Hidden tricks of persuasion: study shows how easily we are manipulated
bbc.com
bbc.com
Basically we make persuasion available for the small- to mid-size online shops by providing a tool that integrates tightly with your (shop)backend. Based on data-analysis from your visitors (we ask for a small JS-snippet on each of your pages) we try to predict, by using machine learning, which visitor is sensitive to what kind of messaging at what particular time.
Examples:
Scarcity: "3 products left in stock", "order within 2 hours and 13 minutes and we'll ship your order today"
Social proof: "23 people bought this product today", "the last order of this product was 3 minutes ago"
Authority: "Recommended by institute x"
We're seeing uplifts in conversions rates from 5% to sometimes 200% (on average 10-15%). Key is timing and finding out what works best for a certain type of visitor. So, for example, shopping at your lunch break often results in a certain behaviour on a shop (ie. going directly or through the shortest route to your desired product) which implicates a sensitivity for a scarcity message. On the other hand, shopping in the evening (more time on your hands) tells us (but not always) that you're maybe more inclined to make a good comparison between products. A social proof message helps the most in that case. It's a simplified version of the reality but you get the idea :-)
The tool is easily integrated in shop software (Magento et al) and usable for the less tech savvy users. The messaging is delivered through non-intrusive pop-ups (maybe you've seen them) and are fully configurable on for example: referer, time of day, position, layout, animation, type of visitor, country, etc etc. We also have an integration with Google Analytics to track performance.
You can try us for 30 days free, shoot me an email at bart[at]conversify.com, mention HN, and I'll give you 15 extra days for free.
This walks a line between helping the customer to make decisions manipulation (I'm being generous here). If I saw an online store doing this I would think less of them (again, being generous in my language) and go somewhere else. Also I can tell the difference between real scarcity (like an eBay auction timer out) and simulated scarcity...
... is what I like to think happens. Obviously it works and the chances of me, or anyone else who thinks the same way, being exceptional is probably slim.
The tool only enforces certain usps or charateristics of the shop at the right time.
Attach some proof of what others payed in higher prices. As in "10 people paid $x for this last week".
Pricing strategies are one of my specialties and I use them in negotiation almost every day.
I think they actually ran this experiment only through their mailing list though but either way Booking.com was already using all these conversion tactics before though so at best they actually used this to occasionally turn off some of the less effective social proofs.
I don't think it would be hard to make the messages selectively true.
The problem with 1 left in stock is that people are responding well to scarcity in general but often don't like to be pushed toward a decision right now.... this is counter effective.
The social proof of seeing other people order, oddly enough, I find much more persuasive even though it's just as subject to manipulation. Maybe I'm just jaded from the ubiquity of 'hurry in, this offer can't last' advertisements on TV, on the weekly coupon junk mail that shows up in the mailbox and so on. I always wonder why car dealerships make such a huge thing out of their sales, given that they seem to occur on almost a monthly basis.
Regardless, your comment and the subthread it started gave me a product idea - an adblock-like plugin that would remove all such manipulative elements from online shops. Basically, it would cancel out all your hard work ;). But hey, it's an arms race between salesmen and consumers.
I honestly don't know how to reconcile my own ideals with day-to-day capitalism. Brick&mortar stores all around not only manipulate, but sometimes blatantly cheat people. I realized recently that I probably couldn't open a store myself - my own conscience would run me bankrupt pretty quickly. I'm not made for this age ;).
For any book on Amazon, for example, 90%+ of the reviews are zero-information, because they either are entirely about the reviewer ("I thought this book was great/sucked/whatever" in various long-winded guises), are paid shills, compare the book unfavourably to another one by the same author (will will also have reviews comparing it unfavourably to another one by the same author) or are incoherent.
I've long thought that a review-sanitizer wouldn't be that hard to build that filtered out large numbers of reviews using what amount to anti-span techniques. Con-artists like you suggest that a more general counter-measures approach would be worthwhile.
You may object to being characterized as a con-artist, but you are precisely using algorithmic techniques to gain the mark's confidence so you can manipulate them to your own ends. That is the definition of a con-artist, and it's quite different from ethical salespeople do, based on my own experience in sales.
