minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Posts tagged ideas
Influence: actions speak louder than words
Apr 4th
Influential language is important. Questions, listening and metaphor are important. But there could be an even more important factor in influence: the purely “incidental” behaviour of the people around you.
“Turns out your colleague’s husband’s sister can make you fat, even if you’ve never met. And a happy friend affects your happiness more than a bigger income. It turns out our connections – our friends, our friend’s friends, even our friends’ friends’ friends – have an astonishing influence on our behaviours, beliefs and even health.”
That’s the blurb from Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, which sets out the science behind these surprising claims.
As I blogged recently, the infectious metaphors in people’s language, including their body language, provide one of the important ways in which behaviours spread through groups.
And there’s more to it than that.
Because behaviours can spread through networks of people even when there’s no intentional communication – and even no direct relationship – between the people involved.
Actions speak louder than words – and significantly louder than the small gestures which are generally thought of as “body language”.
Here’s an example. I live very close to the Brentford football ground and yesterday, the team was playing at Wembley.
At one level, Wembley is a More >
Is passive income damaging your health?
Mar 21st
Could the myth of “passive income” be damaging your health – or at least your psychological well-being – as Daniel Priestley, author of Become a Key Person of Influence, proposed in a talk recently?
He argued that the notion of “passive income” was founded on the idea of making money by doing something one didn’t want to actually do, when in reality, money is more often made by doing what you’re truly passionate about.
It was interesting to hear this the day after experiencing TEDx Observer, a day of truly passionate speakers with “ideas worth sharing”. Speakers who were intent on changing the world for the better, each in a different, specific way: charity workers, bloggers, academics, entrepreneurs, artists, people with “causes”. Speakers who were not necessarily doing what they love so much as doing what they felt was important. More on this another day.
But Dan’s point was also interesting in the context of James Geary’s new book about the role of metaphor in thought, I is an Other.
Among many other interesting ideas, James draws attention to the metaphors we use for money markets. He says: “Psychologist Michael W Morris and collaborators studied a slew of financial commentaries and identified two primary market metaphors.
“What More >
