In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Ciladini tells of a fascinating psychological study performed by Ellen J. Langer of Harvard in the 1970’s. He cites it as support for the well known principle of human behavior that when someone asks us for a favor, we want to know the reason why.
Of course you say. You know that because you are human and you recognize that you like to know reasons too, so what’s so fascinating about that? What Langer’s study showed was that it doesn’t matter what the reason is, simply providing a reason is enough!
Langer’s subjects interrupted people and asked to let them cut in line at the copy machine. When they asked, “Excuse me, I have five pages, may I use the Xerox machine?” 60% said yes. If you are in sales, that’s not a bad closing rate for simply asking.
However, when the question was posed as, “excuse me, I have five pages, may I use the Xerox machine because I am in a rush” the rate of success exploded to 94%, more than a 50% increase over the previous question. Of course, you say, they gave a good reason and people were polite. Perhaps you are right.
Then the questions was changed to, “Excuse me, I have five pages, may I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies.” Not exactly a good reason, or even one that has added any information at all to the request. In fact, it is almost nonsensical. However, the success rate only dropped to 93%, just one percentage point!
Langer noted that: “the listener at the copy machine heard a two-part statement: a request and something like a reason. That was all their mental script for such a situation required. They never did reflect on the fact that the interrupter’s ”reason” was not meaningful.”
Cialdini calls this a “trigger feature.” We respond to the request because when we hear the word “because” or when we hear a request structured as a two part statement, one resembling a request and the other a reason, it triggers a script within us and we comply.
There are many triggers cited by Cialdini and by others that can help us craft a more compelling offer. I’ll be writing about them here.
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