The Jordan Harbinger Show - 414: Jonah Berger | How to Change Anyone's Mind

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Jonah Berger (@j1berger) is a professor at Wharton and a world-renowned expert on word of mouth, social influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. He's also a bestselling author; his latest book is The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind. What We Discuss with Jonah Berger: How the ingrained anti-persuasion radar we all possess makes it harder for us to follow even the best advice. Why providing someone with a "menu" of options is a far more effective method of persuasion than giving them a single option. While pushing works well when we want to move furniture, we're better off identifying obstacles and removing them when we want to guide another person in a certain direction. How effective advertising overcomes our anti-persuasion radar and gets us invested in the idea of buying products. Why most anti-smoking campaigns have an effect opposite of their intentions, and how a Thai campaign cleverly adopted a tactic that actually worked. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/414 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger show. So an eight-year-old boy or an eight-year-old girl goes up to a smoker on the street. It says, can I have a light? And smokers do, of course, what you'd think they would do. They say, no way.

There's no way I'm giving you a light. Like, you're a little kid. You should go run and play. Like, it'll give you lung disease. It'll give you emphysema. Don't you want to be healthy? Like, no way am I giving you a cigarette. And then at the end of the interaction,

the kid goes, okay, and they hand the smokers a piece of paper. And on those piece of papers and note that says, hey, you worry about me, but not yourself. think about calling this quit line. Because again, rather than trying to persuade the smokers, not saying, hey, don't smoke. You can do whatever you want. But if you wouldn't give me a cigarette,

why are you still doing it yourself? It points out a gap between their attitudes and their actions or what they say they care about and what they're recommending for someone else. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills

of the world's most fascinating people. If you're new to the show, we have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional arms dealer and neuroscientist, and each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. Today on the show, Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of Business, one of the top schools in the nation. He's an expert on word of mouth, viral marketing, social influence,

and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. Today, we'll discover that humans have an anti-influence and anti-persuasion system. Of course, we'll also learn how to work around this, hopefully for good. This episode centers around persuasion, especially as used in marketing and influence campaigns. We'll also learn why we don't even see influence in real time, even when we're trained to do so, and how we can sharpen ourselves to be more aware of influence attempts, subversive marketing, and of course, our own bias as well. Speaking of influence, if you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and celebrities every single week, it's because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at

Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they help contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. Now, here's Jonah Berger. The last book I interviewed you about was Invisible Influence, last time you were on the show. And this book, The Catalyst, actually in many ways is similar. You know, we start off with a little bit of persuasion. And you note that most of the time, we just hit the gas and try to force our way to get someone to do something else, right? If we want to persuade,

parenting is a classic example. I've got a nine-month-old kid, so I don't have to do this yet. But I distinctly remember my parents saying things like, why do you have to do it? Because I said, say, or, you know, this is the way things are done, and you have to do it that way,

and you just have to trust me because I'm your mom or your dad. And that's limited in its effect, especially if those people we're talking to are not our children, right? So what alternative strategies are we looking at here, short of field hypnosis? That's the first way. Yeah, you know, I was talking about a consultant who talked about this in, I think, a way that many of us can understand.

You know, imagine you're presenting in a meeting, right? So you're pitching a group, whether it's a client, potentially, or even an internal meeting. Maybe you're pitching your boss and your team or their team on an idea. And you're doing your best, right? You're giving them lots of reasons why they should do what you want them to do. You're giving them facts. You're giving them figures. you're giving them information, you know, you're giving them PowerPoint slides, all the growth

trajectories go up and to the right, you know, everything looks wonderful. And they're all sitting there and they're looking like they're engaged. And at the end of the meeting, they say, okay, well, think about it and then they never get back to you. Because what they're really doing is they're sitting there thinking about all the reasons why what you're suggesting, unfortunately, is wrong, right? Because essentially people, whether they're kids, whether they're nine month old, soon to be, you know, eventually two years old or they can talk a little bit more, or whether they're that boss or that client in the meeting, you know, we all have an ingrained anti-persuasion radar. It's essentially a defense system that detects persuasion attempts. So when I realize that someone's trying to persuade me, whether it's a

telemarketer or an advertisement or someone presenting in a meeting, I engage in sort of a set of defensive actions to protect myself against persuasion. I avoid the message. I ignore it. So, you know, maybe I hang up on that telemarketer or I delete the email. Or even worse, I do what's called counter-arguing, right? I sit there and I think about all the reasons why what someone is suggesting it's wrong. I poke and I prod, sort of like almost like a high school debate team member, right? I find all the flaws. I find all the holes, and the argument eventually comes crumbling down. And so I think the challenge for us as people trying to change minds, whether it's our kids' minds, whether it's our client's mind or our boss's mind, is not so much to persuade, but to get people to persuade themselves.

One thing I talk a lot about in the reactions chapter is really how can you shift the role of the person who's listening to you? Not so you're pushing on them, but you're involving them in the process. they're participating in a way, and as a result, are much more like to buy into what you're suggesting at the end. And so I'm happy to talk more about some specific strategies of how to do that, but that is a high level of sort of one of the principles, right? Rather than persuading people, get them to persuade themselves, rather than trying to sell them, get them to buy into what you're suggesting themselves, and they'll be much more amenable to changing. It's funny. Thinking about this, people are going, oh, great, okay, get them to persuade themselves,

like when you let a kid think cleaning their room is their own idea, a friend of mine who's also a I got parenting on the brain now, which is probably a good thing. He said, my son just asked me how he can earn more Legos, because I texted him a photo of a bunch of Legos. I get sent a lot of stuff doing a show, and I'm like, my kid's going to choke on these. They're like, you know, it's like a castle set of Legos that he can't use for a decade. Yes, you know? And I'm like, thanks.

It's a very kind gift. But this thing is going to be old and dusty and not cool in 10 years or I'll just buying it. Like storing it is just not even worth it at this point. And again, the show fan who sent this. to me, I'm deeply thankful as just one of those things that non-parents send to parents and they think, this is awesome. Yes.

They're going to love this. Toys with lots of lights and sounds also fall in that way. Yeah, I'm like, you know, every single one of these things can poke through skin and kill him. So I'm just going to go ahead and not let him have that. Anyway, so I took a photo of it and sent it to my friend who's got little kids who are appropriate age. And he said, yeah, my kid just asked me what he can do to earn more Legos. And I was like, ah, putting a pin in that, because that's really one of those notes where you go,

So he can say, well, you can start to do more cleaning or something like that. And the kid's like, great, how about I clean my room? The most obvious thing you're always asking me to claim. Yeah, good idea. And then maybe you can clean up your toys outside and all these little things to earn more Legos. There's also a dark side to this too. Recently, I was involved in a lawsuit. And I don't know how much I can say about this or how much is a good idea to say about this.

But one of the things that I did during the lawsuit was the other side was so predictably irrational and angry that it was easy. enough to do something that would trigger them to do something that would then kind of either be something we wanted them to do or would paint them into a corner. Well, I don't want to give an example because then they're going to be like, I've been tricked. But, you know, they would, they would do something and they'd go, oh, well, we're just going to do this now. And my lawyer and I would just kind of sit there and chuckle because we were like, really, all you had to do is post this tweet and get him so riled up that he would then pull this particular thing and

then he ends up only having this one or two options left, both of which are good for us. And so we started to do this, and it doesn't trigger what you've called the anti-persuasion radar. I don't know if you created that, but it's a brilliant term. People have this innate anti-persuasion radar, and once you trigger this, they don't want to be persuaded. I'll let you explain it since I'm interviewing you theoretically right now. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like a spidey sense. And as someone described it that way, and I think that's exactly right, if you detect an incoming persuasion attempt, and you then try to fight against it, and that's when their defenses go up and, you know, you avoid, you ignore, or you counter argue. But I think to what you're saying with the

Legos, you know, to me that's a little bit like the carrot and the stick. Yeah. If you do this, you'll get that, which is great in some ways, because as long as you have Legos, people will do something if they're desiring Legos. Eventually, though, they're going to want bigger things and eventually they're going to say, well, if you don't give me Legos, I'm not going to do it. And so that's the challenge with sort of the carrot and the stick approach. And so what I would suggest, instead, whether you have kids or whether you're trying to change an adult's mind, is one way is to give people choice. One way is to provide what I'll call a menu, right? So go back to that example you're presenting in front of an audience, rather than saying, hey, here's what I'm suggesting.

