Richard Shotton: The Illusion of Choice

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Richard, thanks for joining us today.

Very nice to see you.

Yes, likewise, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

So my background is in taking findings from behavioral science, what people used to call social psychology. So the study of how people actually behave rather than how they claim to behave, and then applying those findings to marketing and persuasion.

I like this. And little birdie told me that you might have written a book recently.

I have a second book, so the recent one is called the Illusion of Choice. And the subtitle is 16 and a half Principles From Behavioral Science that Influence what People Buy.

Love the title. Love the subtitle too. This is great. And I would like to before we get into the topic, because Both of us, we connect and vibe over psychology. So I like this. I think the semantics that you put out first are very important. Talking about the transition from social psychology to behavioral science, I think that's really important. Can you like outline that a bit?

I think behavioral science is a broader term. It's a term people might be familiar with because it's coming to vogue in the last 10 or 15 years is behavioural economics. And the reason I say behavioural science on behavioural economics is behavioural economics is a kind of, I think, a small subfield. It's very much associated with people like Kahneman and Tversky where they took findings from psychology and applied them to economics. And they talk about principles like loss aversion and anchoring. But if you just focus on those principles as a negotiator, as a marketer, as anyone trying to persuade other people, I think you're missing out on a really rich heritage of a lot broader findings from social psychology. Those findings go all the way back to the 1890s, I think many of them for practical commercial use.

I agree 100%. And that gives us a great segue into the topic of today's episode. So I think it would be great if we start off by just talking about the benefit of understanding psychology as, as a negotiator to really bring life to the negotiation tactics and strategies that we utilize. But then I want to go into some of your favorite claims to discuss. First we're going to talk about the stolen thunder phenomenon and then also the precision of claims and making benefits concrete. So let's just start off by setting the stage, letting folks know of why it's so important to understand psychology as a negotiator.

There's probably three big reasons. The first I think is relevance. You're trying to influence the behavior of another person. And all behavioral sciences is the study of what effectively changes people's behavior. So I think that is a very, very relevant field for anyone trying to persuade other people. The second strength is robustness in all fields of business. And I think this is true. Whether it's marketing or negotiation, there's an awful lot of hearsay. Now people claim there is an effective way to change behavior to others. What I like about behavioral science is it's never just based on claim or logic or authority. Now all these ideas are based on peer reviewed observed experiments. So you can give these findings genuine credibility. So there's this robustness to the field as well as the relevance. And then the third R is there's a wonderful Range. It's not that there are five or six of these experiments, there are tens of thousands. So whatever country or category or area you work in, there will be an experiment out there that can help you. Not saying it's going to solve the problem, but it will give you a head start to solving the problem.

Agreed. And I love that terminology of head start too, because a lot of times when we are in the midst of a difficult conversation, we might not be able to access a precise strategy or tactic for the situation in front of us. But if we can understand the psychology and come up with workable hypotheses in the moment for what psychological challenges might be in front of us, then it gives us a starting point where we can start to create our own bespoke strategies in the moment and solve for those potential challenges.

Yeah, not a nice way of putting it. The other strength talking about head starts rather than complete solutions is it opens up people to trying small things. Now, if you just look for a silver bullet to solve all your problems, well, I think you'll still be looking in 10 years time. But if you accept there are lots of small things you can do that cumulatively add up to a big effect, that's much, much easier to put into practice.

Absolutely. And tell me if this resonates with you too, because when you start to avail yourself to the knowledge of this literature here, it can initially be overwhelming because like you said, there are thousands of studies and it's like finding the starting point on a circle. Where do I, what do I do? How do I approach this? But then when you think about the cumulative effect, then you can start to recognize, oh, we can put these in order and make our eventual point more persuasive. The way that I think about it is in terms of psychological stacking. So we don't know what that final thing that will push the other person across the edge and lead us to that magical endpoint of persuasion is. But if we can get a better understanding of the psychological nuances at play, we can start to stack some of these principles on top of each other in the interaction in an organic way that makes it more likely, holistically, that the person will be persuaded and change their mind.

