Interpretation of "First Mover Influence"

1. Seizing the throat of attention

2. The ultimate preemptive move: Lenovo

3. Influence and pre-emptive influence

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1. Seize the throat of attention

1. Pre-persuasion: Turn on the "switch" to persuade others

Do you want to become more Influential? Remember this: What we show first changes the audience’s experience of what is shown next.

A proposer cannot change the pros and cons of a proposal, that is what the person designing the relevant product should do. A real master will do everything possible to set a preemptive "switch" before proposing a plan. Let me give you an example:

The author once met a sales star named Jim in a training program. Potential customers in his industry are usually a couple. The salesperson will first ask the customer to take a written test about home fire protection knowledge. After they realize that their knowledge of home fire protection is far from enough, they use this as an opportunity. Market their alarm system and have customers flip through promotional literature describing its benefits.

Others would have brought this information into the house at the beginning and had it as a backup, but not Jim. He had to wait until the couple started taking the test questions before he slapped his head and said, "Oh, I forgot a very important piece of information in the car. I don't want to interrupt your test, so I'll go out and get it myself." Can you come back later?" The answer was naturally "No problem, please do it." In order to make it easier to enter when he comes back, Jim will also ask the head of the household to borrow the door key.

The author observed that this "forgetful" plot was staged by Jim three times, starting at the same time each time. So the author asked Jim why he did this, but he refused to answer and was even annoyed that his trade secrets were discovered. But the author just doesn't give up. Until Jim was asked and had no choice but to answer: "Think about it for yourself, who would you let in and out of your home freely? Only people you trust, right? I do this because I hope to be linked to the trust consciousness of these customers. . ”

Jim’s approach provided a good example for all salespeople. He did not modify the features of the alarm system he sold, nor did he deviate from the standard presentation. He simply associated himself with the concept of trust first, and any positive associations with trust became associated with his subsequent introductions—a clear distinction between Jim and his less successful colleagues.

This kind of "pre-persuasion" behavior before persuading others has been labeled many times by behavioral scientists, but in this book, we refer to it collectively as "switching."

2. The "privileged moment" that makes people have to obey

How to successfully implement "pre-persuasion" and set a good "switch". Here the author mentioned a concept: "privileged moment". "Privilege" means special and lofty status; and "moment" in this book refers to the window of opportunity created by "switch". In such a limited time, the power of the proposer is the greatest.

You must have had such an experience. Whether it is fortune telling or horoscope analysis, the results always surprise you: "It's so accurate, you're talking about me!" The author joked about himself He also worked as a "palomist": Once he attended a party with few acquaintances, and in order to blend in with everyone, he looked at the palm of the party host twice. The first time was at the beginning of the party. He pinched the thumb of the host and said, "According to my judgment, you must be a stubborn person." The second time he read the palm after a few glasses of wine. He cracked the owner's thumb and said, "I dare say you are a very flexible person." Although the two descriptions were completely opposite, the owner thought about it twice and admitted that what the author said was completely correct.

As adults, we all know that this is just a trick, but what is the scientific explanation for why this trick works? This esoteric scientific name is called "forward testing strategy." This means that in order to judge whether a possibility is true, we look for where it is true rather than where it is false. Yes, human nature is like this: it is easy to verify what exists, but difficult to verify what is missing; it is easy to verify, but difficult to falsify. This is the inside story of the fortune teller's "what he says makes sense".

Regarding the creation of switches for "privileged moments", the author also gives another interesting way to "create focus moments".

In English we like to say "pay attention", which obviously means that paying attention comes at a cost. It seems that people can only focus on one thing at the same time. The price of concentration is that you will ignore everything else at that moment. Therefore, people will assign more importance to things that they actively approach.

Let’s take a look at what Milton Erikson, a famous psychologist who is good at creating focused moments, does: Sometimes, patients are unwilling to pay attention to the treatment points put forward by Erikson, but when When the point is brought up again, instead of raising the decibel level to emphasize it, he lowers the volume. He would even wait for a heavy truck to climb the hill outside the clinic before making his point.

