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Discover the exciting latest breakthroughs in brain science that can unlock your full potential. This engaging journey is packed with clear explanations and practical, actionable tips that can truly transform your life for better.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:00:02] Would you like to know the secrets to persuasion? Hi, my name is Dr. Marc Milstein, and welcome to The Best of Your Brain podcast. I am very excited today to talk about our topic, which is persuasion, and how our insights into how the brain works can really provide us with some really powerful techniques to persuade people. So whether you want someone in your life to do the dishes, maybe you want to motivate your team or persuade them or do a really good job on that sales call. Or maybe you want to have healthier habits, walk more, quit smoking, eat healthier. Or what about persuasion used in not a good way? What about con artists, or scams? These phishing scams have gotten really complex. They're very sophisticated. It's no longer about the Nigerian prince that wants to send us money, and so how do we become aware of these techniques that are often utilized to persuade us to make bad decisions, because our awareness of them can be very powerful. So we're also going to talk about AI and how AI can tap into aspects of how our brain works to persuade us as well. Let's talk about how we use persuasion for good and also things we want to be aware of.
[00:01:11] Now, before we get to the take home tips for today, I just want to talk about or define what persuasion is. It's interesting, because persuasion isn't forcing somebody to do something. When you persuade somebody, you're actually flipping a switch in their brain so that they are feeling like this is the right decision, this is the right move for them. It's not forcing or coercing. Let's talk about one of the most powerful companies in terms of persuasion. They are masters of persuasion, and that is Costco. If you go into Costco, you notice that they're giving a lot of samples, and that is using the technique called 'reciprocity'. Our brain is programmed in a way that if we get something, we often want to give something back. And you're walking around Costco, you sample the cheese or some other sample, and you just feel this urge to buy something. That's really this principle of reciprocity. But we can take it a step further.
[00:02:11] There was this really fascinating study that was done. It's called the mint study. And what they looked at was the moment when the bill came, which is kind of the worst moment of the meal. It's the most painful moment. But they asked what happens in certain situations. So you might have had this experience where you get the bill and you open it up and there's a mint there. And what they asked is that if the simple act of reciprocity, of giving someone a mint, does that increase the amount of tips that somebody will give to their waiter or waitress? Well, what they found was that if they gave this mint, people would tip about 3% more.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:02:47] Now then they looked at what if somebody was given two mints? If there were two mints, the tips increased 14%. And then there was a third category. And the idea on the third category was that, well, you would get the bill, you would open it up and you'd have a mint there. And then about a minute or two later, the waiter or the waitress would come over to you and say, "You were so great to wait on. You were such a pleasure. I'm actually going to give you a second mint". And what they found was when this strategy was utilized, the tips went from 14% at two mints, but in this case where there was the two mints, but that little separation, that little personalization, it went up to 21%. A sizable jump. And what we see from this is that, well, it's the same number of mints in the second category, two mints. But adding this personalization, this sincerity, this intention really is powerful. And if we want to utilize this idea of reciprocity, making it personalized so that the person feels like, "Oh, this is really directed at me specifically", can really have an impact on how people react and how they're persuaded.
[00:03:56] Now, we can also go deeper into this. There's parts of our brain that are involved in emotional processing. And the idea in this experiment was, does our emotional state have an impact on how we are persuaded in a moment? And masters of persuasion are really advertisers. They know this research and they have it down. And you might have had this experience where you're watching TV or YouTube and a commercial comes on, and you might notice that commercials tend to be in 1 or 2 categories. Category one is: you're special. There's nobody like you. You are an individual and we need to celebrate that. Category two, the other type of commercial is often: be like everybody else, join the crowd. Over a million people served. Just be like everybody else. Everyone is doing it. And these are actually two completely opposite messages, but they're utilized in persuasion. So the scientists or the researchers took this a step further, and they asked the question, do people's emotional states impact whether or not somebody is going to be persuaded? So they took a group of people. They divided them into two groups, and one group was watching romantic comedies like When Harry met Sally or The Notebook. And the other group was watching things that were really scary. So what's scary? Well, they had them watch horror movies or the news. Nothing scarier than the news. And what they found was that if people were watching something that was romantic, they were much more likely to be persuaded if the advertisement had the messaging of ‘be different, be unique. You are unique. You're special. There's nobody like you’.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:05:32] And if you think about it, if you're dating or you're feeling romantic, you want to stand out from the crowd. You don't want to blend in. But if the people were watching something that was scary, and it was something that was like a horror movie or the scary news, people were much more responsive to an ad that was about ‘be like everybody else. Join the crowd’. And if you think about it, well, if you're running from a tiger, the last thing you want to do is stand out. You want to blend in with the crowd. You want to be a bit more anonymous, and we think about how our brain is programmed in a way to respond to different messages of persuasion based upon our emotional state. Advertisers utilize this. They will pair their ad or the ad messaging based upon what we're watching. Politicians do this as well. We'll often notice that they will use certain types of imagery, maybe scaring us, talking about things in fearful ways to try to push us to make certain voting decisions. So just being aware of this can be really important when we're realizing that sometimes we can be manipulated to make certain decisions or to be persuaded by utilizing or changing our emotional state.