So here's a question: how would you deploy your algorithmic knowledge in a way that focused on qualifying rather than closing? The goal of an ethical sales-person is to qualify people in the channel, because a fully qualified lead is a closed sale. It may be a quite similar process, but you're asking a fundamentally different question. Not "how can I manipulate the lead to close" but "how can I identify the lead's needs and ability/willingness to pay?" Maybe it's not possible, but if websites focused on this rather than confidence tricks (which is what you are using) people would probably be much more willing to part with their money (the book "Getting Into Your Customer's Head", which is probably somewhat dated now, gives a fair idea of the approach I'm talking about.)
First, manipulation in my view is an unethical forced change of behaviour (buying something you don't want). We don't manipulate people with our tool (I'll come back to that later).
Secondly, con-artists are people that mislead and manipulate other people to have a (personal) gain, either financially or otherwise.
So, imagine an online shop. That shop has some usps (best widgets in town, fast delivery) and some information on each product (number in stock, number of buys etc etc). That information is usually 'embedded' on the site (frontpage, product details, checkout page). To communicate all those pros you would have to guess where in the user journey the customer has the need to read one of those perks (or you could just repeat them over and over again which hurts the user experience).
Our tool takes those usps and information and targets those at the right customer at the right time. You hate social proof? Fine, we won't bother you with that. You need a confirmation about the trustworthiness of the store? Fine, here's why the shop is to be trusted (reputation, expert in field etc etc)
We know what is important to you (qualifying) and communicate that. That's not manipulation or a con-artist's MO because it's true and we don't mislead you. We know, based on your data, what your needs are. (if a shop owner wants to communicate false claims, that's fine, but in the long run people are not buying there anymore. See my other comment on this subject).
Persuasion is everywhere, whether you like it or not. We just try to make it more effective by removing all the random persuasion messages (which are sometimes screaming at you) and finding out what works for whom and when.
That appears to be exactly what you're doing. Unless, of course, you're trying to claim that your company is some kind of altruistic non-profit that manipulates people for the greater good.
1. Deliberately manipulating buying decisions for profit.
2. Concealing the fact that the information you present is intended to manipulate, not to inform.
3. Ignoring whether or not a buying decision will genuinely benefit the customer and not just the seller.
Put simply, you seem to have zero interest in the customer except as financial prey.
Do you really not understand how shady this is?
It's true that persuasion is everywhere - but so what? Germs, pollution, poisons, politicians, and other bad things are everywhere too. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to mitigate their damaging effects.
If you don't understand why this is a problem, consider how customers would feel if you explained your manipulation up front.
How much damage would the brand suffer?
Now, if you had customers who were happy with your presentation after an open explanation ("Yes - tell me when you're about to run out of stock so I don't have to wait until you restock") that would be different.
But instead of giving them that choice you're using textbook psychological exploits to push their behaviour around in ways that benefit you, potentially at their expense - and IMO that's certainly not a cool thing to be doing.
1) Doesn't every single shop/business try to convince (I'm not using manipulate because of it's incorrectness and the negative association some people may have, see other comment) you as a potential buyer through the same principles? Is that a bad thing? Why isn't it 'allowed' in your eyes to emphasize your strong points (usps) or factual info about a product? What's the difference between our tool and mentioning these facts on the site it self?
2) We inform people about a product shop with factual information so that they can make a better decision. Example: A customer is worried if this shop is legit. Letting them see a message with the number of positive reviews the shop has got can make that worry go away. Social proof also helps in this process (just like we do in the real world when seeing an empty restaurant versus a crowded restaurant).
3) See (2). Our main goal is trying to convince customers of buying at a shop. Helping the shop with communicating their sales pitch to customers isn't about ignoring the interest of the customer. It's in the interest of the shop owner that he guards the interest of the shopper or else his retention or returning rates are going to be very bad.
Your comparison of germs (etc) with persuasion misses every point...
If I would tell customers that if they feel insecure about something (is this shop legit?, is this a popular product?, how long do I have to get it tomorrow?) our tool would provide them with the answers to that at the right time (using our algorithms and data-analysis), then I'm sure no one would object.
Lastly: people are intelligent creatures. If stock info on a product doesn't have your interest but you see it anyway, you'll ignore it (like we do all day with other inputs/noise). But if you are interested in a product and need it fast, than a scarcity message at the right time will certainly help you.