Give people a choice. Say, hey, which do you like better, X or Y? Which of these, you know, I'm suggesting one of these two courses of action, which do you guys like? And what it subtly does is it shifts the role of the audience, right? Because before the audience was going, I don't like this, this is why I don't like this, this is why it's not going to work. But when you give them a choice, now they're sitting there going, wait a second, I've got a job, I've got to figure out which of these two I like better. And because of that, one, the anti-persuasion radar doesn't have time to work because I'm focused on my new job, which is figuring out which one I like. And two, because I'm figuring out which one I like, I'm much more like to go along with one of them

at the end of that meeting. It's giving people a menu, but it's a small menu. It's choosing the choice set and allowing them to choose from within that choice set because now they feel invested in it. And it works the same thing with kids. I mean, you know, I was talking to a parenting expert who talked about this from the kid's angle. And you know, it's, hey, which do you want to do first? Put on your pants or your shirt. So we have a two and a half year old. And so recently went through some similar things myself. And so it's not saying, hey, do this. And it's not saying do this or I'll give you some Legos. It's saying, which one of these do you want to do first? Right. And then the kids not saying they're going, well, actually, I want option three to do neither of them. They're saying,

hmm, which one do I want to do first? I want to put my pants on or my shirt on. And now they're not think about the other options and they're much more menable to doing what you wanted in the first place. So when people think they're being sold or persuaded, this anti-persuasion radar kicks in, defenses go up and then suddenly people, what, shut down or they just more skeptical and suspicious or is there like a complete shutdown? I'm sort of imagining myself when I walk on the car lot and somebody's like doing the assumptive close and it's their third day on the job and it's all clunky and I'm like, dude, I just told you I'm not here to buy. You don't have to like do all the, I feel like I'm sort of embarrassed for them at some level, and I'm just like, I know you're doing your job,

but look, this is not happening. Like, you're not going to outframe me. Come on. I think a good way to think about it is often when we try to change minds, we assume some version of pushing will work, right? You add more information. You add more reasons. You try to emotional appeal. You do some sort of clothes. You know, you use all these techniques that we're all familiar with that often use some version of pushing. And it's sort of clear why we think pushing works, right? If there's a chair in the middle of a room and we want to move that chair, pushing is a great way to move that chair, right? We push on it and it goes. The problem with people that we just talked about is when we push people, they're not like chairs. They don't just go. They in some sense

dig in their heels. That radar goes off and they don't just become sort of immobile or stop listening. They push back. And so I think a good way to think about is almost, you know, you imagine that chair, sure, if you're just pushing and there's nothing pushing back, the chair goes. But with people, you start pushing them, they push back. You push harder. They push harder back. And so they don't go anywhere. And so really what this book is all about is rather than pushing or finding more facts or figures or reasons, figuring out what those obstacles are and removing them, right? Figuring out, well, what's preventing someone from changing, whether it's reactants because we're pushing them too hard or, you know, whether it's one of the others, I'm sure we'll talk about later.

What are those barriers or those obstacles? Let's figure out how to get rid of them and let's use that to help people be more willing to move. Do you mention the example of public health messaging when it comes to some of this and kids eating tide pods? I would love for you to talk about that just because it's the most ridiculous news story of, was it 2018? Yeah. When I read it, I thought, this is fake. And then I went on YouTube and I went, okay, I lost like 5% more of faith than humanity after that. Yes. So I'll tell the tidepod story. It's also funny because, you know, when we think about these stories, we think they're one-offs, but it is indeed come back to sort of re-hant us again. So I'm sure most of your listeners are familiar with tidepods. Yeah, they eat them all the time.

So, you know, they're little packets, basically. They're, you know, one inch by one. one inch squares, filled with all sort of chemicals. You're probably not aware of the story behind Tyde. So I'll talk a lot about the story. So Tide many years ago wanted to make doing laundry and doing dishes and all these other things that Procter & Gamble cares about easier. They started to try to figure it could we come up with tablets or cubes that basically people can toss in rather than have to measure. It failed. The first iteration, move forward a couple decades. They come out with Tide pods, a new version of them for laundry. No must, no fuss, no measurement. You just toss them in. They work. So Tide was thinking, look, this billion dollar laundry market,

is ripe for innovation. Let's spend over $100 million in marketing. Let's launch these things and we'll really do quite well. And they did well for a little while. Tide pods were selling. People were excited about them. Then, as you noted, there was a problem. And the problem very simply was that people were eating them. Now, you're probably sitting there going, what do you mean people eating them? They're full of chemicals, right? People eating them? No people were eating them. So there was some funny video on college humor. There was a piece on the onion. Suddenly, you know, 18-year-olds are challenging each other on the internet to eat Tidepods. Called the Tide Pots. challenge, got some traction, obviously dangerous. Tide is sitting there going, well, what do we do?

And so they did what any corporation does. They told people not to do it. They said, hey, don't eat tid pods. And in case you don't believe us, look, we hired this celebrity. Rob Grankowski and Rob Grankowski comes along with his own video and says, don't eat tidepods. They're a bad idea. Don't eat tibods. Okay. So they think this would be the end of it. They make this message. They hope it will stop people from eating tide pods. Doesn't stop eating people from eating tide pods also doesn't have no effect, even worse, visits to poison control shoot up, searches on the internet shoot up over 400%. Essentially a warning becomes a recommendation. Tide telling people not eat Tidepods makes them more likely to do it. Why the like,

is it because more people saw that and then thought, wait, you can eat Tidepods? I'm so mystified by this because one, I would never think to eat a detergent, a capsule. They do look tasty, though. I will tell you, they're too brightly colored. They need to make them dull looking and And the ones I put in my dishwasher, they don't look tasty. They look like weird soap. But the tide pods, you bust those things out and you're like, this looks like a toy that I could play with. And since it doesn't do anything, but it's soft, the texture looks just right.

It looks like it would be delicious at a restaurant. Like a giant gummy bear. So I kind of get that, but I wouldn't do it because I'm an adult. Then if I see a celebrity say, hey, you know, this is detergent. Do not eat this. Don't do it. Yeah. That would not encourage me.

So what's actually happening here? This makes no sense to me. So a couple things are important. So one, certainly the case when people tell us not to do things, we go, screw you, don't tell me what to do. I'm going to do it anyway. Right. So you know, you're a teenager, your parents tell you not to date someone. You know, someone tells you not to do something. You're like, ooh, I want to see. Why did they tell me not to do it? And so, and sometimes it's an advertisement. It makes people realize this thing exists and makes them interested in it. Telling people to do something makes them less interested in doing it. Think about all the, you know, stuff around the coronavirus where they said, you know, stay at home, wear a mask, do this. You know, and this is essential a public. health messaging has been doing for decades. If it's a good thing, do it. If it's a bad thing, don't do it. And assuming that just telling people what to do will change behavior. The problem, what that does is it impinges on people's ability to see their choices as driven by themselves. That's at a core what reactance is. We want to see that we're in the driver's seat. Why did I buy this car,

use this detergent, make this choice. I did it because I wanted to. But as soon as you, whether you are the government, whether you are tied, whether you are a friend or a boss, whoever it might be, As soon as someone tells me what to do, now it's not clear whether I'm doing something because I wanted to do it or because they told me to do it. And because of that uncertainty, right, I don't know whether it's me or them, I say, well, screw it, I'm not going to do it, right? Because it could be not driven by me, I'm not going to do it. Or in Tide's case, be more likely to do it. People say, don't impinge on my freedom and autonomy. Don't tell me what to do. I'm going to do it anyway, and that reactance is really what drives these things.

