minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Archive for July, 2010
Dreams of DiCaprio, guns, bombs and cash
Jul 29th
Do you ever dream about guns, bombs, car chases and things that go bang?
My head was bubbling with questions after watching the new Leonardo DiCaprio film Inception last night, and to be honest, that one was top of the list. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt that kind of dream. Have you?
There’s a relationship between that scrap of wondering and the big, more important question that followed it: “What is the real commercial value of 1. being able to read someone’s mind and 2. implanting a compelling suggestion there?”
The “commercial value” question matters to me because that’s what I do. I can and do read minds.
I can implant suggestions, too (in fact, I’m doing it right now).
And yet somehow, I’m not being approached to do it by the kind of millionaires who would hire Leo and his gang – and who would incidentally buy an airline to facilitate the job
I do think what I do has solid commercial value.
For example, if you can read someone’s mind, if you can discover their deepest desires and the structure of their thinking, then you can present your product or service in just the way that makes them most likely to buy.
And that’s where More >
Elephant Whispering
Jul 7th
A powerful metaphor can change the way we think. That’s been known for many years – by politicians, religious leaders, entertainers, advertisers, teachers and more.
Here’s a personal example. Recently, I’ve enjoyed some very useful new insights thanks to a metaphor from Jonathan Haidt in his fascinating book The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt likens the mind to a rider on an elephant. The rider is the conscious part of the mind – the small fraction of our being that we are aware of – and the elephant is everything else.
It’s also well known that a powerful metaphor can be used to communicate complex ideas quickly and easily.
That’s because it makes sense not only to the rider (the conscious mind) but also to the elephant (the unconscious). The elephant isn’t always great with abstract words, but it loves metaphors and understands them easily.
Riders, elephants and information
When you want to get some information from another person, what do you do? You ask them: in other words, you ask their rider.
This works very well for information the person is consciously aware of, such as the name of the capital of Afghanistan or the recipe for apple pie.
At the same time, your elephant is communicating More >
How to make someone feel really bad (and why you might want to)
Jul 5th
The fact you’re reading this means you’re probably a nice person at heart, and a ‘people person’. You probably love to make people feel good. Warm smiles and infectious laughter are what people expect from you. And because people feel good when they’re with you, they want to spend time with you.
New E-Book, Surprising Ideas
But sometimes, even you need to make people feel really bad. Sometimes, you just want to!
That bad feeling can be one of the most effective ways to motivate someone to change: to change their unhealthy habits, to ditch something that makes them unhappy, or to buy your product or service to solve their problems.
People may like the idea of going for positive goals, but in fact real action (and spending) is often more strongly motivated by our desire to avoid discomfort. Remind someone of the distress their problems are causing, have them feel that real-life pain, and they are much more likely to buy your solution.
David Grove, the inventor of Clean Language (on which this technique is based) called the deepening of pain “drawing the arrow back” – the further the arrow is drawn back by an archer, the more power it has when fired at More >