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's a good way of looking at it. And I certainly agree with your point that the topic can sometimes feel confusing. And part of that is the volume of experiments. The other part is academics don't try and make it easy. I mean, unfortunately, academics write in an unnecessarily jargon filled way often. So the original papers can often be quite dense. That's a little bit ironic because there is a brilliant behavioral scientist, or maybe define himself as a psychologist, but called Oppenheimer and he has a wonderful paper and it's called erudite vernacular, utilized irrespective of necessity. And then there's a colon and it's. And then it's the danger of using long words needlessly. And in his study he gets a group of participants and half of them are given a abstract of an academic paper. So this is the precis at the beginning of the paper that it tends to be written in an unnecessarily complex way. That group read the paper, sorry, read the abstract, and then they rate the intelligence of the author. Oppenheimer then gets another group of people, gives them the same basic abstract, but this time he's replaced the jargon with simpler alternatives. Now when that second group rate the intelligence of the author, the scores are 13% higher. So Oppenheimer's argument is we often believe the way to impress other people is to speak in an unnecessarily convoluted, complex way. But actually it tends to backfire. You want to speak in the simplest way you can, that still reflects the nature of the subject. So unfortunately, many psychologists have not learned from that paper. Most academic papers are unnecessarily dense and turgid.

This is so validating. And listeners, to make this even simpler, the more you try to sound smart, the dumber you may end up sounding.

That would be often on this phone. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

And I think really it speaks to the tribal nature of communication too, because a lot of times you write these papers and they are written in this esoteric language because you're essentially trying to look cool to your friends. So I want to show off to the people who are in academia who can understand this, but then for the people who are in the business world, they're trying to take this, this knowledge and apply it practically. It makes it inaccessible. And now people can't utilize it in the way that it was meant for.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of professions are similar, both in using unnecessarily complex terminology, but also often doing things that aren't for the benefit of the end client but are signaling their sophistication to their peers. Like my field is advertising. And often brands don't use very simple techniques like rhyme, for example. Rhyme in the 1960s, 1970s is a very common tactic in advertising. There's lots of studies that show. It's very memorable and it tends to be believable. But if you look around at the last five or 10 years of advertising, rhyme is used much, much less. And I think the reason is if you're a creative director, you feel slightly simplistic to suggest a rhyme. You want to be admired by all your creative peers and rhymes certainly won't generate that image of sophistication.

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Agreed. Agreed. And it's again, it requires a bit of internal negotiation to figure out what it is that's most important to you and efficacy and persuasive value is what you're going for. Then sometimes it requires a little bit of humility in order to put that into practice.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah. Well, let's move on to the Stolen Thunder phenomenon. I was really excited to see that. Can you let the listeners know about it? Yes.

It's a lesser known study. The original work was done by Kipling Williams at the University of Toledo and he sets up a scene for the participants and they're all imagining they're in a jury and there's three different groups of participants and the first group of participants hear a strong case from the defense and then a case from the prosecution and then they say whether the defendant is guilty or not. Second group of people get a weak case from the defendant and then the prosecution tears it apart and that's, that's called the Thunder version. So there's a weakness in the defense's case and the prosecution tears it apart. Final group, and this is called the Stolen Thunder group. Exactly the same as the previous group. Defence has a weak case. The only change is at the very end the defence case admits the flaw in their argument and then the prosecution tears it apart. Now in that group, there is a significant increase in the proportion of participants who believe the defendant is not guilty. So between the Thunder case and the Stolen Thunder case, you see an increase in the volume of People who are found innocent. Now, it never gets up to the stage of innocence in the strong defense case. So the argument from Kipling Williams is, if you have a problem, better to admit it before the other side draws attention to it. Because if you admit a flaw in your argument, you have proved your honesty, and then everything else you say becomes that much more believable. Because remember, in the setup for this case, the defense never gives reasons about why in the Stolen Thunder part, never gives reasons about why. That weakness isn't a problem. All they do is state its existence. If person you're dealing with knows that you have a flaw, far better that you say it. And then at least you get the benefit of trustworthiness and believability. That's something I think can be applied far more often in negotiations or persuasion.

Richard, let me summarize this, making sure I get it. So we have three different scenarios. In the first one, we have the strong defense, and then we hear from the prosecution. And the second one, we have a weak defense, and then we hear from the prosecution. And in the third one, we have a weak defense. But at the end, you admit the weakness, and then you hear from the prosecution, and then in terms of persuasive value, it is the.

Strong defense, that is it gets the most innocent verdicts. Your next best is the Stolen Thunder, where the defense admitted the floor. The worst one for the defense perspective is when the defense never admitted the floor. Yes. So, point being, if you've got an amazing courtroom case, absolutely brilliant. But if in like most circumstances, there's going to be a problem, there's going to be conflicting evidence, if you admit that problem, then you stand to benefit.