In order to hear what Erikson was saying, the patient had to lean forward, which was a sign of concentration and interest in what he was saying.

By carefully arranging it to allow others to focus on one thing for a period of time, you successfully create a focal moment, which will greatly enhance the persuasiveness of your point of view. Speaking of the main people this method is suitable for, parents and friends who are always worried about their children being "disobedient" may wish to give it a try.

3. The focus is the reason

The author once witnessed the 2002 celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne in central London. Compared with the grand scene at the time, a news report afterwards impressed him even more: When a young girl was meeting the Queen, her mobile phone in her handbag suddenly rang and it couldn't stop at all. Everyone, including the queen, stared at the girl's bag. The sudden embarrassing moment made the girl stunned. In the end, even the Queen leaned forward and suggested: "Child, please answer the phone. It may be something very important."

The most prominent and eye-catching thing at a certain moment is The most important thing is that it can even affect people's judgments about cause and effect. At this point, even the Queen of England had to give in. The scientific explanation for this is called "the focus is the reason." In order to explain this principle, the author gives a painful real case:

One night in 1973, 18-year-old Peter Riley returned home from a party and was surprised to find his mother lying on the bed In a pool of blood on the floor. A police autopsy later revealed that she had been brutally murdered: her throat had been slit, three ribs were broken, and two thigh bones were shattered.

Riley is 1.7 meters tall and weighs 55 kilograms. There is no blood on his body. It seems unlikely that he is the murderer. But seeing him dazed outside the door where his mother was killed, the police suspected him from the beginning. Later investigation found that Riley's mother had a very violent temper and treated him very badly. If she killed her mother because she couldn't bear it anymore, this explanation would make sense.

So the police took Riley away. For 16 hours, four police officers took turns questioning him and using various means to force him to confess. Finally, Riley couldn't stand it anymore and signed a confession. A confession was issued. The next day, Riley woke up in his cell, and the terrible fatigue disappeared. He realized that he had made a big mistake, but it was too late - no one paid attention to his struggle in the subsequent court trials. . It wasn't until the then-chief prosecutor's death two years later that Riley's alibi was discovered in his filing cabinet, leading to his release from prison.

This explains what "focus is the cause": the initial focus can not only make people perceive the importance, but also make people perceive the causal relationship. After knowing this, how to guide and shift the focus of others' attention becomes particularly important. Now here’s a problem for you: Suppose you open an online store specializing in sofas. You will soon find that customers are clearly divided into two groups: one group of people is more concerned about whether the price is cheap, while the other group of people is more concerned about whether the sofa is comfortable. How can we make customers focus on comfort rather than price?

No need to waste time thinking about the answer. In 2002, two marketing professors named Naomi Mandel and Eric Johnson came up with a great solution after conducting a series of surveys. They set the background of the website’s landing page to fluffy and soft clouds, and then a miracle happened: more and more visitors began to seek more comfortable sofas, and at the same time no longer resisted those more expensive but more comfortable sofas. Because these clouds put their focus on "comfort".

This is called "soft selling" in marketing, and being placed in this book once again proves the title of this section: "Focus is the reason", that is, the focus of people's attention will make people think to the reason why things happened.

4. The left hand is a "switch" and the right hand is a "magnet"

Improving attention can bring preemptive advantages. So is there any information that can automatically bring about this without any effort? What about the attention? The author mentions three naturally occurring attention "switches": sex, danger, and orienting response.

Obviously, among many factors, sexual stimulation is the most attractive to others. This is no secret. All writers or screenwriters know this and use it skillfully in their own stories. The plot is being set. French scientists also conducted an experiment. The researchers arranged for an attractive 19-year-old girl to walk towards a random, unaccompanied middle-aged man, point to four gangsters not far away and ask for help, asking them if they could Help get back your stolen cell phone.