I'm impressed by the product/service but I'm so jaded about 'being gamed' that I'm always cynical when I buy online.
I have been astounded to discover how irrational my thought processes are, even though this is an important choice and I'm consciously trying to avoid instinctive and emotional decisions: I see evidence of halo effects, risk aversion, substituting difficult comparisons for easier ones ("what's the better work environment?" is hard, but "where did I have conversations I liked better?" is easy), and more.
Overall I wouldn't actually recommend trying to learn about cognitive biases in the midst of making an important decision – it's really, really easy to tie yourself up in knots! E.g. "Do I like them better because I interviewed with them more recently (availability heuristic)? Am I making the mistake of preferring the easy certainty of having made up my mind over the discomfort of making a complex choice?"
It's a really cool field of research, though.
Edit: One interesting "hack" the book mentions is how to game feedback. Essentially, we decide how frequent something is by how easily we can call to mind examples of it. However, past about six items, most people will have trouble coming up with examples of anything; however, unless they're aware of this fact, the difficulty of coming up with the later examples can cause them to erroneously think it's not very frequent after all.
So, for example, if a professor in a course evaluation requires students to list 12 ways to improve the course, students will actually rate the course more highly than if they are only asked for three! Evil uses for this are left to the reader's imagination.
Definitely worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mOgWH5JZkg
Yes, they can be used to manipulate people, but they're really just used in everyday encounters to make things positive for everyone - simply touching people on the shoulder when you talk to them and giving eye contact is a great way to connect with other people, and get them to become more comfortable with you. It's a known fact that people who like each other have much more physical contact between them. Observing this, and portraying it as something new and abusable is just silly.
Maybe we're all losing the ability to connect with one another authentically.
If you want the short version, read the 6 principles that Cialdini reduced them to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini#6_key_principle...
> "Observing this, and portraying it as something new and abusable is just silly."
Err... no, it is not silly. Techniques like these are routinely used to separate people from their money -- and in the digital age to get people to share ever more information about themselves. Being aware that this is a 'thing' means you can come up with counter-techniques to cope with it. Or just let yourself be manipulated (I guess that should be counted as an option).
Also worth looking at the list of cognitive biases as they're commonly exploited too.
I won't argue with you because my point we're not of differing views.
I think it's cultural. Different cultures, different ways of establishing trust. I had an interesting conversation with a coworker (I work for a German company) about the need to calibrate monitors for proper color rendering for different tasks. His desire to understand the 'truth' about how monitors deliver light to our eyes was quite strong while at the same time being very direct about rejecting casual references such as it's just what you have to do with a monitor when you do print jobs. Germans. Engineering focus and zero bullshit is part of the culture.
I also 'hung out' with a bunch of Romanians in Amsterdam one night over the weekend. They were very direct with mis-trust. One of them put his coat next to me on the couch I was sitting on and he looked right at me and said "you don't steal my coat, OK?". I assured him I was not going to steal his coat and then he smiled and said "great!". :)
In the U.S. it seems we use a lot of shortcuts to establish trust quickly. The problem with this approach is that because the cost of trust is so low (say an ad hominem argument or bandwagon bias) it's easy to abuse the trust system for personal gain. Given we're all about living the "American Dream" of becoming insanely successful ($1B exit anyone?), this frequently puts us in a situation of duality, where we want what we want, but aren't willing to put the time and effort into establishing the trust we need to get us there.
These are generalizations, of course.
I don't see an article on the flaws in that study in a quick search, but here is a similar one: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/1...
419 scams are entirely different. They are typically sent out en-masse precisely because most people are not vulnerable to the scam. Also, they appeal to people's greed, the victims believe they will be getting a large sum of money for very little effort. On top of that, the victims are usually worked over for a period of time by seasoned con-artists before sending any money. There is no simple trick like here like handing someone a water bottle or saying a magic phrase.
I don't think they're entirely different. 419 scams mass e-mail people and are tailored to pull in the kind of people that fall for 419 scams. Likewise, the target of this video here was likely selected by the magician as someone who could have been fooled (walking alone, older, distracted, wallet in front pocket), and also cherry-picked as a video example.
