Category: Persuasion

Part 2: Psych tips for how to promote change in other people.

5. Three steps to help someone else change

Firstly, the person has to be open to the possibility of change.

People can be very defensive about their habits; behaviours or patterns of thought may have taken years to develop.

Secondly, be warm and supportive.

Remember you’re a helpful friend who is interested in their well-being but is still accepting who they are.

Thirdly, help them develop self-awareness.

A central feature of habits is that people perform them unconsciously and repeatedly in the same situations.

A vital step in changing a habit, then, is identifying the situation in which it occurs.

You can help other people identify the situations by gently pointing out what seems to prompt them to perform the habit.

6. Let people convince themselves

Changing someone’s mind is just as hard as changing their behaviour.

But one useful tip is to use self-persuasion.

Let people talk themselves around to your point of view.

In this recent study, people were more convinced by a talk when they gave it themselves than when they merely heard it passively.

This suggests that we really are persuaded more strongly when we make the argument ourselves, even if it isn’t in line with our own viewpoint.

The same trick works with attitudes to smoking.

People are more put off smoking when they deliver an anti-smoking message than when they passively receive it.

Can you encourage someone to convince themselves to change?

7. The confirmation bias

One major psychological barrier to changing the mind is the confirmation bias.

The confirmation bias is the fact that people search for information that confirms their view of the world and ignore what doesn’t fit.

The way to fight the confirmation bias is simple to state but hard to put into practice.

You have to try and think up and test out alternative hypothesis.

Sounds easy, but it’s not in our nature.

It’s no fun thinking about why we might be misguided or have been misinformed.

Try to point out facts that don’t fit to the other person.

8. Eight steps to changing minds

Changing people’s minds isn’t just about telling them they are wrong; if only it were.

To be convinced people need to hear an alternative account.

This alternative needs to be short and sweet, it needs to be repeated, you need to attack the source of any misinformation and more…

→ Read all 8 ways to change people’s minds here.

Two paths image from Shutterstock

Fairness is not a totally stable trait, people can be encouraged to show more compassion.

A drug used to treat Parkinson’s can make people show more compassion to others, a new study finds.

Tolcapone has been found to change the neurochemical balance in the prefrontal cortex.

The new research found that this leads to more fair and equitable behaviour.

Dr Ming Hsu, one of the study’s lead investigators, said:

“We typically think of fair-mindedness as a stable characteristic, part of one’s personality.

Our study doesn’t reject this notion, but it does show how that trait can be systematically affected by targeting specific neurochemical pathways in the human brain.”

In the study, 35 participants were given either the Parkinson’s drug, tolcapone, or a placebo.

Tolcapone was used because it is known to prolong the effects of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to fairness.

Then people played a simple economic game in which they divided up money with strangers.

Those who had been given the tolcapone did so in a more egalitarian way.

Dr Hsu said:

“Our study shows how studying basic scientific questions about human nature can, in fact, provide important insights into diagnosis and treatment of social dysfunctions.

Our hope is that medications targeting social function may someday be used to treat these disabling conditions.”

The study brings us closer to understanding how compassion — such a crucial human behaviour — works in the brain.

Dr Ignacio Sáez, the study’s first author, said:

“We have taken an important step toward learning how our aversion to inequity is influenced by our brain chemistry.

Studies in the past decade have shed light on the neural circuits that govern how we behave in social situations.

What we show here is one brain ‘switch’ we can affect.”

The research is published in the journal Current Biology (Sáez et al., 2015)

Heart image from Shutterstock

Wonderful influence of mother’s presence on infants’ brain development and experience of pain.

The mere presence of the mother helps sooth an infant as well as changing genes in the emotional centres of the brain.

The new study from the NYU Langone Medical Center examined which genes in rat pups were active when its mother was either present or absent.

The study found that when experiencing pain, hundreds of genes in the rat pups brains were modified by the mother’s presence.

The pups were also soothed by the mother’s presence.

This is the first time that scientists have shown how the infant brain reacts to the presence or absence of its mother when in distress.

It is hoped the findings — presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C. — may need to new ways of treating pain in infants.

Professor Regina Sullivan, who led the study, explained:

“Our study shows that a mother comforting her infant in pain does not just elicit a behavioral response, but also the comforting itself modifies — for better or worse — critical neural circuitry during early brain development.”