The men who were tested were still divided into two groups. Only 20% responded to the girl’s request for help. In the second group, the number of men who acted bravely doubled! Want to know the difference? A few minutes before the second group of men were asked for help by the girl, another young girl asked them: How to get to Love Street? Previous research has shown that when asked about Valentine's Day, all men think of "Valentine's Day" related to sex. This connection gives them the courage to risk their lives to win the girl's favor.

Violence, and the threats it poses to security, have always captured human attention.

We all know that scary scenes in horror movies can scare you, and the photos of car accident scenes are horrific, but we always don’t want to see them but can’t help but look at them. The more visible the horrific outcome, the more attention it receives. More than a dozen countries have placed large pictures on cigarette packages saying "Smoking is harmful to health", which has had a dual effect: it has persuaded more non-smokers to boycott cigarettes and also persuaded more smokers to quit smoking.

Anyone who has studied psychology knows the story of Pavlov’s dog. The great Russian scientist Pavlov discovered that he could link a dog's salivating behavior to something unrelated to salivating, such as the sound of a bell. By repeatedly ringing the bell before feeding, even when no food is present, the dog begins to salivate at the sound of the bell. Most people don't know the follow-up to this story: In order to demonstrate his discovery of "conditioned reflex" to others, Pavlov invited many people in the industry to visit. However, the dog did not salivate every time he rang the bell in front of others. The conditioned reflex only worked when he performed the experiment alone. The reason is easy to explain: the environment has changed. The people who came to watch completely occupied the dog's attention and made him forget about eating. So more than a century after this experiment, our body's response is no longer called a "conditioned reflex" but an "orienting response": a specific response will only occur when all influencing factors remain unchanged. .

Previously, we talked about a lot of tricks to set "switches" and attract attention. However, it is easy to conquer a country but difficult to defend it. Once we have our attention, how do we maintain it as long as possible? The author also provides several "magnets" in the book:

The first principle is "relevant to yourself." People naturally like people who are similar to themselves and are more willing to pay attention to things related to themselves. This is especially evident in advertising copy. It is also promoting men's underarm antiperspirant product "Zhiperspirant". The copy before modification was like this: "For many years, people have acquiesced that antiperspirants have no effect. But now, people no longer have to be so helpless..." I know how the experts modified this copy and finally increased sales. ? He only changed the word "people" to "you".

The second principle is called "To be continued". Here we have to mention a famous principle in psychology: the "Zaigarnik Effect". Bluma Zeigarnik, a female psychologist from Lithuania, once went to a restaurant to eat with her teachers and classmates. She discovered that the waiters in this restaurant could remember the dishes they ordered without any paper and pen, and then accurately Food is served. She was curious about the limits of this waiter's memory. So after he had served all the dishes and waited for a while, Zeigarnik invited him over, covered all the plates and wine glasses, and asked again what everyone at the table had ordered, but he basically forgot all about it.

People will devote more attention to unfinished things. The "Zeigarnik Effect" is definitely the most effective way to treat procrastination. The author himself is a writer and always suffers from delays in finishing his manuscripts. But a writer friend of his kept writing articles and books. After asking for help, I discovered that her "big trick" was that every time her writing quota was about to be completed, even if she already had an idea, she would not continue and would just stop. The result of this is that she herself cannot procrastinate, because her attention is always focused on the ideas that have not yet been written, so she has to fill in the "to be continued" hole without taking a long break. The author said that this method is now used by him with great success.

The third principle is to make good use of the "power of mystery". The author himself gave an example. When he was teaching at a university, he faced an important challenge, which was how to get a room full of handsome men and beautiful women to focus on him, an old man giving a lecture - and also to be able to last 45 minutes in a class. Then he discovered a clever trick that teachers may wish to refer to: every time a class starts, he will set up a mystery. Sometimes a story will be told, with only a puzzling beginning, and the ending will be told at the end of get out of class. An even more exaggerated time was when the bell rang just as his class ended, but none of the students left. They would rather be "dragged to class" to hear the answer to the riddle that the teacher told him at the beginning of class.

