A couple of weekends ago our family was down in Darling Harbour while it was buzzing with hundreds of World Youth Day Pilgrims in funny hats as well as the normal crowd of ‘ordinary’ people in funny hats. So it was a typical day in the city and as usual there were a couple of street performers doing their thing (how come they are always English?) performing for the unworthy masses, alternatively heckling and praising the audience. Always funny to watch,..especially if you aren’t actually in the audience.
Anyway, there was a ‘statue guy’ dressed up in metallic silver jacket, mask, hat, pants, shoes, standing completely motionless (it must take years of practise to do that I wonder if my son would be interested in learning…) until he lurched out at a small boy who walked past, breaking the whole I-am-a-statue routine. So after frightening the kid half to death, he made a small lollipop appear from his palm and pulled it out from behind the boy’s ear, handing it to him.  The kid’s parents stood by watching carefully – up to this point they had just been hoping that the statue guy was a real performer and not a raving psycho. But once the lollipop changed hands, they started lunging for spare change (you don’t think the statue guy does this for the love of it, do you?). So the mum dove into her handbag and the dad into his pockets. A suitable range of gold and silver coins were produced and placed on the ground … and the boy left with his lollipop and a smile.

So, was this simply the act of an amateur street performer? No way! This guy is a professional – he knows people’s ‘hot buttons’ and how to push them, especially when it comes to parents with cash.

What he does – and with great effect – is use the power of reciprocity, which is a phenomenon that was first studied by social scientist Robert Cialdini in the 1970s. Cialdini was continually perplexed by his ability to fall for every door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman, used car dealer and con man, so he set out to study why he was such a sucker. He did this by going undercover, working with, and being trained by, various companies that used dubious tactics to persuade, con, and generally get their own way. He separated these areas of persuasion and compliance into six principles and published a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which has since sold millions of copies and is still used and cited by, well … everyone! Although he gives examples of unethical persuasion (I love stories about con men!) his underlying proposition is that having an understanding of the techniques will allow you to persuade people ethically and with integrity, and also make you aware of how others will try and persuade you. Knowledge is power!

All six principles of persuasion – liking, reciprocation, consistency, social validation, authority and scarcity – have lots of interesting implications, many of which are often beyond the obvious.

But the one we’re looking at – reciprocation – works like this: humans have a hard-wired reflex to return a good deed that is done for them. Your kid gets given a lollipop, you automatically dive for coins to return the favour. It’s done before you even think about it, it’s not something you consider or analyse. Click, Whirr – Respond. Someone gives you a birthday present, and you ‘know’ you have to buy them a better one on their birthday (damn that!).

There are a handful of interesting points about this. First of all, you can’t fight the urge to respond. It’s why you feel compelled to return a dinner invitation even if you didn’t really enjoy the other people’s company that much the first time round. To further investigate this, one study looked at what would happen if Christmas cards were sent out randomly. The results were remarkable – a mysteriously large percentage of recipients responded the following year by sending a card in return (‘We got a card from them, better add them to our list’). In one case, a ‘friendship’ (meaning a history of cards exchanged) developed between two families and decades later the daughter in one family went to stay with the other family while she attended college. (Cialdini still gives many speeches on his research, and the new implications of it, and apparently he was recounting this story once and a lady in the audience shouted out ‘That was me!’)

So, the first point is that it is instinctive for humans to respond to kindness. In fact in business scenarios the effect is so well known that many companies have a ‘no gift’ rule so that their staff are not influenced by such factors. Think about it – have you ever bought something in a supermarket purely as a result of a product tasting? You walk past a stand set up at the end of an aisle, sample a product and before you know it you’re explaining to your wife why you have a packet of turkey sausages or sun-dried tomato flavoured cheese dip in the shopping.

The second point is that the principle works even when the good deed is uninvited. Krishnas were observed soliciting for donations in busy airport waiting areas by simply thrusting small flowers into the hands of passers. Interestingly, the majority of recipients were compelled to respond with a donation, largely just to ease their conscience. It’s a reflex – just like the parents diving to find change for the street performer, people couldn’t resist reciprocating, even though they didn’t want the flower in the first place.