The scientists analysed the amygdala — an almond-shaped part of the brain important in processing emotions.

Professor Sullivan continued:

“Nobody wants to see an infant suffer, in rats or any other species.

But if opiate drugs are too dangerous to use in human infants because of their addictive properties, then the challenge remains for researchers to find alternative environmental stimuli, including maternal presence, coddling, or other cues, such as a mother’s scent, that could relieve the pain.

“The more we learn about nurturing the infant brain during infancy, the better prepared we are to deal long-term with treating problems that arise from pain, and physical and mental abuse experienced during infancy.”

Image credit: Oleg Sidorenko

What’s in a name?

People whose names are more easily pronounced are believed more than those with hard to pronounce names, a new study finds.

This is even true when comparing two foreign people with unfamiliar names: the one that is more easily pronounced is perceived as more believable.

The study was inspired by the idea that we don’t necessarily weigh up the truthfulness of what we hear on an objective basis (Newman et al., 2014).

There are all sorts of psychological biases going on which influence how we perceive what we are told.

The study’s lead author, Eryn Newman, explained the general principle:

“When we encounter new information, how easy or difficult it is to process plays an important role in all sorts of situations.

For example, research shows people think that food additives with easier names are safer than those with difficult names.”

To the Fred Flintstone parts of our brains, that feeling of familiarity signals something that we can trust, but information that’s difficult to process signals danger.”

For the research, the experimenters looked through newspapers and websites from around the world for pairs of names from various regions.

One example of a pair of names used in the study was ‘Andrian Babeshko’ and ‘Yevgeny Dherzhinsky’.

Participants were asked in one experiment to describe how dangerous a person was, purely on the basis of their name.

In another experiment, participants imagined they were trying to choose the safest tour guide for a trip.

Each time the more easily pronounced name, like ‘Andrian Babeshko’, fared better than the harder of the pair (‘Yevgeny Dherzhinsky’).

Similarly, previous studies have found that people with easier to pronounce names are more likely to be liked, accomplished and even elected.

Newman continued:

“What we now know from these results, however, is that the consequences of easy-to-pronounce names reach much further than previously thought.

Just think of the situations in which pronounceability could have a significant impact on people’s lives.

For example, we might ask whether the pronounceability of eyewitnesses’ names influences jury verdicts.”

The authors finish with a reference to a spoof from The Onion, titled “Bush Deploys Vowels to Bosnia“:

“For six years, we have stood by while names like Ygrjvslhv and Tzlynhr and Glrm have been horribly butchered by millions around the world,” Bush said. “Today, the United States must finally stand up and say ‘Enough.’

It is time the people of Bosnia finally had some vowels in their incomprehensible words. The US is proud to lead the crusade in this noble endeavour.”

[…]

Said Sjlbvdnzv resident Grg Hmphrs, 67: “With just a few key letters, I could be George Humphries.

This is my dream.”

Image credit: Alan O’Rourke

First study to compare human and monkey brains with modern MRI methods reaches fascinating conclusions.

Researchers at Oxford University have pinpointed an area of the brain that is uniquely human–perhaps part of what gives us our higher cognitive powers and separates us from monkeys.

The area, in red above, part of the ventrolateral (at the front and side) frontal cortex, is likely to help us plan for the future, learn things from others, behave flexibly, along with other complex tasks.

To reach these conclusions, Neubert et al. (2014) compared brain imaging–both structural and functional–from healthy human volunteers with that from macaque monkeys.

This allowed them to build a picture both of the brain’s structure and how the different areas interact.

Professor Matthew Rushworth, one of the study’s authors, likened the brain to a mosaic of tiles:

“The brain is a mosaic of interlinked areas. We wanted to look at this very important region of the frontal part of the brain and see how many tiles there are and where they are placed.

We also looked at the connections of each tile–how they are wired up to the rest of the brain–as it is these connections that determine the information that can reach that component part and the influence that part can have on other brain regions.”

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was then divided up into 12 areas, 11 of which were connected up in very similar ways in both humans and macaque monkeys. This shows some of the striking similarities between the brains of humans and monkeys.

The 12^th area, though, in the lateral frontal pole, had no equivalent in the macaque monkeys, and may represent a uniquely human aspect of our brains.

