One day, I got a call from a friend.This friend recently opened a shop selling Indian jewelry.Something incredible just happened to her.As a psychologist, she thought, I might be able to make sense of it.This is the story of those hard-to-sell turquoise jewels.It was the peak tourist season at that time, and the store was full of customers.Those turquoise jewels were worth their money, but they couldn't be sold.In order to sell them, she thought of various tricks.For example, moving them to the middle display area to get people's attention didn't work.She even told the salesperson to push the gems hard, but still nothing came of it.

Finally, on the first night of shopping out of the city, she angrily wrote a scrawled note to the salesperson: "The price of each item in this box is multiplied by 1/2." Sell ​​the jewelry you hate, even at a loss.A few days later, when she returned to the store, as she expected, all the gems were sold.However, she was stunned when she learned that the salesperson had sold all the jewels for twice the price because the salesperson misunderstood her scribbled handwriting and mistook the "1/2" on the note for "2". . That's when she called me.I knew what was going on as soon as I heard it.But I told her that if she wanted me to explain it, she had to hear me tell a story first.Actually, this story is not about myself, but about mother turkey.This story belongs to the relatively new discipline of ethology, the study of how animals behave in their natural environment.Mother turkeys are very competent mothers, they are loving, vigilant, and protective of their chicks.They will hold the young turkeys under them and spend a lot of time keeping them warm and clean.But mother turkey's parenting methods are a little weird.In fact, all of this parenting work is triggered by one thing, and that's the "cheep" sound of the baby turkeys.And other identifying characteristics of young turkeys, such as smell, feel or appearance, do not seem to play a role in the parenting process.If a young turkey chick makes a "cheep" sound, its mother comes to care for it; if it doesn't, its mother ignores it and sometimes kills it .

Animal behaviorists have experimented with a female turkey and a stuffed weasel, vividly illustrating the mother turkey's extreme dependence on this sound.Weasels are natural enemies of turkeys.Whenever they approached, the mother turkey would make an angry cry, pecking and clawing at them.The researchers did find that even pulling the weasel specimens close to the mother turkeys on a rope resulted in an instant onslaught from them.However, for the same weasel specimen, when a small tape recorder that can make a "squeak" sound is put into the weasel specimen, the mother turkey will not only accept the approaching weasel specimen, but will also wrap it under her body.Once the recording is turned on, the weasel specimen will be attacked fiercely again.

This behavior by a hen turkey seems ridiculous.It will hug its natural enemies in its arms just because it can make a "squeak" sound; it will abuse and even kill its own children just because it can't make this sound.It looks like a machine whose motherly instincts are automatically controlled by this voice.But animal behaviorists tell us that this phenomenon is not unique to female turkeys.In fact, they have found this regular, mindless mechanical pattern of behavior in many animals. This pattern of behavior exhibited by female turkeys is called a "fixed behavior pattern," and it includes an intricate sequence of behaviors, such as the entire courtship or mating process.An essential feature of the pattern is that the behaviors that make up the pattern occur in the same way and in the same order each time, as if the pattern were recorded on tape and placed inside an animal.Whenever the courtship situation occurred, the courtship tape was played; whenever the parenting situation occurred, the parenting behavior tape was played.As the tape rotates, a standard set of behaviors occurs.

The starting point for the author's greatest contributions.As Ma Yun expressed, when people who don't know him see his face, they come to the conclusion that this person is a bad person.Because his face is like the so-called "squeaky" "pattern" here What's most interesting about this model is the way these tapes are started.For example, the presence of a female often makes another male of the same species feel violated, and the latter takes action to defend his territory, thus setting off a tape of territorial behaviors, including standing guard, intimidation, and intimidation. If necessary, a series of actions such as fighting to the death.Oddly enough, however, it wasn't the challenge male's entire body that activated the tape, but certain features of him, the triggering traits.This feature is usually only a tiny part of the intruder.Sometimes, the shade of a color can be a triggering feature.

