CHAPTER 11

Under the Influence

IN HIS CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BESTSELLER INFLUENCE, PSYCHOLOGIST and world-renowned persuasion expert Robert Cialdini identifies six weapons of influence in the battle to direct human behavior:

1. Reciprocation. People feel obligated to “return the favor” when you do something for them. This is why so many of the fund-raising appeals you get in the mail contain things like free pencils or address labels.

2. Commitment and consistency. People feel obligated to do things they have publicly committed to doing, and they want to seem consistent—both to others and to themselves.

3. Social proof. People are more likely to do something if they see other people doing it.

4. Liking. People are more likely to be persuaded by you if they like you.

5. Authority. People are also more likely to be persuaded by you if you are a legitimate expert or authority figure.

6. Scarcity. People see (positive) things that are scarce or rare as more valuable. Which is why so many commercials tell you to “act now” and buy those Civil War commemorative coins because inventory is “going fast.”

In the nearly thirty years since Influence was first published, these principles have become the established tools of marketers, business leaders, politicians, diplomats, and activists to change the hearts and minds of people around the world. To Cialdini’s collection of weapons, we offer a seventh: motivational fit.

Our studies show that when you use the right style of message, the recipient—whether it’s a family member, a student in your class, a colleague at work, or a constituent in your congressional district—will find it more believable, trust it (and you) more, and pay more attention to it. That powerful combination results in far more effective persuasion. As the examples in this chapter will show, you can do extraordinary things—like getting teens to take their health seriously or getting potential tax cheats to actually pay up—if you deliver your appeal in a way that syncs with their motivational focus.

Fight Teen Smoking

One of our favorite examples of the persuasive power of motivational fit comes from a study of antismoking ads aimed at teens. Rather than focusing directly on the effects of smoking on physical health, these ads highlighted smoking’s social consequences—how you might be rejected by others as a consequence of your smoking habit (creating prevention motivation) or accepted as a consequence of being a nonsmoker (creating promotion motivation). Each version of the ad was also delivered in terms of either benefits or costs:

Promotion Message + Benefits Frame (Fit ): Get Social Approval

Images: A teenager sitting among a group of other teens at a party puts out a cigarette, and his peers look at him approvingly. They smile and laugh together—one person gives him a high-five.

Caption: “Don’t smoke. Have a good time.”

Promotion Message + Costs Frame (Nonfit ): Miss Out on Social Approval

Images: Peers are looking at a teen approvingly, smiling and laughing. Then the teen starts smoking, and the friends turn their backs and start ignoring him.

Caption: “Don’t smoke. Smoking spoils a good time.”

Prevention Message + Benefits Frame (Nonfit ): Avoid Social Disapproval

Images: A teen is smoking at a party, and he’s getting strongly disapproving looks from the others around him. He notices and stops smoking, and his peers stop looking irritated.

Caption: “Don’t smoke. Avoid being annoying.”

Prevention Message + Costs Frame (Fit ): Incur Social Disapproval

Images: A group of teens are standing around talking at a party. One teen starts smoking and gets strongly disapproving and irritated looks from those around him.

Caption: “Don’t smoke. Smoking is annoying.”

Most people would look at these four sets of ads and see no real differences—the message seems more or less the same: nonsmoking is better for relationships than smoking. Nonsmokers are popular and have friends, and smokers are shunned. But in each version the message is experienced a little bit differently. In fact, the versions that created an experience of motivational fit (i.e., the promotion-focused/benefits and prevention-focused/costs combinations) were significantly more effective in increasing teen viewers’ intentions to not smoke.

And that’s not all. Teens who had a dominant promotion focus had particularly strong intentions not to smoke after seeing the promotion/benefits ad (“Don’t smoke. Have a good time”), while prevention-focused teens (yes, they exist) had especially strong intentions not to smoke after seeing the prevention/costs ad (“Don’t smoke. Smoking is annoying”).¹ So for these particular viewers, there were two sources of motivational fit: (1) the fit between the focus and the delivery within the message itself and (2) the fit between their own dominant focus and the focus/delivery of the message. The more sources of fit you can create, the more persuasive your message will be.

