Social Engineering Blogs

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Practical Persuasion

The more you know about Persuasion the more you see it.  I have seen a couple of advertisements recently on television.  Some good, some could be improved.  So here is you test.  I have put a couple of videos into the post and see if you can see what is good and what would be done to improve them.

OPSM Ultra Wide Digital Retinal Scan

Below is the OPSM advertisement for their Ulta Wide Digital Retinal Scan.  I like the use of CONTRAST but I think something could be done to improve the persuasive of the advertisement.

HINT: It has to do with the order and the use of SCARCITY.

ANSWER: Instead of starting with what competitors do and show how much more the Retinal Scan offers, what do you think the impact would have been if they had started with the wider scan and then retracted to show how much their competitors are missing?  It is a small thing but one I think would have been very impactful.

ADF Recruitment Ad

Tell me what two principles the ADF are using in this advertisement.  One obvious and one not so obvious.

Answer: Obviously the first is Consensus showing you what many other Australians are doing by joining up.  The second is that of Consistency, tapping into people’s identity and labeling setting to show if you are this type of person then the ADF is for you.  Subtle and sophisticated but if you are that type of person, very effective.

Audi – What Defines Us

Finally Audi – they are diving deep into Liking as you can see yourself as the teenager.  Consistency because of the things we stand for.  Scarcity because of the things we have lost, regrets we have, things we could lose in the future.  Finally Contrast – well because not many car makers have taken this route before saying that what you do defines you – of course it does – but in this case drive an Audi and remove all the regrets you ever had a kid – why?  Because you can!

Very clever.

Type your ideas in the comments box below.  I will provide my comments on Thursday.

The post Practical Persuasion appeared first on Social Influence Consulting Group.

Humiliation Is Our Strongest Emotion?

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Courtesy of StockVault

New brain research suggests that humiliation is the strongest emotion a human can feel.

Wired.com reports on this claim and delves into the question of, Is humiliation really more intense than other negative emotions such as anger or shame?

The researchers, Marte Otten and Kai Jonas, conducted two studies in which dozens of male and female participants read short stories involving different emotions, and had to imagine how they’d feel in the described scenarios.

The first study compared humiliation (e.g. your internet date takes one look at you and walks out), anger (e.g. your roommate has a party and wrecks the room while you’re away) and happiness (e.g. you find out a person you fancy likes you). The second study compared humiliation with anger and shame (e.g. you said some harsh words to your mother and she cried).

The researchers used EEG (electroencephalography) to record the surface electrical activity of their participants’ brains. They were interested in two measures in particular – a larger positive spike (known as the “late positive potential” or LPP); and evidence of “event-related desynchronization,” which is a marker of reduced activity in the alpha range. Both these measures are signs of greater cognitive processing and cortical activation.

The study’s finding was that imagining being humiliated led to larger LPPs and more event-related desychronization than the other emotions. According to Otten and Jonas, this means that humiliation, more than the other emotions they studied, leads to a mobilization of more processing power and a greater consumption of mental resources. “This supports the idea that humiliation is a particularly intense and cognitively demanding negative emotional experience that has far-reaching consequences for individuals and groups alike,” they concluded.

This does not conclusively support the idea that Humiliation is our strongest emotion.  Further research should be conducted, but this does note that the brain seems to be doing more when a person feels humiliated, but we do not seem to know exactly what yet. One possibility, the researchers acknowledge, is that humiliation requires more mental processing, not because it’s so intense, but because it’s a complex social emotion that involves monitoring loss of social status.

Statement Analysis In Cyber Space

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Courtesy of StockVault

Ever wonder if the person on the other end of a chat room or email really can’t meet with you for that lunch date OR if they really didn’t receive the email you sent a few days (or weeks) ago?

Well, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Defense Intelligence Agency senior officer Tyler Cohen Wood to discuss how to tell if someone is lying to you when your not interacting on a face-to-face basis.

There is always room for ambiguity and misunderstanding when communication is conducted in spurts and is written rather than face-to-face.  This room for “error” is due to the lack of nonverbal behavior signals called Gestures.  When we communicate face-to-face most of what we say is communicated not in the words but by our body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice and gestures.

According to the article, research has shown that most of us tend to be be suspicious of information we receive online but override our suspicions and trust the information anyway. Experts call this our “truth bias.”

We often have powerful emotional reasons to believe what someone is telling us. We really want to believe the message from the cutie on the dating site is real. Ditto the text saying our spouse is working late.

Ms. Cohen Wood notes, “The majority of people prefer to tell the truth.  That’s why when they are lying, the truth is going to leak out.” She notes that using a modified version of statement analysis will help a person sort out the truths from the untruths.

Some of the things to look for are below:

1) Pay attention to a person’s use of emphatic language. It doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is lying, but rather that he or she really wants you to believe what is being said. This is also the case when a person keeps saying the same thing over and over in slightly different ways.

2)Look for language that distances the writer from the intended reader. That is they omit personal pronouns and references to themselves from a story. Ex: Say the person receives the following text, “Hey I had a great time last night, did you?” and they reply, “Last night was fun.”

3) Watch out for is the unanswered question. You ask, and the other person hedges or changes the subject. Most likely, the person doesn’t like saying no, or doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. But he or she also may also be keeping something from you.

4) Noncommittal statements are red flags—”pretty sure,” “probably,” “must have” and, my least favorite, “maybe.” “These words leave the person an out,“ Ms. Cohen Wood says.

5) Qualifying statements, are another potential tell. Expressions such as “to be honest,” “there is nothing to worry about,” “I hate to tell you this”—often signal that the person is uncomfortable with his or her next statement.

6) Tense Hopping:  Someone describing an event that happened in the past usually uses the past tense. But if midway through the story the person starts fabricating, that material plays out in his or her head and leads to a switch to the present tense.

Ms. Cohen Wood notes that all of this also relies on the person’s baseline behavior.  You have to the norm for someone before you can detect that they are veering away from it, which is a sign that there is more to the story than is being told.

Want to Learn more about Reading Gestures and Nonverbal Communication? 
Attend our “The World of Gestures” LIVE Webinar hosted by psychologist Dr. David Matsumoto this Saturday June 7th at 10:00am PST.