What do YOU want them to think?!
At least a dozen times I've asked
hundreds of people in an audience to look around a room identifying
everything that is brown and instruct them to remember what
they see because this is a very important experiment.
Then I ask everyone to close
their eyes.
Everyone knows where everything
brown is because each of their brains have been instructed to
focus and find all brown...and they have been told that this
is an important task.
"Now, point to something
green."
No one can do it.
Those that point somewhere inevitably
fail.
No doubt you may have participated
in this fascinating experiment in the past as well.
The Fascinating Human Brain
It's an amazing thing about the
human brain. We can retain an unbelievable amount of information.
But in this case, we can't remember
where *anything* green might be...
We weren't told to look for it...
Imagine your friend teaches a
grade school class and little Billy is acting up in the back.
Your friend tells a fellow teacher about the experience.
"The kid is always acting
up. He's probably 'ADD' and I wish he was on his way out. He's
driving me nuts."
"Huh. I guess I've never
seen it in his behavior. He can be talkative but he never misbehaves
in my class and he's a pretty sharp kid. Sometimes even helpful
to the other students."
Your friend looks at the fellow
teacher as if he has lost his marbles.
Your friend will not likely ever
see the student in any way other than he has and the other teacher
will likely not change his view that the student is a pretty
good kid.
Here's what happens when the
second teacher visits the first teacher's class to observe...
Weeks
later, the teachers agree to exchange notes on the student again.
They've both retained their original opinion.
Today,
the second teacher decides to sit in with your friend in his
class. He sits at the back of the room and takes careful experimental
notes on the young boys behavior noting anything that diverges
from sitting and being quiet.
At
the end of the day, the student had contributed four answers
to questions for the class, spoke out of turn once, helped another
student once, stopped an argument another time and laughed ridiculously
loud once at a joke another student told.
"Did
you see him today? The kid was back at it again. He was smarting
off and disrupting the class again."
"Actually,
he was pretty well behaved."
"You've
got to be kidding!"
"No.
I recorded everything he did today."
Your
friend looked at the record and simply couldn't believe they
were talking about the same child.
Your
friend saw what he expected while the actual record showed a
very different picture of what really happened.
KEYPOINT:
You remember what you expect to see.
And
don't worry, your friend isn't crazy.... He also looked for
everything that was brown and saw what was brown.... and nothing
else.
As
soon as you have an attitude, opinion or emotional connection
to something or someone else, you immediately filter your awareness
of that stimulus through those attitudes, opinions and emotions.
It's
how the brain operates. It's how the brain must operate or it
would see something new and have to start from scratch analyzing
what "is" and what causes what attitudes, emotions
and opinions.
That
would be incredibly time consuming and cause the destruction
of the human race. (I'll come back to this.)
Unfortunately
as helpful as this "filtering" is in general, it creates
a very interesting life for each of us.
FACT
ONE: We see what we expect to see.
FACT
TWO: We don't see what we don't expect see.
FACT
THREE: We see what we are told to look for...and not much else.
This
week we found out something even more incredible. When a person
drinks a drink of alcohol something amazing happens when it
comes to people seeing what you want them to see...
FACT
FOUR: People who have had just one drink lose their ability
to discriminate reality even more profoundly.
They
REALLY see what they expect to see. They really feel what they
expect to feel. They really see what they are told to see.
Here
is the research.
After
you read this section, I'll give you some tips on how to utilize
this information in a persuasive context on the internet and
in face to face communication.
People
who were given a simple visual task while mildly intoxicated
were twice as likely to have missed seeing the person in a gorilla
suit than were people who were not under the influence of alcohol.
The
study, appearing in the current issue of The Journal of Applied
Cognitive Psychology, is the first to show visual errors caused
by "inattentional blindness" are more likely to occur
under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon occurs when
important, but unexpected, objects appear in the visual field
but are not detected when people are focused on another task,
according to Seema Clifasefi, a postdoctoral psychology researcher
at the University of Washington.
While
the research, a pilot study, did not test driving aptitude,
the study has strong implications for people operating motor
vehicles after consuming alcohol, according to Clifasefi, who
is affiliated with the UW's Addictive Behaviors Research Center.
"Driving
requires our full attention. We need to perceive information
from a variety of sources when we are driving, but alcohol reduces
our ability to multi-task. So we focus on one thing at the expense
of everything else," she said.
"Say
you have been at a party and are driving home after having a
couple of drinks. You don't want to be stopped for speeding,
so you keep eyeing the speedometer. Our research shows that
you will miss other things going on around you, perhaps even
a pedestrian trying to cross the street."
In
the study, 46 adults ranging in age from 21 to 35 were brought
into a bar-like setting. Half of them were given drinks containing
alcohol to bring their blood alcohol level up to 0.04 -- half
the legal level for being drunk in most states. The other half
were given drinks containing no liquor.
After
the volunteers had their blood alcohol levels measured by a
breath test, they were taken to a computer monitor and asked
to watch a 25-second film clip. The clip showed people playing
with a ball and the volunteers were told to count the number
of times the ball was passed from one person to another. In
the middle of the clip a person dressed in a gorilla suit appeared,
walked among the players, beat its chest and then walked away.
Results???
(You aren't going to believe this....)
Afterward,
the subjects were asked if they saw the gorilla. Just 18 percent
of the drinkers said they noticed the gorilla while 46 percent
of the sober subjects indicated they saw the gorilla. The research
was based on older research without the involvement of alcohol.
The results were just as impressive. People simply don't see
that gorilla. It SEEMS impossible, but what seems ridiculous
is EXACTLY how our brain works in reality.
And
it's a bit unnerving when you think about it!
TWENTY
FIVE SECONDS! That's it. And in the middle of that 25 seconds,
a gorilla shows up on the screen beating his chest and if you've
had a drink, you didn't see it. More than half of those who
didn't have a drink didn't see the gorilla.
The
power of focused attention via suggestion is absolutely shocking.
Applications:
The
applications are far reaching and can be applied to almost any
persuasive setting. The covert nature of the behavior is obvious.
When
you are writing copy or making a sales presentation it is VERY
IMPORTANT to encode your targeted information into your client's
awareness.
If
you write for your website, make sure you tell people what to
look for early on. ALL THE BROWN!!! Make sure you have not led
them into some other world where they are asked to see green.
If
you tell them that you have a money-making opportunity and then
offer facts to support that. Talk about unrelated things and
they will be filtered out making a story that is incomplete,
incoherent and entirely forgettable.
"What
we're looking for are ways to get this project done without
spending tons of money on waste like x, y, and z. Our competitor
isn't interested in that, and whatever you ultimately decide,
those factors can't be forgotten..."
That
client will be listening for x, y and z...and ways to get the
project done, so you better do something with those four pieces...because
that's what they are going to be filtering for...and what they
will be hearing!
This
works in text and face to face communication.
Whatever
you direct the person's mind to is where they will be primed
to pay attention to. Very much like a magician.
One
worthwhile additional bonus:
If
you say something negative about your competitor, your client
WILL remember your competitor. It may not be good or bad...but
they'll remember ...and if you haven't put a greater degree
of emotion on your own product...they won't remember yours at
all.... NEVER mention a competitor or anything about them, except
in the context noted above..
One
final suggestion: Write down the facts and keypoints from this
article on a piece of paper and keep it on your desk for a week.
Just one week. Refer to it everytime you write copy or review
your sales materials and presentation strategies.
Many
covert persuasion techniques will ever yield the results this
one will!
Til
next time!
