PERSUASION IN BRIEF THERAPY USING THE LATEST SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

PERSUASION IN BRIEF THERAPY USING THE LATEST SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, DECISION-MAKING, AND PERSUASION RESEARCH TO CREATE COOPERATION Bill O’Hanlon To get a free copy of these slides, visit: billohanlon.com Click FREE STUFF Then click SLIDES

THESE INFLUENCE PRINCIPLES ARE BASED ON RECENT RESEARCH Persuasion research Social influence/social psychology research Non-rational/non-conscious decision-making research

WE HAVE THE ILLUSION WE MAKE RATIONAL CONSCIOUS DECISIONS During any given second, we consciously process only sixteen of the eleven million bits of information our senses pass on to our brains. Nørretrander, Tor (1999). The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. NY: Penguin.

THE 3 MAJOR PRINCIPLES OF INFLUENCE SOCIAL FOLLOWING CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES LOSS AVOIDANCE AND How to use these principles in changework to reduce resistance and increase cooperation and results

INFLUENCE PRINCIPLE #1: SOCIAL INFLUENCE FACTORS

THREE LITTLE WORDS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE An informercial copywriter (Colleen Szot) changed the “call to action” from: “Operators are standing by; please call now.”; to “If operators are busy, please call again.” Sales increased significantly; shattering a 20-year sales record Why? Implied social demand; everyone is calling!

GAZING SKYWARD STUDY Stanley Milgram had a person in NYC gaze skyward; most people ignored him. When he was joined by 3 others gazing skyward, 4 times as many people also stopped and looked up. Milgram, S.; Bickman, L. and Berkowitz, L. (1969). “Note on the drawing power of crowds of different sizes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 13:79-82.

THE HOTEL RE-USE STUDIES Social psychologists, led by Dr. Robert Cialdini, investigated how the percentage of re-using towels more than once per stay was influenced by messages about how others behaved When a message was left saying it was good for the environment to re-use towels, a certain percentage of people re-used When the message was changed to suggest that most people re- used towels in that hotel, re-use went up 26%; when it was more specific (most people who stayed in that particular room re-used) re-use increased 33% Goldstein, Noah; Cialdini, R.B.; and Griskevicius, Vladas. (2008). “A room with a viewpoint: using social norms to motivate conservation in hotels,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (2), 214–20.

PETRIFIED FOREST STUDY In an effort to reduce stealing of wood pieces from the Petrified Forest, officials put up a sign reading: “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.” The study was suggested when a graduate student reported that his fiancée, who was usually scrupulously honest, read this sign and nudged him and whispered, “We’d better get ours now.”

PETRIFIED FOREST STUDY Researchers specially marked wood pieces so they could measure theft on various trails. Then they created alternate signs: “Many past visitors have removed petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” This sign showed people picking up wood. “Please don’t remove wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” This one showed a lone person picking up wood with a red X superimposed.

PETRIFIED FOREST STUDY RESULTS CONTROL (no sign) = 2.92% stolen Social following sign = 7.92% Lone wolf sign = 1.67%

TAKE CARE HOW YOU USE SOCIAL NORM MESSAGES Women’s Voices, during the 2004 presidential campaign, sent out 1 million postcards with this message: “Four years ago, 22 million single women did not vote.” Oops! Voter turnout for single women was especially low that year, even lower than in 2000.

PERCEPTUAL ACUITY TEST Choose the line, A, B, or C, that matches the line without a letter under it

ASCH PERCEPTUAL STUDIES When three subjects all gave the wrong answer, the subject also gave the wrong answer 75% of the time But when even one of the subjects dissented, even giving another incorrect answer (even if that dissenter was shown to be visually impaired), the subject gave the correct answer almost all the time Asch, Solomon. "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgment," in Groups, Leadership, and Men , ed. by Harold Guetzkow (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951), pp. 177-190 Asch, Solomon, (1955). "Opinions and Social Pressure," Scientific American, 193:31-35. Allen, Vernon and Levine, John, (1971). "Social Support and Conformity: The Role of Independent Assessment of Reality," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 7: 48-58.

