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You know we love to see ourselves special snowflakes in a working class contacts will be similar is more ok like being similar friends i wouldn t want to be similar to the family members that they love and care about.
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This is the art of charm learn everything you need to know to crush it in business love and life.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger, and I m here with producer Jason today.
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We re talking with Jonah Berger.
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He s the second youngest professor at Wharton, now that Adam Grant is a full prof. That must steam his chicken a little, eh, Jason?
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Today we ll be discussing influence, both on ourselves and on others, specifically how it s invisible and undetectable to us most of the time.
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how this affects how we act, what we do, what we buy, and how we live our lives, how to harness this influence to persuade and dissuade, all this and more on this episode with Jonah Berger.
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And with that, The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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If you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the toolbox where we discuss body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, and everything else we teach here at AOC.
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In the USA, just text charmed to 33444.
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That s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444.
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Everywhere else, go to theartofcharm.com.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the right questions.
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All right, here s Jonah Berger.
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Jonah, thanks for coming on the show.
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I really appreciate it, and as does the AOC family.
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The book is interesting.
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Influence and anything having to do with influence and forces that shape behavior is always interesting for us, so we appreciate your time.
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Oh, thanks so much for having me.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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Oh, one sentence is tough.
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In my day job, I m a marketing professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and in the rest of my time, I m a best-selling author of Contagious, Why Things Catch On, and the new book, Invisible Influence.
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Tell me why Wharton, being a business school, is interested in influence and forces that shape behavior.
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It should be obvious, but I d love to make that business connection immediately.
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Yeah, I think whether we re a leader of a big company, a manager of a small business, or just an individual within an organization,
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Even in our personal lives, influence is a powerful toolkit that we can use to help make better decisions, help shape our companies, and make ourselves more successful.
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And so it s a toolkit that everyone needs to use and understand.
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Excellent book title, by the way, Invisible Influence, The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior.
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And we ll link that in the show notes as well, of course, as we do with all the resources.
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One thing that I found not surprising but really interesting, I suppose, about the concept of influence is that our choices are driven by our own personal preferences and opinions.
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It seems really obvious, it s not even worth mentioning, except that s wrong.
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Our choices are not driven by our own personal preferences and our opinions.
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It s driven by something else.
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Yeah, I mean, I was talking to my dad a number of years ago now, telling him I was working on social influence.
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He was lamenting influence s effect on others.
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God, you know, looking around, he was saying, you know, DC, where my dad lives, he was saying, DC lawyers, they re all the same.
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They all, you know, make it big, they make partner, they go out and they buy a BMW.
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And I said, well, dad, you know, aren t you a DC lawyer?
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And he says, yeah.
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And I said, and don t you drive a BMW?
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He says, yeah, but you know, I drive a blue one, and everyone else drives gray ones.
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What I love about that story is we don t see influence.
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Sure, maybe we see it in others.
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We see people dressing the same or listening to the same music, but when it comes to ourselves, we just don t see it.
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We think we re completely different.
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We think we buy what we buy because we like it or we like the color or it was on sale.
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We don t realize these subtle and often surprising effects that others are having on our behavior.
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But second, influence isn t just one flavor.
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It s not just that we do the same as others, which is what we often think of when we think of influence.
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Just as often, we do something different.
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We avoid something because others were doing it.
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Or sometimes we re similar and different at the same time.
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We buy the same car brand, but we buy it in a different color.
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We can deconstruct a lot of this.
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Why do you think people don t notice their own influence?
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Why are we biased against our own bias?
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There are two reasons.
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I mean, one, in American culture, influence is a bad word, right?
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You say influence, people think manipulation.
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Americans love to see, we love to see ourselves as independent, like special, unique snowflakes that are so different from everybody else.
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particularly the millennials, our parents raised them to say, you know, we re different.
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So if difference is good, then we don t want to think that we re influenced, that we re the same.
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We don t want to think that others are affecting us.
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But we ve actually done a bunch of research on this, and it turns out that even when influence is good, even when it would be a good thing to be influenced, people still don t think they re susceptible to it.
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It s not just about self-presentation.
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People don t see it.
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And the reason is that it often happens non-consciously, below our awareness.
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Take, for example, how people name their kids.
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Everybody says,
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their kid is my aunt or uncle to honor them or you know this is my best friend s name growing up they talk about their own likes their own preferences we actually looked at the data we sifted through a hundred years of baby names and how popular each name was every year for the last hundred twenty five years and what we found is that names tend to be popular when other names have been popular recently.
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So let s say Lisa was popular last year.
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Well, now other names like Larry and Lindsay might be more likely to be popular this year.
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Even though people think they re picking them based on their own likes and dislikes, they show up at kindergarten with their kids and everybody has the same name.
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And the reason is being affected by others.
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We don t realize that hearing Lisa, for example, makes Lindsay or Larry sound better.
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But the more fact that we ve heard that sound makes the name more appealing.
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Even hurricanes, we would think hurricanes would hurt the popularity of names.
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Hurricane Katrina, for example, should decrease the number of babies born with Katrina.
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And they may, but if you look at other K-names, well, 10% more babies are born with K-names the year after Hurricane Katrina.
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Because people heard that K-name a lot.
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Katrina made K-names sound more familiar, and so they were more likely to pick those names, even though they thought it was their own preferences that were driving their choices.
