In this experiment as part of the ‘experiments series’ in which we decode and decipher the science of influence we look at how powerful influence can be in the field of human psychology. Here we are pushing the extremes of influence.
Some of these experiments have been featured in Duncan’s best selling Effective Influence book, available now on Amazon.
Let me pose a question:
Do you believe that the power of influence can be so powerful at times that you could be influenced into plunging your hand into a glass of acid?
YES / NO
The experiment:
If ever there was a question to pre-face an influence based experiment that makes you sit up and listen that would be it! Equally so, it could have been preceded by a question enquiring as to whether you believe in hypnosis or not, and if you do, whether you think you would be susceptible to it or ever experienced it?
Hypnosis is a human condition which involves a ‘hypnotist’ focussing the participants’ attention, reducing their peripheral awareness and the enhancing their capacity to respond to a suggestion or series of suggestions. In its most distilled form – hypnosis is a word given to enhanced levels of suggestibility (or influence) and is generally more successful on those who are already open to the power of suggestion.
To identify the most suggestable set of participants out of a group, hypnotists usually start any performance performing a series of ‘set pieces’. These performance pieces are where the body’s natural mechanism responds to the instruction or command given by ‘hypnotist’ under the guise of hypnosis.
Let’s try one of these set pieces now as an example. The first experiment is perhaps the most traditional in the arsenal of a hypnotist.
Stand or sit with your arms bent at 90 degrees and the palms of your hands together. Apply pressure to the palms of your hands and then interlace your fingers as though you are making a plea to god. Now, with you palms firmly pressed together, extend your two forefingers, keeping your palms together and other fingers and thumbs interlaced, but keep your fore fingers apart. Once you have done this focus all of your attention on the gap in between your two fore fingers and imagine a small magnet on the pad of your index finger. Next, imagine that these two magnets are pulling each other together and the more you notice it, the stronger it gets. The more you focus, the more the magnetic pull will become stronger and the more your fingers will move. The more they move, the closer your fingers will move together. Keep focussing on your fingers and in a few moments you will feel and see your your fingers come together.
If this is delivered with the correct authority, tonality and instruction, you will find that most people’s fingers will come together. This is predominantly based on human physiology, and should happen to most people who follow the instructions. More importantly it allows a hypnotist to eliminate those participants who this does not work with.
The participants eliminated are potentially not open to suggestion or willing to experience something new, and as a result will try and prevent the natural physiology of the body from working. It’s not seen as a failure as the perfumer or hypnotist will be performing to many people at once and this natural phenomenon will be experienced by most people.
That said, once you have eliminated these people, if you were then to perform a few other set pieces with less dependence on the physiology and more dependence on suggestion and influence, you will soon eliminate even more of the lesser suggestible participants. This will result in you being left with one participant who you will be able to ‘hypnotise’ into performing unbelievable acts with relative ease that even they didn’t think were possible. To everyone else they will believe this could have equally been them and your skill set can work on anyone.
Place the psychological principle of ‘social influence’ into the mix and the participant will start acting in ways that they think are appropriate for a hypnotised person to act and, voila, you have a credible, open subject to work with.
Whilst this may seem like a digression, I can assure you influence and suggestion are interconnected. In 1965 Martin Orne and Frederick Evans conducted an experiment in which they followed a similar process in order to find a particularly malleable subject.
Through the subsequent ‘hypnosis’ process, the participant picked up several different objects including a piece of chalk, a harmless reptile, a coin, a venomous snake and then finally plunged their hand into a beaker of acid all under the influence of ‘hypnosis’, suggestion and social compliance.
As a side note, the participant didn’t really plunge their hand into acid but wholly believed it was a vat of acid. For the purposes of health and safety, (and to act humanely) the researchers had switched out the acid for a beaker of water. It was a good thing they had too, because as soon as the researchers explained what had happened in the experiment, the participant then threw the acid at them.
After the experiment, the participant agreed that they would never do such a thing in their regular waking state and were amazed at their behaviour. The researchers agreed that there were a couple of reasons for the participant’s compliance with all of the instructions given to him.
Firstly, he had previously acknowledged that he was in a controlled, laboratory setting. With this knowledge in mind, it gave him the confidence that the researchers would not let any harm come to him. This can be described as the earlier mentioned, ‘social-influence’. Secondly, and perhaps the most relevant for the purpose of this experiment was that he was more inclined to behave in a certain way because he had initially been selected due to his general suggestibility and openness.
Whilst it could be argued that the participants were simply pretending to be hypnotised and behave in the way that they think a hypnotised person should, Orne and Evans continued with a second stage of the experiment, to eliminate this possibility. In this second stage of the experiment, they chose 6 participants who had failed the first round of ‘set-pieces’ or were deemed to be the least suggestible participants in the original group. They asked them to merely pretend to be hypnotised and first, pick up the non-venomous snake and then the venomous snake. All of the participants complied with both requests, in the same way as those who were actually ‘hypnotised’.
When, they too, were debriefed after the experiment and asked why they had followed both instructions without question, again, much as before, they believed that no harm would come to them because not only did the University ethics committee not allow them to be placed in dangerous situations, but if the researchers had contravened this rule, they had faith that the experiment was being conducted by competent and reliable scientists.
Decoding a deciphering the experiment to make us a better influencer.
To influence somebody to plunge their hand into a beaker of acid requires a specific environment for this to work. The famed British psychological illusionist elaborate more on this in his TV special ‘The Push’ in which he and his production team were able to influence a participant to push a man off the top of a building.
The process to arrive at any form of extreme behaviour is not always covered in behavioural psychology books but all forms of professional hypnotism follow this format. Perhaps the most powerful influencer our example is the researcher. The participants believe that no harm will come to them and as a result allow themselves to be influenced by placing their trust in an authoritative figure. This again demonstrates how powerful ‘authority’ is as a principle of persuasion.
Duncan Steven’s is the world’s leading influence expert. He decodes and deciphers influence experiments as well as conducts his own with his team. You can find out more by getting in touch below to have him speak at your next event. He can equally help you and your team navigate situations which require a new approach to influence.
