“He that has once done you a favor will be more ready to do you another than he whom you have yourself obliged.” – Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was an 18th-century American statesman, scientist, inventor, musician and author. You probably got introduced to him at a very young age when you read that nursery rhyme, “Early to bed”. Once, a person lambasted him publicly with a long speech. This angered him but instead of taking some kind of an outright revenge, he decided to try something different.He realized that his goal was to turn his hater into a friend because, according to his estimation, this man who’d berated him could one day become very influential.So Ben wrote him a letter asking him if he could lend him a ‘scarce and curious book’. Ben worked at and maintained a library at that time and was widely known for having good literary tastes.Needless to say, the hater was flattered and sent the book eagerly. Next time he met Ben in person he talked to him and ‘ever after manifested a readiness to serve him on all occasions.’The Ben Franklin effect What you just witnessed has come to be known as ‘The Ben Franklin effect’.It states that when we do a person a favor, we tend to like them more as a result- even if we didn’t like the person or hated them initially. In other words, you can effect a favorable change in the attitude of a person toward you just by asking them to do a favor for you.At first, it almost seems like magic but there is a good psychological explanation as to why this happens…Consider how you behave when you’re indecisive. If I offer you a chocolate cake you probably won’t show any indecision and will gladly take and eat it. It just tastes so good.However, if you’re watching your weight and I offer you a chocolate cake, indecision can kick in since the potential cost of eating a chocolate could be weight gain.In order for you to eat the cake, the perceived potential benefit of eating it has to outweigh the potential cost of eating it. ( see why we do what we do and not what we don’t do)While you’re still unable to decide whether to eat the cake or not, let’s say I insist that you eat it and you cave in. At this point, your mind will likely slip into a state of cognitive dissonance because you just did an action that didn’t match your psychological state. You weren’t psychologically prepared to eat the cake.In order to restore stability, your mind now has to invent excuses and rationalizations to justify what you did so that your cognitive dissonance is resolved.So you might say something like, “One piece of cake isn’t going to do any harm” or “I’ll do extra cardio tomorrow morning.”The human mind is designed in such a way that it tries its best to do those actions which carry more benefits than costs. If it fails and ends up doing something that carries more costs than benefits it has to somehow convince itself that it didn’t really fail because the knowledge that we incurred more costs than benefits is difficult to handle.When you ask someone for help and they do help you out, even if they had no good reason to do so, they’ll need to invent one. Since we usually help those whom we like, the person’s mind goes like, “I helped him, therefore I must like him.”
“Did you just say you don’t like me? Would you mind passing me that bread, please?”In the incident of Ben Franklin, some other factors were at play too that shouldn’t be overlooked. We like it when someone likes our favorite book, movie or TV show because it helps us boost our ego. (see Why we want others to like what we like).In many cases, hatred is just a way to make yourself look better than your competitor. Often, when someone says “I hate you” what they’re really saying is “I hate how you’re better than me.”Ben Franklin’s hater probably hated him because he knew at a deep level that Ben was better than him- hence the need to lambast him publicly. When Ben fed his depleted ego by asking for help (the helper is at a superior position than the helped), he was pleased and ‘ever after manifested a readiness to serve him on all occasions’.He could now think of Ben as his equal or even as his inferior. But we all know who’s really the clever one and superior one over here.
Literary Persuasion–The Hunger Games
If you’re reading this, then chances are you like to read. And you almost certainly like stories.
From an evolutionary viewpoint, the reason for loving stories is clear; prehistoric man could listen to his friend talking about a close encounter with a wolf in a cave and then he could use that knowledge to stay alive on his search for food. Stories were sugar coated pills of important information. They were also a way of creating beauty to bond with other humans and increase one’s survival (1). Even today, it’s a well-known fact that we tend to enjoy things that lengthen our lifespans–mother nature is funny that way.
Granted, the ‘don’t eat those red berries, because…’ story is extremely different from the modern fictional sagas, but we’re captivated by them just the same.However, this still doesn’t explain our love of books in particular. These days, most books have been turned into films, which require little effort or time to watch. Reading a 700-page book is an entirely different form of crazy. It requires days, and sometimes weeks, of dedicated page flipping. Why do we do this?
