Advanced Code of Influence. Book 3

Transcription

1 Advanced Code of Influence Book 3

2 Table of Contents BOOK 3: COGNITION, HEURISTICS & CATEGORIZATION... 3 Social Cognition... 3 The Role of Heuristics... 8 Representativeness Heuristic Availability Heuristic False Consensus Effect Anchoring Heuristic We Are Social Tacticians

3 BOOK 3: COGNITION, HEURISTICS & CATEGORIZATION Social Cognition The world we live in makes sense to us because humans are capable of social cognition. Social cognition is an over-arching term that refers to how people process and encode information at any given time and how people recall and utilize the same when they need to understand the behavior of other people. It is very important to understand how people actually process information when they are trying to make sense of other people s speech and actions. Earlier in the book we focused on some primary theories regarding attribution, self-esteem and so forth. Attribution is a vital social process that allows people to analyze behaviors and events easily. 3

4 However, more recent studies in social psychology reveal that people do not necessarily engage in critical/analytic processes all the time. So it is possible for a person to attribute causal relations but it is also possible that he is working purely on gut feel. Does this mean that people are just plain lazy because they don t like to think things through? Not necessarily. We have to remember that people have to face a lot of information on a daily basis. Analysis and critical thinking are very taxing and people have limited cognitive resources. Due to the limitations of the human mind when it comes to processing large volumes of information, people have to use shortcuts to arrive at rationalizations that will still help them make sense of the world at large. 4

5 Back in the 70s and 80s, social scientists and psychologists championed the idea that people were constantly thinking about people and physical reality. Scientists came up with models that answered some questions about how people actually attributed causal relations to the things they encounter on a daily basis. Social scientists came up with the idea that people were naïve scientists because they believed that we were always constantly testing our theories and inferences about reality. Fast forward to the nineties younger researchers began seeing the flaws of the earlier models of attribution. For one, these models were inherently limited because of fixed coordinates (consistency, frequency, etc.). And statistically there was no hard data that proved that people were indeed naïve scientists all the time. 5

6 And so they created another theory: that people are actually cognitive misers. Cognitive misers, as the name implies, do not expend a lot of effort in trying to critically analyze available information. Instead, they take shortcuts or they take thin slices of information so they can make an analysis of a particular situation instead of using a longer process of deduction and attribution. Since humans are essentially limited when it comes to cognitive resources, it is worthwhile to explore the newer theories of social cognition because you would be able to apply these in your question for influence. We must remember though that even though people have a tendency to take cognitive shortcuts to make inferences, it doesn t mean that they will be at risk for inaccurate inferences. 6

7 Amazingly, even though people have a tendency to skip long attribution processes, they are still able to produce accurate inferences about events and most importantly, the behavior of the people they meet. 7

8 The Role of Heuristics How are people able to create snappy yet accurate judgments without going through complex mental calculations? How can a person remain rational or logical even if he is essentially a cognitive miser? The answer lies in heuristics. Heuristics works in this manner: people take a large chunk of information (i.e. casual relations) and create a rule of thumb based on what they have understood from the large chunk of casual relations. After creating the rule of thumb, similar situations will trigger the memory of the rule of thumb and people can then make quick judgments based on the rule of thumb alone. 8

9 Information Heuristics: "Rule of thumb" Instant judgment/ inferences It is very easy to create inferences based on preformulated rules of thumb. However, this method thin slicing information does come with a downside. Social scientists discovered that no matter how objective a person is, heuristics still produces biased output (just like attributions). Now, there are actually two kinds of heuristic cognitive methods: representativeness heuristic and availability heuristic. 9

10 Representativeness Heuristic This type of heuristic utilizes general categories or prototypes to produce valid inferences about a situation, thing or behavior. When a person receives an input (i.e. a peculiar behavior from someone), he will immediately reach into his reservoir of categories to check if he already has a schema or category for this type of behavior. If he is able to match the behavior with a category that already exists in his memory, he will stick to this category and make a decision based on what the heuristic method has given him. The representativeness heuristic is present even in the small things that we do on a daily basis. Here are some examples: When you go to a clinic, you try to find: 1. A man or woman wearing a scrub suit (NURSE) 10

11 2.A man or woman wearing a stethoscope and a white laboratory gown (DOCTOR) If you want to find a commodity in an unfamiliar grocery store: 1.You try to find an aisle that has similar products You are lost and you don t know which direction to go: 1.You try to find road signs to more familiar areas 2.You try to find a sign that will lead you to a gas station or someplace where you can ask directions The representativeness heuristic is a deeply ingrained skill that every person has. Though it is still essentially a theoretical model, I can say with confidence that this heuristic is used by people very frequently and on a daily basis. 11