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Sounds like subliminal messaging, right, when you re in the movie theater and it s like, you are thirsty, go buy a Coca-Cola, or whatever that sort of concept was that they came up with, what was it, in the 60s maybe, or 70s, that became illegal, to lay messages in certain video frames so that you would do things?
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Is that even real?
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Now that I say it out loud, it doesn t sound real.
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Yeah, so the short answer is somebody said they did that, and they were actually lying.
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So they didn t actually lash, whether it was eat popcorn or drink soda on the screen, that didn t actually change sales.
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But there s actually been a bunch more recent research that shows that subtly, on the margin, these things do matter.
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Where we vote, for example, take whether you vote at a school versus a church.
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We did a bunch of research a few years ago showing that if you voted a school, you re more likely to support a school funding initiative.
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Why?
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Well, you see school-related things.
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You re in a school-related building.
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It makes you feel, even non-consciously, like you should support this initiative.
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Voting at a church, for example, might change how we vote on gay marriage or stem cell initiatives.
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These subtle things in our environment often affect us, even without us realizing it.
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What about things in our environment that are maybe, so to say, permanent, like social class?
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How does that influence us in what we do and what we like and how we live?
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Yeah, so a friend of mine did some great research on this.
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She went around, she asked a bunch of MBAs, you know, hey, imagine you re about to buy a new car and you find out a friend of yours that you told about this is buying the same car as you.
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How would you feel if someone else had the same car as you?
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And MBAs said, oh, God, I d be angry.
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I d be annoyed.
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I mean, they re buying the same thing I have.
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How could they do that to me?
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Okay, and that makes sense.
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They wanted to be different.
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They wanted to be unique.
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They wanted to feel special.
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But then she asked that same question, that same scenario to a slightly different group of people.
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a group of firefighters and she found that firefighters actually felt very different about it when they were told that a friend of theirs bought the same car they said great let s start a car club why wouldn t it be cool if the two of us have this thing in common that we could share and it turns out that social class weather your working class working class environment or work middle class environment or even culture more generally
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American cultural context where to stay in east asian context affects how much difference we want you know we love to see ourselves special snowflakes been working class contacts will be similar is more ok we like being similar to our friends i wouldn t want to be similar to the family members that they love and care about the same thing in
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East Asian context.
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In East Asia, fitting into the group is good.
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Why wouldn t you want to be part of a larger whole?
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And so it really depends on how we re raised.
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It s not that one thing is right or wrong.
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It depends on the environment that supports us.
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And this can get negative and it can get insidious.
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It can go beyond cars and get into things like academic success.
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In the book, you mentioned that there were a lot of schools that you had looked at where academic success was seen as, quote unquote, being too white among African American students.
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So smart kids would purposely blow off exams or do poorly in school because they wanted to cling to a certain cultural identity, which had the unfortunate side effect of also being really bad academically.
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and it ruins lives.
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Can you explain that a little bit, and maybe we can get into how we can prevent some of this?
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Yeah, and there s this very insidious, actually, but quite important idea about acting white.
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So some researchers looked into race school performance, and obviously this is a very contentious issue, lots of debate here, and there are lots of things that affect school performance.
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There s a well-known gap.
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Minority students, particularly from lower-income neighborhoods,
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have lower school performance.
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There are many reasons for this gap.
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Obviously, some of them are lack of resources.
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Minority schools that have more minority students tend to have less funding and have larger classrooms.
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There tends to be discrimination, which obviously hurts minority students.
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But even going beyond all that, there was an additional reason that researchers found.
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When they interviewed students, they found that many of these students had a high aptitude, but they avoided doing well in some cases because they didn t want to seem like they were acting white.
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There s a stereotype that doing well in school, you know, being a high performer, raising your hand in class, working really hard, doing your homework.
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That was a thing that white Caucasian kids did.
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And as a result, minority students didn t want to seem like they were acting white.
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So they avoided some of those behaviors.
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Their peers would chide them or make fun of them for working hard or
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stay in after class.
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What are you, an Oreo?
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You re black on the outside and white in the middle?
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Why are you trying so hard?
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Why are you trying to be white? 
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Now, first off, obviously, there s no reason that academic success is a white thing.
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Everyone should and can do well in school, but this stereotype, this notion that acting and trying hard in school was a signal of being white was really detrimental.
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It caused students to actually work less hard in school and do less well.
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And even skin tones, research have really interesting papers showing that students that look more white, so let s say Latino students that have a lighter skin, are more susceptible to this than Latino students that had darker skin because they had outward markings already of being more a member of that group.
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And so it s not just about what something does or its functional reasons.
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Of course people should work hard in school.
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It s about what it signals.
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What does it communicate about us to do one thing rather than something else?
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Not just simple stuff like buying a certain product, but even trying hard in school or espousing a particular political ideal.
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What does that signal about us and how does that change our behavior?
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How does this affect our politics as well?
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Because this is sort of the thing that stuck out at me was, all right, we ve got this in academia, but we certainly, certainly have it in politics, which seems really timely right now.
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I was working recently with a group that wanted to get clean energy, whether we re talking about wind power or solar power, to catch on among Republicans.
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If you look at it, Republicans, conservatives, should actually like clean energy a lot.
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It reduces our reliance on foreign oil, which is a good thing.
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It helps national security, something Republicans like.
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It focuses on smaller government rather than bigger government, something Republicans should like.
