Hello. This is Devan Rome. Welcome to Part 6 of my 12-part series reviewing the concepts I’ve learned in CXL’s Digital Psychology and Persuasion Program. Here is a link to the course. In this series, I review the principles discussed and taught in the course. I also write about some of my opinions of the course. With that said and out of the way, I will now get on to this week (week 6’s) review of the course. I am now more than half way through this 12-part series, and I am certainly learning a lot.
Today, I will start with Mr. Roger Dooley’s video on trust symbols. Trust symbols are a logical way for you to build trust. It’s hard to say how people discriminate between brands. Studies show that you should use familiar trust symbols. This certainly makes sense.
I am now starting Roger Dooley’s course on cognitive biases. The first section of this course gives a bunch of readings and shows us the cognitive bias codex. Let’s get this course started. The first one is the availability heuristic. This is related to the neglect of probability effect. People tend to be bad with stats. Stats also tend to not change people’s minds’ however, it does often help people confirm what they already think is true. Roger Dooley recommends not to use statistics to persuade; rather it’s often better to use vivid stories and personal examples. Some other related biases are optimism bias, wishful thinking, the valence effect, and the positive outcome bias. To people, what’s easier to remember is usually considered more important. A good example would be bad events that have happened in certain places. Stories and graphic images are more persuasive for two reasons. First, because they make your stories more available. Second, because they make your stories easier to recall.
Now for the important psychological tool. Roger Dooley uses the example of two buck chuck. Experimenters found that people who thought their wine was Californian enjoyed their meal more. It was all about perception. This was also found with prices of wine. This has also been found with MRI machines. People were found to enjoy wines that they simply “perceived” as being better. In that way, perception is reality. To benefit from this bias, Roger Dooley recommends the following “Set high but realistic expectations to improve customer experience.” Why? Often expectations frame people’s reality. Woah.
We also have another bias, the courtesy bias. People tend to be socially correct over truth. This can affect you when you’re doing market research. Why? Because you may not always get honest answers from your customer. People careful how you phrase your questions so that you get the answers you really need.
Now for loss aversion, this was one of Daniel Kahneman’s first discovered biases. This bias basically says that loses loom larger than gains in people’s brains. This bias has been proven with loss framing. By presenting identical frames differently, you can change people’s behavior. One group that does loss framing pretty well is dentistry. Free trials are another great way to exploit people’s aversion to loss. You can also do this to decrease churn. Dooley gives an example of telling people what they will lose when you cancel. In a UCL study, 100% of subjects showed aversion to loss. Now for the quiz. Done. 100%.
Now for the Ben Franklin Effect. This talks about a thing Ben Franklin did. Ben Franklin figured out a smart way to persuade someone. The thing that Ben Franklin used was basically reverse reciprocity. I wonder if I can use this in social media marketing. I will have to think about it.
Now for the framing effect. A framing effect is basically how you frame your information. The way in which you frame has an effect on your framing probability. One example is framing something as a penalty increased conversions compared to framing it as a coupon. Dooley recommends you make sure you test both negative and positive frames, as negative frames have been shown to be quite powerful in the research. Of course, this depends on a lot of factors, which is why you should be sure to test. Now for the quiz on this module, I think it would be called. Done. 100%.
Now for the authority bias. Authority opinions are usually considered more highly, even when they are not relevant. Often, even if you can’t find the “right” authority, any authoritative person will still help you significantly increase your persuasion power.
Now for fluency bias. This is related to people’s believed credibility. Usually, easy to pronounce names are perceived as more trustworthy. By making things easier to process, you a=can your persuasive messages more powerful. Roger recommends these three tips to increase fluency: easy a=language, easy to use (UX), and simple fonts). He says that generally, anything you can do to make things easier will be good for you. Got a 100%. Nice.
Now moving on to the bizarreness effect. This is a bizarre bias. Things that are really weird are easy to remember. This can help you with availability bias, probably. This one can be dangerous, I think, as people tend to prefer things that are familiar.
Now for the narrative fallacy. This means that brains usually try to construct stories out of things that exist, even if there is no story there. By putting your persuasive message in the form of a story, you can increase its persuasion power. A great example of this is the ad that read “They laughed when I sat at the piano, but I started to play…” Our brains like stories because we evolved that way. We’ve even tested the effects of stories in fMRI machines, with crazy results. One example is that they put two people in an fMRI machine and had one tell a story. The scientists found that the brains of the two people basically flickered in the same way, the brains were basically synchronized. Roger Dooley says that telling stories is basically the closest thing to mind control. When it comes to applying this to testimonials, Dooley says to not just include a testimonial, but to turn your testimonial into a story.
Ok. I will stop for today. I think this will cover enough for this week. Gosh. I sure did learn a lot!
I will see you all again next week, when I will review week 7 of this program. Thank you for reading.