Now think about the last time you tried to persuade someone—perhaps your spouse, your child, or a good friend—to avoid a dangerous behavior like smoking (or excessive drinking, or texting while driving). What did you say? There’s a roughly 50 percent chance that you phrased your plea in a way that didn’t provide fit. You might have told your spouse that you wanted him to quit smoking so he wouldn’t get cancer (prevention/benefits framing) when it would have been more persuasive to tell him that if he keeps smoking, the odds are good that he will get cancer (prevention/costs framing). You might have told your teenager that nobody likes or respects you when you drink too much (promotion/costs framing)—when it would have been more persuasive to tell him that people will like you and respect you more when you keep your wits about you (promotion/benefits framing).

The good news is, you can be much more persuasive from now on, and encourage the people you care about to live healthier, happier lives, if you take a moment to consider how to deliver your message with maximum fit.

Fit Is Good for Your Health

These antismoking ads were effective not only because they created fit, but also because they found a way to cleverly get around the “smoking is bad for your health” approach—one that doesn’t usually gel with young people—by making smoking about popularity and social isolation rather than lung cancer and heart disease. But there are circumstances in which we really do want kids to think about their physical well-being, too. So how can we get young people to pay attention to significant threats to their health and persuade them to take action to protect themselves? Part of the problem, of course, lies in the fact that young people often don’t perceive themselves to be at risk in the first place. But the good news is that once you understand how promotion, prevention, and motivational fit work, you realize that different kinds of health messages will be effective, depending on your audience’s perceived risk.

This was nicely demonstrated in a study conducted by market researchers Jennifer Aaker and Angela Lee, who used motivational fit to create advertisements aimed at college students for a product used to prevent and treat mononucleosis (or “mono,” as it is often called).² They began by giving all the students in their study the following information:

Mononucleosis is so common that by the age of 40 over 85 percent of all individuals have already had the illness! This may seem hard to believe, especially to those who cannot ever imagine having had a mono-like illness. Because most people who contract mono have such a mild case, they never realize that a past scratchy sore throat or an unusual bout of fatigue was actually mono. Although anyone can contract the illness, the disease is most commonly seen by physicians in young adults between the ages of 15 and 30, especially those living in close contact to schools, colleges, and military bases. Mono can occur year-round, but most cases develop in the early spring.

Next, they manipulated the perceived risk for contracting mononucleosis, by telling some of the students that they could contract mononucleosis from common behaviors that they frequently engaged in (high risk), while telling others that mononucleosis is only spread through more unusual, rare behaviors (low risk).

High Risk (More Prevention-Focused) Message

Participants in the high-perceived-risk condition read that they would be at risk for contracting mono if they “kissed, shared a toothbrush, shared a razor, had sex without a condom, engaged in oral sex, shared bottles of water or soda, or got a manicure.” Since these are activities that undergrads often engage in, the message conveyed was that it is very easy for your typical college student to get mono.

Low Risk (More Promotion-Focused) Message

Those in the low-perceived-risk condition read that they would only be at risk if they “got a tattoo, used needles, pierced body parts such as nipples, nose, tongue or belly button, were accidentally jabbed by a needle, had multiple sex partners during the same time period, were subject to the use of unsterilized equipment in a doctor’s office, or had a blood transfusion.” These are all relatively rare activities among college students, so the message conveyed was that your typical undergrad will not catch mono.

Finally, they read an advertisement for a real product (Supranox), described as an all-natural supplement that fights mononucleosis. The arguments in the ad were delivered with either a gain or a loss framing.

Gain Framing

Enjoy life! Know that you are risk free from mononucleosis. Let SUPRANOX^TM be a part of your daily routine.

It is important to enjoy life. SUPRANOX^TM helps you do that—by allowing you to fight an illness even before you have it. Enjoy Life. SUPRANOX^TM.

