how to persuade more people to do what you want

6th April, 2011 - Posted by stellacollins - No Comments

Listening to the radio this morning there was an article about the census that caught my attention.

Apparently one quarter of the population have not completed their forms and there are going to be census collectors out knocking on doors to try to encourage people to complete them.

My attention was drawn to this article because of some of the work I’ve been reading about persuasion.  If one quarter of the people have not returned their census form then that means three quarters of us have.  Which statistic is more likely to make the remaining people send their form back?

Robert Cialdini, a world expert on persuasion, talks about the principle of ‘social proof’ being a really strong influencing factor on our behaviour. If we think most other people are doing something we are more inclined to behave like them, because that’s usually the best course of action.  Following the crowd, doing what’s normal, checking out the general consensus is, on the whole, a sensible way to behave.

Now at this point there is usually someone who leaps up and says ‘I don’t follow the crowd – I always like to do something different!’  Persuasion of groups of people isn’t about getting every single individual to follow but is about most people following.  So if you’re the odd one out that’s great – however, I expect even you are persuaded by the ‘crowd’ occasionally otherwise you’d never join a queue, never buy a book because it’s in the best seller list or never check out the film reviews before going to the cinema.

You can see social proof all around you every day and will have experienced it’s powerful pull yourself.

But often authorities and the media aren’t exploiting this power of social proof and the tendency of most of us to want to be ‘normal’ because they share statistics with us that highlight the less desired course of action that is being taken by a smaller group e.g. the census information I heard this morning.

In a study in Arizona the signs in a national park about not removing parts of the petrified forest were varied between those that had a negative social proof message ‘Many past visitors have removing the petrified wood from the park’ and a merely informational sign ‘Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park.’  There was also a control condition with no sign.  Marked pieces of wood were left around the park and monitored.  In the control condition 2.92% pieces of wood were stolen but in the negative social proof example 7.92% were stolen.  The information sign led to slightly less theft (1.67%) than the control condition.  What would have happened if the sign had been a positive social proof message e.g. ‘Most visitors to the park leave the wood for the enjoyment of others’

Research would seem to suggest that if this morning’s story had been ‘Three quarters of the population have already completed and returned their census forms’ they would get more census forms back than ‘One quarter of the population have not returned their forms’

How could you exploit this tendency of most of us to want to be like others?  Are you highlighting examples of the desired behaviour exhibited by most people or are you focusing on the less desirable behaviour of a minority?

What do the messages in your organisation suggest most people are influenced by?