In this micro-masterclass we look at Heuristics and how we can leverage this to create effective influence for use in negotiations.
In general, people prefer to avoid thinking about how they should react by using predictable shortcuts to guide their decisions. Advertisers take advantage of these pre-programmed human responses and using their advertising to elicit a response that is in-line with their advertising goal. They apply the fundamental principles of persuasion including reciprocation, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity and consistency in an attempt to influence our decisions.
In Kevin Dutton’s superb book ‘Flipnosois’ he gives an example of heuristics, by posing a similar question to the one below.
Imagine your friend has a just bought a lottery ticket. They have chosen numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 as their potentially winning numbers. Unfortunately, they fail to win, however, based on their ticket, which of the following winning sequences of numbers would give you the most amusement if they had been drawn out?
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
OR
4, 14, 22, 33, 40, 45
If you chose one over the other then this is heuristics at work. The lines of numbers have equal odds of coming out of the lottery machine regardless of their numerical sequence.
In his book, Kevin also poses another question:
Imagine you have received an application form from somebody who has ticked a box saying that they are 6 foot 5 inches. The closer you look; you can’t work out whether this second tick that refers to his profession is next to ‘basketball player’ or ‘banker’. Which one of the two is more likely?
If you said basketball player, then you have chosen the same answer as 78% of Cambridge undergraduates and fallen into the same heuristics trap. Like them, you are incorrect.
If we were to break it down, let’s say there are 100 basketball players and 5,000 bankers proportionately speaking in the number of applicants. Let’s say 80% of basketball players are 6 foot five or taller, that’s the equivalent of 80 players. In comparison, let’s take an extremely conservative 2% of bankers are 6 foot five or over. That equates to 100 bankers, thus the answer is more likely to be the bankers.
These two examples are of heuristics-in-action or otherwise known as ‘mental shortcuts’. In these situations, our brain takes the incoming information and based on probability and associations, makes a considered choice subconsciously.
With the brain making hundreds of decisions a minute, to conserve its power, we rely on these mental shortcuts (or heuristics) to help us make quicker decisions. This means that when the need comes to make an important decision to preserve our health and wellbeing, for example, the mind is a lot more agile and can react much faster.
People are subconsciously applying these heuristics to every day situations on a constant basis. However, this corner-cutting can also result in errors or misguided judgements of a situation.
In a world where we are being exposed to a greater amount of information at every minute of the day, through social media or online news, advertisers are having to think more creatively as to how to communicate their persuasive messages to us to hook us in or encourage to take action.
Research from a UK attention technology company, ‘Lumen research’ have found that only 4% of digital ads get more than 1 second of attention whilst only one fifth of all ads get looked at all. With these striking statistics to consider, it is no wonder why creative agencies are curating clickbait headlines to attract our attention. Clickbait headlines often include simple and compelling messages with curiosity hooks built in. They are designed to capture our attention and stand out from the rest of the ‘online noise’.
As people become more resistant to clickbait-style headers and adverts as their psychological defence mechanisms increase and as the number of websites on the World Wide Web gets larger, it’s becoming increasingly important to consider the creation of your content more carefully. From an engagement perspective, as technology progresses at an ever increasing rate and attention rates decline, readers, viewer’s, people who engage with online and offline content or prospective clients are relying more and more on heuristics or mental shortcuts to inform their decision making process. If we can take advantage of these heuristics and apply them to our own influence strategy then we can leverage increase success.
Persuasive messages can certainly be used to influence consumers into buying a particular product or service through the exploitation of social heuristics. In fact in 2003, researcher J. Sean McCleneghan studied two prominent women’s magazines. His research found that after studying a range of Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines that had been sold over a given period, he found that the word ‘sex’ appeared in more than 46% of the 186 headlines.
Not only that, but, 62% of the headlines he assessed, implied ‘sex’. These headline used phrases such as ‘erotic tastes’ ‘intimate affairs’ and more. Whilst it is neither subtle, sophisticated, nor refined, the old adage of ‘sex sells’ still rings true. Sex, when employed as a curiosity hook, is another example of a heuristic shortcut that both Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines exploited to sell their latest editions and with great success. Alongside sexuality, freedom and the word and connotations linked with opportunity also featured heavily in the headlines and content to encourage women to buy.
As well as sex, scare stories, fear, scarcity, time restrictions and excitement are other factors which generate a strong emotive response. These factors can also trigger mental shortcuts and are well worth considering when curating a persuasive ad or influencing people to change their actions or behaviours. If this consideration is applied to groups, teams, societies or larger organisations, this can trigger the consensus principle of persuasion and lead to stereotyped thinking – another powerful form of influence.
Duncan Stevens is an leading expert in the field of influence and human psychology. He is regularly hired by clients to help their teams and leader increase their influence and persuasive to become more effective. If you are interested in finding out more, navigate below and get in touch. Duncan can be hired as a keynote speaker or to deliver one of his part, full day or week long masterclasses.
