Reality Reconstruction

You Are Very Smart Because You Are Reading This

If you want to quit smoking, the best way is to tell everybody you know that you will quit this Friday. If you want to lose weight, the best way is to promise your close friends and relatives that you’ll be down to a certain weight by a certain time. If your boss wants to guarantee you’ll finish that report by next Wednesday, he’ll make you commit to it at the weekly meeting, so that everybody can hear.

The persuasive power of Commitment and Consistency is just as powerful as the other laws, but a bit more subtle. This law requires the persuader to elicit some kind of behavior or action from the person they are trying to persuade. It isn’t as passive as the other laws, yet it is just as powerful.

In his book “Influence, Science and Practice,” Dr. Cialdini demonstrated this beautifully. Several researchers canvassed few blocks in a residential neighborhood. They asked if they could place a small, non-controversial, discreet sign in one of their windows facing the street. They sign said something obvious like “be careful in the street” or something.

Then they canvassed the same neighborhood a few weeks later, only this time they asked people to put up a rather large, ugly sign in their front yard.

The people that had previously allowed a small sign in their windows were overwhelmingly accepting of a much larger, uglier sign. Those had rejected the small sign also rejected the big sign.

To demonstrate that they weren’t simply sorting the neighborhoods for people that liked signs, they first went through a neighborhood, and only asked to put up the big, ugly sign. Virtually everyone soundly rejected the idea.

In order to put up big signs, it helped significantly to find people willing to put up small signs. Once the small signs were up, and there proverbial foot was in the door, the larger signs were much more acceptable.

Some psychologists believe that this stems from the idea of cognitive dissonance. We don’t like truths that contradict what we believe about ourselves, so we tend to ignore them.

In the case of the small sign acceptors, they created an image of themselves as somebody who accepts a sign on their property.

Later, when the big sign request came in, in order to maintain their identity, they had to accept it.

Whenever we say or proclaim something in public, we are effectively making a statement about who we are and what we intend to do. When something happens in the future, we will tend to act in a way that is congruent with our previous statements.

Another powerful example.

Studies have been done on jury trials. When the defense and prosecutors have finished,the trial goes to jury. They retire to the jury room to work amongst themselves whether the defendant is guilty or innocent.

Frequently, they will take a “straw vote,” meaning they will get everybody’s gut instincts before they start to argue the particulars.

Cases where people state their belief in the defendant’s guilt or innocence out loud tend to last three times longer than when they write “guilty” or “not guilty” anonymously on a slip of paper.

When they commit their opinions for the other jurors to hear, they are much less likely to later change their opinion.

In “High Probability Selling,” by Jacques Werth, he demonstrates a particularly powerful sales method. The sales person is consistently asking the client “If this happens, what are you going to do?” Along the sales presentation.

For example, if the client says he wants to pay over sixty months, with no down payment, the sales person would say, “If I could get you a deal for nothing down and payable over sixty months, what would you do?”

Once the client says what he or she would do, they are effectively applying the law of Commitment and Consistency on themselves, and literally convincing themselves to buy the product.

This can be very powerful if you are a manager and would like to motivate your employees. Give them a positive label, and get their buy in. Once they publicly agree with that label,they will do everything they can to maintain it. Labels such as being creative, working together well as a team, or pushing to meet a deadline will be greatly enhanced by the application of this law of influence.

A powerful story (albeit it a bit old fashioned and having a slightly religious angle) illustrating this is the tale of Johnny Lingo. A wealthy, local trader in the Polynesian islands comes in one day to buy a wife. They are all shocked to find that not only has he chosen who is considered the ugliest girl on the island, he pays many many more cows that they think she’s worth. (While he is negotiating with her father, the other island women are bragging how many cows their husbands paid for them).

Fast forward a couple of years, and Mrs. Johnny Lingo is the most beautiful, gracious and noble women on the entire set of islands.

The moral of the story is to give people a positive imagine, and they will live up to it. If you give anybody a positive imagine, they will almost certainly agree with it, especially if there is physical proof (like eight cows in the transaction) and a public ceremony.

The take away from this to twofold.

If you want to improve yourself, or do something particular beneficial for yourself, tell as many people as you can. Tell them in positive terms what you will be doing, whether it be losing weight, getting a degree, passing a test or asking out a girl. This will have a powerful effect on your motivation. Be as specific as possible.

If you want to avoid committing to something you may later regret, be very careful about stating your intentions of the future. Reserve the right to withhold any commitments until you’ve given your conscious mind adequate time to think it over.

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