Intense Influence

WARNING: Ramin’s Rambling (unstopped train of thought).

Wow, I’m amazed. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of the hundredth monkey effect? Guess I’m the 101st monkey!

I just found a book called “Influencer” and hit the “Buy Now” button right away. If you’ve read my “Letter to You” you will know why. This book is so close to the idea of Intense Influence - and I didn’t even know the book existed (in fact, it was published 6 days after I uploaded my “Letter To You”.) I can’t wait to grab a hold of it, but I watched the trailer and the Influencer interviews already, and I recommend you to do that too.

= = = Getting Off-Topic Here = = =

But it really makes me wonder: are ideas floating around in space? Rubert Sheldrake’s concept of the “morphic field”? While one of my dearest friends is a firm believer in Esther Hicks “Abraham teachings” it just never seemed plausible to me, and the logic twisted. Maybe I’m judging from a uneducated standpoint (since I only spent like 30 minutes with Esther Hicks’ book), but I looked at the outcome of it - what kind of decisions my friend made based on the conclusions he drew from reading the book. The Secret then brought it really mainstream, and there’s been a great discussion on “The Secret” from Kevin Hogan, Dave Lakhani, Blair Warren and Bob Beverly (you can still listen to the audio here - they basically bashed “The Secret”, cracked the fuzzy concepts with common sense like you crack an eggshell tapping it on the table).

So, are ideas just another form of undiscovered matter, kind of like a gas we haven’t been able to detect? (For another view on what ideas are check out this great TED Talk by Dan Dennet).

To me, the most convincing theory still is based on common sense. After all, humans are not THAT different. We all have the same basic neurologic equipment and we live on the same planet. There’s basically a huge “unification” going on of how we percieve the world (thanks to technology - the conclusions we draw from what we percieve might differ and of course there’s conflicts and culture clashes, but if you look at it from a historical perspective you find that our mental maps of the world are getting synchronized.

So ideas never come out of a vacuum - every idea is a response to other ideas. Intense Influence is basically a response to a world full influence attempts. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and it has only one purpose: influencing people. Since Vance Packard published “The Hidden Persuaders” in 1957 the sphere of influence of corporations has dramatically increased, and the knowledge about influence techniques is spreading more widely. So as we are becoming more aware of how we are being influenced - isn’t it natural that we stop complaining and whining about how “they” control us and start thinking: “Hey, if this works so well that they can influence millions of people on such a deep level - how can I use these techniques to influence myself to have a better life? How can I use the same strategies that they use to make me buy, or vote (or not vote) and to change my life for the better? How can I use persuasion techniques to raise my children better? How can I use persuasion tactics to better my relationship?”

I’m writing this in Germany - and Germany today really is a country full of whiners (economy, unemployment, politics, social security, health care, and on and on and on… in the end it boils down to: we don’t have enough). Which I think is very funny. Until a couple of weeks ago, Germany had a bigger economy than China. That’s 82,000,000 people having more money than 1,300,000,000 people. There’s a widespread illusion of powerlessness. It’s in the media, it’s in society, it’s in the schools. And lots of people see it and think: “Gee, what’s that all about? We live in an age of opportunities, we CAN make a difference - why don’t we DO it?!” That’s why I think you definetly should get Influencer - The Power To Change Anything. If it is what I hope it to be, it will be a wake-up call for many.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.
- W.E.B. Du Bois

Watch this great BBC documentary called “Century of The Self” at GoogleVideo for free. You’ll learn so much about mass persuasion and propaganda, how it came to be, what Freud’s got to do with it and how Bill Clinton used it to win elections (and you can think for yourself what the Bush administration used it for…)

Click here to watch “Century Of The Self” for free now.

Would you get on an airplane with a “blind autopilot”? An autopilot that hasn’t been programmed? Probably not.

But chances are the airplane of your life is on blind autopilot if you haven’t worked your habitudes recently.

What are habitudes? It’s something John Fogg came up with. Habitudes are habits of attitudes. Attitudes we regularly “have”. This is a really powerful concept, because attitudes are much more intense than thoughts or wishes. And attitudes we engage in regularly shape our personalities probably much stronger than anything else. Habits are the part of our personalities that work “on auto-pilot”.

