5: Liking and Attraction
It is probably not surprising to anyone to learn that, as a rule, we say "yes" to people we like and to people to whom we feel attracted. But it may be a but enlightening to see how widely this tactic is used for commercial purposes.
Consider companies such as Tupperware, Amway, and Mary Kay cosmetics. Each of these uses networked selling by independent agents, most of whom sell their products to their friends and acquaintances. The products themselves are not very competitive in terms of price or quality and would not fare well if they were sold in stores alongside better and cheaper items, so these firms leverage social connections between people.
The Tupperware "party" itself employs multiple methods of compliance gaming:
- Reciprocity - A party is thrown at which guests receive give-aways before hearing a sales pitch, making them feel they owe their host an order
- Commitment - People are asked to give testimonials about the products that they already use, making them feel committed to purchase more of the same
- Social Pressure - People are asked to place orders at the party itself, and the purchasing of some guests cause others to purchase just to go along
- Liking - Ordering the merchandise is less about making a purchase and more about helping a friend who is selling it
(EN: The author doesn't jump ahead to the last two topics, but I sense that the "not sold in stores" claim and the "limited time" of the party create an artificial sense of scarcity, to be discussed later.)
It is all the more interesting that the marks of the sales-party scam are fully aware that a person they like is going to attempt to sell them something, and they are going to buy it even if it's something they don't really want, and they resent it. A testimonial from one suburbanite is given: "I hate being invited to Tupperware parties ... but when a friend calls I feel like I have to go and when I get there I feel like I have to buy. What can I do? It's for one of my friends."
Liking and Salesmanship
It was mentioned, in the context of social pressure, that a person is more likely to purchase when a salesman even mentions the names of friends and neighbors who have purchased, or who suggested they might be interested. Not only does asking for references give the salesman leads, but using your name to other people makes them purchase out of a desire to be similar to someone they like.
This is also common in business-to-business sales: the portfolio of clients is a list of admired companies, and a manager who is called upon is expected to give the offer more consideration if he believes that successful companies have purchased the product - because he admires and wants to be like successful managers in other firms.
Another common tactic among salesmen is to attempt to make themselves likable. They are as a rule overbearingly friendly and cheerful people who are gregarious and approachable, and it's a common sales tactic to call the mark their friend, or themselves the mark's friend, or by other means to get the mark to see their relationship as more personal than commercial in nature, at least until the deal is signed.
Liking is so effective that in some cultures it has become part of the sales ritual. Haggling in Middle Eastern markets invariably begins with the merchant inviting the prospect to have tea with him, and doing business with a Japanese firm often means spending a long period of time establishing friendship before anything related to the business transaction is mentioned.
Factors that Cause Liking
Social scientists have been investigating the factors that causes one person to like another for decades, and while they have no clear answer they have identified evidence for a number of factors that reliably cause liking. And it is little surprise to find that each is already being exploited by compliance professionals.
Physical Attractiveness
It's generally acknowledge that people who are physically attractive have an advantage in social interactions, and research indicates the degree and breadth of this advantage are greater than might be expected.
A study of Canadian elections found that attractive candidates receive an average of 2.5 times as many votes as unattractive ones. Yet 73% of Canadian voters vehemently deny that physical appearance might have any influence on their voting.
A similar effect has been found in hiring situations, with attractive applicants in a simulated interview receiving more favorable ratings than unattractive ones - and interviewers likewise claimed that appearance had no influence in their decisions. Another study in Pennsylvania found that attractive criminal defendants received more acquittals and lighter sentences and that damages awarded to attractive victims were nearly twice as high.
Cialdini mentions the "halo effect" that occurs when a person who demonstrates one positive characteristic is assumed to have other qualities of character. People assume that an attractive person is kind, honest, and intelligent without knowing anything about their character.
There is only one instance in which physical attractiveness is a liability, and this occurs when a person of the same gender regards them as a rival or competitor. In those instances, an attractive rival is treated more harshly.
It is little wonder, then, that salesmen are fussy about their appearance, and managers who hire sales or customer service personnel show a marked preference for attractive candidates.
Similarity
Another factor that causes liking is similarity. We like people who are like ourselves - which is to say we are favorably disposed to people who seem similar to ourselves.