12 Imagine how you can apply this knowledge to increase your influence. Since people use the representativeness heuristic to make quick judgments, you can shape your words and behavior so that people would become confident of what you are trying to convey more quickly, since you are sending out the right signals that trigger both emotional and logical responses from the other person. So for example, if you are trying to sell a product or service to another person, you won t have to think of very complex ways to influence the other person to trust in what you say. You just have to identify potential triggers that will convert the other person s thinking pattern. Now, while it is very convenient for a person who is trying to influence someone to use a particular tendency or weakness (in this case, representativeness heuristic), we must also remember that the representativeness heuristic 12

13 still produces biased inferences or causal relations. Each person s particular bias to different social representations can produce desirable or no so desirable valuations of your own words and actions. For example, if you try to dress up well just before a meeting to impress your bosses, you may impress your bosses but other members of the meeting (i.e. your team members or project co-workers) may think of you as a complete braggart because you dressed above them. The bosses think you are showing your professionalism since you dressed well before presenting facts to them. However, your coworkers will think that you might be trying to make them look bad because some of them are wearing old suits and shirts while you chose to wear new suit on the day of your big presentation. 13

14 Regardless of your actual intentions, people would still use the representative heuristic to categorize you the moment they see you. Going back to the presentation/meeting scenario, if you overdress, members of the upper echelon of your company will immediately categorize you with terms like well dressed or smartly dressed while your co-workers will probably think of you as over-dressed or a braggart. As you can see, when a person makes an inference using the representative heuristic, he automatically misses out on other potential inferences that may be more accurate than his first inference. 14

15 Availability Heuristic While the representative heuristic is used to analyze people s behavior, the availability heuristic is more frequently used to determine whether or not an event is likely to happen based on available information about similar events. The availability heuristic is intimately associated with informational accessibility or the degree at which a person can easily recall a situation or event from his own memory. The big difference between the availability heuristic and informational accessibility is that there is a subjective participation when one uses the availability heuristic. For example, the concept of cookies is easily accessible for most people but that does not mean that a person would be constantly recalling his subjective experiences about cookies. The only time that the information 15

16 becomes part of s heuristic would be when a person has to recall something related to cookies when he has to make a decision related to cookies. The availability heuristic in situations where we feel anxious about doing something because we have read or heard about something similar. For example, if there are a string of muggings in your area, you would have a natural fear to go out alone at night because of the stories that you hear from your neighbors. Because of the high accessibility of related information (i.e. stories about the muggings), you are led to believe that you should not go out at night alone because you might be mugged, too. 16

17 False Consensus Effect The false consensus effect is a specific bias that usually results from the use of the availability heuristic. The false consensus effect points to the tendency of some people to exaggerate the validity of their own opinion by thinking that the majority of those around them will have the same opinion. There is no way to measure whether or not the majority of the population will agree with a person and therefore, the false consensus effect will never generate anything that is truly objective/neutral or statistics-based. People just think that other agree with them. For example, if you ask someone if he likes a particular restaurant, his train of thought would be something like: 17

18 1. Yes, I like that restaurant it serves really good food at really great prices. 2. I think other people like this restaurant, too 3. 9 out of 10, people around this area will choose this restaurant over other restaurants. As you can see, a person who has a false consensus effect will defend his positive or negative statement about something by citing false consensus, regardless of what other people actually think or feel about something. The false consensus effect is quite common among people because long standing beliefs are easily pulled from the conscious memory. Strongly held beliefs are tied integrally to our own behaviors and tendencies and therefore, our judgment of other people s appearance, behavior, credibility, etc., are partially influenced by our own behavioral biases. 18

19 Anchoring Heuristic The anchoring heuristic has some similarities to the availability heuristic. First, it is also based on informational accessibility. The more accessible the information, the more quickly this heuristic is used. Second, the anchoring heuristic can also result in a false consensus effect. However, the big difference between the anchoring heuristic and the availability heuristic is that with the anchoring heuristic it is not the informational accessibility that is the primary influence but the order at which options are given to a person. The anchoring heuristic is also more commonly used when a person has to give a quantitative analysis of a situation. Studies regarding the anchoring heuristic have shown that people are more likely to provide a higher quantitative 19

20 estimate if a person was given a higher starting point. So for example, if you asked a person if there would be a 90% chance of his favorite team winning (as opposed to asking him if there was more than a 1% chance of the team winning), he would probably state a higher quantitative estimate if you use the 90% anchor. According to social scientists, our own use of the anchoring heuristic is dependent not only on our own capacity to analyze but also on a peculiar mechanism in our minds. You see, when something is presented to you in a series, the first thing that is given to you becomes the most accessible piece of information in the series. So in essence, the mind latches on to this first element and slowly, the mind s ability to latch on to the second element, third element and so 20