Loss Framing

Don’t miss out on enjoying life! Not knowing that you are risk free from mononucleosis. Let SUPRANOX^TM be a part of your daily routine.

It is important not to miss out on enjoying life. SUPRANOX^TM helps you do that—by allowing you to fight an illness even before you have it. Don’t Miss Out on Enjoying Life. SUPRANOX^TM.

Aaker and Lee found that students who perceived themselves to be at high risk became more prevention-focused and were more persuaded to try Supranox by the loss-framed version of the ad. Students who thought they had relatively low risk of contracting mono (which is generally the normal attitude for most young people with respect to any illness or disease) were more promotion-focused, and as a result were more persuaded by the gain-framed Supranox ad.

So when you are trying to persuade someone to protect themselves when they really don’t see the need for protection, you can still succeed if you use the right delivery—the one that creates motivational fit. If they really see little risk from what they are currently doing—and let’s face it, few teenagers do until it’s too late—it is better to use promotion-focused messages emphasizing gain to persuade them than prevention-focused messages emphasizing loss.

Help Fund Social Initiatives

It’s not easy to get people to want to part with their hard-earned money, particularly in a tough economy. That’s true even when the cause is one we can all agree is a worthy one, like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or providing a better education for our children. So when you are an advocate of a worthy cause, you need to do more than simply plead your case—you need to do it as persuasively as possible. Once again, the key is understanding the motivational focus of your target audience and delivering your message in their language.

To get a really clear sense of how this works, take a look at the following essay we created as part of a study (led by our MSC colleague Joe Cesario) advocating the funding of a new after-school program for students in New York City.³ Pay close attention to the subtle shifts in language throughout, and note that the details of the program itself are always exactly the same. Again, it’s not about the content of what you are proposing, so much as it is the way you say it. (The promotion-worded version contained the phrases that appear below in italics, while the prevention-worded version substituted the phrases that appear below in brackets.)

New Student After-School Program

This essay is written to advocate a new proposed citywide policy change involving the New York Public School system and the city of New York. A new city tax would be applied toward the development and implementation of a special after-school program for public grade- and high-school-level students. The primary reason for supporting this program is because it will advance [secure] children’s education and support [prevent] more children to succeed [from failing]. If this program is initialized there will be a greater [lower] number of schoolchildren who complete [fail to complete] the full K–12 education program, and there will be a greater [lower] number of students who succeed [fail] in their post-academic life choices as well. Given the higher rate of success [lower rate of failure] that this program would ensure, it is important to develop this achievement [prevention] program as soon as possible.

The primary goal of this program is to ensure success [prevent failures] for the city’s youth, and it would focus on improving both academic and practical skills. There would be several steps taken to ensure the success of this program in meeting its goal. First, teachers from individual schools would meet to design a program tailored specifically to the needs of that student body. After faculty and administration identified factors which would help promote achievement [avert failure] of students at that school, they would design a program which focused specifically on these domain topics. However, the content of a given program would not be limited to any specific topic. Assistance for any issue that the student believes would help him or her succeed [prevent him or her from failing] can be addressed in these sessions. Thus, special training could be provided in nearly any academic and relevant practical domain. This design allows for the program to be both specific and broad in terms of the targeted topics that promote [prevent] student success.

Another noteworthy aspect of this program will be its comprehensive content, which will include both academic and nonacademic domains. In this way, a broader scope of topics necessary for success [the prevention of failure] can be covered. The program, therefore, will focus not only on important academic qualities but also on important social aspects of a student’s life. Assistance can be provided for students who wish to receive help with interpersonal skills, emotional difficulties, or any number of social and psychological issues with which they may need help. In addition to the standard academic skills covered in such programs, other less-emphasized topics can be targeted as well; these include topics such as the creative arts (music, painting, etc.), industrial arts (woodworking, mechanics, etc.), home economics, and others. Such a broad skill base allows for the development of the whole person, not just single aspects of one’s life. Given this far-reaching knowledge base, student success [failure] levels will be greater [smaller] because all aspects of the individual can be refined.