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Yet, when they went around interviewing conservatives, they found that most conservatives didn t support clean energy.
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And so they were wondering why.
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And finally, they got to this politician that I think said it really nicely.
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He said, look, you know, I ve looked around, and it seems like people like Al Gore support clean energy.
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And if someone like Al Gore supports clean energy, well, it s probably not for me.
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And what s so interesting to that, just like the idea of acting white, even in politics, it s not just about what an issue is, it s about what that issue signals about you.
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What does it say about you as a politician or as a voter to support clean energy?
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Or in the most recent, you know, in the campaign we re in, what does it say about you to support Donald Trump?
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Many of the people who supported Bernie Sanders, for example, get it not just because of his policies, but what it signaled about them.
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You know, they wanted to be anti-establishment.
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They wanted to show they were young and hip.
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And so supporting Bernie was a way to do that.
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It s not just about policies.
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It s also about parties and about the identity signals they have.
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Ah, interesting.
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So we kind of see this with brands, we see this with insiders of all groups.
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So you have a really interesting, I guess, memory test, for lack of a better description, in the beginning of the book that, for the most part, proves that influence is invisible or that we don t realize it.
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And I would love, since I ve read it, to throw Jason under the bus and do this live on the show if we can.
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Oh, perfect.
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Jason, you re ready to go?
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I m ready to go.
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Okay, I m going to give you a list of seven words, and I want to see how many you can remember.
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Okay.
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And so you can take as much time as you need.
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I m going to tell you the seven words.
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I ll wait a couple minutes, and then I m going to ask you again the answers to those words.
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Okay, you ready?
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Here we go.
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The first word is reckless.
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The second word is furniture.
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The third word is conceited.
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The fourth word is corner.
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The fifth word is aloof.
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The sixth is stapler.
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And the last is stubborn.
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Now, I ll read that one more time.
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Reckless, furniture, conceited, corner, aloof, stapler, and stubborn.
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Okay, you got those?
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Okay, now before I give you the test, I want a little bit of time to elapse.
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So I m gonna read you a passage before I ask you to spit back the words, okay, to sort of clear your mind.
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I m gonna tell you about a guy named Donald.
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And by the way, this isn t supposed to be Donald Trump, it s just supposed to be a guy named Donald.
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So Donald spent a great amount of his time in search of what he liked to call excitement.
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He s climbed Mount McKinley, shot the Colorado Rapids in a kayak, driven in a demolition derby, and piloted a jet-powered boat without even knowing much about boats.
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He risked injury and even death a number of times.
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Now he was in search of new excitement.
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He was thinking perhaps he would do some skydiving, maybe cross the Atlantic in a sailboat.
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By the way he acted, one could readily guess that Donald was perfectly aware of his ability to do many things well.
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Other than business engagements, Donald s contacts with people were rather limited.
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He felt he didn t really need to rely on anyone.
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Once Donald made up his mind to do something, it was as good as done, no matter how long it might take or how difficult it might be.
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Only rarely did he change his mind, even when it might as well have been better if he had.
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Okay, now before I give you the memory test, one question.
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I realize you ve never met this guy Donald before, but based on this description, if you had to pick one word to describe Donald, what word would that be?
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Reckless?
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Okay.
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Thank you for doing the test.
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I appreciate it.
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I ll ask you about the words in the second lecture.
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I m not even going to ask you about the words.
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The test was really about this Donald passage.
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When people were asked a similar question, as you just were, most people described Donald somewhat negatively.
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They thought he was reckless, a bit conceited.
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Crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat is kind of risky after all.
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The fact that he was aware of his ability to do many things well makes him sound sort of stubborn.
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So it s not surprising that you thought he was negative.
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Here s what s interesting.
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A different set of people were asked to remember a different list of words before they heard about Donald.
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So rather than the list I gave you, starting with words like reckless and having words like conceited and aloof and stubborn, instead they were asked to remember a different list of words.
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Now, if I asked you, hey, do the words affect how you see Donald?
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You d say, of course not, right?
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Why should the words you told me in a memory test affect how I saw this person?
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And you d be unfortunately wrong.
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Because when people are given a different set of words, more like adventurous or self-confident.
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I was going to say adventurous, yes.
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Yeah, or self-confident, independent, right?
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When they heard those word force, those were the way they perceived Donald.
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Even though we re not aware of it the things that happen in our environment the words you hear the people were exposed to change how we see the things that come after them and so same donald the judge completely differently because the words activated different ideas in people s minds all this is driven without awareness and all driven by the power of often invisible influence.
1
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That s amazing.
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Yeah, it s really interesting because I can see this being applied pretty much everywhere, at least tested pretty much everywhere, from shopping malls and walking into a store and what s at the front priming you to look at the brand in a certain way, to commercials, to even slogans that are in parts of advertising.
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I mean, there s so many things here that we can use to prime other people.
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If a list of quote-unquote random words
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can influence the way that we perceive the person, the protagonist of a story that you tell a few minutes later, a few seconds later, the ability for us to be influenced in ways that we can t see or don t realize is kind of infinite.
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Relationship so the people we marry our spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends we think it s all about the moment we see them we knew there s just a one person for soulmate looking around to find that person one cinderella prince charming that has the perfect foot for the glass slipper.
2
SPEAKER_01
When you kind of look at the data, though, there s something interesting or quirky.
