Rob Yeung - I is for Influence: The new science of persuasion

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Bonnie Chiang for her insightful comments as always and Becky Mallery for her diligent research. Thanks also to the Talentspace team for giving me the time and space to write uninterrupted! Dedicated to my parents, and Steve and Byron as always.

INTRODUCTION

If you would persuade, you must appeal to
interest rather than intellect.

Benjamin Franklin

In 1957, a middle-aged American market researcher announced a discovery that so outraged and frightened the general public that the CIA was ordered to investigate its potentially terrifying implications. Newsday magazine called it the most alarming invention since the atomic bomb.

The man responsible for the uproar was James Vicary, a heavyset man with the oversized features and perpetual scowl of a security guard. Vicary was a self-proclaimed expert at depth-probing, or the alleged science of delving into the psyche of consumers. Earlier in the 1950s, he had spent time researching the behaviour of customers in shops, using hidden cameras to investigate the relationship between women shoppers patterns of eye blinks and their purchasing intentions. The goal was to predict womens shopping preferences from their eyes alone, but his research findings were disappointing and he quietly dropped the topic.

But it was his innovation in a movie theatre in suburban New Jersey for which he shall forever be remembered. During showings of the movie Picnic over a period of six weeks, he repeatedly projected the words Drink Coca-Cola and Hungry? Eat popcorn on screen at five-second intervals. Each phrase appeared on screen for only a three-thousandth of a second, too briefly for the audience to be aware that they had seen advertising messages at all. Rather amazingly though, Vicary reported that he managed to boost sales of Coca-Cola by 18 per cent and popcorn by a startling 58 per cent. He had invented subliminal advertising.

The public was appalled. Average Americans worried that they could be made to buy just about anything against their will while the New Yorker magazine condemned Vicarys machinations because, in its view, minds were being broken and entered. Legislators in Washington, D. C., launched campaigns against what they saw as a clearly unethical technique, asking the governments Federal Communications Commission to ban the use of subliminal advertising.

There were other concerns too. This was the 1950s, the height of the Cold War against the communist regime of the Soviet Union. The Soviets had just beaten the United States in the space race by successfully launching their Sputnik 1 craft into orbit around the Earth. The fact that the Soviets had succeeded in launching the worlds first ever man-made object into space was a serious blow to the American publics belief in capitalism. To compound the problem, communism was establishing a stronghold in China too. The American public felt under siege from all sides and paranoia about the threat from communist countries was high. What if a foreign government used this terrifying new subliminal technology for the purpose of political indoctrination, slipping the propaganda message convert to communism into American movies? Whole swathes of the American public might be coerced into altering their political beliefs or committing other heinous acts without even realising they had been influenced to do so.

The CIA moved swiftly to investigate Vicarys claims. Assembling a task force of psychologists, behaviour experts, and intelligence

The CIA concluded that the power of subliminal advertising had been greatly exaggerated. Despite the furore in the popular press, the effects were short-lived and too unpredictable to manipulate peoples behaviour in any meaningful fashion. Certainly, there was no threat that it could be deployed to coerce people to behave dangerously or against their will. Perhaps certain members of the CIA were even disappointed that the practice couldnt be used to compel foreign agents to act in ways that might benefit the United States.

Reputable researchers from universities around the world were also unable to replicate Vicarys findings. In identical tests, they reported over and over again that subliminal messages either had no effects or only tiny effects that were nearly inconsequential. How could Vicary have boosted popcorn sales by 58 per cent?

Answer: he hadnt. A few years later, in 1962, Vicary finally admitted in a magazine interview that he had made the whole story up. He had not collected data about the effects of subliminal advertising even once, let alone over the course of six weeks. He had not succeeded in boosting Coke and popcorn sales. In fact, he confessed that we hadnt done any research. It had all been a hoax, a lie, a patent untruth. He had dreamed up the idea in a desperate attempt to stir things up, to generate publicity for the floundering agency that he ran.

To repeat then: subliminal advertising doesnt work. Yet if you ask most people today, they still think it does. It persists as a legend. It lives on as an urban myth, because we all remain fascinated by the psychological methods that can be used to influence us.

The psychology of influence and persuasion

I was about 10 years old the first time I can remember really wanting to influence someone, to change someones mind. Wed learned in school one week that smoking cigarettes was bad for us. Really bad. In a biology lesson, there was a hush amongst the class as our teacher Mrs Beard told us of the poisons contained within cigarette smoke. She told us that cigarettes contained a gooey black substance called tar that could clog our lungs. She reminded us that when we went swimming and got water in our mouths by accident, we choked and coughed when it got into our lungs. And she asked us to imagine how it might feel if we got tar which was 10 times thicker, more syrupy, and poisonous too into our lungs.

I was horrified. Not because I had ever smoked a cigarette or even planned on trying one, but because my dad smoked. I went home and told him how dangerous smoking was for him. I told him how cigarettes led to lung diseases, how he could end up having breathing difficulties, how he could even end up with lung cancer.

Dad listened stoically to the arguments. He nodded and said hed think about quitting. Except he carried on smoking.

I didnt understand why. He had definitely grasped the arguments against smoking. He even seemed to agree with the points Id made. I felt confused, frustrated, even a little scared. Why wouldnt he stop?

Thankfully, the tale has a happy ending. Dad did stop smoking. But it took nearly three years of constant nagging and pleading, encouraging and cajoling from myself and the rest of the family before he quit. Surely there had to be a better, less frustrating way of changing someones mind than that?

Fast-forward 10 years and I was looking for my answers, to uncover the methods and manoeuvres that could change peoples attitudes and alter their behaviour. Studying for an undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Bristol, I came across one particular research report that resonated deeply with me.

In 1964, the Surgeon General in the United States published a definitive report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer. The connection between the two is widely accepted nowadays, but at the time it was sensational news and a shock to many people. Shortly after the announcement, two academics at UCLA in California conducted a survey of several hundred people in nearby Santa Monica, gathering their views on the Surgeon Generals conclusions.