How do we influence each other, knowingly or unknowingly? Discussing the social and cognitive psychology behind influence, and what to do to maximize our odds of being memorable and making a long lasting impact.

Transcript

Hello! I’m Leo Isikdogan, and welcome to Cognitive Creations. Today, we are exploring how we get influenced by others and influence others, knowingly or unknowingly, from a social and cognitive psychology perspective. We will discuss what we can do to maximize our odds of being memorable and making a long lasting impact.

Mimicry in learning

Let's start with learning. One of the easiest ways to pick up a skill you like is to imitate people who do it well, in the way you like. For example, if you appreciate someone's way of using language, their presentation style, their everyday expressions, or how they decorate their home, why not do the same yourself?

I have done this for many things in the past. Language learning is one of them. The way I speak English is a blend of a range of styles. It combines the styles of people whose speaking I have appreciated over the years. The same goes for my presentation style. It is a blend of the styles of my favorite professors and YouTubers.

I still do this to refine my personality iteratively. If someone has a trait that I like, I don’t copy it as-is but do it in a way that fits with the rest of my personality.

I sometimes find myself doing this unintentionally. Mirroring someone’s style through mere exposure.

Mere exposure effect

The more I’m exposed to something, the more I start to like it, and the more likely I become to internalize it in my own style. This is called the “mere exposure effect.” It is the idea that merely being exposed to something over and over, increases your likelihood of liking it, even if nothing about it has actually changed objectively.

The more you watch or listen to someone, the likelier you’ll become to admire them whether it’s a writer's style or a speaker's mannerisms. This principle shapes our tastes in many areas, from food to entertainment.

To make the most of this effect for personal growth, I try to expose myself to qualities I wish to adopt. Because, the more I’m around these elements, the more naturally they'll become a part of me.

The people we spend a lot of time with influence us, including people who are not around us physically too, so called parasocial relationships. Those one-sided connections we form with influencers we follow, YouTubers we watch, and podcasters we listen to, and so on. When we see or listen to them often enough, it starts to feel like we're hanging out with close friends.

Advertisers use this trick a lot. They feature celebrities. They have collaborations with influencers.

The more we see something, the more we tend to like it. Initially, novel things might be perceived as threats. But, if nothing bad happens after repeated exposure, we lower our guards. They become familiar and comforting and we become more gullible.

Cognitive Ease and The Two Modes of Thought

When something is familiar, it requires less cognitive effort to understand, leading to a sense of ease and comfort. This is also known as “cognitive ease.”

Daniel Kahneman describes two different modes of thought that contribute to our decision-making processes: system one and system two.

System 1 operates quickly, with little effort. It's the kind of intuitive, immediate thinking that occurs without deliberate, conscious effort. When we're in a state of cognitive ease, we're more likely to rely on System 1 thinking.

System 2 thinking, on the other hand, is slower, more deliberate, and more logical. It requires conscious effort and is used for complex calculations, critical thinking, and decision-making in unfamiliar situations. It's activated when we need to engage in more deliberate and analytical thinking. When we're in a state of cognitive strain, we're more likely to engage System 2 to scrutinize our thoughts and actions more critically.

Repeating stimuli, even nonsensical ones, can induce cognitive ease and create a sense of safety and positivity.

Cognitive ease can also be influenced by high-contrast images, clear audio, legible text, pronounceable names and abbreviations, and so on. For example, if you are given a question, and it is easy to read, you’re more likely to respond faster but it’s also more likely for your answer to be incorrect.

Cognitive ease supports intuition but can lead to gullibility. So, stay vigilant folks! Vigilance and skepticism may be more mentally taxing and less pleasant, but they are crucial for critical thinking and separating fact from fiction.

Anchoring and Decoy Effects

A related cognitive bias here is the “anchoring effect.” The anchoring effect is a psychological phenomenon where people rely heavily on the first piece of information they get when making decisions. This initial information, or "anchor," influences their judgment, even if it's irrelevant.

In negotiations, for example, the first price offer sets an anchor. Subsequent counteroffers are influenced by this anchor, shaping the negotiation's direction.

Kahneman's research, along with other studies, shows that anchoring significantly impacts how we value things. For example, restaurants often list prices from high to low on their menus. The high prices at the top act as anchors, making the lower-priced items further down seem more reasonable. Sometimes, customers are given even an additional option with the sole purpose of making the other choices more appealing. This option is inferior in every way, such as being more expensive and of lower quality. This additional choice is essentially a decoy, and this phenomenon is known as the “decoy effect.”

Framing Effect

How options are presented influences our choices. For example, when people hear about a surgery's 90% survival rate, they're more likely to choose it. But, when they hear about a 10% mortality rate they are less likely to choose it. Even though these two phrases mean exactly the same thing, the way they're framed significantly changes people's decisions.

This is known as the “framing effect.” The same applies to monetary gains and losses. An 80% chance of making a profit sounds more appealing than having a 20% chance of incurring a loss.

Prospect Theory

Adding to this, Prospect Theory suggests that we are more sensitive to losses than to gains in general.

