Influencing tip - herd instinct
If you were to collapse in the street with a serious medical emergency, is it better to do it in the quiet Yorkshire village where I live, or in the middle of a busy street in London?
Here's where you should choose, and what it's got to do with influencing.
You should choose the quiet Yorkshire village. Why? Because it's highly likely that the first person who comes along will offer you help. In a busy London street, it's much less likely that anyone will stop. People will look at everyone else hurrying past, and will choose to hurry past themselves – leaving you groaning on the ground. Human beings are highly influenced by the behaviour of others. Especially in situations of uncertainty, people are very likely to go along with what everyone else does or says.
In a famous psychology experiment Solomon Asch asked volunteers to join a group and answer simple questions about the length of lines on a piece of card. Unknown to the true volunteers, the other participants in the experiment were actors – hired to give blatantly wrong answers to the task. To Asch's astonishment, when the volunteers were asked to give their views after the other participants had given their answers, they conformed to the group view 32% of the time. Such is the power of herd instinct.
See a short video clip of the experiment
What does this mean for you? If you want to influence a person or a group it may be ineffective to try and convince them directly. Much better to point out how other people like them do whatever it is you want them to do.