2. A preemptive move: association

1. Language association

What is the purpose of using language? The author summarizes the views of the famous psycholinguist Jünne Chemin: Language is not only a transmission mechanism, but also an influence mechanism, that is, inducing the recipient of the information to identify with the concept.

Another linguistic association worth mentioning is the power of metaphor. There is an ace insurance salesman in the United States named Ben Feldman. During his career, he became the most amazing life insurance salesman of his era. In 1992, he was hospitalized due to a cerebral hemorrhage. The New York Life Insurance Company where he worked decided to establish "Feldman Month" and launch a competition to see who could sell the insurance with the highest total price this month to commemorate this event. A great salesman celebrates his 50th anniversary with the company. By the end of the month, the 80-year-old man was talking on the phone from his hospital bed and eventually won the competition named after himself.

You must be curious: What did he say on the phone? You must know that the potential customers of life insurance are a group of people who are not far from the end of their lives. Selling them insurance is reminding them that they are one step closer to death.

How to avoid arousing their resentment? Feldman's talent for metaphors was revealed when he simply said: "When you leave, the insurance money will come back." Upon hearing this, the customer immediately thought of the metaphor "life insurance is related to one's own responsibilities", so I immediately made up my mind and placed orders one after another.

2. Situational association

When the author once wrote a book for general readers, he did not take a leave of absence from the university. Instead, I write part of it in the office when I go to work, and then write another part after I get home, and so on. When he was in the office, he was enveloped in a strong academic atmosphere: he was surrounded by desks and bookcases filled with professional books, journals and documents, and outside the window were rows of academic institutions and department buildings; In his apartment, he was surrounded by newspapers, magazines and TV programs, and outside the window was the endless flow of human beings. After finishing the book, the author discovered a frustrating fact: the part he wrote in the office was too professional and not suitable for public reading, so he had no choice but to go home and rewrite it.

It is not difficult to see that this is one of the forces of situational association: the impact of the external environment on people. In addition to the influence of the external environment, the inner experience of the self is also particularly important. Have you ever had this experience? When watching a musical, someone in the audience coughed, and then the whole cough began to spread throughout the theater. After listening to an academic lecture on skin diseases, it didn't take long for you to feel... My skin is itchy and I can't help scratching it... The bottom layer of each of our bodies is sleeping with various experiences that can be suddenly awakened. As soon as our attention is diverted, these experiences will be activated immediately.

Therefore, if your inner emotions are positive, you will activate your positive energy. You can even create your ideal mental state yourself. When the author first entered graduate school, there was a guy named Alan Chaikin in the class. His GRE scores were astonishingly high, far exceeding all the "students" in the class. And it didn't take long for people to discover that he was not a very smart person with many ideas. He was just good at dealing with exams. So the author asked him how he did it. Every time before entering the examination room, he no longer held the book and wanted to read it twice like other people did. Instead, he "let his mind fully warm up" to calm his nervousness. Think about the scene after you succeeded in the previous exam. Entering the examination room with confidence, it turns out that "writing is like a spirit".

Similarly, there is always a stereotype in society that "girls are not good at math". If a girl in the family is always instilled with this concept, even if she is talented in mathematics, she will not be able to learn mathematics well. How to break it? That is, forgetting your gender before taking a math test. There was an experiment in which girls were divided into two groups to take a math test. One group needed to fill in their gender on the test paper, and the other group did not. Experimental results showed that girls who were reminded of their gender had lower scores.

