Why would we do something that we anyway should do due to our good morals & values, just for the sole reason of getting validation from others doing the same thing? Let's get persuasive, ethically. Shall we?
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Welcome to our ETHICAL PERSUASION and LEADERSHIP Series.
I'm so thrilled to have you here. This small yet incredibly impactful series will create long-lasting positive shifts in your career, work life, and personal life, in any situation where your persuasion power is called for.
This series will also provide you with advice and strategies on Effective Leadership in the 21st Century and how to Create & Sustain a Movement. The sessions of this series will include 2-5 min long snippets or ideas on everyday Persuasion Tools that you can start using immediately to create your impacting the world.
So without further ado, let's do this.
There's an old joke that comedian Henry Youngman would tell about his previous night's hotel accommodation,
Now I sincerely hope you've never done that. :D
Dr. Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, Stanford University & University of California, and one of the most brilliant men I've read from, writes in his book.
"Over the last few years, however, the moral dilemma facing hotel guests has changed. These days, the question of whether to remove the towels from their room has been replaced by the question of whether or not to reuse the towels during the course of their stay."
With more & more hotels adopting environmental programs, travelers are being asked to reuse their towels to help conserve resources, save energy and reduce the amount of detergent-related pollutants released into the environment.
In most cases, this request comes in the form of a card placed in the guests' bathrooms.
Just for a second here, IMAGINE that I give YOU the task of designing a small message that goes on the card, such that the maximum number of guests reuse their towels.
What message would you write?
If I were to guess, it would go something like this.
"Dear Guest, You are requested to reuse your towels because we, as an organization, focus on environmental protection and want to conserve our precious resources."
And I'm sure that you would accompany this message with eye-catching environment-friendly pictures, ranging from rainbows to raindrops to rainforest ... to reindeer, even.
This persuasion strategy generally seems to be an effective one.
But what if I tell you there's a BETTER way!
Social psychologists, during their research, used the same message you would've written. But what they did differently was that they added a particular sentence to the message.
They added,
"Dear guest, we would like to inform you that a majority of other guests, others like yourself, who had previously stayed at the hotel, had re-used their towels at least once during their stay."
And guess what. This did the trick.
The results of the study showed a 33% increase in participation, as compared to the standard environment appeal.
How fascinating is that?
If you think about the implications of this small idea of the SOCIAL PROOF tendency, you will also enjoy an AHA moment.
I want to end with the fact that Human Psychology has been studied scientifically for over half a century now.
Yet the research on PERSUASION is something of a secret science, often lying dormant in the pages of academic journals.
Or, if it is out there in society, it's usually a factually incorrect and/or incomplete representation of a deeper notion.
But, don't you worry, I'm your messenger of wisdom & psychology based on SCIENCE & not fads.
BONUS TIP
But still, just for curiosity sake, think about it.
Why is it so?
Why don't people see the field of Psychology with the same lens as other social disciplines such as Economics, Political Science, or Public Policy?
One explanation could be that these other disciplines require learning from outsiders to achieve even a minimal level of competence.
On the other hand, people just assume that they already possess an intuitive understanding of Psychological principles because for them, their own unique experience from 1 set of eyeballs, is enough to come up with all the answers to Psychological Questions.
How naive would you call that?
As a result of this overconfidence, people are less likely to consult psychological research when making large consequential decisions in their lives.
Persuasion is a SCIENCE.
Anyone can learn the principles. Absolutely anyone!
And no it's not Manipulation.
If you are ethical intrinsically, then your Persuasion will be too.
If you're coming from a place of compassion, heart & a sense of SERVICE, then your Persuasion will be too.
It's just that plain SIMPLE.
Now, if you have some ethical persuasion skills, please do share. Write to me. Write in the comments section below. I would love to learn from you.
Talk to you next in the next post.
Adios.
Take care.
Until then, be JOYFUL, get busy SERVING Humanity, and become truly FULFILLED in the process.
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Prateek Singh Kumar
