Consensus is perhaps one of the most powerful behavioural psychology tools that you can leverage to increase your influence and in particular ‘Influence Without Awareness’.
Instead of trying to influence people by yourself, it is often significantly more effective to highlight what many others are already doing, have said, or have already bought or done in the past.
You just have to look at fashion to see this psychology in action.
Many of us want to conform with norms of society and ‘fit in with what most people do’ and do ‘what should be done’, despite believing we are independent, unique, individual. If enough people are doing something we perceive this as acceptable and appropriate we also behave, act speak like this too. Psychologists have shown that people follow this path time and time again. When people are unsure of what to do, they look to others to influence their actions, reassure their behaviours, and then they follow suit accordingly. We do this in order adapt to the world around us, fit in and help us to survive in a world full of different personalities and types of people and so that we are not shunned as an outcast. Even the name ‘black sheep’ is synonymous with being different, and shunned .
We can observe consensus working in a subtle level when we are simply watching TV too. It’s common that we find ourselves laughing at jokes on sitcoms (which may not be all that funny) because a laughter track can be heard over the top of it. Similarly we may donate a handful of coins into a basket of coins being passed around a church simply because we see that some coins are already in the basket and we see other people are doing the same. All of these examples demonstrate how we adhere to social norms and consensus to fit in to society and follow other people’s behaviour to guide our own.
This is no more apparent than on social media. If we are looking for a particular product or service, we may turn to online reviews to guide our final decision as to whether we we buy the produce or invest in the service. If we find that one product or service has 100 likes and the other has 20 likes, then most people would be more influenced to buy the item that he greater number of people. However, if you then realised the item which had 20 likes had been endorsed by 20 of your friends you would be more swayed to buy that product or service instead, as we place a greater trust in them than some random reviewers we aren’t familiar with the background of. We are constantly searching for clues and cues to check the reliability and validity of the world around us. As a result, we are more naturally inclined to believe things that other people believe is true.
For the sake of completeness, it is also worth considering the so-called false consensus effect. If we endorse products or services simply because other people have done so, simply to preserve our own prestige and reputation, then this can create a form of naïve realism. The inevitable consequence of this would be a reduced sensitivity to the notion that the reality may be very different to how it is actually presented. Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable condition.
For consensus to be valid, each individual should contribute independently out of his or her experience and insight. Alongside social pressures and the ever increasing need to fit in to society which is maintained by the ever-pervasive world of Instagram and Facebook, this allows us to use consensus to influence others to a much greater level of success.
This is especially true when your brand, product or service has been endorsed by an authoritative source. This could come in the form of a person, the newspapers, TV or any respected publications or websites. If the source of this social proof is valid, reliable and credible then leveraging consensus into your influence strategy is very powerful indeed and ensures your influence is much more effective.
As another example, from a business and sales perspective, research has shown that introductions to new clients or customers are worth 15 times as much profit compared to a cold-call, again reiterating how powerful consensus is – in this case through a simple introduction.
Similarly, celebrities or people who we see as similar to ourselves or we aspire to be can massively influence our choices as we aspire to buy into their lifestyle too and believe that by dressing and behaving like them will give us that same level of happiness that they present to the world (whether it is true or not).
Consensus has also been a powerful principle of persuasion throughout history both intentionally and unintentionally. This has led to names such as The Werther Effect, mass shooting contagion, copycat crimes, or copycat suicides as becoming synonymous with the unintentional influence of widely publicised tragic events.
Take the phenomenon of copycat suicides as an example. When Marilyn Monroe committed suicide in August 1962, at the beginning of August, her death was followed by an increase of 200 more suicides than average for that same month. A sudden increase of emulation suicides after a widely publicised suicide is also known as the aforementioned Werther Effect
Copycat crime is another term synonymous with consensus. These crimes are usually inspired or modelled on a previous crimes and the term was first coined in 1916 due to the amount of crimes that were committed in a similar style to Jack the Ripper.
Finally, extensive media coverage of mass shootings has also influenced copycat behaviour. This has increased further as media coverage spills into every home through TV, phones or computers exposing more people to them than ever before as news spreads even quicker and further. This is particularly apparent in recent years. At the time in 1999, The Columbine School shooting was a one-off tragic event in history. However, since then we have seen many mimicked mass shootings. A study conducted in 2015 suggests that the Columbine shooters have inspired a minimum of 21 mimicked shootings and 53 attempted plans to commit such an act in the U.S. over a 15 year period.
Whilst consensus is generally leveraged to influence people to physically take action, it can be equally effective to persuade people not to take action. In 2010, a proactive election campaign was launched in Trinidad and Tobago to suppress certain voter demographics from going to the polls.
In this particular elections, there were 2 main political parties in contention for leadership.
One party were made up of predominantly black candidates and supporters, whilst the other was made up of predominantly Indian voters-to-be.
The People’s Partnership Coalition election campaign was focussed on targeting the youth, and in particular, first-time voters. Specifically, they wanted to increase the level of apathy from young adults and youths through a campaign which was both reactive and non-political because the youth did not care that much about politics.
The campaign team devised a campaign to focus it’s message around ‘joining a gang’, where the young voters-to-be can be part of a movement and do something cool, collectively. By focussing their campaign in this way, it was possible to create a consensus without being overly political. The campaign team created a ‘Do So!’ slogan which meant ‘Do so, don’t vote’. This was then fed anonymously online which the young embraced and help spread the message. This message partnered with a logo of crossed fists which indicated a stance of resistance against politics and voting ensured that this could equally be mimicked in person. This links back to an psychological principle mentioned in an earlier micro-masterclass suggesting that physiology equals psychology, meaning they will more loyal to the belief they had been fed.
This powerful message became a craze and the young voters-to-be were making viral YouTube videos and coming together as one. All of this began to snowball through the power of consensus. The campaign felt like it was an organic resistance or movement created by the youth, but, it had in fact been instigated and had originated from the outset by the People’s Partnership campaign team and their advisors. Whilst even the Indian youth had fun joining in with the campaign, when voting day finally arrived they refused to against their parent’s wishes. Instead of not voting as they had campaigned for, they in fact did so. As a result of this apathy and election campaign that encouraged large swathes of Trinidad and Tobago not to vote, this swung the election by 6% in favour of the People’s Partnership Coalition and resulted in Trinidad and Tobago’s inaugurating it’s first ever female Prime Minister.
This success was the result of an influential campaign encouraging apathy, and targeting the emotions of the youth, not to take action collectively. The power of consensus-driven-influence resulted in only 40% of 18-35 year olds voting!
Duncan Steven’s is an influence and effectiveness expert who travels the world sharing his knowledge and helping teams, leaders, businesses and companies become more effective and influential. He is regularly hired to deliver full day, and week long masterclasses as well as his highly sought after keynote presentations. He is in high demand to share his knowledge on his Effective Influence Model and Influence Without Awareness process. Learn more about hiring Duncan for your next event by following the link below:
