Influencing tip - avoiding loss
If you wanted to persuade a colleague at work to do something, which of these strategies would be more effective?
Strategy one: If you do this good things will happen
Strategy two: If you don't do this, bad things will happen.
One of these strategies is more than twice as likely to succeed as the other.
Most people tend to go for the more 'positive' approach – 'do this and good things will happen'. They're wrong. Three times out of four, the second approach – the 'avoiding loss' approach - will be more effective. That's because most people are more motivated to hang on to things they might lose, than to gain things they haven't yet got. In a classic social psychology experiment conducted at the University of Victoria in Canada, students were given a coffee mug. After a bit, they were asked if they'd swap it for a big bar of Swiss chocolate. Only 11% agreed to relinquish the mug. In a parallel experiment, students were first given the chocolate, and then asked to trade it in for the mug. This time only 10% agreed to the swap. Once we've got something, we're highly motivated to hang on to it (which maybe explains all those clothes in your wardrobe you never wear but are reluctant to take down to the charity shop).
Of course how you get your colleague to think about the negative consequences of inaction, without it seeming as if you are simply threatening them, requires a certain amount of skill and great deal of trust – and trust is the subject of next month's influencing tip.