The study’s lead author, Franz-Xaver Neubert, said:

“We have established an area in human frontal cortex which does not seem to have an equivalent in the monkey at all. This area has been identified with strategic planning and decision making as well as ‘multi-tasking.'”

The researchers also found that the auditory areas of the human brain were very well connected with the prefrontal cortex in comparison with the monkeys. This may underlie our advanced language skills.

Image credit: University of Oxford

It’s not just what you say, it’s the way that you say it.

The sound of our voices, including its pitch, accent and inflection, has all sorts of subtle effects on how we are perceived by other people.

Here are ten ways in which the sound of your voice influences other people’s minds.

1. Familiar voices jump out

Familiar voices seem to jump out of the background hubbub automatically at us.

Participants in a recent study listened to their spouse’s voice when it was mixed up with a stranger’s voice (Johnsrude et al., 2013). They found it easier to pick out what their spouse was saying compared with the stranger.

The punch line is that people also found it much easier to ignore their spouse’s voice when they wanted to.

So, familiar voices are easier to hear, and also easier to tune out.

2. The voice of love

There’s a subtle change in people’s voices when they speak to someone they love.

Despite the subtlety of these shifts in the voice, people can detect the changes by listening for just 2 seconds (Farley et al., 2013).

One of the study’s authors, Susan Hughes, explained that the voices of new lovers had a special tone:

“There was vulnerability associated with the voices of those newly in love. Perhaps people don’t want to be rejected.”

3. Women attracted to deeper voices

It’s hardly a revelation that women prefer men with deeper voices (Collins, 2000), although it does contain a mystery.

The mystery is: why? You might, quite sensibly, guess that it signals a taller man, more muscles, a hairy chest and so on.

But actually when women are tested, a deeper voice only tells a woman that a man probably weighs more. In other words, men with deeper voices can just as easily be short, fat and totally lacking in muscles or a hairy chest.

4. Deeper voices are more memorable

Deeper voiced men also enjoy a range of other advantages: they sound more like leaders (Rindy et al., 2012), consequently voters go for deep-voiced males (Klofstad et al., 2012) and women find what they say easier to remember (Smith et al., 2012).

5. Men attracted to higher voices

Just as women prefer men with low voices, men prefer women with breathy, high voices–but not too high-pitched and squeaky (Xu et al., 2013).

The idea is that a high-pitched voice signals a smaller body and a more submissive person (hey, no one said evolutionary psychology was politically correct).

6. Breathy male voices are sexy

Most know that a breathy female voices sound more attractive to men, but one surprise in the research is that a breathy male voice also sounds more attractive to women.

One theory of why breathiness is attractive for both men and women is that it makes the voice sound less aggressive and therefore more approachable (Xu et al., 2013).

7. Beware the cheating voice

A potential problem with a man having a deep voice and a woman having a high-pitched voice is that it signals attractiveness, which also means they might be cheaters!

People seem to be implicitly aware of this (O’Connor et al., 2011). One of the authors of the study, Professor David Feinberg, explains:

“Men with higher testosterone levels have lower pitched voices, and women with higher estrogen levels have higher pitched voices. High levels of these hormones are associated with adulterous behaviour and our findings indicate individuals are somewhat aware of the link and may use this in their search for a romantic partner.”

8. Love your own voice?

Everyone must have had the experience of hearing their own recorded voice back and being surprised by it. Many people say: “Oh, I really hate the sound of my own voice!”

But is that true?

A study has tested this by having people rate a series of voices, which, secretly, also included their own (Hughes, 2013). It turned out that, on average, people really liked the sound of their own voice, despite not recognising it as their own.

So, it’s not just politicians who love the sound of their own voice–most of us do.

9. Foreign accents less believable

One problem for those with a foreign accent, is that it sounds less believable.

A recent study found that statements that were read in a foreign accent were rated less truthful than those read in a native accent (Lev-Ari et al., 2010).

While prejudice may be involved, it’s more likely down to the fact that foreign accents are more difficult for the brain to process.

Unfortunately our minds apply a simple rule: if it’s more difficult to understand, it’s less likely to be true.

10. Imitate accents to understand

If two people with different accents are talking to each other, they naturally blend them to match, usually without realising.

The reason for this is partly that when we imitating someone else’s accent, it makes it easier to understand what they are saying (Adank et al., 2010).

But make sure that you keep it subtle, or it will sound like you’re mocking them.

Image credit: Marina Montoya