I don't really think that is true. Unless it's explained to them I don't see most viewers picking up on the subtly touches and strange hand/wrist holding, the body language mirroring, the use of the water bottle to distract, the placing and reinforcement of the suggestion?
Personally I think it appeals because it looks entirely like magic - "these are not the droids you're looking for" - to most observers the first time they watch. For me a great illusion is one where I can't see how it's done without at least watching a few times.
There are definitely some magicians using stooges, Dynamo is one who's pretty easy to spot, but if Brown is doing so then he's done really well to hide it as I'm sure the major news outlets would pay well for a person from one of his shows who could expose details to show it was a sham.
Brown's mix of NLP/hypnotism techniques with standard illusion and misdirection is what makes him so entertaining.
Yes, viewers can pick up on obvious things like handing someone a water bottle while telling them to give you their wallet and saying things like "You're happy to give that to me". It's only subtle enough for people to feel special in noticing it, but not so subtle for them not to notice it at all.
> Brown's mix of NLP/hypnotism techniques with standard illusion and misdirection is what makes him so entertaining.
What you brand as a demonstration of NLP/hypnotism I see as the psychology equivalent of "Divert auxiliary power from port nacelles to forward shields!"
Brown has a pretty bad image of NLP so I'm not sure he would be happy that people say he is using NLP.
https://tx.proxfree.com/permalink.php?url=s54aaHA%2FaGsaD5vH...
Not easier to believe than the wallet steal.
The wallet-steal trick I believe, because it only involved one mark. All Brown had to do was film dozens of attempts until it worked. Nothing new there -- Zimbardo and Milgram showed that if somebody refuses an order to do something silly, dangerous, or immoral, all you have to do is ask somebody else. It won't be long before you find a willing stooge. On the other hand, it might take months before you find an entire group of still-sober people (who just walked into a pub) who will play along perfectly with a complicated trick.
Those things are not mutually exclusive - they can see the salmon near the top, and decide they are in fact hungry for salmon (as opposed to picking the burger right below or above it instead). It's rapid decision capitulation. People often are open to multiple choices, and get exhausted or annoyed the longer the process of choosing goes on.
Restaurants probably put the most popular dishes in the top and/or bottom as well.
(Not to mention when the page is divided by sections, so you would have the main dished in the middle, so the point is moot)
Also how you define top/bottom? Divide the page into 2 parts? 3 parts?
The average use will look at a menu in a "F" pattern[1]. Try to imagine a big "F" over the menu, then pick something outside of it.
Try to stay clear of images too. If they require an image to sell you the product, there's a reason.
Avoid fancy descriptions and titles. Something called "Fried rice with chicken" will often be just as good and often in bigger quantity than "Le Coq au Vin du Chef". Foreign words and country of origin are a big red flag you are buying dreams and not quality + quantity food.
[1] http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/...
TL;DR: Pick the thing that looks good but "meh". Fancy restaurants have chefs that will make everything flavourful. The only reason it has a "meh" description is because the profit margin is lower.
And why on earth would you want to screw with the restaurant profit margin? What possible gain is there in that for you?
As for profit margins, what I meant is that a recipe with a fancy name is often sold at double the price of everything else while being dead simple to make and uses simple inexpensive products.
Thai food is a great example. I used to pay, let's say, $20 for something that seemed exotic and complex to me. I went with an asian friend at the very same restaurant and he laughed at me for taking this meal at this price.
To him, it was the equivalent of "meat and potatoes". Cheap, inexpensive, fast to make.
He recommended I try the "chicken rice" (no fancy description). Well, turn out the chicken rice uses the same spices as the meal I was paying premium for, had a bigger quantity and even had some other ingredient that to me, were just as fancy and exotic. The "chicken rice" is about $8 cheaper than what I used to take AND I now have enough to bring some home to eat at launch the next day if I want.
(Don't pay attention to the exact prices, I can't remember what it was.)
I have some ridiculously expensive designer furniture at home that rationally makes no sense to choose over something from IKEA. Despite that, they give me a lot of satisfaction and I can feel justified in my decision because of that.
That's not to say that everybody makes decisions that they are happy with, there are lots of ways people are manipulated into decisions that they later regret. However, you really should take into account how people feel about a decision before judging whether or not they have been cheated.