2
SPEAKER_01
Most people meet the person they end up marrying at one of two places, at work or at school.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that makes a little bit of sense.
2
SPEAKER_01
We spend a lot of time at work or at school, except what s the chance, right, that if there s one perfect soulmate for us, we happen to meet that person?
2
SPEAKER_01
They happen to work at the same office we do, or happen to take the same Introduction to Humanities class first year of college many years ago.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, might it be something else beyond that they happened, we happened to get so lucky?
2
SPEAKER_01
A scientist actually did a great study to look at this.
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SPEAKER_01
He took a bunch of students, so imagine you re in this guy s class, the end of the semester, you re done with the semester, he says, look, I d like your help on a quick survey.
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SPEAKER_01
Shows you a couple pictures of different people, and asks you how much you like them, and how attractive you find those folks.
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SPEAKER_01
And so you rate the different people, and you re done with the study.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, it turns out those weren t just people.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those people were actually folks that had been in the class during the semester.
2
SPEAKER_01
But they weren t students, they were activists.
2
SPEAKER_01
The professor had picked people and asked them to come to class different numbers of times.
2
SPEAKER_01
So one of those actors came to class a couple times, one came more times, and one came almost the whole semester.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what he found is when he looked at the ratings that people gave their photos, people thought the folks were more attractive that had come to class more often.
2
SPEAKER_01
The mere fact that they had seen them more often wasn t they were more attractive to begin with, but the mere fact that people had seen them more often made them look more attractive.
2
SPEAKER_01
The mere fact they were more familiar made people like them more, even though they re exactly the same people.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so again, we think, you know, we pick our friends and our romantic partners based on our own personal preferences, our likes and our dislikes, but merely having seen someone more, merely having interacted with a brand more frequently, can make us like it more.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there a limit to how familiar something gets where it then becomes boring?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there sort of a Goldilocks theory here where something that s too familiar is boring and something that s too novel is too unfamiliar and strange, but is there a middle ground that s ideal or is it just more familiar is better?
2
SPEAKER_01
There is and i love the word you use goldilocks sometimes we think it s all about being different want to be so different from what people have seen before yet on the other hand you might think similarity is good is it good to see something more might newbie good as well it turns out that right in the middle as an ideal point it s called sort of moderate similarity or optimal distinctiveness just like goldilocks you know too familiar to see something too many times we don t like it if we see it not enough we don t like it once we see it just enough times we come to like it more.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how do we blend the appropriate amount of similarity and difference, like your dad with the automobile?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s a BMW, but it s a different color.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is there a tool that you use when you re helping people with this or when you re looking at this that you can, is there a percentage of difference?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you measure it, I guess, is what I m asking you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, when I work with companies or individuals to help them apply this stuff, I give them that idea of being optimally distinct, I say, look, you know, you don t want to be so different.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because if you re so different from what people have experienced before, you know, your product is so new, and no one s ever seen it before, it s gonna be hard for people to adopt it.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re pitching something, let s say you re pitching your company or your idea to somebody, that idea is so different, they re gonna say, well, that s really different than what we re doing already, probably cost a lot to implement, I m not sure if we want to do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
At the same time, if it s so similar,
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SPEAKER_01
Exactly the same as what s going on now people say why do we need anything do i need to change if what you re doing is exactly the same i ll just stick with what i m doing already.
2
SPEAKER_01
But in between similar and different at the same time just like goldilocks is just right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Essentially need to pitch ourselves and ideas like goldilocks need to focus on how we re similar and different at the same time similar enough.
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SPEAKER_01
to evoke that warm glow of familiarity, but different enough to feel novel and new.
2
SPEAKER_01
So take technology products, for example.
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SPEAKER_01
When introducing a really complex or new technology product, companies often cloak it in a similar shell to make it look more similar.
2
SPEAKER_01
And TiVo came out, they put it in something that looked like a VCR.
2
SPEAKER_01
Didn t have to.
2
SPEAKER_01
TiVo is nothing like a VCR inside.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s digital, there s no tapes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yet they made it look like a VCR because they thought it would help people feel more comfortable adopting it.
2
SPEAKER_01
At the same time, if your idea s not very new,
2
SPEAKER_01
Well then maybe you need the surface or the outside to look more different.
2
SPEAKER_01
When Apple came out with one of their new products a few years ago, the guts were basically the same of the prior generation, but they made the outside look really different to make it feel more new and different.
2
SPEAKER_01
So depending on whether you re more similar or more different, sometimes pitching in and pulling a little bit of the other can make you more successful.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, there s so many, almost infinite application of this, and I think if we start looking around our house at things that we bought because they looked new, or things that we bought because they looked like something we were familiar with, even though they were totally different, things maybe we bought for our parents, like TiVo, we can see this stuff works on us.
2
SPEAKER_00
But how do brands use things like pricing?
2
SPEAKER_00
For example, elite brands use elite style pricing,
2
SPEAKER_00
that shows the brand, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s less of the pricing as the item gets more expensive.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is a little cryptic, so I m trying to give an example here.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe sunglasses, where the mid-range Chanel sunglasses have the giant logo on the side.
2
SPEAKER_00
The whole thing is one giant, big logo.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the super top-level item in the line maybe has a tiny logo, and maybe it s only on the inside, and it s only recognized by insiders.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you explain this concept?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like a curve, where the branding is most prominent in the middle.
