Some thoughts on Pyschology and Influence

In one of my college courses, we had a unit on the psychological effects of propaganda and advertising. It focused mostly on the work of psychologist Robert Cialidini and his Six Principles of Influence. These are tools often used my marketers and salespeople to persuade people to buy their products. When I heard these, it made me absolutely sick. I immediately recognized multiple times in my life when I had been conned by these very same tactics. I already had a general dislike for salespeople and this made it worse. I couldn’t believe that people would knowingly and intentionally manipulate people for their own personal gain.  What disturbed me even more is that some of these principles existed in Preach My Gospel, which is the manual they use to train missionaries. Of course, it was dressed up in religious jargon rather than psychological terms, but they were unmistakably there.  I’ll explain later how I resolved my issues with these ideas, but first let’s look at what some of these principles are.

I’ll be covering just a couple examples to give you a general idea, but if you want to read more, start here: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/six-principles-influence.htm

One of tools salespeople use is called reciprocity. The idea is that when somebody gives something to you, or does something for you, you feel obligated to return the favor. I had an experience with this when shopping for housing in college. One particular management company gave me a goody bag with a free jump drive, pen, and coupons when I took a tour of their apartments. Other places you’ll see it used is at car service places like Les Scwabb or Jiffy Lube. They’ll usually offer free brake inspections, because the chances of you having your car serviced by them after receiving a free inspection is extremely high. Similarly, the church offers free Bibles and videos on T.V. spots and pass-along cards as a way to get a foot in the door for missionary work.

Another tool is social proof. This is the one at work behind peer pressure. I heard it just this week in a commercial with the tagline, “30 million customers can’t be wrong”. This is a pretty broad category, and it is implemented in many different ways. Say you’re at a new buffet restaurant.  It’s not a fast food place, but it’s not exactly a typical sit-down either. Do you leave a tip? You’ll probably look around at other tables to see if other people are leaving tips or not. We’re just hard-wired to think this way. It happens in classrooms as well. Let’s say the teacher is talking about something, and you simply don’t get it. But no one else is raising their hand and asking questions. What do you do? It seems that everyone else gets it; will you look stupid if you ask? This one comes into play during testimony meetings in church. Everyone else goes up and says stuff like, “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the one true church”. What do I say? I think I believe, but I’m not that certain. Will people think I don’t have a testimony or am not as valiant if I don’t use language like that?

One more related principle is that we tend to give more credence to things we hear more often. In one study I heard about, they surveyed participants asking them to choose from a list what they believed were the most common crimes in their area. The researchers also did a count of how often these crimes were reported in the local news media and found the actual crime statistics for the areas. When they compared the participants’ responses, they found that their answers did not line up with the actual statistics, but mirrored the media coverage almost exactly. Because more severe crimes, like homicide or assault received more press coverage, people assumed they happened more frequently than they actually did. Everyone knows that Macs are better than PCs for graphics and multi-media applications. But are they really? How did we start believing this? Have you personally done any kind of research on the subject? I would argue that we just heard it frequently enough that we started accepting it as true, even without hard evidence.

Learning about these principles really caused me to question why I believed what I believed. I became suspicious of religious indoctrination I received while growing up in the church. Here’s one important thing to remember though that critics often forget to mention; these principles of influence are not just used by con artists and power hungry organizations. They are used by our true friends and by people living genuinely Christ-like lives as well. For example, the principle of reciprocity we talked about earlier could be summarized by saying “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” or “In order to have a friend, you must be a friend first.” These principles are simply tools. The same knife that can be used to stab someone can also be used to help prepare a nice meal for them. It is when you take one of these principles and rip it out of its context and use it as a tool to manipulate people to gain material wealth or further your own private agenda that it takes on a covering of evil.

I want to go back to the “everyone knows that Macs are better” idea real quick. On my mission, I remember skeptics seemed to think that the only reason we believed is because we were raised Mormon. While they may be absolutely right, they forget that it goes both ways. Perhaps the only reason they don’t believe is because they weren’t raised that way. What one side calls indoctrination and brainwashing, the other side may call properly educating our children and teaching them the difference between right and wrong. We are all subject to being influenced by those around us. There is not a single person above it. I started becoming keenly aware of this after I had participated in one of the online forums for disaffected Mormons for a couple of months. The general feeling on most of these boards is that you are naïve if you think you can go back to believing the church is true. And after you hear that enough times, you begin to think it is true, regardless of what you may have believed before. Here’s the thing though; the people on these boards do not represent everyone that has been through a faith struggle. After a while, I realized that the board was pretty much run by the same five or six people who had been hanging around for years. The other participants showed up in the middle of their crisis, stayed for a few weeks, and moved on. Most of the people who were further into their crisis or had resolved things weren’t on these boards. There are a lot of voices you simply do not hear, and at least some of them do go back to believing. At times I wondered if they actually existed, but since I have started this blog, I have found out that someone I know personally is one of them.
(Just to clarify, I have nothing against the people on these support boards. They were an great source of support to me during the most painful stages of my crisis).

So, knowing that we are subject to psychological influence from outside sources and that it is a fact of life, what do we do? Rather than be cynical and question the motives of everyone around us, or try to prove that we are strong enough to not be influenced, I have a better suggestion. Why not choose to surround ourselves with people we want to be like and allow ourselves to be influenced by them? I’m not suggesting that we should only be friends with a certain, narrow-minded group of people. I think sometimes we can learn the most from people who are not like us. But the idea of choosing your friends wisely is not just an old-fashioned dogmatic statement. We will be influenced and shaped by those closest to us. Be conscientious about who you choose to influence you.