Another step taken to ensure the success of this program will be the method by which students are selected to participate. Students can either decide by themselves that they wish to participate in the program or can be recommended for participation by a teacher or administrator. Utilizing both methods of participation will allow a greater number of students [prevent less students from missing the opportunity] to participate, and therefore there will be a higher [lower] percentage of students succeeding [failing] following implementation of the program.

Finally, it is important to consider the issue of the extra tax needed to fund this project. The personal cost of funding this program is far outweighed by the many potential benefits [costs] this program will promote [avert]. In fact it is estimated that for every dollar spent on this program now, 3.5 extra dollars will be available in the future due to higher safety rates [saved in future costs due to lower crime rates] and greater [lower] numbers of people lacking [with] financial assistance needs. Greater student successes [Reduced student failures] now result in greater benefits [reduced costs] for everyone, including those same students and other citizens, later.

In conclusion, it is important that we develop and back a special after-school program for the grade- and high-school-level students of NYC, to be funded by a new citywide tax. By helping students to achieve [By preventing the failure of students to meet] their academic and social potential, we will have a greater [lower] number of students succeeding [failing] in both academic and post-academic life. This includes an increased [decreased] number of students finishing [failing to finish] their K–12 education program, a greater [smaller] number of students attending [not attending] post-high school education programs, and, overall, students receiving [less students failing to receive] more fulfilling and higher-paying jobs. This program can be an effective way of providing the assistance needed to students to raise [lower] the overall level of success [failure] in our public school system.

Did these subtle differences matter? You bet they did. Dominant promotion or prevention participants who read the version that provided a better fit to their focus (i.e., the promotion or prevention language, respectively) rated the essay as significantly more effective and persuasive and had a much more positive opinion overall of the proposed program, as well as greater willingness to pay to support it. Now that you know how to identify the focus of your audience (for a refresher, see chapter 8), you can use this same simple strategy to more effectively advocate for your own worthy cause.

To do so, write out your arguments in whatever way you would normally write them. Next, scan each of your sentences for key promotion- or prevention-focused words or phrases (e.g., achieve, grow, advance vs. prevent, secure, deteriorate). Ask yourself, is this sentence referring to the potential for gain (e.g., greater success) or for avoiding loss (e.g., less failure)? Rework each sentence, when necessary, so that they all point in the same motivational “direction.” The more consistent you are, the more persuasive your appeal is likely to be for the target audience.

Being good at tailoring to fit takes practice . . . like everything else. Even newer members of the MSC who know the research very well sometimes slip in some prevention-focused language when the fit is intended to be with a promotion audience. Indeed, we ourselves still need to double-check our messages for consistency. But you will get better and better at this with practice, and thus more and more effective.

Stop Tax Cheats

As we’ve shown, motivational fit comes in very handy when you want to influence other people’s intentions—even when that intention is to stop doing something they are very tempted to do, like stop smoking when they are tempted to smoke. Using the right language even works to influence intentions when it comes to doing something you would rather not do, like pay your taxes. And there are an awful lot of people out there who aren’t paying theirs. In 2006 (the most recent year for which we have data), the IRS reported that 17 percent of income tax owed to the federal government went unpaid. That’s about $450 billion of revenue that citizens and businesses in the United States are failing to cough up.

It’s easy to sympathize, since few of us really enjoy paying our taxes, and many feel that our current system of taxation is less than fair. Still, governments need taxes in order to provide services, and unpaid taxes mean fewer or inferior services for all of us. So if you were the IRS, how would you try to encourage people to pay their due? A study recently conducted in Austria may provide some valuable guidance (and another great example for this book, since it involved motivational fit).