People can easily make lower animals do some unreasonable stupid things by using the trigger feature.Before we get smug about this, we need to realize two things.First, this mechanically fixed pattern of behavior in animals works well in the vast majority of cases.The second thing we need to understand is that we also have similar pre-recorded tapes in our bodies.Usually, these tapes work to our advantage, but sometimes the trigger feature can also fool us into misplacing a tape. An experiment by Langer, a social psychologist at Harvard University, proved that humans also have fixed behavior patterns similar to animals.There is a well-known code of conduct that states that when we ask someone for a favor, we are more likely to get it if we can give a reason.The reason is simple, people just like to find a reason for what they do.In order to verify this unremarkable fact, Lange went to the library and asked the people who were waiting in line to make copies to do her a little favor: "Sorry, I have 5 pages to copy, can I make copies first? Because I There is something urgent." This "request + reason" method has almost 100% effect, and 94% of the people let her go to the front.But when she doesn't explain why, the effect is much worse. "Sorry, I have 5 pages to copy, can you let me copy first?" When she said this, only 60% of the people agreed to her request.At first glance, the most notable difference between the two request styles is that the first request provides additional information "because I'm in a hurry".But Lange tried a third request, which turned out not to be the case.The real reason lies not in saying that sentence more, but in the word "because".Lange's third request is "Excuse me, I have five pages to copy, can I make copies first? Because I have to copy a few pages." This request does not include a real compliance reason, using only the word "because".It adds no new information, it just repeats an obvious fact.But this request method achieved almost 100% effect again. Even if there was no real reason and no new information to support her request, 93% of people agreed to let her be in the front row.Just as the squeak of a baby turkey elicits a maternal response from the mother turkey, so the word "because" elicited a subconscious submissive response in Langer's subjects, even though "because" was not followed by a command. The reason for their obedience. "Click, wow!" The tape played automatically.

Langer's other findings also showed that, while there are many situations in which human behavior is not mechanical or tape-playing, it occurs surprisingly often.The strange behavior of those customers in the jewelry store is an example.They snapped up turquoise jewels after a salesperson mistakenly doubled the price of the jewels.I can't see any rationale for their behavior other than using the "click, wow" theory. Most of these customers are well-off, but have little knowledge of turquoise.When they buy jewelry, they rely on the basic principle that "expensive = high quality".Hence, these vacationers, who are determined to buy good jewelry, see the turquoise jewelry as more valuable and more desirable after the price has been increased.Price alone has become a trigger feature for quality.And the sharp increase in price has led to a substantial increase in the purchases of those customers who pay attention to quality.

It's not hard to criticize tourists for their stupid buying decisions, but after thinking about it, we can be more forgiving.These people have all grown up with the admonition of "you get what you pay for", and have experienced the correctness of this law many times in their lives.It didn't take long for them to translate the law into "expensive = premium".This formula has worked well in the past because, generally speaking, the price of an item increases with its value, the more expensive the better the quality.So when they want to buy high-quality turquoise jewelry, but they don't know much about jewelry, they naturally rely on this formula to judge the value of jewelry.

But these customers may not realize that judging the value of turquoise based on price alone is like an opportunistic gamble.Instead of working hard to master all kinds of knowledge to judge the value of turquoise, it is better to rely on only one number, because they know that this number is usually related to the quality of the commodity.They firmly believe that price speaks for itself.This time, because someone mistook "1/2" for "2", they made the wrong bet.But judging from their past and future living environment, it is still the most reasonable way to take this shortcut to gamble.

In fact, this automatic, tape-like behavior can be seen everywhere in our lives.Because in many cases, this is the most effective way to behave.And in other cases, we have to.Since ancient times, the environment we live in is undoubtedly the fastest-paced and most intricate environment on earth.To adapt to this environment, we need to have shortcuts.It is impossible for us to personally know and analyze every person, every event, and even every situation that we encounter every day.We have neither the time nor the energy nor the ability to do so.Therefore, we must often use our tapes, and use the method we have learned from experience, to classify things according to their characteristics.Then when a certain trigger characteristic appears, we react accordingly without thinking.