Then, apply that cynical value-proposition argument and suddenly, unhappiness. Why? Because a friend was critical? Because it no longer tastes good? I'm not convinced of the efficacy of that mental model.
I was paying $20 for a product that in reality is worth $8 to produce.
Now, I am paying $12 for a product that is equal in quality and has an increased quantity.
The only difference is that with the first product, I was tricked into thinking I was getting a better value. The description was fancier, the name of the recipe was exotic, there was an image on the menu, it was at the top of the page.
The other one was simply "chicken rice", on the back of the menu, squeezed between meals that had names that sounded better. Don't judge a recipe by its name.
In fact, I was paying more for less.
Edit: Yes, I was happy with the first recipe before knowing that I was paying premium for a meal that was in fact, very simple.
The issue isn't my overall happiness. It's the fact that I was tricked into buying a product only by its description and position on the menu. Since it had a picture and I am always in a hurry, I picked it over the more simple "chicken rice" that was in fact just as good (same ingredients, same spices, same chef) while being cheaper.
Was I happy with the original recipe? Yes. Was I wasting money on it? Yes.
Am I as much happy with the new cheaper meal as I was before? Yes. Am I saving money? Yes.
Someone who thinks that way probably isn't a good tipper either, so enjoy the free ride on the restaurants' pathetic cashflow.
There's a reason why margins are high on certain menu items in restaurants; running restaurants are a rough business, labor-heavy, and the day-to-day take is volatile and meager, often to do factors entirely out of your control.
Nobody is stealing anything. We are talking about picking the most cost effective option on the menu while intelligently avoiding traps made by the menu's designers. Picking the item that is "under the fold" instead of the one that has been carefully crafted by the designer for you to pick.
Personally, I use the money I save by taking those items over the featured items by ordering more wine! Everyone is winning here.
I think the idea is that a consumer can get better value for money, and/or a better culinary experience by resisting those items that are heavily pushed. It assumes that restaurants employing these tactics seek to promote dishes with the most mark up on them.
Um, ok. So if I have "chicken braised in red wine with lardons, vegetables, mushrooms, cooked in the Chef's style" that fails with being a "fancy" description and mentioning the country. But le coq au vin du chef is also disallowed because it uses foreign words?
So no coq au vin ever?
Customer: "What's the 'chicken stew'?
Waiter: "chicken braised in red wine with small pieces of bacon, vegetables, and mushrooms, cooked in the Chef's style, sir"
C: "You mean coq au vin?"
W: "Yes, sir."
C: "Oh, ok, I'll have the boeuf bourguinon."
W: "One stew prepared with beef braised in Burgundy flavoured with garlic, onions, herbs, with pearl onions and mushrooms."
Customer2: "I'll take the terrine of Brussels pâté, does it come with Melba toast?"
W: "OK, one lumpy paste of pork ofal made in a rectangular pot. We _can_ do very thinly sliced slowly cooked dry toast if you'd like."
Saying no French is like saying no proper nouns, no Waldorf salad say, but having to describe the ingredients.
The idea isn't to void all recipe that have fancy names. It's to be on the look for those recipes that have very simple names and are located in areas of the menu that aren't optimal. Those hidden gems will often get you all the quality and taste for a lower price and/or bigger quantity.
If there the whole menu is written using imaginative titles and there's a "beef stew" hidden in a corner, you can well be certain that it's a "boeuf bourguinon". There are many reason why it is hidden so. In the end, the main reason is that the meal in question isn't as profitable for the restaurant. It's up to you to decide if it is profitable for you.
Overall we are exceedingly good at rationalising choices, even when we provably had no influence on them (look up experiments done on patients with severed brain stems).
You are certainly right that people get annoyed with multiple choices, though. I don't remember if it's Cialdini ("Influence") or Jonathan Haidt ("The Happiness Hypothesis") that cites experiments that shows that people are happiest with their choices when they have a small-ish number of alternatives. Above a relatively small number of alternatives, peoples satisfaction with the choice they end up making drops rapidly. Not only is the process of choosing tiresome, but we get far more room for doubt about whether or not we made the right choice.
Unless you're a vegetarian and there's one option tucked away on page 2.