[00:06:41] Now, a key part of really understanding how to utilize persuasion is delving a little bit deeper into what is happening in the brain. And we talked a little bit about this idea of the 'persuasion switch'. And there's a part of your brain called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and it's basically the part of your brain right here above your eyebrows. And it's this part of the brain that becomes activated when somebody is being persuaded, when they feel like they're making the right decision for them. So the question really becomes, how do we activate this part of the brain? How do we make somebody feel like they're making a good decision, especially when we're trying to have them make a good decision, push them in the way of making some good habits or good changes or making some good decisions. Now, what we realize is that the same part of the brain that becomes activated when we're feeling persuaded is the same part of the brain that is activated when we feel heard, when we feel like somebody gets us, when we're building trust and empathy. And there's this part of the brain called our mirror system. And if you think about it, if you go to a sporting event, there's thousands of people there. Why do we care? Why do we care about these people on the field playing the sport? Well, there's this mirror system, and the mirror system is such that if you watch somebody hit a home run or have the game winning shot, your brain becomes activated as if you're the one doing it, too. See, our brains are connected in a way that we feel and experience things that we're watching other people do.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:08:11] If you go to the movies, you see somebody on the big screen, you see the close up of their facial expression. You don't even know this person. Most likely they're not even a real person. They're a character. But you see that close up of their face crying, and we actually mimic that expression subtly. And then we have that feeling, that emotion. And what we realize is that essentially what's happening is that mimicry, facial expressions, being connected to people, builds trust, builds empathy, but also allows people to be persuaded. They did this experiment where people walked into a store and they didn't know this, but the salespeople, there were two of them, and one of them was instructed to subtly mimic the people looking to buy something. Like if you laughed, they would laugh. If you smiled, they would smile. They would kind of talk like you. And then the other salesperson was told not to do this, just act like themselves. And at the end of the shopping experience, they asked people, which salesperson did you like better? And overwhelmingly, people said, you know, I really liked that specific one. And that person was the one that was mimicking people. They weren't aware that they were being mimicked, but they're like, there's something about that person I really liked. And those people actually bought more. They spent more in the store.
[00:09:20] And what we realized is that there's something about this connection, this face to face connection that builds trust, empathy that we're talking about also allows people to be persuaded. And there's something about this connection with our facial expressions that's really powerful. Have you ever had that experience where you're talking to somebody and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm listening" and they're just on their phone looking down. You get angry, you get upset, because that mirror system is disrupted. We want face to face contact. We crave it. And if we're getting it, we really feel protected. We feel like somebody gets us. They understand us. Again, that's the step to persuasion. That's a key part in the process. Have you ever got a text message from somebody and you write them a question, you say, "Do you want to meet me here? You want to go to this event or this party?" And they write back either yes or no. They answered one of those two ways. And you look at it, you're like, oh, wow, are they upset? What's wrong? I don't understand, what did I do? And then they send the emoji, the facial expression. Even if it's a cartoon, it somehow makes sense to us. We really understand facial expressions more than we understand words. It just connects in our brain. And what we realize is that if we look at people like con artists. In movies, they're often meant to look like they're fast talking, they're talking circles around people, and they're making people's heads spin so they can't make a good decision.
Dr. Marc Milstein: [00:10:40] What we see in reality is that really effective con artists are really good listeners. They actually allow people to feel heard. See, we don't have to solve everyone's problems. But if people feel heard or listened to, they start to open up. They start to be persuaded. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. So just being aware of this idea can be really powerful and really important. Now, we also want to be aware of the fact that AI is using these techniques as well. Have you gone to ChatGPT lately? You type in a question. It responds by saying, "I hear you, I understand, I can understand how you might feel that way". And we realize that this can be good or it can be quite dangerous because an AI can deliver messages that can be very persuasive. Actually, there's a study recently that found that when you call and you talk to a computerized voice, if that voice sounds like you, you're more likely to respond in a positive manner. And think about technology as it moves forward. There are ways in which the voice that you're talking to, the computerized voice, might mimic you and sound like you based upon how you're talking. So again, just being aware of this can be really powerful and important.