How is it different than regular advertising, though? Because ads come on all the time where celebrities will say something like, drink White Claw, it's so tasty and fun or whatever. You know, this, I don't even know if I'm supposed to talk about this. This is a joke advertisement for an alcoholic beverage. I don't want to, you know, get in trouble for this. But that works. Advertising works.

You know, hey, look, buy this thing. It's fun. So how come we don't have reactants to that? Like, wow. Yeah. Well, let's be careful, right? So what are we comparing advertising to, right? And so if we compare, you know, $100 million advertising campaign to no advertising at all,

$100 million of advertising is make a lot of people aware that something exists. You know, a Super Bowl ad makes a lot of people aware that something exists. That doesn't mean all those people go and buy it. Right. And, you know, my first book, Contagious, was all about how word of mouth is much more powerful than advertising. Why? Because we know advertisers are convincing us, trying to convince us. So our radar goes up.

The agenda, yeah. But when our best friend says, hey, I had a white claw last week and it was delicious. I don't know if your best friend would say that. hopefully not, but imagine they said that. We're not going to go, oh, you're trying to sell me some white claw. We're going, oh, you're trying to help me out. So my radar system doesn't go off. And so I'm much more influenced by a friend or somebody I know telling me something appear than an ad. And so reactants happens for most ads. It's just that so much money is spent on advertising in some cases that even above and beyond the reactants that happens, it has a little bit of an impact.

But if there wasn't so much reactance, the ads would actually have much larger impact than they do already. Interesting. So we see certain types of advertising get less effective over time, probably because reactants goes up, right? So like... Well, yeah. Nine out of ten dentists. Right. So think about the first time nine out of ten dentists came out. Someone's like, oh, that's so convincing. Wow. Dentists must really like this. Now all of us sit there go, no way. Like, you just paid a bunch of people. This isn't true. I'm not going to believe it. Yeah. Or just anything that's advertised is always approved by nine out of ten. So it becomes like table stakes to have that. Yeah. I mean, you know, you see the people in American, you know, United Airlines. It looks like they're having a wonderful flight.

they're having a great time. I see the ad and I go, man, I've never been on that flight. Like, I would love to go on that flight. On that flight, they're on time. They didn't lose the bags. The customer service people are nice. Like, I'm on the flight where they don't care about you. You know, they lost your seat. They lost your bag. And the flight is two hours late. But the ad makes it look wonderful. And so I think, you know, the first time, sometimes these appeals work, but people are smart. The second, the third, the 10th time, they definitely don't work. They decrease in effectiveness, in part because of reactants. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Kelly McGonagel was on the show. a little while ago, and she mentioned this anti-smoking and alcohol campaigns can increase consumption.

Apparently, Tidepod campaigns can also increase consumption. She mentioned that those black lungs on cigarette packs, and I don't know if they do this in the United States, in Asia and other countries, they will put like a disgusting photo of like an autopsy lung or heart or both on the pack. It's one of the most disgusting photos you could see, and it's printed right on the pack. and I thought, well, that works on me. Like, I'm already a non-smoker, but if I even thought about it, like, if I've had too many whiskeys and someone's like, hey, come outside and smoke with us, I see that pack come out, and I'm like, I don't even want to be standing near you when you smoke to continue the conversation.

I'm going to go wait inside. Yeah. Because it's just, but they just are unaffected by it. And Kelly's research, Kelly McGonigle says research shows that this actually increases consumption, which is, like, really kind of a bummer. Yeah. So I'll say a couple things. So first of all, there's a bunch of research that looked into smoking and other related campaigns.

You know, some of it has found what called backfiring effects in part because they're like advertisements, right? So, you know, think about the old don't do drugs campaigns, say no to drugs, right? Of sort of the 1980s of potentially, you know, one's youth. And, you know, a lot of these campaigns that said, hey, you know, there's some kids at school. They're going to ask you to try drugs and you should say no. Right. And if you're a 12-year-old kid, you're going like, first of all, drugs, I didn't know these things existed. Right. What are they? And second, oh, other people are using them? And it's the cool kids at school. well, maybe I should check those things out. And so it deals a little bit with norms where it says,

hey, don't do this because other people are doing it. That's one thing. I think another thing I would say, though, is there are ways around this. So there's a great smoking campaign I talk about in the book from Thailand. It's from this group called the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, essentially a quit line to help people to quit smoking. And similar to what you said, you know, they've realized we don't need to give smokers information. Smokers aren't sitting there going, man. The reason I'm smoking is because I think it's good for me. Right. That's not what smokers are thinking. Yeah, I read an ad from 1850 and it said that this was good for your... Yes. The thing they used to advertise like, oh, this will help you clear your throat out or something like that. Definitely help clear your throat out one way or the other. Yeah. So the

ad does something interesting. The campaign does something interesting. They have a smoker on the street. They come up to smokers, and they ask the smokers for a light, and which is something that most smokers say, yes, of course, but it's not a regular person asking the smoker for a light. It's an eight-year-old kid. So an eight-year-old boy or an eight-year-old girl goes up to a smoker on the street, it says, can I have a light? And smokers do, of course, what you just think they would do. They say, no way. There's no way I'm giving you a light. Like, you're a little kid. You should go run and play. Like, it'll give you lung disease. It'll give you emphysema. Don't you want to be healthy? Like, no way am I giving you a cigarette. By the way, very clear

that smokers know more about the health effects of cigarettes than doctors do, right? They're very happy to list all the reasons why you shouldn't smoke. And then at the end of the interaction, And the kid goes, okay, and they hand the smokers a piece of paper. And on those piece of papers, a note that says, hey, you worry about me, but not yourself, think about calling this quitline. This campaign goes viral. Millions of views on the internet. Calls the quit line go up 40%. But it's an example of a much broader principle called highlighting a gap. Because again, rather than trying to persuade the smokers, not saying, hey, don't smoke. You can do whatever you want. But if you wouldn't give me a cigarette, why are you still doing it yourself? It points out a gap between their attitudes and their actions

or what they say they care about and what they're recommending for someone else. Essentially, you know, people want those two things to be in line. If I say I care about the environment, then I should recycle. And any time our attitudes and our actions don't line up, it creates cognitive dissonance. I'm sitting there going, man, I say one thing, but I'm doing something else.

I got to figure out how to make those things fit. And often people change their behavior as a result. And so a great way to change behavior is to highlight a gap. Hey, you know, you might want to go run outside and do whatever you want and not wear a mask, but would you want your grandparents to do that? Would you want your younger brother, sister to do that. Okay, if you wouldn't want them to do it, then why are you doing it yourself?

Not telling people, hey, do these things, but making them realize, wait, if I wouldn't want someone else to do it that I care about, why should I be doing something different? You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Jonah Berger. We'll be right, right back. And now back to Jonah Berger on the Jordan Harbinger show. It seems so obvious, but of course, like addiction is complex, right? There's like a compulsion for this. But you said that campaign was extremely effective? Yes. Yeah. Huh. So what are we trying to do sort of like reduce cognitive dissonance or like smash them so hard with the obvious facts that they can no longer reconcile these two ideas in their head? Let's be really careful. We're not smashing with the facts. It's even better as if they smash themselves, right? I think

about it is sort of guiding a journey, guided choices or guiding a journey. We're not telling them what to do. We're not telling them don't smoke. We're not telling them wear a mask. We're not telling them adopt this product or service. We're giving them choices or asking them questions or raising ideas and letting them make the decisions. But because we're guiding that journey in the right way, we're not just saying, hey, do whatever you want, right? We're sending an eight-year-old kid to talk to smokers, but we're not sending them to tell them not to smoke. We're encouraging them to figured out themselves, right? We're using them, and because they're participating in that conversation, they're much more likely to change at the end of it because they decided at themselves. Again,

we're not persuading them. They're playing a role in the process. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Again, like having them make this decision for themselves, you mentioned in the book about how choice and control make us happier or more content. Let's discuss this a little bit because there's, of course, there's these like vague ideas of autonomy and things like that. We don't want to feel influenced. what is it about choice and control that we as humans seem to be hardwired to do? Yeah, I think the best way I often like to think about is we like to be in the driver's seat, right? Like we like to feel like a choice is ours. Like we are guiding our destiny.