21 forth, is reduced over time (since our cognitive resources are inherently limited). 21

22 We Are Social Tacticians Reading through all the strategies that I have included in this book, you might be thinking: which strategy is really being used by people? Which theory is the correct theory? Truth be told, we cannot really pin down a single social theory when it comes to influence and identity. In fact, if we were to do that, we would continually hit a brick wall because people don t process information using just one internal paradigm. People are essentially social tacticians regardless of culture and education. Over time, people learn how to use different processing strategies to protect and enhance their self-concepts. And over time, people are also able to examine different human behaviors and events using different theoretical models. Of course, people don t have to read about social attribution, social representation and all 22

23 these theories to be able to use them. Always remember that the social aspects of culture were formed before these theories were created. These theories only describe the existing social phenomena. Now if we were to think about how people process information, you might think that there would be some incongruence between reality and these theories. For example, we discussed earlier that people can be cognitive misers because they make use of rule of thumb to thinly slice information to make quicker evaluations of what s in front of them. While it is true that this situations, people choose to expend their cognitive resources to come up with a critical appraisal of an event or situation. What does this all mean? Does this mean that people are thinking chaotically and that meaningfulness can only be derived through this chaos? Not necessarily. 23

24 What we do know now is that people also evaluate their inferences and attributions before they can wholeheartedly believe in these and that there are also other factors that affect a person s approach to analysis. People can also make use of a variety of different methods to come up with a satisfactory analysis of a situation. Now, social scientists have been able to identify four major factors that affect how a person chooses his strategies when analyzing social situations: 1.Time availability 2.Cognitive load 3.Importance 4.Informational availability Let s discuss the first factor, which is time availability. If a person is in a rush and he has to make a quick judgment about something, which 24

25 strategy would be most likely? Well, it has been discovered that people choose heuristics over other methods because this approach offers the fastest route to a sound and accurate judgment. I m not saying that every decision based on heuristics is a sound one, but we have to admit that heuristics (anchor, representativeness and availability) is a fairly easy way to get a good answer to our personal queries. If a person does not have enough time to think of something critically, using heuristic methods is the best option because it produces an answer that would at least be close to a critical answer. The soundness of an attribution created with heuristics will not be questioned because a person who is using heuristics would be making use of his long-standing beliefs and subjective experiences to thinly slice a situation. The next major factor in our list is cognitive load. Cognitive load refers to the amount of 25

26 cognitive resources needed to carry out a mental task. Among all the theories we have discussed so far, heuristics offers the lowest cognitive load among all the methods. Inversely, a person who wishes to test his theories about the world at large would have to expend a lot more mental energy to get satisfactory answers because he would analyze variables from the target situation itself, whereas in heuristics, you don t even have to analyze the situation anymore. You just note the event and try to match the event with an existing experience in your memory. Also, if you have a high cognitive load to begin with (i.e. you are thinking about your work all the time), you simply won t have any time left to engage in more critical/analytical thought patterns. The mind would shift gears and choose heuristics over long attribution processes because you already have something 26

27 in your mind that you have to pay close attention to. The third factor is importance. We all know that not all information is important. In fact, I m willing to bet that 85% of all the information that you receive on a daily basis is not crucial and does not require your immediate attention. This is one unfortunate truth that we have to contend with in our modern time. With the further evolution of the Internet, things have changed considerably. Thirty years ago, people were only barraged by advertisements and other wads of disposable information when a person choose to read a newspaper or any other printed medium. 27

28 With the Internet, information overload is highly likely. The human mind is extremely efficient. It won t allow the information overload to get the best of it. What it will do is it will simply raise its selectivity level so that only the most crucial bits of information are processed thoroughly. For example, if you receive an advertisement for a hair growth solution, would you think about that more than a call that says that your house was on fire? Of course not. The mind automatically (and urgently) pulls to the surface memories and schemas so you make a quick and almost reflexive decision to disregard the hair growth advertisement because your house is on fire. Also, people tend to be more critical if the information at hand is vital to one s career, life, etc. You won t be making snap judgments if you received information that your debt has tripled in the past three months. You will 28

29 immediately discard the heuristics in favor of the more critical thinking process. And finally, the fourth major factor is informational availability. When someone tells you that a new burger joint down the block is serving the best food because their hamburgers are extremely fat and juicy, is it possible to critically analyze the situation? Sadly, no. There is simply too little information at hand and you don t even have subjective experience yet. So in some instances, it is impossible to be critical immediately if informational availability is far too low. In such instances, you will be forced to resort to heuristics to make a decision. Will you go to the new burger joint? You can only make an informed decision by pulling out similar experiences and memories and thus, you would be using heuristics instead of critical attribution. 29