Virginia Satir used to say that habits are mankinds strongest motivators, and Satir really understood human nature in many ways. Richard Bandler said the same. Habits are powerful. They seem kind of boring - there’s nothing spectacular or big about habits. They’re so “common” and “ordinary”, so “usual”. But they’re extremely powerful.

That’s why I like “habitudes” so much. They condense the whole concept in one simple word - and it’s a new word, and that encourages new thinking.

Enough theory now, how can we use this?
Simple. Take 10 minutes for this exercise (if that’s not “deep enough” for you, just repeat it later).

1. Browse your habitudes.
   We all have plenty of habitudes. Get an overall picture of your “habitude landscape”. Write your habitudes down (just keywords, you don’t need to explain them).
2. Pick one habitude that’s in your way.
   A counterproductive habitude that you’d be better off without.
3. Find better alternative.
   Think what habitude you want to have instead of that bad habitude.
4. Delete and paste.
   Delete the negative habitude and replace it with the positive habitude. Don’t just delete the negative habitude. Because then you’d just have this gaping hole in your habitude landscape that you’d stumble accross all the time. Take the negative out and put a positive in.

You can make it much more complex and difficult - but try this simple version first, and after you experience for yourself how powerful this is and you want to take it one step further, post your questions as a comment or email me.

Framing is such a powerful influence tactic, I want to dig a little deeper again here.

It really doesn’t matter how reasonable or educated you are. Medical doctors are probably some of the best-educated specialists in their field, yet even their decision making processes can be influenced by framing.

Scientific Study about Framing

20 years ago (1987) the New England Journal of Medicine published a study called “On the elicitation of preferences for alternative therapies”.

(You just gotta love these scientists for coming up with names like that…)

So what was the study about?

It was about cancer patients and what would be the best way to treat their cancer.

What the researches did was asking questions. They basically asked one group of medical specialists (Group A):

“How should lung cancer patients be treated? Radiation therapy or surgery? And by the way, patients who get surgery have a 65% chance of surviving after one year.”

About 75% responded surgery was the best choice.

Then they asked another group of medical specialists (Group B) the same question, and presented the same facts. Only, the framed the facts a little different:

“”How should lung cancer patients be treated? Radiation therapy or surgery? And by the way, patients who get surgery have a 35% chance of dying after one year.”

58% responded surgery was the best choice.

75% vs. 58%! For a major medical decision (we’re talking dead or alive her). Medical professionals after years of study and experience.
That’s intense, isn’t it?

In the next post on framing, I’m gonna let you in on a powerful framing exercise and lay out a nice step-by-step process to follow.

Read more:

• On the elicitation of preferences for alternative therapies, New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
• Summary of On the elicitation of preferences for alternative therapies

Ok - it’s a big trend now to let other people post in your own blog. I don’t want to jump on that bandwagon, I want to keep this blog authentic, that’s why I made an exception for master-persuader Kenrick Clevelands article on framing.

Author: Kenrick Cleveland

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” - Anais Nin

The ability to frame a situation is considered ’spin’ by politicians and media pundits. It’s the ability to situate your view on an issue to your advantage.

There’s the ‘Nuclear Reduction Treaty’ which on it’s surface sounds like a pretty good idea. But in the world of ’spin’ what something is called is not necessarily what’s inside and in a very Orwellian twist, the actual substance of this treaty is to prolong the nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Russia and stockpile more weapons. Reduction?

The ‘frame’ around this treaty sounded pretty darn good though.

This name game happens all the time in politics. The greatest, most well known example is ‘the Patriot Act’. It suggests freedom, liberty and the pursuit of justice. And yet, it’s exactly the opposite of all of that, limiting freedoms, diminishing freedoms and wildly unpatriotic.

Another framing example is the abortion debate. On one side there are the ‘pro-lifers’. Their frame is to show photographs of aborted babies, villainize the other side as ‘baby killers’. On the other side are the ‘pro-choice’ advocates who say that a fetus starts out not as an ‘unborn baby’ but simply a cluster of cells that has the potential to grow into a fetus and then a baby. They frame the ‘pro lifers’ as ‘anti choice’ and point out the irony that while many ‘pro lifers’ tend to anti abortion, they are also pro death penalty.

