success winning quality customer first Etc it turns out that these things actually work and impact us subconsciously so think about what the things are that you're trying to achieve and how you can decorate your room to put you in that state of mind for example when my goal was to make ten thousand dollars per month I went on Amazon and bought a fake ten thousand dollar stack and put it on my

desk to remind me of my goal when I wanted to invest more I printed out a phrase that said make money work for you framed it as a picture and put it on my desk you can also do small things such as changing the background picture on your phone or computer you can listen to different types of music according to the type of work you're doing if the task requires you to be highly focused just Google music for focus and listen to it while working on that task for example before I start writing scripts such

as this one I always watch a video from my favorite YouTuber I like his videos because they're high quality and he can explain complex Topics in a very simple way just passively playing some of his videos before I start writing scripts puts me into the right mindset where I'm also focused on quality and simplicity number six bring the person to the right mindset before you deliver your message let me explain with an example once I wanted to convince one of my colleagues to do things differently in our project both of us knew that this change

would be great for the project however he simply didn't want to do it because it would mean extra work for him especially at the time we had a few other arguments in previous days so he was in a mindset where he would just disagree with whatever I suggested so after two failed attempts to convince him I tried a tactic from this book and it worked what did I do differently this time well before I opened the topic I said this I said do you remember three months ago you suggested a change that I disagreed with

but since it was for the benefit of the project I agreed to do it he said yes I said okay today thanks to that change you suggested we have great improvements in our project at the time I was against it but I agreed to what you suggested because it was best for the project it wasn't about you nor about me it was about what is best for the project now today I'm asking you for a change and we both know that it's the best thing for the project so what do you say we both put

our egos aside and implement the change I'm suggesting he thought a little bit and said yes and that was the end of the story the reason this worked was that I shifted his mindset from arguing to doing what was best for the project think about your life you probably have also had similar situations what are the things you can say or do before you deliver your message to bring the person to the right mindset so that he or she would be more receptive to your message do you need the person to be fair romantic honest

or cooperative Define what it is that you want find a sentence or thing that would put the person in that mindset and then deliver your message and of course do it ethically not just this tactic but all of them you might ask what will happen if I don't do it ethically for example what would happen if you decide to use them unethically in your company against your customers well your employees will see what you are doing and they will start using the same sneaky techniques against their own customer which is you so it's highly likely

to backfire one more thing always keep in mind that you are not immune to such tactics and can be easily influenced for example a friend or colleague might mention a small favor they did for you before they ask for a big favor mentioning the small favor will put you in a mindset where you will feel a strong urge to help them back helping others who helped us is deeply coded into our DNA and it's very hard to fight against it if the favor they ask is equal to the favor they did for us then all

is good but sometimes they use their small favor as bait to get you to agree to something much larger so in situations don't give an answer right away take your time tell them that you'll think about it and let them know your decision if you rush it you are highly likely to agree to their request and then regret it this has happened to me personally multiple times I have agreed to do things that I regretted later finally my goal with this video was number one to increase awareness about the weaknesses every single one of us

possesses so that we can protect ourselves and number two show you ways you can apply them ethically to your life job or your business I hope it was a useful video if you want to see similar videos to this one then check out the video you see on your screen have a great day