This similarity can occur in various ways: appearance, opinions, personality traits, background, lifestyle, and other dimensions. We instinctively seek out similarity, and may ignore many ways in which we are dissimilar to some one and focus on the few areas of commonality. Confidence professionals play on this by attempting to mimic their victims in a wide variety of ways.
Personal appearance is a relatively easy method of presenting similarity: people who wear similar styles of clothing can be seen to gravitate toward one another, and are more disposed to like one another.
As an example, a study done on a college campus used an actor who would don various costumes (hippie, jock, nerd, etc.) and approach other students asking for a dime to make a phone call. They succeeded more than two-thirds of the time when their attire matched that of their mark, but less than half the time when their attire did not match.
Another observation was of petitioners at a demonstration - not only were they more likely to sign a petition if the petitioner was dressed in a similar fashion, but they were also more likely to sign without bothering to read it.
A second aspect that is easy to fake is backgrounds and interests. He mentions that car salesmen are trained to look for evidence of things when inspecting a customer's trade-in vehicle. If they notice a set of golf clubs or camping gear in the trunk, he will find a way to mention a personal interest in golf or camping at some lull in the conversation. If he sees evidence of children, he will talk about his own children as if they are of the same age as the customer's. If someone mentions that they moved to town from another state, he may claim that he (or his wife) had once lived there as well.
Because we are inclined to seek out similarities, even minor similarities can be presented, and many are very easily faked, particularly in the context of a short-term conversation in which there isn't enough time for the perpetrator to slip up on the details.
He also briefly mentions the "mirror and match" behavior we see in peoples' nonverbal communications and suggests that they "have been shown to lead to positive results" but goes no further. (EN: this is also mentioned in communication studies - they are more inclined to engage with a person who mirrors them ... unless it becomes obvious that they are being mimicked.)
Compliments
Flattery, as it turns out, will get you quite far with many people: when you pay a person a compliment, not only do they feel the need to reciprocate, but they get the sense that you like them in a general way, and are disposed to like you in return. It is particularly effective to compliment someone on something that they are proud of - as this shows similarity in that you admire what they admire.
For both men and women, to be complimented by someone gets our attention because it plays upon the instincts related to mating (if the person is the opposite gender) and subordination (if the person is the same gender). Flattering is a way of putting a person on a pedestal, and most people are at least a little narcissistic and thrive on positive remarks about themselves.
He mentions a highly successful car salesman who sent a card to more than 13,000 former customers each month - the holiday changed from month to month, but the message was simply "I like you," exactly thus. While it seems bizarre and a bit hammy, he credits this practice for doing far more repeat business than his fellow salesmen.
Granted, there are limits to our gullibility, and when we become aware that someone is paying us compliments in order to manipulate us, we tend to take offense. But unless it is exceptionally clumsy, we tend to believe praise and like those who provide it.
An experiment done on male students were made aware that a person was going to ask a favor of them. An actor approached and would engage in conversation before making the request, during which they would make positive remarks about them, negative ones, or a mix. Naturally, the actor who made only positive remarks was best liked and most likely or receive the favor he requested - even though the marks in the study had been informed in advance that the actor would be making a request.
(EN: Cialdini doesn't mention this specifically, but there is the perception that people who are completely positive are not seen as trustworthy, hence there may have been an expectation that the actors who provided mixed remarks would be seen as more trustworthy - but this was not the case.)
Familiarity and Collaboration
Familiarity also creates a sense of liking: people respond better to things that they recognize, and this is often unconscious.
The author mentions an experiment in which the faces of several people were flashed on a screen, so that subjects could not register or remember them - yet when asked to assess a series of pictures as to their likability, they faces they had barely seen were rated as being more likable.
(EN: Familiarity and collaboration were lumped together under the same heading - but the author has little to say about familiarity before moving on to collaboration, which he explores more fully.)
Collaboration
He mentions the common experience in boys' summer camps, in which segregating the boys into cabins and making each cabin a "team" in competition with others created so much hostility that the experiment had to be undermined for their physical safety. By giving the boys a common problem (the truck transporting food to the camp was stuck) the experimenters were able to restore a sense of harmony.
These two examples show the opposite effect - in which people in proximity who are not able to become familiar with one another have a sense of enmity. (EN: What he doesn't mention is that it creates a sense of camaraderie among each group - whatever differences they had before, they behave as teammates, particularly when they are threatened by other groups for being a member of that group.)