We are guiding our journey. We are making decisions. You know, there's obviously work on too much choice that says, you know, too much choice can be overwhelming. You give people too many options. They don't make a decision. But what's neat is if even in those studies, if you look at those studies, when they ask people, do you want choice, people always say, yeah, of course, right? Even when choice is bad, even when there's so many options we feel overwhelmed, we prefer having the option to choose rather than not having

that option because we don't want to feel like someone else is making the decision for us. There are lots of great studies that look at this, you know, even terrible choices that make people feel horrible from making them. They rather have them making those choices than a doctor making those choices, for example, because they want to feel like they're in control. So even when it's worse for us, we love that sense of control. What kind of choices? You mean like to... Oh, like, there's great studies that have been done. So Sheena Aiongar has done a bunch of great work in this area. But, you know, they'll take people and ask them to imagine that, you know, you have a young child that has a disease and, you know, you have to fear out whether to take them off a ventilator or not. And if you take them off the ventilator, they'll die. But if you leave them on the ventilator, they'll probably be brain dead and won't have a great life, you know, which will you choose? And people hate this choice, right? It makes them feel stressed out and badly. But if they ask a second set of people, hey, do you want to make this choice to take your child? off the ventilator or not? Or do you want a doctor to make this choice? Most people say, well,

I want to make the choice. Of course I want to make the choice. This is such an important choice. Why would I give it up for a doctor? I want to have control over what's going to happen my kid. Even though it's going to make me miserable, by the way, I don't think about that. And even though the doctor might make a better choice, by the way, I don't think about that. I don't want to give up that feeling or freedom, the chance that I'm driving my destiny. And so even when it's a terrible choice like that one, we want to feel like the choice is ours, even if it makes us worse off. I want to feel influenced even when it's complex, right? Because I almost would feel my gut says I want somebody else to make that choice.

That way I could sort of rationalize that I didn't really have a choice, right, that this was something so bad that I couldn't do anything about it, not like I chose to pull my auntie's life support system out. Like, oh, I didn't have a choice. I would want to almost rationalize that that was the case. I think if someone said, hey, the way we usually do it is that we choose, but if you really want to you can choose. You would love that situation. You'd say, great, go ahead and do it. But if the situation was reversed, they said, hey, it's your choice. But by the way, if you want us to choose, we can,

then we're not going to give it up. We feel badly about giving up the opportunity to choose, even though sometimes we have a sense it might make us worse off. It's really hard for us to let it go. Think about it, right? People love going to stores with Mo Choice. People love, you know, health care plans that give them more options. Even though because those things have more options, they end up choosing plans that are worse for them after all, because they like the sense of choice and the feeling of choice more than they actually like choosing itself. That makes sense.

Now, you mentioned to reduce reactants we can allow for, or we're allowing for agency, essentially. And the first example you gave in the book was providing a menu. And you mentioned this before, where it's, do you want to put on your shirt first or your pants first or whatever the example was that you gave? Or do you want to wear your yellow pajamas

or your blue pajamas before you go to bed right now, that kind of thing? what other options and techniques do we have to reduce reactants? To reduce reactants and allow people to decide for themselves what it is they want to do. So we talked about providing a menu, right, giving people some choice. We also talked a little bit about what I call highlighting the gap or putting out a gap between their attitudes and their actions. So that's like the Thai smoking thing. Yes, yeah.

And you can think about the same thing at the office, right? You know, someone's wedded to an old project. It's not working. It's losing money, but they don't want to give it up. You know, rather than telling them, hey, we need to close this project, we should shut out of this project, saying something like, Would you recommend someone else start a project like this? And they'll probably say, no, given what I know now, you know, I wouldn't want to start it again. And then you could say, oh, why are we still doing it then?

If you wouldn't recommend someone else is doing it, again, asking them rather than telling them. And outside of highlighting a gap, I would say that's another principle that I talk about there, which is asking rather than telling. So, you know, one example of this, there was a startup company in the book that I talked to a startup founder. And he was trying to get people to work harder. You put in more hours, work weekends. And, of course, you tell people to work weekends, they say, thanks, but, you know, no thanks, I don't want to work weekends. So instead he had this sort of all-hands meeting where he was like, hey guys, what kind of startup do we want to be? Do we want to be a good startup or a great startup?

And everyone knows how to answer that question. Everyone goes, we want to be a great startup. Yeah. Right. And then he goes, okay, well, then what do we need to do to get there? And so people start talking about it. And they start coming up with ideas and they start making suggestions. And then later on, when he implements some of those suggestions, it's a lot harder for them. And one of those suggestions, by the way, was putting in more hours. It's a lot harder for them not to do it because in a sense, they've committed to the conclusion. right? They said, hey, we need to put in more hours and say, great, that's what you came up with. Let's do it. So it sort of forces them to put a stake in the ground. By asking questions, again, does a couple things. One, it shifts the role of the listener from thinking about what they don't like what you suggested to come up with what they think you should do, which they're more than happy to do, right? It's their opinion. It's their ideas. So they're really happy about those ideas. But then later when you go ahead and say, great, I liked your idea, let's do it. They can't say, well, I don't want to because they came up with it. And so again, asking rather than telling, telling pushes reactants, asking gets them involved, allows them to participate, and makes them much

more bought in so that later when you roll out something they want to do, they're happy to go along with it. Yeah, this reminds me of a concept that Chris Voss, who's an FBI hostage negotiator, had mentioned on the show before where he's got this sort of magical question where he says, how am I supposed to do that? And you kind of let the hostage taker figure out how you're supposed to do this thing or come up with ideas on how to solve the problem. That way later on, they're not thinking, well, you're forcing me to do this, right? It's their idea on how to get through the situation without getting, I don't know, shot by the police or whatever the situation might happen to be. I want to highlight something with providing a menu, though, as well.

When we don't provide multiple options, people poke holes in the single option, which can you speak to this a little? Because I think this is kind of magical when it comes to sales presentations or, you know, parenting like you gave in the example you gave in the book, broccoli or chicken, poking holes in that single option, I've noticed this so many times. Even when I talk to my own team about something, if I bring them an idea, they have 8,000 things that are wrong with it.

If I bring them three ideas, they just pick one and we go on with their lives. Yeah, and again, it's involving them in the process, right? It's shifting their role, and I think we talked a little bit about this already, but it's shifting their role from shooting down, that anti-persuasion rate, are shooting down what you came up with,

which was their job when you're presenting one option, to switching their role to say, okay, which of these do you think is best? Okay, well, hold on, now I have a different job. I've got to compare these different options. I've got to think about them in terms of which I think is best. So I've got a job. I like having a job. I like feeling like someone cares about my opinion. I like having choice. I like feeling free to make those choices. But now I'm spending a lot less time thinking about what's wrong with each of these options, more time spending, thinking about what's right, and less time think about which options are not on the table. Because obviously, there are more than three options in any situation. There might be 10 or 15 or 20 options. But because you focus them on a few and all of them seem like decent options, they focus on those. and are more likely to choose one at the end. Back to the earlier point about hostage negotiators using some of this, start with understanding with something where I think even in the book,

you give the example of crisis or hostage negotiators using this. I'd love to hear about this because this is something, basically anything you can use when somebody's got a machine gun aimed at a crowd, spectators is something you can use with a teenager. So this is going to be widely applicable, even though it sounds like it's not going to be. Yeah, you know, one interesting thing about this book, I did sort of the usual set of interviews, right?