A most amazingly inspiring book. Sometimes the patterned behavior we adopt doesn't fit the situation, because even the most appropriate tape and most reliable trigger features don't work every time.But we are willing to accept this situation because we have no other choice.Without these patterned behaviors, we stand still, categorizing, evaluating, and comparing, while our time to act relentlessly passes.There are now every indications that we will rely even more on these stereotyped behaviors in the future.As our lives become full of excitement and become more complex and dynamic, we also rely more on shortcuts to cope with it all. The famous British philosopher Alfred believed that this is an inescapable feature of modern life.He once said: A sign of the progress of human civilization is that people can take actions more frequently and without thinking.For example, coupons are a product of the progress of human civilization.Consumers think they can buy something at a discounted price just by showing a coupon.How much do we really know about coupons that automatically induce this thought?All this can be illustrated by the experience of a company that produces automobile tires.Because of a typographical error, the company sent out a coupon that didn't save the person who got it money, but it had the same effect as a coupon that didn't have the typographical error and actually saved the customer money.The moral of this story is obvious and very inspiring to us.We want coupons to do double duty.Not only do we want it to save us money, but we also want it to save us the time and effort it takes to figure out how to do it.In today's world, we need the first strength to deal with financial constraints and the second strength to deal with the more important mental exhaustion. The critical core at which the author can contribute to human development through his research. Although this mechanistic pattern of behavior is ubiquitous in our behavior and will play an increasingly important role in the future, surprisingly little is known about it.Perhaps precisely because it always happens in a mechanical, unthinking way.Whatever the reason, it is most important for us to recognize the fact that this pattern makes us more subservient to those who understand it. To learn more about our submissive nature, let's look again at the work of animal behaviorists.Scientists who play turkey calls all day aren't the only ones who know how to activate the behavioral tapes of different species, their research shows.A creature known as a mimic knows this well.They mimic the triggering traits of other animals, tricking them into misbehavior and then exploiting the opportunity to achieve their own goals. One species of bloodthirsty female firefly will play this trick to kill another species of male firefly.Usually, the male fireflies will carefully avoid approaching the bloodthirsty female fireflies.But after hundreds of years of evolution, the female firefly has found a weakness in her prey: a special flashing courtship signal that tells her mates she's ready to mate.The female fireflies somehow cracked this code.When they send this simulated courtship flash to their prey, the courtship tapes in the male fireflies are activated.They flew over involuntarily, fell into the arms of death instead of love, and became the meal of the female killer. Insects seem to be the best at exploiting this spontaneity of their prey, and it is not uncommon for their prey to be fooled to death.But some animals take a less draconian approach.One small fish, the upper canine-toothed blean, exploits the partnership of the other two species to its advantage.These two cooperative fish are like "Matt and Jeff" in the cartoon, with a larger grouper on one side and a smaller fish on the other.Small fish are cleaners for big fish.Big fish allow smaller fish to get close to it, and even run into its mouth to help it remove fungus and other parasites from its teeth or gills.This arrangement is really perfect: the harmful substances on the big fish are cleaned, and the small fish who act as cleaners get their dinner without any trouble.Typically, big fish will eat any small fish that come close to it, but when this small cleaner fish gets close to it, it immediately stops swimming and floats in the water with its mouth wide open, almost still there.This is what a big fish does when a small fish heaves up and down.Apparently, this swimming pattern of the small fish is the trigger feature that makes the big fish suddenly tame.The blean fish took a cue from this phenomenon: It can use their cleaning process to profit.The blean fish imitated the swimming style of the cleaner fish and slowly approached the larger fish.The big fish stopped automatically and floated motionless in the water.Then, the blean hurriedly took a big bite of the big fish's meat, and swam away quickly before the frightened and injured big fish came back to its senses. There are also sad stories similar to those in the animal world in human society.Some of us, too, trick us into subconsciously responding by simulating trigger traits.Unlike the instinctive responses of animals, our subconscious responses are usually derived from some learned psychological principles or formulas.Although these principles have great or small effects, some of them are quite obvious in guiding human behavior.We have been influenced by these principles from a very early age, and have been at their mercy ever since, so that we hardly perceive their power.But in the eyes of others, these principles are not only visible and tangible, but also ready-made, and they are weapons that can automatically influence others. There are those who have clear guidance on where the weapons of influence are hidden, and who often wield them skillfully to achieve their ends.They make their way in society, wanting everyone to do what they want, and they always get it.In fact, the secret of their success is that they know how to make a request, how to arm themselves with the weapons of influence of one kind or another that