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve all heard of the idea of conspicuous consumption.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the idea very simply is, look, if you want to show status, buying expensive products with logos on it is one way to do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to show people that, yeah, you re wealthy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you need a signal that they can see.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so buying something with a big logo is one way to do that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so you d expect that cheap stuff sort of has no logos, but expensive stuff has a large logo.
2
SPEAKER_01
It lets you show that you spent a bunch of money.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s half true.
2
SPEAKER_01
Cheap stuff does have small to almost no logos.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you buy something from Walmart, buy a t-shirt from Walmart, it doesn t say Walmart in big letters on the front.
2
SPEAKER_01
Most people don t want to advertise that they bought something on Walmart.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you buy something a little more expensive, more expensive sunglasses, for example, or a more expensive handbag, sure enough, stuff as it gets more expensive has a larger logo.
2
SPEAKER_01
Up until, though, a certain point, as it gets more expensive, the logo actually gets smaller and even in some cases disappears.
2
SPEAKER_01
The really expensive sunglasses, the really expensive handbags actually have almost no visible logo on them.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the reason is simple.
2
SPEAKER_01
People who are buying something more expensive want to show they didn t buy the cheap stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s an incentive for the mid-tier brands or the middle expensive stuff to have a logo on it, to let people show that they re different, that they didn t buy the cheap stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
But then if you re really wealthy, you don t want to buy something with a big logo on it because it makes you look just like the mid-tier folks.
2
SPEAKER_01
It makes you look just the same as someone who didn t spend as much money.
2
SPEAKER_01
So really expensive stuff actually takes the logo off, makes it more difficult to see what someone bought.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s not that there s no logo at all.
2
SPEAKER_01
Often they use subtle signals.
2
SPEAKER_01
They talk about the idea of dog whistle fashion or things that are only visible to those in the know, whether it s red bottom shoes or clothes with just the right detailing on it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It allows you to signal to other people that have that insight, that are part of the same group as you or the same culture, that you re smart and you know what s going on.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, so you see folks who are quote-unquote insiders using things like boats, which are obviously expensive, but all the way down to handbags and watches, which can be super expensive and look just like something that is not.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then there s different types of investment that you discuss in the book as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
For example, hipster bikes, which is an example that I think may not be from the book, but something I noticed while I was reading it in San Francisco.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of a rarity, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You see these bikes, they only have one gear, there s no brakes or no hand brakes anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re so rare that it shows that you kind of get it, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You re willing to invest in that.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re willing to buy something or become a part of this subculture where the rest of us look at it and say, whatever, it s a bike.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if you re kind of in the fixie bike click, you get it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Even college ball.
2
SPEAKER_00
You mentioned college football or basketball as part of an example of this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you explain that?
2
SPEAKER_00
I thought that was super interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I lived in San Francisco for a number of years, and if San Francisco has one thing, it has hills, huge hills that are really difficult to run up or bike up.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so you d expect that if someone lived in San Francisco, probably first of all, they wouldn t bike, they d take a car.
2
SPEAKER_01
But secondly, if they had to bike, well, then they d get one of those big mountain bikes that has lots of gears that makes it really easy to bike uphill.
2
SPEAKER_01
But if you look around San Francisco, particularly among hipsters, you ll notice something weird.
2
SPEAKER_01
Which is a lot of them ride these bikes that have essentially no gears or one gears despite called fixes even, which can only pedal around if the wheel is moving to break you actually have to pedal backwards almost or hold your feet on the pedals.
2
SPEAKER_01
So why in one of the hilliest cities in the world would you want to buy a bike that makes it difficult to bike up and down hills that makes it difficult to ride.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it turns out it has a lot in common with what we were talking about before, the power of signals.
2
SPEAKER_01
Signals are really good, but they re particularly good if they re costly, if they re difficult for people to do.
2
SPEAKER_01
The more difficult for something is, the less likely people are to do it, and so the better it is a signal that you re really into something.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s hard, for example, to learn about indie music or the hippest new technologies.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have to be in the right industries.
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SPEAKER_01
My brother-in-law
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SPEAKER_02
for instance, he s always putting me up on new game, the newest social media technologies like Yik Yak or Peach or whatever these things are.
3
SPEAKER_02
Every time I see him, he tells me about the new stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
But it takes time or effort to know about that stuff, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
It s not something you just know offhand.
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SPEAKER_02
You have to spend time in that culture.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so as a result, that signal, that cost, keeps out outsiders.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s almost like a mohawk, for example.
3
SPEAKER_02
Sure, we d love to have a mohawk if that signaled something desirable, but it d make it really hard to get a job.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so as a result, a mohawk has persisted as a signal of outsider culture.
3
SPEAKER_02
Even language, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
I tell this funny example in the book, but often in my MBA class, I put up a name on the board, and I ask someone who doesn t know anything about college basketball to read out that name aloud.
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SPEAKER_02
And they look at the name.
3
SPEAKER_02
And they hem and haw for a couple minutes, they re puzzled, and they go, Krzyzewski?
3
SPEAKER_02
And they spell it out.
3
SPEAKER_02
If you spelled it out, it looks like Krzyzewski.
3
SPEAKER_02
Turns out that name is Krzyzewski.
3
SPEAKER_02
Mike Krzyzewski, a famous college basketball coach.
3
SPEAKER_02
But if you don t know anything about college basketball, that name doesn t look like Krzyzewski.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s nothing about that name that makes it look like Krzyzewski.