So I interviewed top performing salespeople and leaders of organizations and great bosses and startup founders and that sort of stuff. But I also interviewed hostage negotiators, substance abuse counselors, you know, a guy who got a grand dragon of the KKK to announce the KKK. I talked to a lot of people. I talked to people who changed political parties. I talked to a lot of interesting folks outside of the normal type of people I would speak to. And it was neat to see, you know, parenting experts, it was neat to see the same principles

at work in different areas under slightly different names or approaches. And so starting with understanding, I think, is sort of simple, but we often don't think about it. And, you know, one of the hostage negotiators I talked to, spoke about this a lot, where he said, you know, often novice negotiators want to jump right to the end. They want to start with influence. I want you to come out with your hands up. Or, you know, if it's your kids, I want you to eat your vegetables. If it's your boss, I want you to implement this project. They jump right to what they want.

And listeners, the people they're trying to change go hold on, no thanks, and they do all the react and things we talked about. And so what he said that sort of sees the negotiators do is they start with understanding. They start by figuring out who is the person I'm trying to change. Why are they here? What is the problem? And if I understand them, how can I make it easier to change them? If you go to the doctor's office, for example, and you go in with a problem, the doctor doesn't say, okay, let me give you a cast for your foot. The doctor starts by saying, okay, what's your issue?

Let me ask some questions. Let me figure out what the problem is so I can actually solve it. And so, you know, doctors think about that as a diagnostic. Hosten negotiators talk about the same thing. And this guy was saying he starts every interaction with hi, you know, my name is this, are you okay? And he starts asking the person questions to get a sense of why that person is there in the first place. And I'll share a story, which I think is really revelatory. It's one I hope none of us have to be in, but I think it really shows this idea of starting with understanding. He was talking to a guy who was thinking about committing suicide. It was a father who had a couple young kids. He had lost his job. He had no way to provide for his family. But he had a big insurance policy and he thought, look, you know, if I kill myself, This insurance policy will pay off. It'll take care of my family. Not how insurance works, by the way, people. Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of the challenge, right? Because the hostage negotiator wants to come and say, hey, man, you kill yourself. Insurance won't pay off. I did my part here.

Thanks. See you later. Yeah. But the person's in such a state that they may still kill themselves, right? You can't just jump to influence. So instead he comes in. He's, you know, hey, are you okay? What can I get you? How can I help you? How can we work together? All this sorts of stuff. And he starts a conversation. He starts by understanding, you know, what's going on? You know, what are you worried about? Oh, you know, I can't provide for my family. Okay. And so he doesn't say, hey, the insurance policy won't pays off. He says, okay, clearly he sees the person cares about their family. Tell me about your family. Oh, I've got two young kids. Oh, you seem to care about them a lot. Yeah, they're great boys. I take them fishing. I'm trying to raise them to be

gentlemen, all these different things. He starts the guy in a conversation about the things that the guy cares about. And as part of that conversation, he's learning a lot about why the guy's there. He's learning about what the guy cares about, what the guy's worried about, all those different things. So, you know, tell me about your boys, tell me what they do. And he gets to a place in the conversation, the host negotiator, where he goes, oh, well, it sounds like you care a lot about your kids. And the guy goes, yeah, I do. And then the hosh negotiator goes, and this is when he makes his move. He goes, well, if you kill yourself, your boys are going to lose the best hero they've ever had. Doesn't tell the person not to do anything. Doesn't tell them what to do. Just again,

guides that journey, because now he's raised something, right? He's raised something that the person sitting there going, wow, like, actually, that's pretty powerful. Maybe I, maybe I don't want to do what I wanted to do originally. Again, he doesn't tell him, but he starts with understanding he gathers that information that allows him to get to that point. And so, you know, the same thing can be true with customers. People talk a lot in marketing about customer centricity, starting with the customer. Too often we use the same pitches or the same appeals with everyone, the better we understand why someone's in the situation around what they need, what the barriers are. I use this all the time in consulting projects. You know, let's figure out what's stopping someone

from buying your product or service, let's identify those barriers and remove them. By starting with that understanding, we can really encourage change to happen. In the book also, you discuss concepts like loss aversion, and this is commonly discussed, but we can refresh here. Why is it that we're so afraid to lose things versus the prospect of gaining something?

It almost seems like the opposite because you see people doing such stupid things, like gambling, buying lottery tickets. I mean, where's loss aversion when people are dumping 10% of their income? even though they're below the poverty line into lottery tickets. Yeah. It seems like I'm missing that part of the equation.

Yeah, so I think a good way to think about it is to talk about a study that was done many years ago with mugs. And it could be anything. It's not important that it's a mug. It can be whatever product or service you want. It could be with selling a home, but the study was done with mugs, and so I'll talk about it that way.

And so imagine I show up and I say, hey, thanks for doing this interview. Really appreciate it. By the way, here's a mug, a coffee mug. It's a Wharton coffee mug. It has a Wharton logo on it. You can use it to hold coffee or tea or whatever you want. it's a beautiful mug. And you say, thanks, that's great. And you take the mug home. And then I call you a couple

days later and I say, hey, I have someone who wants to buy a mug like that, how much would they have to pay you to sell that mug? Okay, so I ask you your price to give up this thing that you already have. To give up something you've been using, how much someone would have to pay you to give it up? And you might give a number like $8, $9, $10, whatever it is. Your valuation that mug is $8 to $10, something like that. If I put you in a second scenario, though, I didn't give you the mug. I just said, hey, here's a coffee mug. It's a Wharton mug, it's a Warton mug, whatever, same situation. But now it's not yours. You're thinking about buying it. Do you have a Ross mug instead of a Wharton mug? I can find whatever mug you like. It doesn't have to be a word. I'm a Michigan guy. I don't really want an award. I have a number of friends that went to Michigan. I'm happy to get you a Ross mug. But I asked you how much you would pay for that mug.

Same mug, same thing. You would say about half the amount. You would say maybe $4, maybe $5, something like that. Okay. Same mug, same uses, but because it's not yours already, you value it less. And that's a lot of what the research shows. Essentially, it shows what's called the status quo bias or the endowment effect. The stuff we're doing, we like it a lot because we're already doing it.

it feels safe. We know what it's like. We become attached to it. It's hard to let it go. New stuff is costly. It's hard to give up old things because we say, well, this is all the stuff I'm giving up and we weigh the things we're giving up more than the stuff we're getting. And so we become attached to the old things and unwilling to shift to the new ones. And this is a huge problem when it comes to change, right? Whenever we're trying to change someone's mind, not just trying to get them to do something. Well, I was trying to get them to give up that old thing. People talk a lot about this in relationships. They say, oh, you know, I'm dating someone, but I'm not sure. But, you know, I'm just really worried that I'm not going to be able to find some. Right, exactly, the switching costs or whatever involved. You're both uncertain about the new thing, but you're also attached to that old thing. That old thing is not perfect, but because you know it, it feels a lot safer, and so we tend to stick with it even in cases when we should. Do switching costs and loss aversion, do they go up the longer we have something? Because I'm thinking about relationships where it's like, they're slashing each other's car tires and, like, you know, putting X-Lax and each other's breakfast cereal. And they're like, but I don't know.

It's been 20 years. You know, I can't go back out on the market. Like, they're more afraid to be alone is sort of the conventional wisdom. But it's also just loss aversion. It's not necessarily more, well, I guess that's part of loss aversion, right? They're more afraid to be alone. It's like a component of it. But there's also just that familiarity.

