Niro Sivanathan The counterintuitive way to be more persuasive TED

Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer: Krystian Aparta

Imagine you’re on a shopping trip.

You’ve been looking
for a luxury-line dinnerware set

to add to your kitchen collection.

As it turns out,

your local department store
has announced a sale

on the very set you’ve been looking for,

so you rush to the store
to find a 24-piece set on sale.

Eight dinner plates,
all in good condition;

eight soup and salad bowls,
all in good condition;

and eight dessert plates,
all in good condition.

Now, consider for a moment

how much you would be willing to pay
for this dinnerware set.

Now imagine an alternate scenario.

Not having seen this 24-piece luxury set,

you rush to the store to find
a 40-piece dinnerware set on sale.

Eight dinner plates,
all in good condition;

eight soup and salad bowls,
all in good condition;

eight dessert plates,
all in good condition;

eight cups, two of them are broken;

eight saucers, seven of them are broken.

Now consider for a moment

how much you would be willing to pay
for this 40-piece dinnerware set.

This is the premise of a clever
experiment by Christopher Hsee

from the University of Chicago.

It’s also the question that I’ve asked
hundreds of students in my classroom.

What were their responses?

On average, when afforded
the 24-piece luxury set,

they were willing to spend
390 pounds for the set.

When afforded the 40-piece dinnerware set,

on average, they were willing
to spend a whopping 192 pounds

for this dinnerware set.

Strictly speaking, these are
an irrational set of numbers.

You’ll notice the 40-piece dinnerware set

includes all elements
you would get in the 24-piece set,

plus six cups and one saucer.

And not only are you not willing to spend
what you will for the 24-piece set,

you’re only willing to spend roughly half
of what you will for that 24-piece set.

What you’re witnessing here

is what’s referred
to as the dilution effect.

The broken items, if you will,

dilute our overall perceived value
of that entire set.

Turns out this cognitive quirk
at the checkout counter

has important implications

for our ability to be heard
and listened to when we speak up.

Whether you are speaking up
against a failing strategy,

speaking against the grain
of a shared opinion among friends

or speaking truth to power,

this takes courage.

Often, the points that are raised

are both legitimate
but also shared by others.

But sadly, and far too often,

we see people speak up
but fail to influence others

in the way that they had hoped for.

Put another way,

their message was sound,

but their delivery proved faulty.

If we could understand
this cognitive bias,

it holds important implications

for how we could craft
and mold our messages

to have the impact we all desire …

to be more influential as a communicator.

Let’s exit the aisles
of the shopping center

and enter a context in which we practice
almost automatically every day:

the judgment of others.

Let me introduce you to two individuals.

Tim studies 31 hours a week
outside of class.

Tom, like Tim, also spends 31 hours
outside of class studying.

He has a brother and two sisters,

he visits his grandparents,

he once went on a blind date,

plays pool every two months.

When participants are asked to evaluate

the cognitive aptitude
of these individuals,

or more importantly,
their scholastic achievement,

on average, people rate Tim

to have a significantly higher
GPA than that of Tom.

But why?

After all, both of them spend
31 hours a week outside of class.

Turns out in these contexts,

when we’re presented such information,

our minds utilize
two categories of information:

diagnostic and nondiagnostic.

Diagnostic information
is information of relevance

to the valuation that is being made.

Nondiagnostic is information
that is irrelevant or inconsequential

to that valuation.

And when both categories
of information are mixed,

dilution occurs.

The very fact that Tom
has a brother and two sisters

or plays pool every two months

dilutes the diagnostic information,

or more importantly,

dilutes the value and weight
of that diagnostic information,

namely that he studies
31 hours a week outside of class.

The most robust psychological explanation
for this is one of averaging.

In this model, we take in information,

and those information
are afforded a weighted score.

And our minds do not add
those pieces of information,

but rather average
those pieces of information.

So when you introduce irrelevant
or even weak arguments,

those weak arguments, if you will,

reduce the weight
of your overall argument.

A few years ago,

I landed in Philadelphia
one August evening

for a conference.

Having just gotten off
a transatlantic flight,

I checked into my hotel room,
put my feet up

and decided to distract
my jet lag with some TV.

An ad caught my attention.

The ad was an ad
for a pharmaceutical drug.

Now if you’re the select few who’ve not
had the pleasure of witnessing these ads,

the typical architecture of these ads

is you might see a happy couple
prancing through their garden,

reveling in the joy that they got
a full night’s sleep

with the aid of the sleep drug.

Because of FDA regulations,

the last few seconds of this one-minute ad
needs to be devoted to the side effects

of that drug.

And what you’ll typically hear
is a hurried voice-over that blurts out

“Side effects include
heart attack, stroke,

blah, blah, blah,”

and will end with something
like “itchy feet.”

(Laughter)

Guess what “itchy feet” does
to people’s risk assessment

of “heart attack” and “stroke”?

It dilutes it.

Imagine for a moment
an alternate commercial

that says “This drug
cures your sleep problems,

side effects are heart attack and stroke.”

Stop.

Now all of a sudden you’re thinking,
“I don’t mind staying up all night.”

(Laughter)

Turns out going to sleep is important,

but so is waking up.

(Laughter)

Let me give you
a sample from our research.

So this ad that I witnessed
essentially triggered a research project

with my PhD student, Hemant,
over the next two years.

And in one of these studies,

we presented participants
an actual print ad

that appeared in a magazine.

[Soothing rest for mind and body.]

You’ll notice the last line
is devoted to the side effects

of this drug.

For half of the participants,

we showed the ad in its entirety,

which included both major side effects
as well as minor side effects.

To the other half of the participants,

we showed the same ad
with one small modification:

we extracted just four words
out of the sea of text.

Specifically, we extracted
the minor side effects.

And then both sets of participants
rated that drug.

What we find is that individuals
who were exposed

to both the major side effects
as well as the minor side effects

rated the drug’s overall severity
to be significantly lower

than those who were only exposed
to the major side effects.

Furthermore, they also showed
greater attraction

towards consuming this drug.

In a follow-up study,

we even find that individuals
are willing to pay more

to buy the drug which they were exposed to

that had both major side effects
as well as minor side effects,

compared to just major side effects alone.

So it turns out pharmaceutical ads,

by listing both major side effects
as well as minor side effects,

paradoxically dilute participants'
and potential consumers'

overall risk assessment of that drug.

Going beyond shopping expeditions,

going beyond the evaluation
of the scholastic aptitude of others,

and beyond evaluating risk
in our environment,

what this body of research tells us

is that in the world of communicating
for the purposes of influence,

quality trumps quantity.

By increasing the number of arguments,

you do not strengthen your case,

but rather you actively weaken it.

Put another way,

you cannot increase
the quality of an argument

by simply increasing
the quantity of your argument.

The next time you want
to speak up in a meeting,

speak in favor of a government legislation
that you’re deeply passionate about,

or simply want to help a friend
see the world through a different lens,

it is important to note

that the delivery of your message
is every bit as important as its content.

Stick to your strong arguments,

because your arguments don’t add up
in the minds of the receiver,

they average out.

Thank you.

(Applause)