3
SPEAKER_02
But if you re in the know, you know it.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so those signals, those subtle signals of group membership, just like subtle signals in all sorts of domains, show that we re in the know, show we re special, we re part of a subculture, and we re different from everybody else.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s a keyboard, it has keys, but no markers on the keys.
3
SPEAKER_02
So no letters that you can see on the keys of the keyboard.
3
SPEAKER_02
And you would think, why in the world would someone buy a keyboard that makes it harder to type?
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, again, it s a really good signal of being knowledgeable about something.
3
SPEAKER_02
The only person that can use a keyboard like that is someone who knows where all the letters are, and so really great touch typists can get a keyboard like that.
3
SPEAKER_02
I use another example in the book of buying a watch that doesn t tell time.
3
SPEAKER_02
Why would anyone buy a watch that makes it harder to tell what time it is?
3
SPEAKER_02
But it s a really good signal of identity.
3
SPEAKER_02
Buying a watch, an a-functional watch, shows you ve got the wealth to throw away on something you don t actually need.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, it s completely form and zero function.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do brands protect themselves from negative influence?
3
SPEAKER_00
So, for example, what if I start getting things that I m not supposed to get as a young person, or what if a certain type of person or a certain type of device falls into the wrong hands?
3
SPEAKER_00
This is putting a very dramatic spin on it, but we saw it with the Jersey Shore, and you wrote about this in the book.
3
SPEAKER_00
Tell us what happened with Snooki and Mike, the situation, and Sarantino from that show.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so your listeners may remember The Jersey Shore, the show about those rowdy folks who weren t sort of high culture but seemed to have a good time hanging out at the beach.
3
SPEAKER_02
One of the most famous ones was a woman named Snooki, that was her nickname.
3
SPEAKER_02
She was known for having a foul mouth, being really short, using so much fake tanner that she almost looked like a parking cone.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, a number of years ago, Snooki went down to her mailbox and she opened it up and she saw a package.
3
SPEAKER_02
She opened up the package and there was a handbag inside.
3
SPEAKER_02
And that is exciting, if you re someone like Snooki, you love handbags, but the story gets even better, because it was a free handbag.
3
SPEAKER_02
Snooki hadn t paid for it, there was a Gucci handbag in the mail, a free handbag that cost probably at least $1,000.
3
SPEAKER_02
And why would a company do this?
3
SPEAKER_02
Why would a Gucci send Snooki a free handbag?
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, maybe it s product placement, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Maybe Gucci sends someone like Snooki a free handbag, because they hope that she ll wear it, and she ll show up in People Magazine or In Touch wearing it, and so it ll act like an advertisement for the product.
3
SPEAKER_02
But interestingly enough, it wasn t Gucci that sent Snooki that handbag.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was actually one of Gucci s competitors.
3
SPEAKER_02
Why would someone send a handbag from a competing brand?
3
SPEAKER_02
Why would they wanna help that competing brand?
3
SPEAKER_02
And it turns out it wasn t just Snooki.
3
SPEAKER_02
Actually, Mike, his name was The Situation Sorrentino, actually had something similar to happen to him with Abercrombie & Fitch.
3
SPEAKER_02
They sent him a letter offering to pay him money.
3
SPEAKER_02
And again, that kind of makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_02
Maybe Abercrombie s offering to pay him to wear their clothes as product placement.
3
SPEAKER_02
You think they ll make more money as a result.
3
SPEAKER_02
But it wasn t Abercrombie offering to pay him to wear their clothes.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was actually Abercrombie offering to pay him not to wear their clothes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Why would they pay him money not to wear their clothes?
3
SPEAKER_02
And it turns out these two examples actually have a lot in common.
3
SPEAKER_02
And what both brands were thinking is, sure, sometimes signals are good.
3
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes people will do something because others they aspire to do are doing them.
3
SPEAKER_02
But just as often, signals can act like a magnet.
3
SPEAKER_02
not just attract, but repel.
3
SPEAKER_02
And the thought was if people like Snooki are wearing Gucci handbags, then maybe the folks that buy Gucci already would be encouraged to check out their competitor.
3
SPEAKER_02
They don t want to look like Snooki.
3
SPEAKER_02
They don t want to seem similar.
3
SPEAKER_02
They might actually go out and buy a different brand.
3
SPEAKER_02
Or folks that liked Abercrombie & Fitch, if they saw Mike the Situation wearing it, maybe they wouldn t want to buy the brand anymore.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so people don t only imitate others.
3
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes they avoid doing what others are doing because of the negative signals associated with it.
3
SPEAKER_02
If we don t wanna look like a certain group or we don t wanna look like a certain identity, sometimes we abandon brands or avoid those brands.
3
SPEAKER_02
to avoid signaling undesired groups.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I heard this, I thought, is that real?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I remember the episode where Mike s situation was walking outside, I think in Italy or something like that, and yeah, I watched the show, forget about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was walking outside with those green Abercrombie pants, and the guy sitting next to me, I can t remember if it was AJ or one of the other Art of Charm coaches, or even a boot camp guy, were watching the show, and he said something like, I m throwing those pants away tonight.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was only half joking, and we just thought, like, a little funny comment, little did we realize that was gonna become news and Abercrombie was gonna cut him a fat check never to wear their clothing ever again.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and signals are really important, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
What we wear, what we drive, but not just desirable signals, undesirable signals, too.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, we did a study at Stanford a number of years ago with those old yellow Livestrong wristbands, people might remember.
