In the late 1970s, Ellen Langer of the university was conducting experiments on the utilization of ‘scripts’ in human deciding when she made a surprising discovery. She found a subliminal technique that had the facility to instantly

make any claim, statement, or argument more believable and credible.

Moreover, it absolutely was a method that significantly increased compliance with requests that were absurd and unreasonable.

What Langer would discover, are some things we still use in digital marketing today.

Langer believed that much of human behaviour was automatic and controlled by processes outside the conscious mind; specifically, that we use standard responses supported past experiences to efficiently navigate through the obstacles of the way of life.

Instead of approaching each situation as a completely unique situation, we use our past experiences to make scripts of a way to behave when faced with similar future situations. Today this is often a well-accepted and understood idea but back in the 1970’s it absolutely was still in its infancy.

To test her hypothesis she and he co-researchers approached people at a photocopying area in her University Library. They tested two requests. the primary was: “Excuse me, I've got five pages. May I take advantage of the Xerox machine?” Sixty per cent of the people complied.

The second request was: “Excuse me, I've got five pages. May I exploit the xerographic copier because I’m in a very rush?” By adding a reason, the compliance went up to 94 per cent.

In a Surprising Twist – Making Your Claims Instantly More Credible

At first, it seemed that the participants thought of what the confederate said, agreed with their reasoning, and allowed her to use the copier first. Langer theorized that this wasn't the case in the least. She claimed that the participants weren't really thinking consciously; instead, they were mindlessly complying with the requester because the syntax of the request was triggering a favour ‘script’.

This was validated when the researchers asked the 3rd request: “Excuse me, I've got five pages. May I exploit the copier, because I've got to create copies?”

Notice that the rationale isn't really a reason in any respect.

Yet despite the redundant nature of the rationale, 93 per cent of individuals still complied with the request. If they were actually wondering what the requester had said the compliance rate would logically are closer to 60 per cent. Instead, the word because triggered the rapid cognition module that read the request as a ‘favour script’ and executed the everyday behaviour, which during this case happened to be compliance.

Some 25 Years Later

Over 1 / 4 century later, another group of researchers repeated Langer’s famous experiment, now introducing a brand new factor into the equation.

They wanted to work out if the placebic ‘because’ would work on those that have a better need for cognition. In other words, they wanted to work out if those that generally listen to what's being said and critically think through an argument would still suit the inappropriate reason. They hypothesised that they might not.

To test their idea they recruited 129 undergraduate psychology students and put them through a series of personality and cognition tests. Then the experiment was repeated in an exceedingly similar fashion to Langer’s original experiment.

Consistent with Langer’s original findings, the majority still complied with the requester, provided that they had a reason, whether or not that reason was actually unpersuasive. No surprise there.

What was surprising, however, was that they found no relationship between the need for cognition and compliance. Put otherwise, even individuals who generally thought through arguments were no more likely to note the shortage of a sound reason than folks that were a bit more absent-minded, again suggesting the frequent automatic nature of our deciding.

The Limits of Reason

The only thing that gave the impression to make a difference to the extent of compliance was the dimensions of the request. In Langer’s original experiment, she repeated the method, with the researchers saying they'd twenty pages to repeat.

The question was whether the participants would escape their scripted reasoning or whether or not they would still go with the request even when the inconvenience was higher. This time, the requests without a reason still got low compliance (24 per cent), while the important reason got higher compliance (42 per cent). The hollow reason got identical compliance because of no reason (24 per cent). In other words, when it involves bigger, more burdensome requests people tend to interrupt out of their scripted behaviour and critically assess the given reason for merit.

The bring home Lesson: Provide Good Reasons

What these experiments demonstrate so brilliantly is that giving a reason is one of all the foremost powerful tools available to a persuasion practitioner. it's the flexibility to create a press release or a claim instantly more plausible and convincing. Moreover, provided it’s a tiny low request, a reason overrides conscious thought and directly accesses the automated part of the brain where, if the syntax is correct, the particular content doesn't matter that much.

However, such shortcut-based compliance has its limitations as people often escape automatic behaviour when the stakes are higher and compliance more burdensome.

The realise lesson is to supply a reason for your claims and requests. this can strengthen your claims and increase compliance with your requests. More importantly, you ought to seek to use genuine reasons instead of placebic ones because many of us, especially when the stakes are higher, which they often are within the universe, will tend to pay more attention to the particular reasoning instead of just the syntax.