And it's like, no matter how awful this person is, you've sort of rationalized their behavior because you just don't want to make the switch. Even if it's your friggin' tennis partner and they show up half an hour late every time and like forget once a week that you have a match. or a game, and they're annoying, you don't want to hear about it anymore. You're still not going to switch. Ah, but I have to find someone new. Yeah. And so I think both things are true. It's both that were uncertain about new things and new things are risky and were attached to old ones. The longer you live in a home, for example, the more you value that home above and beyond market price,

because it becomes hard to imagine giving it up. And so loss of version happens anytime we switch from an old thing to a new thing. This happened to me when I was buying a new phone, right? I had an old phone, was running out of memory, you know, it couldn't do things, I couldn't store any more photos on it. I kept holding on to it. Why was I holding onto it? Because it had a small footprint and all the new phones had a larger footprint. Now, that is true. The new phones did have a larger footprint. They also had better memory, better camera, more storage space. Yet I stuck to the old one because I didn't want to give up the small footprint, which is a loss, even though there were all these other gains. Lots of research often shows that gains have to be two times the size of losses to get us

to give up old things. And any time we're asking people to make a switch, we're asking to give up an old thing for a new thing. And so they tend to focus on what they're losing, right? Oh, yeah, this person isn't perfect, but I would lose these things. Rather than think about all the good things they would gain from something new. So how do we get people past switching costs, past loss aversion? Yeah. You mentioned two ways. One, surface the cost of inaction and two burn the ships. I think one sort of seems really clear, but I'd love to hear you explain how these work and how we can do them in practice because burning the ships may be a little tougher in practicality these days. Yes, yeah. And I love the servicing and the cost of an action. I think in writing this book,

that's one thing I've learned a lot about and I've tried to apply in my personal life. And the basic idea here, I think, is best illustrated in terms of injuries, right? So which do you think would hurt you more, a minor injury or a major one? So a minor injury like, I don't know, you sprain your knee or you sprain your ankle or a major injury like you shatter your kneecap or you break your ankle. And if you're like most people, you probably say, well, of course the major injury is a lot worse, right? I have to, you know, go to surgery and I have to go to rehab and all these other things. The minor injury is not that bad. And that's what everyone says and they're wrong. And the reason why they're wrong is when you have a major injury, you do a lot of work to fix

it. You do that rehab, you do that surgery, you do all those things. If you have a minor injury that's below the threshold of change, you never go get that sprained ankle fixed. You never go get that weird sort of shoulder tweak that you have. You never get it fixed. And because that over time, it caused you a lot more pain than it would otherwise. Each amount of pain is a small amount, but aggregated over time, it's a lot worse. And that's the idea of surfacing the cost of an action, right? We think that a problem isn't that big. And indeed, it's not that big, right? You know, if we're using an old software product that's not as good as the new one, it's not that big of a deal. But adding up each of those things actually is a big deal.

And so that's partially what change agents, what catalysts have to do is they have to surface those costs. So this actually happened with a cousin with mine. I was talking to him, he was talking about every time he sends an email, he would write at the bottom of that email his email signature. So, you know, regards Charles every single time or best Charles every single time. And I was like, why don't you just program that as part of your email signature? Like every time you have to write that, it'll just save you time. And he was going, yeah, but it's two seconds. Like each time is only two seconds.

It's like, why would I take the time to change it? And I don't know how to change it. And it'll take me five minutes to figure out how to change it. And five minutes is more than two seconds. And so I'm not going to do it. It's honestly aggravating just hearing this. This guy sounds super annoying. Sorry, you know, we do this all the time. I know. Maybe we can't see it, but we do it all the time. Because that's the minor injury. Yeah, yeah. That two-second thing, yes, it would take more time to get it fixed, but we're ignoring that it's going to bother us the entire. It's like, you know, if you have a cockroach infestation versus you have a couple flies in your house, cockroaches get fixed. You've got infestation. You get a fix. It's terrible. A couple flies you get a fixed. You get a fixed. A couple flies, you don't get a fixed. But they're terrible, than you think. And so what you have to do is turn it from a minor injury to a major one? So, I'm talking to them, is trying to get them to change. Finally, I go, hey, how many emails do you send a day? He goes, I don't know, 40 emails. How many do you send a week or every week or every month? write your email signature and he does the math. And then he goes online and he looks how to automate the email signature because each time was only two seconds. But I could get it across a week or a month made it clear that it actually wasn't a minor injury. It was a major one. It surfaced that entire cost of an action, make him realize, wow, yes, it'll take me more time now than each individual time, but it's worth doing the hard work to fix it now to make it cheaper or less effortful later on. And so it's making people realize the status quo might seem safe. It might seem

easy, but it's neither as safe or as easy or as costless as they might think. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Jonah Berger. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our sponsors is what keeps us going, keeps the lights on around here. To get links to all of the deals you hear about on the show, all the advertisers, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we've got a worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Jonah Berger. You know, that makes sense, although I can imagine he sits there and he does the math on how long that's going to take, which took much longer than actually

just solving the problem. That is true. Yes. Is he also a business school professor? Because it's a very, no, no, he's not. So yes, horrible performance generates action. Average performance generates complacency is, I think, the way that you phrased it, or paraphrasing from the book. Yeah, and there's a Jim Collins quote that says it really nice. He's like, you know, we don't have great schools because we have good schools. We have good solutions. We don't have great ones. If something's good enough, we tend not to change it, but often that impedes us from getting to something better. And so part of what's surfacing the cost of an action or any of these solutions around endowment are is making people realize, look, you should do something now because it's not as

costless as you might think. Yeah, the other example that's particularly painful from the book is the investing. And I see so many people our age younger in their 20s, 30s, and they're just, they won't invest their money. They don't really know what to do. They feel like, they can't learn it, so they just, like you said before, keep things in a savings account or do something that is just sort of moderate. So they're combining loss aversion with the inertia of what is it? Good is the enemy or great as the enemy of the good, something like that, or good as the, sorry, I fuck that up. They're sitting there going, hey, like, I'm not losing any money in my savings account. So I should just keep it in my saving account. And yes, they're not

losing money, but compared to the stock market, they are losing money. And so, I think, as you sort of alluded to you. I tell this story of an investment professional in the book who basically made a calculator over time. They're showing how much her client was losing by not investing in the market. And he kept going, what do you mean? I'm not losing money. I'm making money. And she was going, yeah, but compared to this other option, you're actually losing money. And each period, each day or week, you're not losing that much money. But over the course of a month or six months of a year, you're actually losing a lot of money. And so by surfacing that cost, by saying, hey, you know, you're foregoing thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars by doing this thing,

it makes it more real. It frames it as a loss rather than a gain, which encourages people to take action. Good is the enemy of the great as the quote I was looking for, searching for back there before. I would love to talk about why we don't see influence. And one of your earlier works you gave the example of your dad is a DC lawyer. And he had bought a BMW just like every other DC lawyer. But he was like, well, mine's blue, right? So it's like we don't even notice the influence. And I can give you an example even current from my own life. I thought, okay, I'm going to name my son, Jaden. That's really unique. I don't hear it anywhere else. And it's just something I've liked for a long time, and that's it. And then my friends after you was born were like, hold on, I hate doing this, but I got to send you this article.

And it was like a blog post entitled, All of Your Friends from High School now have a son named Jaden. And it wasn't something he had made as a joke. It was like actually in some popular blog. And I just sat there kind of quietly shaking my head. And I was like, I've been tricked. I've been had. Because if that name is so popular that it's become an actual cliche,

and I didn't even notice it, and I thought, this is unique, I will never have this problem like I do with my own name. Yeah. This happens a lot with names. I've done some research on names in part for exactly the reason you suggested, which is we all choose names and we're all choosing them to be different in some sense, right? We want to be a little unique. We don't want our kid to have the same name as everyone else. Yet often we get to first grade or second grade or whatever it is, or in this case there's a blog post, and we find that lots of people have done the same thing. And so it's this weird situation where everyone wants to be different, yet they all end up doing the same thing. How could that be? And part of that is because influence often happens invisibly. It often happens without our awareness of it. If you ask me, I'm wearing a

gray shirt at the moment. You ask me, why did I buy this gray shirt? I'll give you a story. I was at the store and I saw this gray because I'm a pale person and this is why I like it. I'll give you a story. Whether that story's actually the reason why I bought it is often unclear. And actually a lot of the reasons why I bought are things I may not be aware of, right? I may have seen a whole bunch of people wearing gray shirts, and I don't even remember that's actually the case, but that shifted my behavior. There's a lot of research on something called the mere exposure effect, which basically shows the more you see something, the more you like it. A way to explain it is happens with songs all the time. The first time you hear a song, you hate it, and the tenth time you love it and

couldn't imagine ever hating it, even though you did the first time, because the more you hear it, the more familiar it sounds, and the more familiar it sounds, the easier it is to process. And so you go, oh, this is, this feels pretty good. This feels like something I know and understand, and so I like it. And so the challenge with influence is, you know, we're often not aware of how it works on us and how it shapes other people's behavior. And without being aware of how it works, without seeing it, it's really hard to harness its power.