exist around them.Sometimes all it takes is a correct choice of vocabulary to do this.But the word has to relate to a strong psychological principle and be able to put an autoplaying tape inside of us.It is believed that people will soon learn how to profit from the mechanical responses of others to these principles. Remember my friend who owned a jewelry store?While the initial serendipity gave her a taste of it, she quickly learned to leverage the formula "expensive = premium" often and consciously.In the tourist season, in order to sell those hard-to-sell jewelry as soon as possible, the first method she adopts is to increase the price significantly.She said this trick is really a good way to be both cheap and effective.When the method worked on unsuspecting tourists, as it often did, she reaped huge profits.Even if that doesn't work out at first, she can still tag the items with a "reduced from $XX to $XX" and still sell them at the original price.When she does, she's still taking advantage of the "expensive = premium" reaction customers have had to that inflated price. My friend is by no means the first to use the latter method as a trap for cheap eaters.The writer Rolston gave an example of the brothers Sid and Harry of the Drubeck family.In the 1930s, when Roston was growing up, the brothers opened a tailor shop specializing in men's clothing near the Roston home.Whenever Sid, who was in charge of sales, helped a new customer try on clothes in front of the store's mirror, he would tell the customer that he had a hearing problem.So, when he was talking to customers, he would constantly ask them to speak louder.Once a customer finds a suit he likes and asks how much it cost, Sid will go into the back room, call out his brother who is the master tailor, and say, "Harry, how much does this suit cost?" Putting down the work in hand, raised his head, and gave a price that was much higher than the real price: "Is it that beautiful all-wool suit? 42 yuan." Sid pretended not to hear clearly, and he would cup his hands Put it behind your ear and ask again.And Harry would answer again, "$42".At this time, Sid walked up to the customer and said to the customer, "He said it would cost 22 yuan." At this time, many people would rush to buy the suit, before poor Sid found out that he had made a "mistake." He hurried away with the bargains he picked up by chance. Most of the weapons of influence described in this book share some common elements, two of which we have already discussed.One is an almost mechanical process through which the inherent power of these weapons can be stimulated.The second is how those weapons are used by those who know how to bring out the inherent power of these weapons.The third element has to do with the way these weapons of influence impart their power to the wielder.A weapon of influence is not like a heavy bat, it is a powder keg that makes it easy for the wielder to bring another to his knees. This process is extremely complex and extremely ingenious.Under the premise of correct implementation, the user must tense every nerve to achieve his goal.All he has to do is to arouse the huge influence hidden in the situation at that time and direct it to the established goal.From this point of view, this method is very different from Japanese Judo.A woman who is proficient in judo rarely uses her own strength when fighting an opponent.She will use as much as possible the forces inherent in the principles of nature, such as gravity, the principle of leverage, the conservation of momentum and inertia.If she knows how and when to use these principles, she can easily defeat her physically stronger opponents.So do those who are skilled at using the weapons of influence that naturally exist all around us.They are able to achieve their ends by relying on the inherent power of these weapons without using too much personal power.This move has the added benefit of giving them the power to manipulate the invisible.Even the victims themselves tend to believe that their obedience is influenced by the forces of nature, and are unaware that they have fallen into the trap carefully set by the one who profited by it. There is an example that illustrates exactly this point.One of the principles of human cognition is the principle of contrast, which affects our judgment of the difference between two things before and after.Simply put, if two things are very different, we tend to think they are more different than they really are.Therefore, if we first pick up a light object and then a heavy object, the latter will feel heavier than when we hold it alone.The principle of contrast is well developed in the field of psychophysics and is widely used in all areas of cognition including weight.For example, if we meet an attractive woman at a cocktail party and then meet an unattractive woman, the latter woman will appear even less attractive. In fact, experiments at Arizona State University and Montana State University on the Contrast Principle suggest that we may perceive our partners as less attractive as the mass media bombards them with unrealistically beautiful models Our optic nerve.In one study, college students were asked to rate photos of an unattractive member of the opposite sex.If they had seen some advertisements in fashion magazines beforehand, they would have thought the person was not good-looking.Another study asked male college students living on campus to judge whether a girl in a photo would be a date for them.When judging, one group of students was watching the TV series Charlie's Angels, while another group was watching a different show.The results showed that students in the former group rated their date as less attractive than students in the latter group.Apparently, it was the star's uncommon good looks that dwarfed the date. We often do an interesting experiment in the psychophysics laboratory in order to give students a first-hand understanding of the principle of cognitive contrast.In this experiment, each student sat in front of three buckets of water in turn, one bucket of