[00:11:54] We're going to wrap up today with the big brain trick for persuasion. And it's this idea that there's ways in which we can communicate that can help people be persuaded. And you might have noticed that if you try to tell somebody to do something or tell someone what to do, they get upset. They get angry. People do not want to be told what to do, and yet people are telling people what to do all the time. If people tell you what to do, you might get defensive and angry. That's just how our brain works. We do not want to be told what to do. But again, there's insights that we have in how our brain works to get past that, and there's two key steps. The first step is that if you want somebody to do something, let's say you want them to quit smoking or eat better or get a certain number of steps during the day for exercise, do not bring up that topic. That's step one. Instead, talk about something that the person really loves. Something that the person is very meaningful to them. Could be their dog, their cat could be their religion, could be just something they really value in this world, could be music and get them talking about that subject and do not bring up the thing you want them to change.
[00:12:58] Now, in fact, there was a study done. It's a famous study in this field called the sunscreen study. Now people know that sunscreen is good for them, but a lot of people don't use it. So they did this study and they took people and they divided them into two groups and one group before they talked to them about sunscreen. They just did this technique. They just said, let's talk about your dog or your cat. They found the subjects that people really cared about for that individual and they talked about it for a couple of minutes. The other group, they just had neutral conversation for a few minutes, like the weather, things like that. Then they hit them with the message of, did you know that sunscreen is really important for lowering risks for things like skin cancer damage from UV radiation? Now, the people who did that, what we call priming moment, priming the brain with thinking about things that they care about, those people over the next several weeks use sunscreen. The people who just had the neutral conversation, almost none of them use sunscreen. What we believe is happening is that the brain really needs to be primed to be opened up, to be receptive to certain messages. And if we just start talking to people about what we want them to change, they're defensive. They close up. So opening the brain to be receptive is critically important. The second part is when it's time to bring up the action that you want them to take, the change that you want them to make, what you want to persuade them to do, form it in a question. So if you say to somebody, "Have you considered quitting smoking? Because that is something we know is really good for you", or "Have you considered walking more throughout the day for longevity?" As opposed to saying, "You should walk more", or "You should quit smoking".
[00:14:35] When we say things to people directly, they get defensive. But by forming something in a question, it really forces the brain to have what we call internal reflection. It just changes a momentary process that allows the brain to think about it in a way that's not as threatening. And that's when we see real change happen. And we've seen this consistently in campaigns for healthcare, for anti-bullying campaigns. We see that this is really effective. And I'm going to give you one real world example. Let's say you're watching TV and there's a 30 second ad that comes on. Remember, advertisers are the masters of persuasion. You're watching this ad on television and let's say it's a father and a daughter. They're on a swing set. They're walking through the park, they're getting some ice cream. They're having this really special, heartfelt father daughter day. And you might notice, or you might not, that of the 30 second commercial, this is like 20 seconds of the commercial. And you might even have the moment where you're like, what is this commercial even about? And then in the last two seconds, something pops up on the screen. Have you driven a Ford lately? The question. Now, the ad is not at all about the car. They don't talk about the engine, the braking, the safety features of the car, all the improvements. They just prime the brain with some emotional content, things that you would care about. And then they hit you with the question.
[00:15:57] We can also utilize this for ourselves. We can actually persuade ourselves to do things that we want to do that we might struggle to actually make those steps. We've actually seen in studies that if people just spend a couple of moments thinking about something that they care about, that they love their dog, their cat, music, something they really are passionate about, and then they ask themselves a question, "Maybe I should consider, really optimizing my sleep", thinking about something, "What can I do to really take care of my health better?"
[00:16:24] So as we wrap up today, I want to say thank you for being here, but also I want you to take a moment and just for a moment or two, just sit with something that you love. Think about it conjured up in your brain. Take that moment and sit there. I'll give you a moment. And then I just want to ask you, have you considered subscribing to this podcast? So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. See you next time.
[00:16:49] Thanks so much for watching. If you'd like to receive one brain health tip per week, please sign up for my newsletter. The link is in the description in the show notes below. See you next time.