And nobody wants to admit they're vulnerable or susceptible to this stuff, right? Like, it's, I sat there shaking my head, although it matters not one iota if there's another Jaden in his class. It really doesn't. It's just the reason I sat there feeling bad about myself for a second. was because it's like, I should know better. I do a show about critical thinking. And it's like, I should have had this.

But that's the point of influence is like it is so invisible. It's kind of like saying, no one is above this. It's kind of like saying, well, I'm a doctor who studies the lungs, so I don't need to breathe anymore. Oh, yeah. Right? Like, it's just ridiculous. You're just not immune to this at all.

And, you know, just to be clear, I mean, I've written books about influence and change and, you know, overcoming uncertainty. And lots of people in my personal life love to joke about how I'm, terrible at these things. Just because we study them doesn't make us immune to these issues. And, you know, in influence in particular, we hate to see ourselves as influence. First, because we don't see it. There's that old quote from like the devil wears Prada, I think, that movie where this woman comes in wearing a certain sweater and she feels like she chose it herself, right? Again, she wants to feel freedom in control like she's in control of it. And they say, actually, the reason

you bought this was on the catwalk three years ago and then it made its way down to the bargain bin at Target where you picked it out. You know, we don't see all that machinery happening. And so we think we just like it, we don't realize it, but also because particularly in American culture, being influenced is a bad thing, particularly in sort of Western culture, people like to feel like they're free, like they're independent, like they make their own choices. We talked a lot about reactants, right? We like to fact we're in control. And so we don't want to think that we were shaped by anyone else, because that would be a negative thing, right? We all like to think, you know, we're unique, special snowflakes, we're not like anybody else. Really, we're actually very similar to

other people around us and are shaped by the same biases. Yeah, we're affected by trends, permanent things in our environment, the concept of priming, and I'd love to sort of discuss this a little bit, because I think there's an exercise that you have done before, we won't do it on air now, but you read this list of words, and then you tell a story, and the list of words affect how you perceive the person in the story, and nobody really puts this together. But priming is everywhere, right? We see priming used, well, why don't you tell us? I mean, this is something that brands do. It's something that we experience all the time when we're in different places physically. It's a fascinating concept that I think we could probably use to our advantage, but also helps to

become aware of because it's one of the primary levers for exerting influence on others. Yeah, I mean, I think a good way to think about it is we don't think about everything all the time. We only have so much brain power. We only have so much attention, so much mental capacity. And so we tend to think about certain things at certain moments of time, other things at other moments in time. But by shaping what things people are attending to or thinking about or mulling over in their mind, we can shape the decisions they make. So imagine, for example, just a simple model of choice, right, where you're thinking about buying a new car and you have different levers like price and how much fun it is and its gas mileage and all these different sort of weights that you can

put on different attributes. Well, what the salesman talks about or what an ad talks about or what your spouse talks about right before you look at those cars may shape how you evaluate them. You care about all the different dimensions, but if one person focuses you on a specific dimension, you spend a lot of time thinking about that one, and it sort of has an overweight or an over-impact on your judgment. You know, you talked about the example I shared in the book about kind of how words or story could influence judgment of people. You know, the same behavior can seem exciting and or risky and bad. The same thing can seem like a good idea or a bad idea, depending on what lens you look at it through. And so what priming is really about is, you know, how can we subtly shift behavior?

based on things in the environment, we did a study a few years ago, where we looked at whether where people vote could affect how they vote. Think about the last time you voted, for example, unless you voted by mail, you voted at a polling place. In the United States, we voted a mix of churches and schools and firehouses and community centers, all these different things. But what those different places do is they activate different things in our mind, right? You walk into a church, you're thinking about different things than if you walk into a school. Even though you didn't choose where to go to, you know, imagine you're voting on an initiative around I don't know, gay marriage or, you know, a tax initiative for schools. Whether you're walking to a

school or a church may change how you think about those different ideas and whether you support them or not, not because you always feel one way or another, but because you're a little bit uncertain about which way to go and the prime, that cue in the environment, shapes your behavior. And so I talk a lot about this in an invisible influence. I also talk about it's someone contagious in the Triggers chapter, but basically how we can shape what's salient to people or accessible to people when they make decisions and use that to drive judgment, right? Attributes we make accessible, shape what they do. It's fascinating that people we see more often seem more attractive, same thing for brands. Oh yeah. You know, branding, advertising. I always wonder when companies buy ads on the Jordan

Harbinger show and it's like, they don't want me to send them to a website or anything. They just want me to be like, Coca-Cola tastes good in the summertime, for example. I mean, the ads are a little bit more sophisticated than that, but not really. And they are like, you have to read this verbatim. You know, you can't change any of the words. Which means somebody somewhere was like, like this is the exact messaging and they buy a ton of ads and they all go in the same spot and they just want that over and over and over and over again for insurance or for a drink or something like that. And I find this all fascinating, but I wonder if there's a limit to this. You know, what about novelty? We like that too. There's such a thing as too novel, but there's

also such a thing as I've seen this a hundred times I don't want it anymore. So is there like a balance here? Where is the balance? Yes. So I'd say a couple things. So first, I think you're very right in terms of, you know, what advertising usually does. I think it's easiest to see in a restaurant context, right? You know, if I spend a lot five minutes on the show talking about Mexican food, it's going to make your listeners more likely to buy Mexican food sometimes soon. Not because they never bought Mexican food and I convince them to buy Mexican food, but because sometimes they buy Mexican food and sometimes they buy Chinese food and talking more about Mexican food, makes them think about Mexican food and makes them more likely to buy that. And so by talking

about one thing, it brings that thing to mind, which then makes it more likely to drive behavior. But I think the second thing I would say is you're very right. You know, our behavior is a mix of being similar and different. You know, we want to be different. We don't want to be wearing the exact same thing as our friends, but we also don't want to be wearing something that's completely different from anybody else, unless maybe we're going to the Met Gala or something like that, right? We want to fit in, but be a little bit different. And so there's a nice phrase for this, which is optimal distinctiveness, right, which is a mix of similar and different at the same time. You know, yeah, going back to my dad in that example, we want to buy a BMW, just to show we have status, but we buy a blue one

to separate us from our friends, for example, right? We want to wear what's in this season, or we want to listen to a type of music that everyone likes, but we want to be the one that brings in a new artist in that type of music, so everyone goes, oh, you know, you know about music. And so we want to be similar enough to be right, not to be outside the group,

but different enough to feel like we're our own unique person and we're separate from everybody else. Is there an amount we can see something too many times, so many times that it loses value? I guess that's the golden ticket, if you can calculate that, right? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the situation, right? because you can listen to a song or go to a museum many times and not get bored of it,

but you can also listen to a, you know, 10-second jingle and hate it after four exposures. And so some of it depends on how complex the stimulus is, right? So, you know, before the pandemic took over, you know, I would basically go every weekend, every Sunday morning to the same place with our son. I go to the same place every time, but it's, you know, an outdoor and indoor museum. It has lots of stuff to do. Yes, it's the same place, but it's a rich and complex experience. is that every time is different. So I could go 100 times and not get bored. That's different than