In the area of framing, the anti-abortionists have framed the debate with more intensity showing graphic images to bring their point home.

In persuasion, framing is one of, if not the most important tool we have.

How can frames be used in our businesses? Say, for example, you had a difficult client or a very wealthy prospect who made you feel socially awkward and shy.

How about turning the situation into an opportunity to use your persuasion skills? Walk into the meeting or situation with the intention of it being a learning experience. Frame the interaction in terms of using your persuasion skills, not in terms of their wealth or difficulty.

Here’s an example of the power of frames (quite literally). Recently my wife and I were looking at buying a painting by the artist Thomas Kincaid. He’s called ‘the painter of light’ and his original painting go directly to museums and very wealthy collectors. But he makes lithographs available which are hard to distinguish from the actual paintings.

The woman who showed us the print first showed it without a frame, then she gave us two examples of the painting within frames. The first was simple and smaller. No big deal. The second frame was ornate and beautiful and it made a huge difference.

The insignificant frame, the much less expensive one, nearly ruined the beauty of the painting. It was meaningless. And it struck me right there, the importance of frames. I thought about what an intense experience it is for people to buy into our frames.

This week: think about the frames you’ve established for yourself and how they may be ready to be updated.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/framing-baby-killers-223249.html

About the Author:
Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

So first Kenrick talked about “spin” (the ability to frame situations). If you want to know more about the art of spin, just look “Wag the Dog” (a great movie with Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman). Or alternatively, just read Chapter Four on Public Relations from Douglas Rushkoffs book “Coercion: Why We Listen To What ‘They’ Say”.

Have you noticed how Kenrick illustrated the art of framing on the large scale (politics, society) and then narrowed it down to yourself, how to apply that skill to your own specific situation?

Think about why he structured it the way he did.

Hollywood has perfected the art of storytelling.
Now more people start to focus not so much on how the stories are being told, but what the stories are teaching.

A recent study from the University of Southern California examined the effects of watching the popular TV show “ER” (Emergency Room). They specially looked at three episodes that had “embedded lessons” about teen obesity, hypertension and healthy eating habits in them.

The storyline was three episodes long and illustrated the case of an African-American teen suffering from hypertension. Advice was given to eat more fruits and vegetables and get more exercise.

Did this storyline influence the viewers behaviour? According to the studies yes. It did so to a very minor degree, the behaviour and attitude change was a small positive change.

But think about it: 3 episodes!
If just watching 3 episodes of a TV show could create a MEASURABLE change in attitude and behaviour, that’s amazing! Remember that people watched this TV show for one reason only: entertainment. There was no “health-agenda” in the viewers’ minds. It’s a way of sugarcoating health-education and influencing people.

Details about the study
The researchers measured the effects of the story by using three separate sets of data. One of them provided data on a sample of 807 prime time TV viewers, taken both before and after the three episodes aired. They measured whether their self reported behavior, nutritional habits, knowledge as well as practices were influenced by the storyline.

Those who watched the ER episodes were 65% more likely to report a positive change. They also showed that the storyline had at least some impact. Those who watched ER had a 5% higher rate of knowledge concerning nutrition facts than those who did not watch.

Thomas W. Valente who conducted the study said: “This study demonstrates the importance of interventions and programs targeted at a population level. We have so many public heath issues to deal with, we can’t restrict ourselves to any one strategy. We have to do everything and anything we can to help people improve their health.”

Valente goes on: “People get their information from entertainment. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s a small piece of the puzzle, but we’d be silly to ignore its potential.”

Thomas W. Valente is a Ph.D. and associate professor of preventive medicine and member of the IPR (Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Research) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
He also worked on a similar study before, where he examined the effects on viewers of TV shows that tell stories about breast cancer.

I like what Bill Tancer wrote for Time magazine:

“Years ago, I watched several episodes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? But I’m still waiting for someone to show me the money.”