3
SPEAKER_02
We sold them to a dorm on campus back when they were popular.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then a couple weeks later, we waited, we measured that people were wearing them, and then we sold those wristbands to the geeks on campus, the academic-focused dorm right next door.
3
SPEAKER_02
And as soon as the geeks started wearing them, well, the original folks, they stopped wearing them, because they didn t want to look like a geek, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
And so influence doesn t just lead us to do the same, sometimes it leads us to do the exact opposite.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we use identity to persuade, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve got positive ID associations like athletes, movie stars, and negative associations like slobs, geeks, and people who are on the Jersey Shore.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when I was reading, I was thinking about this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Early adopters kind of follow the same pattern, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
If they re cool and they re influential, it s great.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you see somebody who s really cool in Silicon Valley, whoever that might be, some sort of tech guy wearing a new device, you think,
3
SPEAKER_00
oh, I need to get my hands on that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is this the new X, Y, Z?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is that the new Apple Watch?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, did this movie star have it?
3
SPEAKER_00
And you ve got the cool tech startup guy, but if you have some fat, sloppy computer programmer guy, and he s got the shirt on for that brand, or he s got that device, it s not that cool anymore, and people not only won t go out and get it, but they might not wear it or use it if they already do have it.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and this is a big challenge for brands, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Managing meaning, making sure you have good meanings and avoid the bad ones.
3
SPEAKER_02
You might think as a brand, you know, you have total control over that, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
You advertise, you play certain music in the stores, you can control what it means, but it s often controlled by the people that use or adopt your brand.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, early adopters can be good, but they can also be bad, as you re saying.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, sometimes they prevent a product from going mainstream.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you know something catches on among the tech crowd working recently with a project with google on a new modular phone they have and one thing they re really concerned about is the phone doesn t just get pigeonholed as a tech crowd phone.
3
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t just get thought of as something if you re really into tech it s good but if you re not so into tech it s not so good sometimes products get stuck people talk about crossing the chasm products fail or services failed across the chasm.
3
SPEAKER_02
because they get stuck being associated just with early adopters, and people say, well, if I m not that type of person, this is probably not for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re talking about Google Glass.
3
SPEAKER_00
Jason, you want to talk about that?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that was a product that just died on the vine.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, that was the poster child for the wrong crowd adopting it early.
3
SPEAKER_01
You had your Robert Scoble in the shower with it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you don t know who Robert Scoble is, it s okay, because that s one of the reasons a product is dead, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Hey, Robert s a friend.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s a good guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, his photo of him in the shower wearing his Google Glass going, yeah, pretty much was the Mike Dukakis in the tank photo from way back when, if you re that old.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can use this in parenting, too.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the examples that you gave in the book that I thought was genius is showing broccoli as dinosaur-sized trees if you re the dinosaur or if your kid s the dinosaur.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so you ve got this big boy identity, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Are you the big boy?
3
SPEAKER_00
Are you the big dinosaur?
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s chewing the broccoli up as fast as he can get it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you ve got something maybe on the other side of the fence where, hey, this sort of device or this sort of clothing will
3
SPEAKER_00
help you do your job if you re a really boring lawyer or a business type, and you see that to just stop becoming something fun or cool to wear right away, and you end up with this with clothes, with technology, with food, there s almost no end.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even the way that women wear fashion and makeup and guys wear things like glasses, watches, shirts, pants, and shoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I can t think of many things that are not affected by this.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, think about trends in fads and fashion, or trends in music, what music is hot and what music fails to catch on or catches on and dies out.
3
SPEAKER_02
Often things start with a subculture, a group of people that are kind of seen as hipsters or outsiders or different.
3
SPEAKER_02
A band becomes cool among music heads, or socks catch on among the in crowd in business meetings.
3
SPEAKER_02
But soon enough, it s not just those folks that are doing it, the thing goes more mainstream.
3
SPEAKER_02
So those socks that were really cool originally
4
SPEAKER_03
run by folks in the tech industry or cutting edge fashion folks, the boss starts wearing them, or guys start wearing them with the wrong color suit.
4
SPEAKER_03
What was cool now becomes mainstream, and it no longer signals the desired identity.
4
SPEAKER_03
Once that band is known by everybody, once that hip indie band, everybody who likes Top 40 says they like it as well, it s no longer a cool signal of being in the know to like that band.
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So then the subculture folks are the original doctors will sometimes be a band diverge and move on to something else but then what s interesting that happens is that the signal starts to lose its meaning is a signal being cool the mainstream doctors eventually that thing dies out becomes a band so these ideas identity dynamic signaling can help us explain cycles of bad fashion not only why things catch on people imitating others but why things die out.
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In many ways, this whole episode really adds credence to the idea that you re the sum of those who you surround yourself with, and at AOC, one of the primary goals of what we teach here, especially at Boot Camp, is surrounding yourself with high-quality people so that their effect, their influence, rubs off on ourselves, rubs off on us.
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Why is it so hard to recognize the effect of influence on ourselves, and how do we harness that influence on ourselves and use it for good?
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So often, we don t see influence because we re unaware of it.
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We don t realize these things are affecting our behavior.
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We want to see ourselves as driving our own choices.