WE ALL THINK WE AREN’T GOING ALONG WITH THE CROWD “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” - Eric Hoffer “Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?” -James Thurber You are unique; just like everybody else. - Bumper sticker

MIRROR NEURONS The ice cream cone and the monkey Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). “Action recognition in the premotor cortex,” Brain , 119:593-609. Fogassi, L., & Ferrari, P .F. (2007). “Mirror neurons and the evolution of embodied language,” Current Directions in Psychological Science , 17, 136–141.

SUBTLE SOCIAL MIMICRY 37 Duke students tried out what was described as a new sports drink, Vigor, and answered a few questions about it. The interviewer mimicked about half the participants. The mimicry involved mirroring a person’s posture and movements, with a one- to two-second delay. If he crosses his legs, then wait two seconds and do the same, with opposite legs. If she touches her face, wait a beat or two and do that. If he drums his fingers or taps a toe, wait again and do something similar. The idea is to be a mirror but a slow, imperfect one. Follow too closely, and most people catch on. By the end of the short interview, those who were mimicked were significantly more likely than the others to consume the new drink, to say they would buy it and to predict its success in the market. In a similar experiment, the psychologists found that this was especially true if the participants knew that the interviewer, the mimic, had a stake in the product’s success. • Chartrand, T.L., & Bargh. J.A. (1999). “The Chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 76, 893- 910. • Chartrand, T.L., Maddux, W.W., & Lakin, J.L. (in press). “Beyond the perception-behavior link: The ubiquitous utility and motivational moderators of non-conscious mimicry.” In R. Hassin, J. Uleman, & J.A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought 2: The new unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.

SUBTLE SOCIAL MIMICRY A researcher subtly mimicked half the subjects while asking them survey questions, then “accidentally” dropped some pens; those who had been mimicked were 2-3 times more likely to pick up the pens as those who hadn’t. Van Baaren, Rick; Holland, Rob; Kawakami, Kerry; and van Knippenberg, Ad. (2004) “Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior,” Psychological Science , 15, 71-74.

SUBTLE SOCIAL MIMICRY At Stanford, a computer figure, an avatar, was programmed to mimic the movements and gestures of study participants. If the avatar’s movements were immediate and precise, people picked up on them, but if they were slightly out of sync (delayed 4 seconds) people did not pick up on them and rated the avatars as warm and convincing. Bailenson, J., & Yee, N. (2005). “Digital chameleons: Automatic assimilation of nonverbal gestures in immersive virtual environments,” Psychological Science , 16, 814–819.

VARIETIES OF SOCIAL MIMICRY Motor mimicry Facial mimicry Emotional contagion People diagnosed high on the autistic spectrum show less facial and yawning mimicry than others Hermans, Erno J. ; van Wingen, Guido ; Bos, Peter A.; Putman, Peter; and van Honk, Jack. (2009)“Reduced spontaneous facial mimicry in women with autistic traits,” Biological Psychology , March/80(3): 348-353. Avikainen, S., Wohlschlager, A., Liuhanen, S., Hanninen, R., and Hari, R. (2003). “Impaired mirror-image imitation in Asperger and high-functioning autistic subjects,” Curr. Bio l, 73(4), 339-341. Dapretto, M., Davies, M. S., Pfeifer, J. H., Scott, A. A., Sigman, M., Bookheimer, S. Y., et al. (2006). “Understanding emotions in others: Mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders,” Nat. Neurosa ., 9(1), 28-30.

TAKE-AWAY You probably already mirror people naturally, but you might be able to improve your skill at gaining rapport if you attend to people more closely. Listen to and watch them as they speak and interact with you. Be careful what emotion you convey; it can subtly influence people to feel a smilar emotion

MODELING Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. Famous for the Bobo Doll studies, which showed social learning through modeling. Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.