For example, the joy of winning $10,000 is often not sufficient to offset the discomfort of losing $10,000. The losses are more emotionally impactful than an equivalent amount of gains, so people tend to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains.

People tend to overestimate small probabilities and underestimate large probabilities. People might subconsciously perceive a 99% chance as if it's 95%, and a 1% chance as if it's 5%.

Here's an example: you can win $10,000 with a 95% chance or take a sure $9,400. Most choose the sure gain, even though the riskier option has a slightly higher expected value.

Now, imagine a 95% chance of losing $10,000, or a certain loss of $9,400. In this case, people often take the risk, hoping to avoid loss. Rejecting a sure but slightly smaller loss in favor of taking a gamble.

Something interesting happens when the odds are low, say a 5% chance of winning $10,000 compared to a certain gain of $501. In that case, people's risk preference shifts. A slim chance of a big win becomes more appealing than a small but certain gain. This is probably why people play lottery despite the extremely low odds.

Conversely, with a 5% chance of losing $10,000 against a sure loss of $501, people generally choose to avoid risk. They prefer the smaller, certain loss, because of a fear of a substantial loss. This is essentially why we get insurance.

Primacy and Recency Biases

In addition to how options are presented and what the options are, the order of information we receive also influences our choices as well as what we perceive and remember. Numerous studies confirm that being in the middle is not ideal in terms of memorability. Whatever is in the middle gets forgotten so easily. For example, given a long sequence of numbers, we’re more likely to remember the first and last numbers than those in the middle. This effect is known as the primacy and recency biases.

I actually have an anecdote about this. In a class project back in college, my classmates and I confirmed this well-known phenomenon once again, accidentally.

The goal of our project was to explore how strong emotions impact memory. We showed participants a series of videos and recorded their brain activity with an EEG headset. About a week later, we asked them to recall specific scenes. Then, we looked at the results to see if there were any correlations between the signals we recorded and what they remember. What we found was that regardless of the signals we recorded, they mostly remembered the first scenes and a few of the last ones. So it was primacy first, recency second.

We also found that the most distressing scenes were remembered the best. But other than that, the results were pretty much dominated by primacy and recency biases.

One way to make use of primacy and recency biases in our day to day lives, especially in situations like presentations, is to start and end well.

One thing I learned in college is that one of the best ways to start a presentation is to start with a demo, a teaser trailer if you will, giving your audience a glimpse of what's to come, showing what this is all about. If there’s no demo, starting by posing a compelling question also works to capture the audience’s attention. As for the closing, ending with a statement that leaves a lasting impression usually works better than ending on a standard 'Q&A' slide or the usual 'any questions?' prompt.

Timing can matter in many aspects of life, including job interviews. While we don't control all aspects of timing, we can influence some. Applying for a job right after it's posted might make you one of the first candidates to interview. Being first, especially if you leave a strong impression, can make you more memorable.

Yet, even if you're not the first, there can still be an advantage. Imagine if the previous candidates didn't do so well. In that case, you might appear more favorable due to the contrast effect. However, this often isn't something you can control, unless it's a public audition where you can choose to go on the spot.

Confirmation Bias

Another common bias that affects decision-making is confirmation bias. This is the mother of all biases. This is when people look for and remember information that aligns with their existing beliefs, while ignoring contrary evidence. We see this bias in many areas, such as politics, social issues, personal relationships, and notably, in job interviews.

In interviews, this means an interviewer might quickly form an opinion on a candidate and spend the rest of the time looking for evidence to back this up, rather than objectively evaluating the candidate's abilities and potential.

So, what can we do? As an interviewer, it’s good to be aware of these biases and strive for a fair evaluation. As a candidate, one of the best things to do is to set a positive tone right from the start. People might forget your exact words, but they'll remember how you made them feel.

This applies not only to job interviews, but also to meetings, dates, or any kind of social interaction really.

Egocentric Bias

We also tend to think too much after important interactions like those. It's not just about how others perceive us, but also how we reflect on these events afterwards.

People overestimate their contributions to both positive and negative things. This is because we clearly remember what we do, but we might not notice or think about what others do. This is known as the egocentric bias.

This perception can also lead us to underestimate external factors, such as cognitive biases and randomness. There is so much randomness in many such interactions.

Pigeon Superstition

We are wired to recognize patterns, so we try to find patterns even when there are none. This tendency is not unique to humans; other animals exhibit it too.

A famous example of this is the work of B.F. Skinner, who observed something interesting with pigeons. He discovered that pigeons would develop random behaviors, mistakenly believing these actions triggered food delivery. If a pigeon happened to be flapping its wings when the food arrived, it might continue to flap, thinking this action was the reason for receiving food. In reality, there was no actual connection between their actions and the food being provided. This phenomenon is humorously known as the 'pigeon superstition.'

I think this is the closest biological analog of overfitting in machine learning.

So, it’s not always about what we do. Sometimes there’s no pattern, no causation, maybe just a spurious correlation. Life is a game of both skill and chance, and sometimes we are holding the dice and sometimes not. More on that in the next episode.

Alright, that was pretty much it. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.