He then mentions desegregation in public schools, which was meant to give children of segregated races more exposure to one another, but which resulted in increased hostility. The problem was that while the students attended the same schools, they didn't intermingle. And worse, teachers called more frequently on black students to answer in class gave white students a sense of competition rather than collaboration, and the sense that these were "intruders" who were rivals rather than colleagues.
This enmity was overcome by the "jigsaw" method, in which students of different races were placed together on study and project teams. By making them work together, the sense of enmity was overcome.
In terms of exploitation by compliance artists, collaboration and familiarity are often leveraged to create a sense of camaraderie between themselves and their mark. Consider the "sales manager" tactic used by virtually all car dealerships. The salesman portrays the manager as a stern boss who doesn't want to give the customer a good deal on a car, and in that way creates a sense of camaraderie between himself and the client.
Interrogators commonly use the "good cop bad cop" tactic in which one interrogator is aggressive and abusive of the victim while the other pretends to be kind and caring, and will pretend to defend the victim against his more abusive partner. The "good cop" can frequently obtain a confession from the victim by pretending to be his compatriot.
Conditioning and Association
There's an old saying that advises, "don't kill the messenger" - which is very popular because that is exactly what people tend to do. Cialdini mentions one of his patients who was a weatherman, and who received a lot of hate mail and even death threats. "One guy threatened to shoot me if it didn't stop raining." He presents an AP story that gives testimony of several other weathermen who've received the same treatment from viewers. People are well aware that weathermen simply report the weather, and don't cause it to happen - but the association of person to message is strong.
The opposite also holds true: if you tell a person something that makes them happy, they are more favorably disposed toward you. Compliance professionals often leverage this tendency by attempting to engage their prospects with something that gives them positive emotions - it can be a "gift" just for visiting their store, or a sweepstakes entry, or even news of a special promotional offer.
A similar thing is done in advertising, in which imagery that creates pleasant emotions is associated to a product. The age-old example of using seductive young women in automobile advertising and industrial equipment calendars is based on linking the viewer's attraction to the model to the product the advertiser wishes to be attractive to them. Market research shows this works: that men use more positive terms when describing products in advertising that associated them to attractive women than they did to advertising that omitted the women from the layout.
Another example is product associations to popular causes and people. During the days of the American space program, anything that was associated to space or astronauts sold briskly. Professional athletes are regularly associated to products, as are major sporting events (the Olympics and the Super Bowl) as well as charitable causes.
Political candidate soften use an association to celebrities and other nonpolitical figures in order to win favor with voters, as well as humanizing themselves by being seen with animals and small children, war heroes, or whatever is popular with the voting public.
Defending against Liking
Because liking can be triggered by so many means, it requires a considerable amount of effort to recognize and defend against. And because so many of the factors that lead to liking work on an unconscious level, they are nearly impossible to detect.
Instead, Cialdini suggests a general approach which may be applied after you've gone for the bait and your assailant is about to spring the trap. That is, you can realize when you have the sense that you like someone, question the reasons why, and assess whether it is something they have consciously done to bypass your defenses. This should be more effective because, whatever the cause of liking, the feeling they evoke is the same.
In particular, you can assess the situation when the request is made. For example, if you are in a store and about to make a purchase, ask yourself how you feel about the clerk or salesman you're dealing with. Is it reasonable to feel affiliation to a person whom you met only fifteen minutes before?
Think through the things that they have done that might have been intended to create a false sense of camaraderie: offered you a cup of coffee, complimented you on your choice of merchandise, told a few jokes, set up a boss as a common foe, etc. You may not have to make a complete catalog of all the reasons, but merely recognize that their actions have been a ploy to make you more easy to take advantage of.
A that point, mentally separate the salesman from the deal that they are offering. Ask yourself if you would like the product that they are trying to sell, or if you would find the price acceptable, if it had been offered by someone plain-looking and a bit obnoxious. There may be many instances in which you recognize that you value the item and feel the price is good, and the behavior and persona of the salesman would not have made any difference - but you may also recognize situations in which you recognize that you have been manipulated into a liking trap.
And when you recognize your assailant for what he is - a manipulative person who is pretending to be friendly in order to take advantage of you, your feelings toward him will naturally change to what is appropriate to his behavior.