I love this. And especially as a lawyer, I love this too. Because a lot of times, through no fault of your own, your client comes to you with flaws. Every client is going to have flaws. And I think a lot of times the ego of the lawyer can lead them to say, well, it almost reflects poorly upon me if there are flaws. But it's not that you, as a persuader are flawed necessarily. We all are flawed. But you understand, the point is that the Circumstance is not 100% perfect. And for us as negotiators, whatever realm we happen to find ourselves in, we have to recognize that sometimes we find ourselves through no fault of our own in situations that are not very advantageous, and we have to play our position. And a lot of times we overplay our hands because we think that's the best way to approach it. But what this study is showing us Is that that might undermine our credibility and therefore make us less persuasive.

Yeah, absolutely. In most situations you're not going to be, especially in a commercial situation, there's going to be skepticism from the other side. Because if you just say your product's amazing, the up, the other party is going to think, well, you would say that, wouldn't you? But if you admit there's a problem, then you have tangible honesty. Everything else becomes more believable. So I think it's dealing with the world as it is, rather than dealing with the world as you. As you want it to be. And the problem with most negotiations is that skepticism.

Absolutely, yes. And we have to recognize too, that a good negotiator to a certain extent has to have that level of skepticism or else somebody will take advantage of them. So we have to assume that they're going to come with that skepticism. And if they. And if we give them essentially what they're looking for and say, hey, here it is. Yeah, eases a little bit of that tension and helps them to trust you more. And now let's say somebody listens to this and they say, okay, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to steal their thunder. I'm going to talk about my weaknesses. What are some of the mistakes that people could make when doing this?

That's a brilliant question. So, of course, admitting a flaw is a broad recommendation. There are all sorts of types of flaws. What's interesting in my field of advertising is the best communicators don't admit a flaw randomly. So you admit a flaw that has a mirror weakness. One of the great alcohol campaigns from around the world is Guinness. And for a long time they used to say in their strap line, good things come to those who wait. Brilliance of that line is you admit that it takes time for a pint of Guinness to be poured. So you admit the problem of delay and waiting. But most people in their mind have a trade off with slowness. We believe if things are slow, they're going to be high quality. Or Listerine, the taste you hate twice a day. You admit that you taste foul. But people assume, well, if you taste foul, you're going to be really potent. So the best communicators, I think, find a weakness that has that mirror strength.

Oh, that's brilliant. So it's one of those situations where you admit, yes, this is a weakness, but at the same time is a good thing for this reason.

Yeah. Yes. Now you got to be careful here. You can't humble Brag. You can't say, you know their classic interview, responsive. What's your weakness? Oh, I'm a perfectionist. That will just irritate people. It's got to be a genuine flaw. Now in a maybe a one to one or a business to business commercial setting, your flaw might be that you're expensive. Now that's quite interesting because although price, high price might put some people off, most people assume if you're high priced, you're high quality. So if the case is that you are trading at a premium versus your competitors, there is an advantage sometimes to leaning into that. The other party is going to find out anyway and you want to make sure they connect and are reminded of high price equaling high quality. So yeah, it's really about picking the best flaw to admit.

This is great.

And what this is telling me too, it shows the power of preparation before these conversations because if you do your research, you understand what your flaws are going to be, then you can think about how you can strategically introduce that in a way that is non threatening during the negotiation preparation.

I think you're right is very important because if you go back to that original Kipling Williams study, in his argument he's saying, well admit the flaw if the other party's going to be aware of it eventually. So trying to work out what they already, the other party already think of you, I think you're right. That's an area that would reward preparation.

Love it. Love it. All right, and now let's move on to that next point too. The precision of claims and making benefits concrete.

Yeah, so two separate points. First one around precision. And again, this is trying to overcome the challenge of a trust gap. So the study in question comes from Schindler at Rutgers University and gets a group of people, randomizes them into two separate groups. The first group see an ad for a deodorant picture of the deodorant description. And within the description the ad says reduces perspiration by 50%. Next group, same picture, same description, but the percentage changes. Now it either says it reduces perspiration by 47% or 53%. So essentially some people see a round claim, 50%, some see a precise claim, 47 or 53%. Schindler then questions everyone as to one, how accurate do they think that claim about perspiration reduction is? And two, how believable or credible is it? Now, the group who heard the precise number rate, accuracy, 10% higher, credibility, believability, 5% higher. Schindler's argument is the over time, people have got so used to hearing those who are speculating using round numbers and those who know their stuff using precise numbers that the two things become fused together. We're very attuned to this. If someone said to you, how old's your brother? You'd probably say, well, he's 37 or 38, depending on his age. If someone said to you, how old that old guy lives six doors down from in your road, you'd say, oh, he's in his 60s, in his 70s. We learn over time that if you know what you're talking about, you tend to come up with precise numbers. If you are guessing, you tend to speak generally. So if, let's say your children. Yes. Actually reduces perspiration by 51%, don't make the mistake of most brands. And rounding down to a nice, clean, round number that will reduce its believability. Use the specific number. That's actually the truth.