The Austrian researchers gave a large group of middle-aged taxpayers one of two versions of an appeal, ostensibly from the Austrian Ministry of Finances, to pay their full income taxes (below are translations from the originals). Each began with the following introductory information:

Citizens’ tax payments are the most important source of the state’s revenue. In 2005, Austria had total revenues based on taxes, dues and fees of €58.97 billion. Thereof, €31.8 billion were so-called transfer payments. The federation did not use them for fulfilling its own tasks but redistributed them in many ways in the form of public goods and services to the citizens.

Following the introduction, the promotion-focused version continued:

Paying tax is making the state prosperous. If citizens honestly report to the tax office, the state is able to use the tax budget for financing and improving the welfare system and to provide its citizens with modern health care. Furthermore, if tax payments are sufficient, the state can extend infrastructure such as the road and railway system. The legal system can also be brought to a high and modern level and the safety of the state can be guaranteed. With public money, the educational system can be of high quality and offer a broad learning opportunity at schools and universities. As for arts and culture, a broad range of events can be subsidized. All citizens profit from public goods and services if taxpayers pay tax honestly.

In contrast, following the same introduction, the prevention-focused version continued:

Without paying tax no state can prosper. If citizens do not report to the tax office honestly, tax revenue is low and the state is no longer able to care about social justice and equal medical treatment for all citizens. Furthermore, if tax payments are insufficient, the state has to cut down on infrastructure; the continuous maintenance of the road and railway system can no longer be guaranteed. Extensive economies could impend in the field of security and the legal system. If public money is not enough, the educational system could deteriorate and the standard of schools and universities could decrease. As for arts and culture, a shortage of subsidies strongly curtails the cultural offer. Citizens profit less from public goods and services if a major part of the taxpayers evade.

Next, everyone was asked to imagine that they had received a gift of 4,500 euros, and that they planned to use the money to buy a new car. If they chose to report the gift income to the government, they would owe taxes on it and therefore have less left to buy the car. If they didn’t report the money and were caught, they would have to pay a fine—but it was pointed out that the chances of being caught were quite low (which, generally speaking, is true).

When promotion-minded Austrians read about the benefits for everyone when the number of people who pay their taxes is high, they had stronger intentions to pay the tax they owed, while prevention-minded Austrians were much more motivated to pay the tax when they learned about how everyone would suffer when the number of taxpayers is low.⁴

Sometimes people just need a little bit of a nudge to do the right thing—the kind that motivational fit can easily provide. Anyone who is teetering on the fence about going to the polls to vote, separating their recycling, getting a flu shot, conserving water, or any of the countless other things they know they are better off doing but don’t really want to do, may finally feel like it’s the right thing to do if they experience fit when considering doing it.

Why We Need a Good Fit Now More Than Ever

There are so many messages vying for our attention at almost every moment of our waking lives. We carry on conversations with one another while also glancing frequently at our smartphones, while the TV blares in the background. We read a magazine while also listening to our MP3 players, while glancing up occasionally at the other people and the ads in the subway car. We drive while listening to talk radio, reading the billboards as they zoom by. All this information is trying hard to worm its way into our brains—but what actually makes it in? To say “not much” would be an understatement. Barely any of it gets in and really sticks.

Because of this, there’s no time like the present for mastering the art and science of creating motivational fit. At the conclusion of the most recent edition of Influence, Cialdini remarks on the evolution of technology and the overload of information we each have to slog through daily—all those e-mails, commercials, Facebook posts, and Tweets—and how these changes affect the art of persuasion. “When making a decision,” he writes, “we will less frequently enjoy the luxury of a fully considered analysis of the total situation but will revert increasingly to a focus on a single, usually reliable feature of it.” As we hope we have illustrated through the examples in Focus, motivational fit creates just such a reliable feature to guide our decisions—the experience of feeling right.

If you would like the information you are conveying to elbow its way past all that competition, you need every advantage. Which is why people spend a fortune on eye-catching ads, celebrity endorsements, and premium ad space. But all the money in the world, all by itself, won’t make your message feel right to your audience. When something feels right, it grabs your attention and will be remembered. To make sure your time, effort, and money are well spent, make sure you’re delivering a message with fit.