3. Influence and First-mover Influence

1. Seven Keys to Influence

In the previous "Influence", the author once mentioned There are six important principles that reflect social influence: 1) Reciprocity: Those who have given us benefits are entitled to receive benefits from us in return. 2) Likes: Praise others more, express your love more, and discover more similarities between yourself and the other person when communicating. 3) Social recognition: What other people of the same kind believe in and are doing is also effective and feasible for you. 4) Authoritativeness: The way to make the information you provide more convincing is to confirm whether it is accurate. 5) Scarcity: The less we have something, the more we want more of it, so we must make good use of the "limited quantity" technique. 6) Commitment and consistency: The statements and positions you issue must be consistent with your actions, so that others can regard you as a person who keeps your word.

In "First Mover Influence" published 30 years later, the author added a seventh key to reflecting influence: alliance. To explain it specifically, it means to achieve the unity of body and mind and the unity of action. The unity of body and mind will teach you one thing: How can you maximize preferential treatment among your peers? Mere similarity is not enough; the answer lies in a subtle but crucial distinction. That is, you have to find ways to awaken the other person's sense of family and locality, and skillfully play the "family card" to make the other person feel that you are "from our side" and have the same identity. To give a very simple example, in big cities, the long-term relationship with roommates who rent a house is closer than any other friends and colleagues (provided that they get along well), because people and animals will live under the same roof for a long time. people as relatives.

As for the unity of action, the author made a point: when people act in unity, they are truly unified. How to improve the sense of harmony within the team? Organizing more collective activities and increasing unified actions will give each other more opportunities to support each other - this is the meaning of regular team building in many companies.

2. Two important reminders about first-mover influence

1) Regarding the scope of application. How broadly does first-mover influence apply? It is not an exaggeration to say that it is ninety-nine at the top and just able to walk at the bottom. Scholars have done relevant research on how old a person must be before they are affected by the "switch": the purpose of the study was to stimulate the subjects' willingness to help others. The author showed two 18-month-old babies two Two pictures, one of a person standing alone, and the other of two people standing arm in arm.

Later results showed that babies who saw a picture of two people holding hands were more willing to help the researchers pick up something that had been "accidentally" dropped.

So babies from 18 months onwards can be affected by preemptive influences. As for how to achieve the effect and what kind of effect it is, it all depends on the setting of the switch.

2) About failure. Is there any way to make the "routine" of first-mover influence ineffective? Of course there are, the author mentioned three in the book.

The first point is a simple reminder. We all know that when you are in a good mood, things around you look beautiful. If you are entrusted with something, people will accept it easily. Therefore, on sunny days, people are more willing to delay for a while and accept random questionnaires on the street. But what if it’s cloudy? This involves a simple reminder - write a caring greeting at the beginning of the questionnaire: "How is the weather over there?" When asked like this, the sunny or rainy effect immediately disappears.

The second point is the overly obvious intention. For example, we have seen a lot of product placement in movies and TV series, but do you know what kind of product placement can best drive subsequent sales? It is precisely those product placements that we ignore. For example, there is only a picture but no name, or it is only mentioned by an actor but there is no corresponding picture. This brings the greatest degree of recognition and recall to the audience. And if a product is given a very obvious close-up shot, or even the shot is too long, it will arouse the audience's disgust and create resistance to the product.

The third point is to learn to think deeply. This should be the only way to reduce the "routine index". Go read more and study more, and learn some knowledge about logic, philosophy, induction and deduction, etc. This will definitely improve your ability to spot tricks.

Conclusion

At the end, the purpose throughout this book can be summarized as follows: Communicators can use preemptive concepts to guide others' thinking and then their behavior without leaving any trace, so as to Achieve results that are beneficial to you. Preemptive influence can be successfully exerted if the audience's attention is temporarily directed toward psychological concepts that are beneficial to the subsequent message.

In fact, when faced with a choice, the outcome of our choice largely depends on what attracts our attention at the moment before making the choice. At that moment, we may be guided by dangerous clues from accidental contact; we may also be guided by masters who are well versed in psychological routines; or our psychological preparation in advance may lead us in a direction that is in our own interests. In any case, this individual instantly had first-mover influence.

Whether you are wary of this process or attracted by its potential, you might as well first acknowledge its power and understand its inner workings.