It’s almost August and football season is right around the corner. All across the country football coaches from Pee Wee leagues up through the NFL are exhorting players to push themselves to be the best they can be. Many will go through grueling workouts; some enduring “two-a-days” and a familiar cry from coaches will be “No pain, no gain!”I remember my high school football coach repeating that phrase many times during my three years of varsity football. The meaning was simple – sacrifice now and reap the rewards later. Lifting weights, running wind sprints, repeating drills, and long practices in the hot summer sun would all be worth it when we achieved victory on Friday nights under the lights in front of our parents, friends and community. In persuasion, “no pain, no gain” has a different meaning but can lead to success just as is did on the gridiron. When trying to influence others it’s good to know this simple concept – people are more motivated by what they stand to lose (pain) versus what they might gain. This is a form of scarcity. The late Amos Tversky, a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, and Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, studied this phenomenon of human behavior. In fact, Kahneman won the noble prize for his work in this area in 2002.Here’s what Tversky and Kahneman learned – people experience the pain of loss anywhere from 2.0-2.5 times more than the joy of gaining the same thing. So imagine you find $100 bill on the way to your car after work. You’re elated! You drive home with a broad smile, feeling great about your good fortune. You pull into the driveway and walk into your home with extra spring in your step. As soon as you see someone you begin to tell him or her about your good fortune. You reach into your pocket to pull out the big bill…and it’s gone! How do you feel at that moment? Odds are you feel much worse than however good you felt when you found it. And here’s your litmus test; you left the house in a good mood without a $100 bill, got home without the $100 bill, but now you feel bad…really bad!Why is this important to know? Sometimes you have a choice about how you’ll frame a request – highlight the gain or highlight the loss – and that small decision could be the difference between a “Yes!” or “No!” quite often.In one study of homeowners by the University of California, people were given energy saving ideas. One group was told if they implemented the recommendations they would save an average of $180 on their electric bill over the next 12 months. Another group was told they would lose $180 during the next 12 months if they didn’t adopt the recommendations because they would overpay on their electric bill.It’s the same $180 but when the group that was told they would lose heard this, 150% more decided to implement the energy saving recommendations. That’s a pretty significant difference just by changing the way information was presented. It costs no more to say it either way but the end result was huge.What does this mean for you? Next time you present to someone think about how you might highlight potential loss instead of what someone might gain. For example, if you’re in financial services encouraging someone to save a bit more could make a huge difference in their retirement.Gain Approach – Bob, if you can find a way to set aside 1% more of your income that could mean an additional $250,000 by the time you retire.Loss Approach – Bob, if you can’t find a way to set aside 1% more of your income that could mean losing $250,000 by the time you retire!The financial rep employing the loss approach will be more successful over the long run and clients will appreciate the advice when they hit retirement because they’ll have much more in their bank accounts.I’m not encouraging you to be a negative Nellie but I am encouraging you to use language that scientific research has proven will be more effective in helping you hear “Yes!” That’s what this blog is all about – making small changes in your persuasion approach with people in order to generate big differences.
Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer influencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.
Lie Detector
I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been in a situation where we felt like someone might be lying to us. It’s in those frustrating moments that we desperately wish we knew what to look for in order to figure out whether they are telling the truth or not. If you know what type of behavior to look for and of course consistently devote enough time towards learning this skill, you’ll be able to detect deceit in an instant and become your own lie detector. Before I get into the specifics, it’s important for you to know that you should never decide that someone is lying or trying to con you based on one signal alone. Before you reach a conclusion, make sure you’ve done a thorough job of collecting evidence that leads one way or the other, using a cluster of cues rather than just one. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, lets get to the fun part!
One gesture you might be aware of that is often used when lying is touching the nose. Often times when someone is telling a fib or fabricating the truth, they’ll touch their nose far more frequently than they usually do. However, the interesting part about this is the reason that lies behind this phenomena. When people lie, often times their nose will actually swell. Now before you start staring at other peoples nose when you suspect lying, you should note that it’s too discrete to notice with the naked eye. However, when this happens it creates a tingling sensation or a slight itch that leads to their frequent nose touching.