cold water, one bucket of room temperature water, and one bucket of hot water.We first asked students to put one hand in cold water and the other hand in hot water, and then asked them to put both hands in room temperature water at the same time.At this moment, funny and confused expressions appeared on the faces of the students: Although both hands were in the same bucket of water, the hand that was in the cold water felt that the water was hot, while the hand that was in the hot water felt that the water was hot. The hand in the water felt the water was cold.This little experiment shows that we can perceive the same thing (in this case, water at normal temperature) completely differently because of the previous natural state of the thing. To be sure, the small and sensitive weapon of influence afforded by the principle of contrast is not to be left unused.The biggest advantage of the contrast principle is that it is not only very effective, but also imperceptible.Some people make a fortune from the influence of the principle of contrast, while people fail to see that their principle of time and place is of their own making.That's what those clothing retailers do.Suppose a man walks into a trendy men's clothing store and wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater.If you are a salesperson, what kind of clothes should you show him first so that he can spend more money?The salesperson was instructed to sell him the clothes with the highest price first.And our common sense may be the opposite, we will think that if a person has just spent a lot of money on a suit, then he may not want to spend too much money on a sweater.But apparel retailers know this best.What they did did exactly what the contrast principle suggested: sell the suit first.Because when customers choose sweaters, no matter how expensive the sweater is compared with the price of the suit, it will not appear so expensive.People probably won't go out and buy a $95 sweater.But if he just bought a suit for 495 yuan, then the 95 yuan sweater does not look so expensive.For those who want to buy accessories (shirts, shoes, belts) for their new suit, the salesperson can still do the same.Contrary to our commonsense beliefs, a large body of evidence shows that the expectations of the contrast principle are correct.As sales motivation analysts put it, "It is interesting that even if a person walks into a clothing store with the intention of buying a suit, he is more likely to pay for those accessories if he buys accessories after the suit rather than before." Accessories cost more. For merchants, they can earn more money by displaying more expensive products to customers first.If this is not done, the principle of contrast will not only fail to play its due role, but will also have the opposite effect.If you show a customer a cheap item first, and then show them a more expensive item, it will only make the latter appear more expensive - a result that most merchants don't want to see, obviously .Just as the temperature of a previous bucket of water can make the same bucket appear hotter or colder, they can also make the same item appear more expensive or cheaper, depending entirely on the price of the previous item they were shown . Apparel retailers aren't the only ones who know how to make clever use of the principle of cognitive contrast.When I was at a real estate company secretly learning about salespeople's methods of getting compliance, I discovered that one of the sales techniques they used used the contrast principle.One weekend, in order to understand the inside story of the real estate industry, I accompanied a salesman to show customers houses.The salesman, let's call him Phil, said he was going to show me something so I could get acquainted with the business as quickly as possible.One thing I noticed pretty quickly was that whenever Phil took a new batch of clients to see houses, he always showed them first a few rundown homes that no one was buying.When I asked him about it, he laughed.He said that these houses are the company's "entrustment".There are always one or two very dilapidated but very expensive houses in the real estate sold by the company.The company does not intend to sell the houses, which are for showing to customers.That way, the homes the companies really want to sell will look extra attractive by comparison.Not all salespeople use these pawn houses, but Phil likes this method.He said that when customers saw the run-down houses and then took them to see the houses that were actually being sold to them, their eyes lit up.He likes this feeling so much. "After they've seen a few sets of shit, the house I picked for them is really amazing." 5 of the 6 principles, and he only found out a week after paying the deposit that he had paid 50,000 yuan more than others.His experience is that this book really has such a close description of the real world, and it can really help people to raise their vigilance, especially in an increasingly commercialized society, if there is not enough ability, then it will become a highly capable person victim of. Car dealers also use the contrast principle when selling cars.When the price of a new car is negotiated, they will propose to the customer to buy one additional equipment after another.After shelling out 15,000 bucks, spending a few hundred bucks on something like a stereo radio is nothing.So then the dealer will suggest that the customer buy some accessories, such as coated glass windows, sight glass, tires or a fancy decoration.The trick is to come up with these add-ons piece by piece so that the price of each item is trivial compared to the big bucks the customer has already decided to spend.Many experienced car buyers know that it is precisely because of these inconspicuous add-ons that the price of a budget car is inflated like a balloon.While the customer stands there with a signed contract in his hand, wondering what the hell is going on and can't blame anyone but himself, the car salesman stands aside with a jujitsu master on his face Signature smile.