One simple answer could be ‘the book is better than the film’. But why would we say this? What powerful force would make us struggle through not just one book, but a whole series because it’s ‘better’ than anything on the screen?
I believe the answer is ‘persuasion’. The writer is trying, and often succeeding, to convince you that those 100,000 words are worth your time. Essentially, a book is a never-ending stream of propaganda that tells you to read more propaganda.
From a writer’s point of view, this is a difficult task. There are so many bits and pieces that make or break a story. The characters. The descriptions. The action or the lack thereof. The plot. It all matters because, at any point, the reader could decide the story is not worth the effort.
From the reader’s point of view, it’s kind of cool when you start looking for all the hidden persuasion tactics.
For example, consider The Hunger Games trilogy. I will attempt to make sense of it without spoiling the plot for those of you who haven’t read it. The high caliber of the story is definitely worth experiencing for yourself.
The popularity of the The Hunger Games trilogy is impressive; in 2012, Amazon stated that sales had surpassed the record held by the Harry Potter series (2). It’s fair to say that the author, Suzanne Collins, knew what she was doing. Here are several of the tricks slipped into the combined 1344 pages (A few of these tricks were apparent in the films, but, in my opinion, they weren’t nearly as clear).
A gripping first paragraph: In fifty-two words we discover three characters: ‘I’, ‘Prim’, and their mother. We also learn that they must not be rich, because their mattress is ‘rough canvas’, and something called ‘the reaping’ is scary, brings bad dreams, and is today. Any sympathetic reader is already worried, and has three big questions; who is ‘I’, should we care about them, and what happens during the ‘reaping’ that warrants fear?
Throughout the three books, Suzanne Collins is careful with her words. She always gives just enough, but not too much. This has the added bonus that when Katniss, the protagonist, repeats something we immediately know it’s important.
Katniss: Our main character is arguably perfect for the story. She’s not your average teenager; this is not an average teenage story. Katniss cares most of all about her family, and we learn this for certain on about page 11, but we can tell she cares even from page one when she checks on her sister. Throughout the books, Katniss continually reminds us of her loyalty to her family: it’s the thought of her sister that keeps her going when she’s stuck in the arena ready to give up. Katniss also likes to keep her mind organized. Several times through the story she first recaps on the events that just happened, what she needs to do next, and then makes a plan. Not only does this methodical thinking flesh out Katniss’s character–she’s a survivor to her core–but it also assists us in remembering important details during the fast-paced novel. We also know what to expect next, so when the hoped-for event doesn’t happen, we will, helpfully, start to panic even when Katniss can’t because she is too busy trying not to die.
Surprise: A key factor in our, and most other animals’, survival is our ability to predict future events: It’s the “last time I ate expired mayonnaise, my insides tried to come out–let’s not do that again.” thought process (3). Stories allow us to test our future judging skills, and we feel happy when we guess the plot correctly. However, the excitement always tends to rise when something unexpected happens. There were several times when Peeta, Katniss’s fellow tribute, said things that had such a profound effect (in both my and Katniss’s minds) that I struggled to keep from running around and yelling “what!?” If you’ve read the books, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Almost nothing in the world of the Hunger Games is predictable. We have to continually keep reworking our ideas for how the story will go. I think these surprises also contribute to a more subtle meaning–they indicate the vast intelligence of the other characters. This is important: clever villains are difficult to beat. And characters playing mind games is a big factor in most dystopian fiction (it’s also fascinating!).
Viewpoint: This is an important factor in the success of the books. In my opinion, it’s the biggest reason why the films fall short–why most films can’t seem to capture our hearts like the books do. This distance seems to get worse the closer the screenplay tries to stick to the book, or when the book is written in first person*. The Hunger Games is first person–Katniss tells it: I grin and move in the direction of the bird. First person is limiting for the writer because the reader can only know things that the protagonist knows. Other people’s thoughts and plans are all inaccessible. When these things are important in a novel, it’s usually told in third person (he/she yelled and started to run) and sometimes with a narrator. However, first-person’s claim to fame is the intimacy between us and the main character; for all purposes, we are Katniss. Not only do we know everything she thinks and feels, but we and her are joined in the word ‘I’. In the books, this means that Katniss dictates our thoughts. She’s worried, we’re worried. She doesn’t trust the creepy guy with the trident, we hope she’ll steer clear of him in the future. This narrow, but detailed, viewpoint works well for the Hunger Games story where most of the tension level is caused by what we don’t know.