listen to a 10-second jingle a hundred times in a row, which would get really frustrating really quickly because there's not a lot of variation and nuance in it. And so some of it is how complex the stimulus is. Sometimes it's how much time elapses between repeated exposures. If I asked you to eat the same thing every meal, every day for a week, you would hate me. If I said, hey, you can't go to your favorite restaurant again ever, you would also hate me. Right? You want to go back to that favorite restaurant, you just don't want to go back right away. You want enough time to pass so that it feels stimulating enough and sort of provides enough variety that it's novel, but not too novel. Last but not least, this concept in fashion and branding I find extremely interesting where there's

like this effect where elite fashion brands or any mainstream fashion brand will do this. They put the giant logo, the loudest branding on some of the cheapest low-end stuff. In the middle range has even more branding, right? There's even more stuff on there that's like, oh, you thought Chanel was big on the starter shades, you know, the starter sunglasses, look at the mid-range stuff where the whole thing is like the giant logo. But then as things get more expensive from there, the branding is smaller and smaller and smaller until there are certain handbags, for example, or sunglasses where you can't even tell unless you look maybe on the inside of the temple and you see like, oh, these are Cartier's sunglasses or something like that. So there's this sort of spectrum.

here. What's going on here? This is fascinating because this shows up in all kinds of fashion, especially. Yeah, I mean, so we did some research on this and essentially what it is is sort of subtle signals, right? Logos help people know that somebody has a certain characteristic. And you see this now more online, almost even other than logos, you know, with photos that people post or information. You know, if you want to signal that you're into sports, you post pictures of being at sporting games and you post articles about, you know, your favorite team and information. And you want to share. a lot of things that signal that you're into that. If you're into travel, you post picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower and all these other things to signal desired characteristics.

But the challenge, right, is that sometimes overt signaling can be bad. Sure, yeah, you might want to signal you're in front of the Eiffel Tower, but if lots of people do that, it starts to seem a little bit gauche, right? Oh, look at you, yeah, but like, why are you telling me that? Why are you bragging so much? And so sometimes actually subtle signals can be better. We found with handbags, for example with sunglasses is, you know, part of the reason people buy more expensive items in those domains is the signal status. I don't want to buy the cheapest bag or the cheapest sunglasses. I want to show you that I have some status. So I spend more money. And to show you that I have status, it needs to have a logo on it because if it doesn't have a logo, you don't know that I bought the more

expensive thing. But then sort of interesting is if I want to show that I'm different from those people, right, I can't just buy something in the logo on it because I look exactly the same as them. And so in some sense, another way to differentiate myself is then to use a subtler signal. Right? If you think about shoes with red bottoms or shirts that have special detailing. What those things do is they have a signal. People in the know can tell, but not everyone can tell. And so for those that are really high status or want to differentiate themselves from the masses, subtle signals are a great way to do it. You know, you want to show you're really into sneakers. You don't just buy, I don't know, the newest pair of Jordans, for example, but you wear, you know, a pair from 15 years ago that was

only released in certain colors that most people won't recognize, but the people in the know will be able to tell. And using those subtle signals is a great way to communicate to in-group members or folks that have that knowledge and not necessarily communicating to everybody. Right. So, yeah, you're paying to show this off and paying more to show it off even more. But the top-end consumers kind of don't care. They want something more tasteful. And I think you kind of alluded to this, but like it's an elite club, right? Only recognized by insiders. You know those Birken bags or something like that? These super expensive $25,000 handbags from Hermes? Have you heard of these? Yeah. Yeah. I think they're like a knit bag, right? Or some of their cross.

I seriously don't even really know. Yeah, I'm not totally sure. Generally, in my opinion, they look like something that an old lady would wear. They do have other ones. Yeah. But they're extremely popular. A lot of wealthy people I know, they go in like this secret room and this whole experience where you get it. But it doesn't say, this is a Birkenbag on the side, like you would expect somebody to be able to show it up. It's very, very subtle. And you can tell the fakes by like the way the lock looks or something. And it's like a different kind of zipper. And there's all this training online about how to spot it because I'm not paying $25,000 bucks for a bag if I can't spot somebody else who's a chump in using a fake one and not be

able to rub it in their friggin face, right? Or at least tell all my friends she's got a fake one. So like it's like this dog whistle fashion, as you call it in the book, the red bottom shoes, Christian Lubiton, the hipster stuff, these fixed wheel bikes. Yeah. This is a little bit different though, right? The fixed wheel bikes, this is something that's like more difficult to use somehow that is the virtue signal, I guess? kind of, for lack of a better word? Yeah, and again, it's doing something that most people wouldn't do, right?

Most people wouldn't give up the big logo because they'd be misidentified by some people. Most folks would want the bike with lots of gears because it makes it easier to ride, but being willing to do something that most people aren't is a great way to sort of signal an identity that's different from everybody else. Jonah, thank you so much for coming on the show.

No problem. Thanks so much for having me back. I've got some thoughts on this episode, of course, but before I get into that, here's a quick sample of my chat with AJ Jacobs. He's a friend of mine and does these weird experiments where he lives by the literal world of the Bible for a year or tries to say thank you to all the people involved in manufacturing, shipping, and brewing his morning coffee from the bean growers to the logistics and shipping people. This one really shows you just how dependent we are

on one another. Here's a bite. What I tried to do was thank a thousand people who had even the smallest role in making my cup of coffee possible. And a thousand years ago, oh, that's not a lot. It's a A lot of people. A hundred people would be a tedious. No, it was way more than I anticipated. Ten times that many. Everything we do requires hundreds, thousands of interconnected people and that we take for granted. And just making this mental switch, just from a selfish point of view, is very good because it really does help you appreciate the hundreds of things that go right every day

instead of focusing on the three or four that go wrong. there's a great quote. I wish I'd come up with it myself, but it says it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. So I had to fake it for a long time. You know, I would wake up in a grumpy mood, but I'd be like, I have to spend an hour calling or visiting people and thanking them.

And I'm not in the mood to do that right now. So it was like acting. It was like method acting. And I would force myself to do it. But I'll tell you, by the end of that hour, your mind, you know, the cognitive dissonance is too much. Your mind will switch over to gratefulness. There's a great quote that happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.

Having that mindset really will make you happier. For more with A.J. Jacobs and his fascinating journey to thank everyone involved in his cup of morning coffee and an inside look at just how complex the supply chain of our lives really is, check out episode 174 of the Jordan Harbinger show. Thanks to Jonah Berger, his book is called Catalyst. By the way, I think it's really interesting that there's also reverse influencer marketing. We talked a little bit about influence and influencer marketing.

There's also reverse influencer marketing. So if you remember that show, the Jersey Shore, Snooky and Mike the situation, they were actually paid to not wear certain clothes. If you remember their behavior, you're not missing anything if you didn't see it, but these are like super trashy, low-class folks. They were actually paid to not wear certain handbags, clothing. They were always getting arrested. They were always drunk.

Snooky was actually getting handbags from companies that were sending the competing company's handbags. So, like, Chanel would send over a Gucci bag and be like, enjoy, you know, to get them to wear or use the other brand instead of their own because it was negative branding. These people were so famous for being trashy that people did not want them to wear the clothes.

famously Mike Sorrentino was paid by Abercrombie to never wear Abercrombie clothing ever again, which I think is hilarious and a weird way to make a living. Links to Jonah Burger's book, everything will be in the website on the show notes. Please do use our website link if you buy the books because it does help support the show. Worksheets for this episode in the show notes, transcripts of the episodes are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel coming soon at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can also hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems

and tiny habits, and of course your newfound influence skills. That's in our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. Come join us. You'll be in smart company. This show is created an association with podcast one, and my amazing team that includes Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Milly Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabe Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's in marketing or interested in influence, persuasion, please share this with them.

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