Third, the exchange is often unequal. People respond with a larger deed than the original action. So, if you’re using reciprocity in order to gain a benefit you will often be successful. Think about the statue guy. A lollipop costs him about ten cents, but most people end up giving a dollar or two, even though they know the lollipop is only worth about ten cents and they could easily go up the street and buy a whole bag of them for less than they’ve just handed over!

As you go further into the subject, the implications start becoming more advanced. Apparently during negotiations a concession by one party has the same effect as a favour. And if you can orchestrate a concession, you can swing the balance in your favour, without having to do very much at all or even actually conceding anything. One technique is to make a large request that you expect the other party will say no to. When they do say no it has the same effect on them mentally as a concession by you would have … now they ‘owe you’ and are primed to agree to your next request. A few years back there was a Girl Guide who had set all kinds of records for selling cookies. She was so successful that she was asked to appear on the Tonight Show. When asked the secret to her success she said, ‘It’s simple … first I ask them if they would like to donate $10 000 to the Girl Guides, and when they say no I say, “Oh, well how about you just buy some of these cookies then?”’. Bingo … a sale. In another example, people were asked to sign up to give blood every month and become part of a program. A certain percentage agreed. Of those who refused the request, the level of compliance for a single ‘well can you donate now without joining the program’ request was almost double the rate of people who agreed without first being asked for the larger request. So the moral is start with a big request even if you think the answer will be no, because the chances of your next request being agreed to are higher. When you think about how powerful this is, it hardly seems fair does it?

As I said, I love stories about con men and one of my favourites is about a good old-fashioned con. A con man sits in a Western Union telegraph office … pacing … waiting … and every now and then approaching the window to ask if any news of a transfer has come through. It hasn’t (and won’t, because there is none). He then approaches someone else who is also waiting and strikes up a conversation – ‘Been waiting long? Me too’ – and listens to the other guy’s story about what he is waiting for. Then he offers the other guy a small loan, pitching it along the lines of, ‘Well I am waiting for quite a bit of money … but if it helps you I can loan you $50 until yours comes through’. The guy refuses, saying ‘thanks but no thanks’ and they both wait it out. The offer to lend money (even though it was refused) is the beginning of the process and the reflex emotion is one of gratitude for something being offered. The victim’s transfer comes through and he gets his money. At this point, the victim in the scam will be compelled to return the favour of offering to loan money to the con man – and such is the power of reciprocity. The initial offering created trust, even though it was not accepted and it is human nature to respond in kind. And in this story, the generous reciprocal offer will be accepted, the money taken, and the con complete.

Influence is one of my favourite topics. I can absolutely recommend that you invest a few dollars and buy Cialdini’s book. I am a huge fan of amazon.com (although I can easily spend a couple of hours in a Borders as well!). If you are in sales, marketing, or have a spouse, kids, a boss, employees, customers, suppliers, or are even just a human being, you’ll love it.

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217424698&sr=1-1

As an aside, I was in a workshop about web strategy last week.  The power of reciprocity was referenced, and the example given about using the power of this principle to obtain email addresses and contact details online – the example was ‘We give away a report and we get their details … this is reciprocity in action’. I disagree. This is an exchange, but it does not use the power of the principle. With an exchange of details for a report or something similar (pretty common on the web as the starting point of many email marketing campaigns – get those autoresponders working!), the power of the gift is diminished or equalled by the provision of personal details. Because the name/email is required, the web browsing party views this exchange as a complete transaction; that is, it is balanced. They are not left feeling as if they still owe the other party and there is no reflex drawing them to reciprocate. They gave their details, so everything’s even.

True use of the power of reciprocity on the web would be to give freely, safe in the knowledge that the giving of the gift causes the reflex need to return the favour. And because the return is often larger, any investment you need to make in giving the gift would be a wise one. But this does cause issues on the web because if you give a content-based gift (say a report or a whitepaper), and the recipient navigates away from your page then they are gone and you have no real record of them. So a name capture device is important for other reasons, but it is not about using reciprocity, it’s more about permission (opt in) marketing. If you do capture names and want to use the principle, then give people something else after you have their name – a surprise of some sort (a larger free gift). This creates the need to respond, and if you have the mechanisms in place this will prime you them for you to make some sort of (hopefully) more commercially profitable transaction.

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