Moral Values: There is darkness in the Hunger Games trilogy. The heart of every dystopian novel is the corrupted ethical values of its society. Arguably, Panem, is one of the most twisted: children are forced to kill each other for reality television, and people see it as entertainment. Most of the dislike that I’ve encountered for the Hunger Games is because this sort of violence is horrible to even think about, let alone to write a novel and then produce a film. The youngest kids in the games are twelve, the oldest are practically adults. And to top that, if things get ‘boring’, the game masters cheat by sending fire and setting traps to accelerate death. The question arises, “if there are people in these books who think this kind of violence is okay, how do we keep this generation from accidentally getting the wrong message?” This is another of the places that I feel the film falls short. We’re only watching Katniss feel the pain caused by her society, not actually being her. I will not pretend to understand Katniss’s motivation to make the decision she chooses at the end of the third book, but I will say that the horror is not romanticized. It does, however, serve a purpose: the topic is so unthinkable that it immediately incites a moral response from the reader. Suzanne Collins doesn’t have to show us that it’s bad in the very beginning, as soon as it’s explained, we know. And we also know that the stakes will be high.
Overall, The Hunger Games Trilogy has a plethora of persuasive content that glues us to its pages and there is still plenty more that I haven’t mentioned. There are also these same persuasive tactics in other books–authors like to recycle good ideas: J.K. Rowling loved sticking surprise plot twists in Harry Potter; 1984 takes corrupt ethical values to a whole new creepy level; and The Grapes of Wrath gives you strong characters to care about, whose thoughts clarify their world. The persuasion is everywhere, but we shouldn’t fear it.
We crave stories for our survival, so we pick up a book. We finish it because we’re convinced the words will give us that oh-so-pleasant dopamine rush–the complex kind that you can savor and just can’t find anywhere else. And luckily for us, in most cases, books give us exactly that.
Now go read something.
*I’ve seen several cleverly done films where an entire character is invented just for the purpose of dialogue between him/her and the protagonist. This way, we know what our hero is thinking without them having to talk to themselves. The exceedingly brilliant claymation, Coraline, is one of these films.
If you’re interested in reading more, check out my blog: sonorahillsauthor.com
References:
(1) J. Tooby and L. Cosmides (2001). Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts, SubStance 30, no. 1 (2001): 6-27.
(2) J. Bosman (August 17, 2012). Amazon Crowns ‘Hunger Games’ as Its Top Seller, Surpassing Harry Potter Series. The New York Times.
(3) M. Gazzaniga (2008). Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique (New York: Harper Perennial).
How to Use Equivalence to Close ANY Sale in 5 Minutes Flat
What exactly is Equivalence?
Equivalence is a nifty little trick to get people instantly interested in what you have to say and it works so well because it is a brilliant way to paint a mental picture quickly and without going through lots of fuzzy, generic words.
As an example what mental image do you get when I say:
Uber for Lawn Mowers
Airbnb for cars
LinkedIn for musicians.
TONY ROBBINS for tropical monkies (not really)
You know that Uber for lawnmowers means that this business allows people to sublet their lawnmowers when they aren’t using them.
You know that Linkedin will be a specialized professional social media platform for musicians
This is what I call equivalence.
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO BELOW:
When to use equivalence?
When you want to get your point across quickly
When your business is a bit complex and hard to explain
When you are talking to someone who has no clue to the subject matter
When you want to stand out amongst many similar businesses
Frames of Reference & Associations:
Use a familiar frame of reference, for example, Spain doesn’t have Uber so even though they may have heard of it the won’t necessarily get it.
Please make sure it has a positive association – you don’t want a negative association.
Make sure it has the right association
Do not choose a reference which has more than one predominant association.
How to use equivalence for the win?
Look at the best global brands out there (Interbrand) and see how they do it, look at the best movie characters and fictional characters. For example Hermione from Harry Potter.
Look at what they stand for, is is longevity or loyalty for example – “I’m the Energiser Bunny of…” for longevity.
The post HOW TO USE EQUIVALENCE TO CLOSE ANY SALE IN 5 MINUTES FLAT appeared first on The Persuasion Revolution.
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