As humans, we believe we are pretty immune to obvious attempts to persuade our opinions. We laugh off the daily barrage of automobile commercials on the television, and while we enjoy the snacks given out by the grocery store snack-giver-outer, we don’t actually buy the product he or she is hawking in the aisle.
But of course, the obvious question arises… If persuasion doesn’t work, why do we have television commercials, pharmaceutical salespeople, and grocery store free snack-givers?
Because persuasion does work, even when we believe we are completely immune to its influence.
Elaine McArdle wrote an interesting piece in today’s Boston Globe about being lobbied by the Israel lobby, or more specifically, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). What does Israel and lobbying have to do with psychology? Apparently, quite a lot.
Elaine went on a week-long, all-expenses-paid junket in Israel, as a guest of AIPAC. Dozens of journalists take this paid vacation, even though they don’t cover Israel as a part of their job. I imagine we could get a few free tickets too (well, at least before we wrote this entry).
Not surprisingly, she had little chance to hear “the other side” of the story, that is, the story of the Palestinians. But she didn’t think she was persuaded by the Israeli trip, until she started asking what the purpose of such paid trips are if they aren’t effective…
I called John A. Bargh, a Yale psychology professor who studies nonconscious influences on behavior, and walked him through the details of my junket. Did he think I was swayed by the experience? “Of course you are,” he said. “You’d almost have to be. And you can’t know it.”
A key tool in the subtle art of persuasion, he said, is reciprocity: offer someone a pleasant experience or gift and they feel an almost irresistible obligation to return the favor. The norm of reciprocity cuts across every culture, and the value of the gift is irrelevant: a cup of coffee is as effective as an extravagant trip. Another tool is to provide friendship and human connection — it’s inevitable that a bond will develop when you spend substantial time with someone, especially in a foreign place, where you depend on them.
In the case of the AIPAC junket, it was a one-two punch: an unforgettable and emotionally charged week with warm, likable people – generous hosts and tour guides whom I worried about after returning to the safety of life in Massachusetts.
Emily Pronin, an assistant professor of psychology at Princeton who studies how bias works in the human mind, told me that she and others have found that although we are quick to spot bias in others, bias in ourselves operates almost entirely on a subconscious level. She calls it the “bias blind spot.” […]
Doctors who worry about the sway of pharmaceutical companies over their colleagues insist that their own medical judgment would never be affected. Journalists think they’re too savvy to be hustled by lobbyists. We’re all operating under a fundamental misperception about the soft sell: that we’ll see it happening and avoid it.
I write all of this because I think it’s good background when reading Dr. Carlat’s entry about The AMA, Pharma Gifts, and the Power of 8 where he arrived at much the same conclusion, even though he is a prime example of a professional keenly aware of not wanting to be biased by any persuasion techniques used by pharmaceutical companies:
Several days after [the visit by a pharmaceutical rep promoting the use of Ambien CR], one of my patients came in complaining of insomnia which had not responded to several hypnotics. He had tried Ambien, Sonata, and Benadryl, but was unable to sleep through the night. Usually, in these situations, I would offer trazodone, which has a long enough half life to last most patients all night long. But something in me made me think about my Ambien CR rep, who had left the office saying, “I hope you’ll give Ambien CR a try.” I prescribed Ambien CR. As it turned out, this worked no better than regular Ambien, and he ended up on trazodone.
The fact is that pharmaceutical gifting is an effective marketing technique, as much as physicians deny that their medical opinions can be swayed by such small dispensations.
The real question is, given that we know we’re being influenced (or that someone is attempting to influence us), why can’t we simply work against that? Why must we be influenced even when we don’t want to be? Doesn’t free-will exist?
6 comments
I hope I’m not trying to answer a rhetorical question, but I think the answer might be that the mechanisms that result in the behaviour typically operate below the level of conscious awareness. One can of course act contrary to ones natural inclination but doing so involves lots of effort and people simply don’t have the energy to monitor themselves all the time.
Imagine that you are walking through the supermarket trying to pick out what sort of spaghetti sauce to get. You might start to do price comparisons but after a while you might just go with the one that ‘feels right’. Why does it ‘feel right’? Product placement (where it is physically located on the shelf) and money spent on advertising, most likely. We aren’t aware of why one product just seems to ‘feel right’ but experiments have shown that the above kinds of factors have a significant influence.
We simply don’t have the cognitive resources to question our natural inclinations all the time. How long would it take to do a flavour / price / ingredient comparison of every brand of spaghetti sauce to figure out the best buy? I’m probably exhausted after making the decision to actually cook spaghetti already! How many prescriptions do doctors write every day? Some aspects probably are fairly cognitively demanding (making sure the dx is accurate). Other aspects are kind of down-time. Which brand of treatment for that dx should I prescribe? Within some broad boundaries… Which one ‘feels right’ (aka: to my implicit ‘clinical judgement’)
😉
We are only human and if we didn’t prioritise our cognitive resources we would burn out. Going with what ‘feels right’ is a heuristic that typically serves us well. Our heuristics are usually a fairly guide to the best (or a good enough) choice. Advertising is something that misleads these sub-personal mechanisms, however. That is partly why advertising is so dangerous… Another thing is that research has shown that we really are very bad at countering what ‘feels right’. People employ racial stereotypes even when they are told they are being observed to see whether they are employing them. Similarly, clinicians employ mental illness stereotypes even when they are told they are being observed to see whether they are employing them. Our sub-personal mechanisms can make us act in accordance with them even when we are making a consicous effort not to.
Personally… I figure we are better off using our knowledge and rationality to construct our environment such that we are more likely to perform well in it. In other words, if you don’t want doctors making decisions on the basis of advertisements and you would prefer them to make decisions on the basis of data then don’t let people advertise to them and present them with lots of data. Why not use some of those advertising techniques for good (ie to present the data in a cognitively accessible form) rather than using those advertising techniques to systematically mislead?
I don’t understand the world sometimes.
Wow, that was hugely irresponsible of that writer and a complete breach of journalism ethics. I can’t believe the Globe let her do it. They must be going as far down the dumper as is being reported on the national media blogs. Too bad — used to be a good paper.
Seriously — not even freelance travel writers take paid-for junkets! They pay for their own or they don’t go.
I worked for lobbyists, mostly at the state level, and they are very very manipulative. One thing they don’t mention here is the subtle blackmail they use. It’s very subtle. They will in a very understated way let someone know that they know something unflattering about them, and they’re always trying to find dirt on people, letting then know they know, and then comes “the ask.”. Some lobbyists are really good people, but there are some who have absolutely no conscience. I had a lobbyist actually grab and push me around and yell at me in a threatening way, and the company he worked for worshiped money. I told my boss and was ostracized as a result.