Summary

Influence is about leveraging the brain's existing wiring. Confirmation bias means more data just polarizes further, so effective persuasion starts from common ground rather than conflicting priors. Emotions are contagious and predictable: synchronizing your emotional state with your audience's primes them to receive your message. Immediate positive feedback beats punishment, agency is intrinsically rewarding, and curiosity gaps motivate action more than facts. Social dynamics – our perception of others as competitors, our theory of mind, the momentum of initial ratings – shape decisions far more than rational analysis.

Key Takeaways

• Confirmation bias intensifies with intelligence

Notes

1: Priors

• Confirmation bias: more data → polarization
• Google history personalization polarizes
• Intelligence twists information
• Bayes’ Theorem
• Find arguments on common grounds
  • Not conflicting prior beliefs

2: Emotion

• Emotions hijack brain in predictable ways
• ↑ prompts people to view the world in the same way
• Making sure people are in the same mood you are ensures proper reception
• Babies’ physiologies match their parents
• Twitter increases emotional arousal
• Makes it easier to communicate ideas

3: Incentives

• Moving with pleasure, freezing with fear
• Washing hands display: 33% → 90%
  • Immediate positive feedback
  • Social norms
  • Competition
• Incentivize: carrot > stick (go reaction)
• Dissuade: stick > carrot (freeze reaction)
• Fear, uncertainty → short-term thinking
  • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

4: Agency

• Lack of control → fear
• Tax allocation study: 50 → 70% compliance
• Agency, control is a reward in an of itself
• Elderly plant watering perception of control, responsibility: ↑ happiness, health (IKEA)
• Tell people they’re expressing control

5: Curiosity

• Create curiosity gaps of knowledge
• Belief of future reward > actual reward
• Cost of knowledge: cannot un-know
  • Eg. 42% don’t receive cancer details

6: State

• Stress increases focus on risks
• Take more risks when not stressed

7: Others I

• Think different: desire to be unique
• Ratings ← starting momentum
• Brain perceives others as competitors
• Theory of mind: our ability to think about what others are thinking
  • Greater theory of mind = more likely to buy during a stock market bubble

8: Others II

• How to find answers in an unwise crowd
• Wisdom of the crowd: only applies with independent samples
• Social influence:
• Wisdom of crowd applies to self: can only weigh limited related info at once
• Be weary of systematic bias
• Surprising popular vote: defeats ↑ bias
  • Ask what people thought most others would say. Answer that’s more popular than people expected is right
  • Eg. 100 widgets: 94% 80% → 6% 20%

9: The future of influence

• Brain signal transmission
• Freeing brain from human body