Tag: persuasion
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Using Anchoring for Personal Appraisals
I believe the anchoring effect to be one of the most intriguing psychological phenomena, mainly due to its impact, ease of observation and ease of use. I’ve written much about anchoring before and find it hard to resist new studies on the topic. One recent study shows that even irrelevant anchors can be used to…
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Conformity and Its Influences
There are ten “timeless influencers” of conformity, suggests the literature on the topic, and by understanding what these influences are–and how to use and counteract them–we are provided with some insight into our and others’ behaviour in many situations. To that end, PsyBlog helpfully provides a summary of the ten core factors that influence conformity.…
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The Effectiveness of Social Support on Exercise Goals
Informing our friends and family of our resolutions in hope that the social support will encourage us is an effective tactic–as long as these people ‘check-in’ on our progress at semi-regular intervals. That’s the conclusion from a study where three groups of people had their exercise goals tracked under one of three conditions: a regular…
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Price Reductions and Cognitive Fluency
If the mental calculation required to determine the discount given on a product is difficult then we often misjudge the magnitude of the reduction. This “ease-of-computation” effect for judging price reductions is obviously related to other recent studies looking at ‘cognitive fluency‘ and is another way to manipulate and be manipulated through product pricing. Consumers’…
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Choice Architecture of Organ Donation
The supply of organs suitable for donation is vastly smaller than the demand. To try and increase the pool of potential donors a number of options have been tested: Redefining death so ‘living’ organs can be taken from donors who have died through brain death (via Link Banana), provide incentives for potential donors, or employ…
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Scores and Comparisons: Most Persuasive Feedback Method
Numeric and normative feedback (scores and comparative information) is more persuasive and effective than text feedback with only “self-relevant data”, regardless of the source. That’s according to a 2006 study looking at the best methods for providing feedback to ‘leaders’: This study investigated the influence of feedback format (text versus numeric/normative) on leaders’ reactions to…
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Negotiating Over ‘Sacred Values’
When requested to give up a “sacred value”, the inclusion of a financial incentive incites moral outrage, decreases general support for a compromise, increases anger and increases a subject’s approval of “violent opposition”. Research looking at our reactions to such proposalsĀ offersĀ sameĀ suggestions for negotiating over sacred values. A more successful tack for negotiating over sacred values,…
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Persuasive Design Patterns
The Design with Intent toolkit is a guide to help you design systems to influence a user’s behaviour. The author, Dan Lockton, has subtitled the toolkit 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design. Categorised into the following eight ‘lenses’ (ways to look at design and behaviour) the toolkit proves to be a fantastic resource for…
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The Influence of Cognitive Fluency
We’ve seen before how the cognitive fluency (how ‘easy’ it is to think of or comprehend something) of restaurant menus, stock ticker codes and physical exercises influence how complex, risky and even beautiful we perceive them to be. A recent PsyBlog article provides a summary of a number of cognitive fluency studies and here are…
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Behavioural Game Design and the Manipulation of Fun
Over the last twenty or thirty years gaming has changed almost beyond recognition. With the simultaneous growth in behavioural psychology the two fields have collided, as summarised by Microsoft games researcher John Hopson in his look at behavioural game design. Cracked summarises the article well (if not a tad sensationalised) as Five ways video games…