Another revealing tell to keep your eye out for is hands around the mouth and eyes. This is the same type of behavior seen in children, just in a more subtle fashion. When a child says something they know they’re not supposed to say, they cup their hand over their mouth as if to prevent the words that have already been said from leaving their mouth. Adults do the same thing, it’s just not as obvious. When adults lie, it’s not uncommon to see them take a position in which their hand is covering up their mouth or part of it. People do this subconsciously for the same reason they did when they were kids, but due to the increased subtlety of their behavior it can easily be missed by the untrained eye.
Hands to the eyes have a similar meaning as hands to the mouth. This gesture is also a more subtle version of the rather obvious hands completely covering the eyes that children do when they don’t want to see something. In this situation, the liar doesn’t want to look at the person that they’re lying to, which leads to eye rubbing/itching. Again this behavior is carried out subconsciously by the liar, but means the same thing it meant when they were young. Sometimes the liar will simply look away more than usual when they’re lying to avoid looking at the other person.
To increase your accuracy, observe the behavior of those you tend to interact with on a daily basis, and take note of how they usually behave. Whenever you’ve established a norm for someone, it will be much easier to tell when they’re not being honest with you or if something is bothering them. Some people have little idiosyncrasies that could be misinterpreted as a lying gesture if no norm has been established. Knowing what someones “usual” behavior is like, becomes extremely useful when you want to really make sure someone is being honest, and combined with other universal tells like the ones previously mentioned, can turn your mind into a human lie detector.
Cherry Trees & Honesty
Courtesy of StockVault
How do we get our children to have moral integrity and tell the truth, at least when it really matters? Most of us have a hard time telling the truth ourselves, let alone teaching a child the intricacies of truth telling and the importance of being honest.
Kang Lee, a professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, has been studying this subject for years. He notes, “Talking to kids about the moral importance of honesty and the moral negativity of lying has no impact on kids’ tendency to tell the truth.“
Lee and his colleagues understand that the developing mind of children along with their imagination leads them to tell very interesting and fantastical stories. However, the researchers studied not only the kinds of behaviors that teach children how to lie but also if young children, who know how to lie, can tell when others are lying and how this affects their ability to learn about morality.
One of their decade long studies, published in the journal Psychological Science, tested whether children could effectively learn about honesty from childhood stories that had morals at the end such as Pinocchio or George Washington and the cherry tree.
They studied children ages 3 to 7 years old and asked them to identify familiar toy sounds such as a dog bark. They then played a sound that was harder to identify and told the children they had to step out of the room for a moment. The child of course was told not to peek at the toy.
When the scientist returned she covered up the toy and had the child turn around. She then read one of three childhood tales (George Washington and the Cherry tree, Pinocchio, or the Boy Who Cried Wolf. A control group heard “The Tortoise and the Hare”, which has no moral ending.
The children were then asked if they peeked at the toy while the researcher was gone. About 90% of 3-year-olds peeked. More than 60% of 7-year-olds did, too. Overall, 65% lied about peeking.
Surprisingly, however, those who heard the George Washington tale only lied about half the time, a significant improvement over the other groups. Those who heard “Pinocchio” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” were just as likely to lie as those in the control group.
The researchers speculate that the children were responding to the positive benefits of telling the truth rather than the negative consequences of getting caught lying.
Some words of wisdom from the researchers into embedding morality into your children.
1. Model Honesty – Admit when you made a mistake instead of scapegoating it. Instead of listing all the things you had to do before work, which “made” you late, say “I should have gotten up earlier.”
2. Reward honesty don’t punish it. Say a child/teenager gets a bad grade – address how they can go about improving their grade and what kind of help they might need. But if a child/teenager lies about getting a bad grade then punish the lie not the grade (after all they could have been trying their hardest).
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