Letters Remain

Tag: persuasion

  • Dark Patterns: Evil Design Patterns

    I’ve looked at design patterns many times before: persuasive patterns, anti-patterns and interaction patterns. The missing link: dark patterns. According to Harry Brignull–the designer who really started the discussion on this topic–dark patterns can succinctly be described as “user interfaces designed to trick people” or “dirty tricks designers use to make people do stuff”. Brignull…

  • Irrelevant Neuroscience Jargon Increases Persuasiveness

    The addition of “irrelevant talk about neuroscience” makes a previously bad psychological explanation much more persuasive and acceptable. Luckily experts are not fooled by this addition of spurious neuroscience, but as an in-depth look at the study shows, almost all non-experts (including neuroscience students) are fooled and persuaded by the addition of logically irrelevant neuroscience…

  • The Advantage of Busywork: Happiness

    “We are happier when busy but our instinct is for idleness”, says Christopher Hsee, a researcher at the University of Chicago who has been studying the link between busyness and happiness. What this means is that work conducted merely to keep us busy (so-called busywork) can actually increase our happiness, despite what conventional wisdom suggests…

  • Foreign Accents Make Statements Less Trustworthy

    Due to the principles of processing fluency (also known as cognitive fluency, discussed here many times before), we know that information that is easier to process is perceived to be–among other features–more familiar, pleasant, truthful and less risky. A recent study has shown that this is also true for foreign accents: statements spoken by non-native…

  • Using Charity to Increase Voluntary Payments

    If a business is experimenting with voluntary pricing (‘pay-what-you-want’ pricing), to increase sales and profits give a portion of voluntary payments away to charity (and advertise the fact, naturally). That’s the conclusion from a study by researcher Ayelet Gneezy comparing a number of pricing plans involving–in various combinations–voluntary payments, fixed prices and charitable donations: At…

  • Embodied Cognition and How Objects Influence Our Perceptions

    The physical properties of objects we interact with can substantially influence our opinion of unrelated items and people. Through a number of novel experiments, MIT’s Joshua Ackerman has clearly shown how the texture, weight, and other physical properties of objects we touch affect our judgements and decisions (neatly summarised by Ed Yong): Weight is linked…

  • Web Marketing Lessons from Cialdini’s ‘Influence’

    No marketer should be engaging with people online without having read Robert Cialdini’s much lauded Influence, says SEOmoz co-founder Rand Fishkin. To this end, Rand presents his Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence and Persuasion. The six main principles illustrated: Reciprocation: “The power of reciprocation relies on several conventions. The request must be “in-kind,”…

  • Six Principles of ‘Sticky’ Ideas

    In an excerpt from Made to Stick, brothers Dan and Chip Heath provide an outline of the six principles of creating ‘sticky’ ideas: Simplicity: “We must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. […] Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate…

  • Near-Far Bias (Construal-Level Theory)

    Robin Hanson has written much over the last few months on ‘construal-level theory‘ (also known as the near-far bias) and I’ve been slowly following along, taking notes. The theory, according to Wikipedia, “describes the relation between psychological distance and how abstract an object is represented in someone’s mind. The general idea is that the more…

  • Why Science Needs PR

    Scientists needing to persuade society at large shouldn’t be relying on their data alone to persuade but instead should employ PR tactics, suggests Wired‘s Erin Biba (and a number of PR company employees, natch). I don’t totally agree with the idea (scientific integrity and all that jazz) but some of the thoughts/suggestions are entirely valid…