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So we think we do, and we ignore the subtle factors that affect what we do.
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But the first thing, and the reason I really wrote Invisible Influence in the first place, is to help realize these effects that are happening to them.
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You know, we can t correct for them.
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We can t use these tools if we don t see them and understand them.
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So the first place to start is just seeing influence in the world around us.
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Once we see it,
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We can take advantage of its upsides and avoid its downsides.
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We can make better choices and choose our own influence, and we can influence those around us.
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So one simple tip and trick I often share with people is the idea of being a chameleon, or mimicking those around you.
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And a cousin of mine was talking about this big negotiation he had coming up.
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They were offering him a new job, but they weren t giving him enough money, and so what could he do in that negotiation to be more successful?
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And there s some great research that was done looking at what makes negotiators successful.
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across a variety of people, what makes folks successful, what do they have in common, they found that one trick, one simple trick, led negotiators to be five times as successful.
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And that trick merely was mimicking their negotiating partner, subtly, subtly going after whether the mannerisms, the behavior, the actions of others, and imitating them, almost like a chameleon fits into their environment.
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So if the negotiating partner crossed their legs, they do the same.
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person cock their head to the side slightly, they do the same.
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And it s not just in negotiations.
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In a sales context, for example, a waiter or a waitress that repeats your order back to you word for word.
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So if you said like a Caesar salad with chicken dressing on the side and Diet Coke,
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And they say, okay, great, we d like a Caesar salad, dressing on the side, and with chicken and Diet Coke, say exact word for word back to you.
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Well, they just got a 70% higher tip.
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And so it s not just about listening.
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We often hear about listening.
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It s also about emulating, subtly going after and mimicking the mannerisms, the behaviors, and the language patterns of others.
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It makes us feel more similar.
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It makes other people like us, trust us more, and it facilitates interactions.
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If you and I were talking, we found out we had the same birthday, we feel a kinship.
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got something in common, which makes us trust each other more and leads to better interactions.
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Mimicry does exactly that.
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It makes us feel like we re similar, like we have a lot in common, and it makes those interactions go better than they would otherwise.
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How do we avoid looking ridiculously mechanical and inauthentic?
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Because I ve noticed when people do this poorly, it s really, really off-putting.
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Yeah, and just like any other influence tactic, if you do it badly, it s not
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You really have to do it subtly, not do it all the time.
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Politicians often do this very well when they re traveling around the country.
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They use different language in different areas.
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They use different words or accents.
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A simple way to do it is over email.
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If someone emails you and they use deer versus hi or hey versus deer, use the same language as them.
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That s a case where they re not gonna necessarily pick up that you re doing it, but it ll make you more impactful.
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All right, and we know that we also specifically do not mirror those we want to distance ourselves from.
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In other words, things people, causes that we don t like, and one of the problems that we see a lot at AOC is people who are really bad at this, and on the very bottom end of some of our email inbox where we see some severe problems, we see people with even physical or emotional disorders
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can t see other people s emotions, which really hurts them socially because they can t mimic, because they can t fit in.
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We really try to teach these skills at a higher level at AOC to people who need them or are already good and want to be very good at them.
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For example, we see a lot of this mimicry with intelligence agents, salesmen, special forces, and things like that.
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Jonah, is there anything that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver to the AOC fam?
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No, I mean, I think we got a lot of really good stuff.
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It s hard to cover everything in even an hour and a half, let alone an hour, but there s a book out there, they can read more.
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I think there s a lot of useful stuff in here.
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I just, you know, happy to direct them to some of the resources on my website, but otherwise I think we re pretty good.
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Great, and we ll link to that in the show notes as well.
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Thanks so much, Jonah.
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Oh no, thanks for having me.
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Yeah, I appreciate it.
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All right, great stuff with Jonah Berger.
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Really interesting, blew through that.
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A lot on influence, both how influence affects us affects others, especially how we buy and how we live our lives.
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I thought a lot of that was super interesting because I can see where I myself am influenced despite really being aware of all this stuff for a living.
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And being aware of it, yes, is the first step in defense, but even knowing exactly what s going on doesn t always solve the puzzle.
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Now, at AOC, at our boot camps, we do focus a lot on protecting ourselves from influence, both visible and invisible influence, and how we can influence others and ourselves in a positive way using some of the principles discussed here, so.
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And it was really interesting, the fact that I had adventurous in my head, but I was pre-programmed to say reckless because of the word list that he gave me.
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And I was focused on remembering that word list,
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But when it came to the story, that was the first word that came up because that s what I was pre-programmed to say when he asked me the next question because that s what I was working on in my head.
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Yeah, I mean the fact that you knew something like that was coming and it still worked on you is testament to how powerful this influence really is.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Jonah on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes as well as his resources and the book that we mentioned on the show.
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You can tap our album art in most mobile podcast players to see the cheat sheet for the episode.
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We ll link to the show notes directly on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm.
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Engage with me there, say hi, see some articles, some insights, and other stuff that never makes it to the show.
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And if you want to learn more practicals just like this, I want to encourage you to join us in the Social Capital Challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or in the USA only, text charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
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It s all about improving your networking, your connection, your influence skills, and inspiring those around you, influencing them, if you will, to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
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We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show.
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I also do regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward every week.
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It ll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed in the U.S.
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to 33444.
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This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
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Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogarty.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Now stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.