I think the point is pretty clear, and while certain people have used the study to say: “TV is good for your health” (hrrm…) keep in mind that watching TV is not a healthy activity. However, since most people do it anyway, it’s surely a good idea to use the persuasive power TV has on us. Advertisers do it all the time. They influence our behaviour and thoughts. But they don’t do it for OUR good, but for the good of their profits, to sell more products. Why isn’t that power used more often to the benefit of the people who actually watch TV?

Read more:

• Watch Television, Lose Weight? (Time.com)
• ER Episode Impacts Viewers’ Health Knowledge And Behavior
• Impact of health messages in entertainment (news-medical.net)
• ER Episode Impacts Viewers’ Health Knowledge and Behavior (Newswise)
• ‘ER’ - it does a body good (azcentral.com)
  
• The original study (abstract): Evaluating a Minor Storyline on ER About Teen Obesity, Hypertension, and 5 A Day
• Get Healthier with ‘ER’ (BuddyTV.com)

Related:

• Motivating Television Viewers to Become Organ Donors (gwumc.edu)
• Genetic determinants of medical decisions on primetime television: An evaluation of content and impact of breast cancer storylines on two popular medical dramas; Valente, T.W., Hether, H. J., Huang, G., & Beck, V. (November, 2006)

I’m a strong believer in the power of stories. And I think the world needs better stories.  I am not alone.

Leonardo DiCaprio recently produced his movie “The 11th Hour - Turn Mankinds Darkest Hour Into Its Finest”. I strongly suggest you go and watch the trailer now.

I also suggest you click on “Enter Now” and then on “What can I do?”. And then do just one of those things, it WILL make a difference.

Powerful narratives create powerful actions, powerful ideas. “An Inconvient Truth” from Al Gore was just the beginning.

If you’ve been around the persuasion block for some time, you know this by now (and really don’t need to read this post).

If you haven’t you HAVE to know this now, it’s part of the ABC of influence.

People are more motivated by fear of loss than by desire to gain. This is true for the majority of people.

Fear of loss is one of the strongest emotional triggers, because it is a threat to our posessions. Marketers play that card regularly, when they limit the supply of something or set a time limit.

Robert Cialdini, author of the ground-breaking book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” has quoted an energy audit study. Researches went door to door and recommended housholders to insulate their homes.

Half of the householders got the following “pitch”: If you insulate your home, you will get an extra 50 cent per day.

The other half of the householders got a slightly different pitch: If you don’t insulate your home, you will loose 50 cent per day.

Keep in mind, both of these were the same offers. But there was a 150% difference in response! The people who were confronted with the chance of loss were 150% more likely to have their homes isolated than the people who were presented the option of winning 50 cent a day.

(You can listen to this Robert Cialdini speech at Princeton University, or just download the text-transcript).

If you know something about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) you are aware of meta-programs, and you know already about “Moving Towards vs. Moving Away from”. These are primary motivation strategies.

Tony Robbins said “People will do more to avoid pain than they will do to gain pleasure.”

Many times when people try to influence others, they do so by telling them all the great stuff - all the pleasures they will gain. But is that enough? Sometimes yes. But oftentimes no. The most powerful persuadors in the in the world also make use of that avoiding pain-pattern.

Think about the church. If you behave according to the rules, you’ll go to heaven (infinite pleasure). If you behave wrong, you’ll go to hell (infinite pain).

Just think about politics. Utilizing fear is one of the oldest, but still most powerful instruments in the hands of politicians. They don’t just say: “Vote for my party and let’s make this country a better country.” They also say: “Vote for me, because I will protect you from nuclear terrorist attacks.” They say: “Vote for me because this country is at the brink of a depression.” They say: “Vote for me because the enemy is trying to invade.”

Moving towards = dangling a carrot in front of the donkey

Moving away from = whipping a horse to keep it going.

Fear of loss is a moving away from strategy (losing something is pain, you move away from pain).

Think about the car-salesman. When you picked your car, are negotiationg about the price, chances are pretty good that he will at some point in the negotiation process have some bad news for you: another prospect wants to buy the exact same car. If you are sincerely interested in that car, that puts pressure on you to act more impulsively, because you risk loosing something that you want.

Seth Godin also wrote a both funny and insightful post called Fear of loss, desire for gain