Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Commitment & Consistency

The Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF) and Ogilvy Thailand won a Bronze Outdoor Lion at Cannes in 2012, Gold Special Event and Silver Online awards at the 2013 Clio AWards, Gold for Special Service at the One Show Awards, a Silver Film Lotus at the 2013 Adfest Awards using children to challenge adult smokers.

The video when released went viral and has millions of views worldwide.

Compare the results of the ad whereby almost every adult who received the note stopped to think and threw away their cigarette. No adult, however, threw away the note to the “shock and awe” images used here in Australia trying to scare people into not smoking.

smoking

 

Which one do you think has more impact?

As a non-smoker I believe the commitments made by the adults in the video (i.e. telling the children smoking is not good for them) and then the question from the child querying why they are not remaining consistent with their statements is a powerful use of the Principle of Commitment and Consistency.

If nothing else it certainly makes you think differently  about the stop smoking campaign!

The post Commitment & Consistency appeared first on Social Influence Consulting Group.

The Gift

I have never found a man so generous and hospitable that he would not receive a present, nor one so liberal with his money that he would dislike a reward if he could get one.  

Friends should rejoice each others’ hearts with gifts of weapons and raiment, that is clear from one’s own experience.

That friendship lasts longest—if there is a chance of its being a success—in which friends both give and receive gifts.

A man ought to be a friend to his friend and repay gift with gift…

Generous and bold men have the best time in life and never foster troubles. But the coward is apprehensive of everything and a miser is always groaning over his gifts.

(Havamal, vv. 39, 41-2, 44-6, 48 and 145, from the translation by D. E. Martin Clarke in The Havamal, with Selections from other Poems in the Edda, Cambridge, 1923.)

the gift In many civilizations, business and social exchanges, are started and settled by the giving and receiving gifts.  Marcel Mauss postulated in his classic work The Gift (1924) that various cultures practice reciprocal gift giving and by the act of giving an initial gift an obligation is triggered in the receiver in that they are obligated to repay the debt to the gift giver.

Mauss believed that the gift carried the identity of the giver.  Therefore when the recipient receives the gift they also receive a small part of the identity of the giver.

Just like the double handed giving of a business card in some Asian cultures.  The gift given is that of access to the giver.  You now have their personal details.  Don’t put their card in your pocket and sit down.  Treat  that card with the respect it was given…and therefore should be received.

In The Gift Mauss explores many cultures including the gift giving of the Maori. The Maori believed giving was not only attached to the individual but also to the clan and the land.  The gift was important as it was a vehicle for their mana or the magical, religious and spiritual power of the individual, clan and the land.

The law of gift giving was governed by the hau or the “the spirit of the gift”.  The hau required the gift to be returned to its owner and if the obligation of giving was not observed then the recipient could lose their mana meaning they could lose their spiritual source of authority, wealth, or even become ill or perhaps die.

Just like the Maori, gifts all over the world are a critical tool for creating strong social bonds between individuals, groups and communities.

In The Gift Mauss outlined three obligations:

Giving: the first step in building social relationships.
Receiving: accepting the social bond.
Reciprocating: demonstrating social integrity.

Therefore as Dr Cialdini says,

“In every society, there is an obligation to give, to receive, and to repay”

IMPLICATION FOR YOU

Next time you give, receive or repay a gift.  Think about the power of the gift and all it entails.

The post The Gift appeared first on Social Influence Consulting Group.

The Ultimate Commitment

How much more impact would this test have had if they had asked a question and elicited an active, public and voluntary commitment?

 How would you have gone with this?

“The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by psychologist Walter Mischel, then a professor at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward (sometimes a marshmallow, but often a cookie or a pretzel, etc.) provided immediately or two small rewards if he or she waited until the tester returned (after an absence of approximately 15 minutes). In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI) and other life measures.” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment). While the validity of delayed gratification and strategic reasoning has been called into question – the purpose of this post is to ask you.

How well are you using Commitments to achieve your business goals?

The post The Ultimate Commitment appeared first on Social Influence Consulting Group.