The Grasshoppers Experiment Might Change the Way You See Persuasion
You should be aware of this mental maneuver
One thing I find fascinating about persuasion is that it’s really close to manipulation and yet so different from it.
Every book I’ve ever read on persuasion had a list of qualities you need if you want to be a good persuader.
Most of the time, it’s about positive things like:
- Self-confidence
- Eloquence
- Credibility
- Social skills
- Charisma
The first thing I learned about persuasion is that we need to have a positive attitude towards the person we want to persuade.
Would you agree? At the very least, we need to be friendly.
But what if it wasn’t always the best tactic?
Something called the ”cognitive dissonance” might just prove the opposite.
The ”golden rule”: being friendly will get you positive feedback
Most of us believe that being nice to someone helps influencing them. It helps getting positive feedback.
This is probably true most of the time.
When someone asks you a favor, you’re more likely to say yes if the person asking is polite and friendly. Or really charismatic.
As writer and actor Quentin Crisp once said:
”Charisma is the ability to influence without logic”.
In other words, when you are charismatic, what you’re saying doesn’t even have to make sense. (ok, I’m exaggerating here).
But the idea is that charisma, politeness, and friendly attitude are the important ingredients that help you convince others.
Why? Because it’s easier for us to do things for people we like.
Could the grasshopper experiment change that?
This experiment was carried out several years ago by sociologists Zimbardo, Weissenberg, Firestone and Levy.
The purpose of the experiment was to convince participants to eat fried grasshoppers.
Before the experiment, participants were asked how they felt about eating grasshoppers. All of them said they were unappealing.
(Of course, there’s nothing shocking about it in some countries maybe, but this is an experiment lead in a western country, with western eating habits. Besides, the team made the insects look particularly unappealing, slimy and pretty much disgusting.)
Researchers divided the participants into 2 groups.
2 different experimenters tried to persuade them to eat the repelling food:
1. In the 1st group: The experimenter was nice and friendly with the participants and polite towards his assistant.
2. In the 2nd group: The experimenter was unfriendly. He didn’t smile, he had a mean attitude, and was rude to his assistant.
“How did you feel about eating the grasshoppers?” — the team asked the participants after the snack.
What do you think?
Which group had the most positive attitude?
You would probably say (as I did in the first place) that because they dealt with the nice experimenter, the first group gave positive feedback.
Well, you’ll be surprised.
Here are the actual results:
The 2 experimenters used the same arguments and the same words to try to convince the participants to eat the insects.
But strangely enough, participants who had to deal with the UNFRIENDLY experimenter were more open to the idea of eating grasshoppers and gave more positive feedback afterward!
Surprising, isn’t it?
Well, not so surprising if we consider the ”cognitive dissonance theory”.
The cognitive dissonance explains it
You might have heard of this theory.
It was first investigated by Leon Festinger in 1956.
The cognitive dissonance theory states that when we do an action which is conflicting with our personal beliefs or values, we experience a state of mental discomfort called “dissonance”.
When this happens, we tend to compensate, in order to reduce the dissonance.
How?
There are 2 possibilities:
- we modify the action (we refuse to do the action, or we do only part of it) or
- we modify the way we perceive the action: we ”trick” our own brain into believing the action is not so bad. It’s a mental maneuver.
The classic example is someone who smokes, knowing that smoking is bad for their health.
The act of smoking is therefore dissonant.
In order to compensate, the smoker will either :
- modify the action (stop smoking, which is not easy) or
- modify the way he perceives smoking (he will state that smoking is not so bad compared to drinking for example, or that statistically, many non-smokers die from lung cancer anyway, etc.)
Either way, someone who feels mental dissonance MUST FIND a way to COMPENSATE.
Ok, back to our grasshoppers.
Why did the unfriendly experimenter have more success with the grasshopper-eating participants?
Remember, it’s consistent for us human beings to do things for people we like.
First group:
A nice experimenter asks the participants to do an unpleasant action (eating grasshoppers). They don’t fancy the idea, but they do it because they have a reason: they are doing a favor to a nice person. This action doesn’t produce great dissonance. After the experiment, the participants don’t need to compensate: they admit in all honesty that they didn’t like the grasshoppers. No mental manœuvre.
Second group:
A mean experimenter asks the participants to do an unpleasant action (eating grasshoppers). Most of them accept, but they feel bad about it because they don’t have the ”excuse” of doing a favor to a nice person. This produces a big dissonance, that requires COMPENSATING. How do they compensate? Not by modifying the action (they can’t) but by changing the way they perceive the action: they say the grasshoppers were not that bad! — They give positive feedback.
In a nutshell:
- Dissonant action + sympathy as a reason to do it (positive element) = lower dissonance and honest perception of the action (which in this case is a negative perception)
- Dissonant action + no reason to do so (negative element) = strong dissonance and important need for COMPENSATION: modified perception of the action.
So how can you use this to persuade?
Does this mean that you have to be unfriendly when you ask someone something unpleasant?
Not necessarily. I don’t think that you should go by this rule anyway…
But it does put things into perspective.
When you need to persuade, think ”low dissonance”
Your goal is to reduce the dissonance as much as possible.
The lower the dissonance, the greater the chances that they accept.
But if you can’t reduce the dissonance (because what you have to ask is really unpleasant), think in terms of COMPENSATION.
Keep in mind that the person you ask to do that action WILL compensate mentally.
- If you are the nicest possible, they will do the action but remember it as a bad experience.
- If you are less nice (let’s say a little cold, not the devil himself), they will do the action AND might compensate by thinking it’s not that bad after all…
Here’s an example:
An employer orders Stan, one of his employees to do something dishonest. Like stealing a piece of technology information from a competitor.
Stan is an honest guy and he doesn’t like the idea, but let’s say he doesn’t have a choice.
If the employer is a nice guy, friendly and smiling, Stan will do what he’s asked. But he will struggle with it. It will give him nightmares. He will be bitter about it. If he tells his wife about it, it will probably be something like: ”My boss asked me to do something nasty, and I did it because he’s a really cool guy, but it was awful.”
If the employer is mean (or really a jerk), Stan will do it (because he doesn’t have a choice) AND because he needs to compensate this important dissonance, he will probably say to himself ”everyone does it nowadays anyway”.
(In other words, Stan provides himself with a reason to do it.)
Do you think this is pure manipulation?
You could probably call it that way.
And I’m NOT suggesting you should use it.
What I’m suggesting, is that you should be aware of it. This psychological mechanism does exist. And sometimes, it might explain some of your own reactions after experiencing dissonant actions.