Which illustrates one way of countering these sorts of manipulation tricks: a very slight offset from the mainstream.
If you find that when you're looking for a product you only end-up with one option that meets your requirements, or perhaps even only one that only partially meets them, then you're pretty much unsusceptible to 'buy this now' pressure.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini
It seems like all these decisions are completely arbitrary, and I know that I'm always looking for any dumb excuse to pick one arbitrary option over another.
Flip a coin.
I sometimes get paranoid that cultural belief systems, cultural environments and all the knowledge of humanity has indoctrinated me into a specific modality of thinking that is so well formed and 'correct' that I don't even think to question it's influence on me, because that would be ridiculous, right? It's just so hard to argue against, because it's like a wall of reason, logic, observation, and rationality. That, or pretending I have magic powers - which I do.
For more open ended decisions I use deliberately and obviously irrelevant metrics like wordplay or ad-hoc numerology.
It's useful for getting people to stop asking you where you want to go for lunch for example.
I just do my stuff for thinking new thoughts. I did a zen thing where I deconstructed every concept and word, and essentially "broke" it in my mind - gave it no power in it's meaning, and thus could not use it in reasoning. I did this over and over and over.
The important part is that I didn't need a reason to destroy the meaning - because I've always lived maintaining my theories until they are proven incorrect, while accumulating information to build on them. But some stuff doesn't prove itself incorrect, because it's a self perpetuating pattern.
That's where I became paranoid about viral ideas, things that are true simply by the virtue of their construction. The construction is considered correct, therefore application of the construction can never be questioned. And I don't know if that really means anything about human existence, but I know it pisses me off when I feel like I've been spoon-fed a way to think.
Mine is useful for sitting alone in my room, staring at a wall of books. I don't really have a lunch problem. I eat lunch at my desk.
Look around you and ask yourself how much of it is actually authentic and makes any real difference in your life. Is any of it authentic? Is any of it really you? How much of it is manipulated by the media, who are really just a proxy for the influencers of the network owners... the choices of shows on available to us on the TV, the way the news is portrayed, the mood of ads that barrage us constantly, the influence of corporations on government that use lobbyists to pass bills that propagate the cycle...
I daresay that a miniscule portion of your thought process is actually your own [hypothetical you, not actual you]. Much of what we do going unexamined until something major happens in our lives - divorce, job loss, health issues, death that causes us to stop and examine life and ask ourselves - How much does any of this routine matter? How much of it makes any tangible difference?
This is also why religious debates and wars transpire - even in a developer environment where we pride logic and meritocracy above all: Visual Studio is clearly better than Eclipse, the PC will always be better than the Mac, Android is better than the iPhone and Git is better than TFS ;)
I've done this trick plenty of times and it never fails to blow peoples' minds. I do it by taking the card I want them to see and slightly push down the card in front of it. This will cause a small break when flickering through.
Regardless of how you achieve the force, once you've got someone to select a card which you knew of ahead of time, shit just gets crazy. This is basically all of David Blane's up close street magic he does on video.
Like when he goes and asks someone to pick a card then throws the deck at the window and the card they chose is stuck on the outside of the window. No-one would notice the card stuck on the outside of the window before he threw the deck at it.
Another one was where he went to some NBA team's training and had them pick a card, then he got a basketball from a pile of basketballs and cut it open, and the card the guy picked was inside.
If you don't know that you were forced to choose the given card, it's the closest you can get to feeling as though magic genuinely happened.
I feel that a lot of these effects are more effects of nudging a customer to take action rather than making a customer buy something they normally wouldn't. Increasing conversion rates from a typical 2% to 2.2% isn't that huge.
I'm more interested in the outliers, in what cases do you get a 200% effect? And in what cases can these tricks influence important decisions? What house you buy? What medical insurance to get? Thoughts?
Or she might actually be hungry for salmon. And as we know, our mind sees what it wants to see[1].
I agree with the essence of the article, though.
If the answer is YES and the probabilities are all either 100% or 0%, that means nothing for free will, though it is consistent with a completely determined will. It's also consistent, however, with a free will (by pretty much any of the definitions) that determines brain state before any other empirical evidence of the decision of the will is available.
one of the links http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13658-brain-scanner-pr...