I love this. And the timing of this, Richard, is perfect, because just an hour ago I was delivering a training for a real estate company and we're talking about how to, first of all, how to list your prices. I said every price on your website is a round number. That makes it more ripe for negotiation. That's the first thing. And then when you're conceding, when you're making your concessions, you want to think about it beforehand. And if you concede on a round number, then it makes it more likely for the person to invalidate that number and not take it as seriously. So you want to think about it beforehand and come up with precise numbers. And so just incorporating this psychology into your negotiations makes the offers and counteroffers that you make so much more persuasive. Yes.

So, interestingly, you mention a development of this idea from, from Schindler around precise prices. Now, precise prices are fascinating. Some work from the mid-90s from the University of Florida, where they showed that if you showed someone a precise price, they were more likely to think it was worth that price than if you gave them a round price. But. And this was Januszewski and you. I think the experiment was a little bit abstract. It was asking people to speculate on what they do. I think it was students as an audience. So it always had a little bit of uncertainty around it from the academic backing. But recently Uber have released data. Now they have a big behavioral science team. So if you get into an Uber, you've probably been in one of the experiments and they released data saying that they had been testing surge pricing. Right. So you and me might be on the same road, different ends of the same road. You look for an Uber and you're given a 2x search price. I'm given an Uber and I'm giving a 2.1x search price. What Uber found was that on average I would be more likely to accept the ride. So even though I'm seeing a higher price, I'm more likely to accept it because being slightly skeptical, if we see round prices, we assume they've been marked up a lot, whereas if we see a really precise price, we probably still think it's been round up, but just edged up in small degrees. So there's this lovely opportunity, as you say, with your real estate client, if you've ever got round prices, just put them up a little bit, you've got more margin, they'll be perceived to be better value.

Oh, I love this and I love the validation. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much. And I think this is a good opportunity, listeners, if you plan on using that technique or any of the ones that Richard said, give Richard a five star review on the podcast. Don't give it to me, just give it to Richard. That's, you know, that's what we're doing here. This is great, man. I love that. And I know we're coming up on time too. And then let's hit that last point, making benefits concrete.

So, yeah, lovely study. The original one was done 1972 by Ian Begg at the University of Western Ontario. Simple study, reads out a list of 22 word phrases. The phrases that he reads out, they're all jumbled up so the participants can't guess what he's doing. But they fall into two types of. Half of the phrases are what he calls abstract phrases. So things like better excuse or impossible amount. These are things that you cannot visualize. They're intangibles. The other half of the phrases are physical things. So white horse or square door, he reads out the list. After he's read it out, he asks people to recall as much as they possibly can. And he finds that on average, people remember 9% of the abstract words, 36% of the concrete words. So there is a massive fourfold difference in memorability. Begg's argument is vision is the most powerful of our senses. So if you use language that people can visualize, what you say will be very memorable and sticky. If you use abstract language, very forgettable. Now, that idea can definitely be applied in a business setting because lots of times professionals talk about their premiumness, their trustworthiness their quality. The problem is they're all abstractions. What you have to do as a communicator is translate those abstractions into concrete, visualizable words. And if you think about maybe one of the best and most effective brands ever, Apple, that's exactly what they used to. With the ipod. All the competitors talked about 126 or 256 megabytes of memory. They talked about memory in an abstract way. What Apple did was still talk about the abstract concept of memory, but they turned it into something visualizable. Thousand songs in your pocket. A picture of pocket. You can imagine a song that's memorable in a way that those abstractions will never be.

Incredible. And this is not. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here, but I think for just for me, as a business owner here and somebody who negotiates every day just these little tweaks, I can see immediately how it could lead to better understanding, more collaboration, less distrust and more persuasive value while still being really honest and transparent with the way that you negotiate.

Yeah, I love your point about honesty. What I'm not suggesting is people make up a flaw or make up precision or make up concrete word. Most of the time we have flaws. The data probably was precise until we rounded it. And changing a word isn't immoral. So you're absolutely right. All of these principles you've got to apply, honestly. But if you do. Absolutely. They'll have a positive effect.

Absolutely. Oh, Richard, this was so good. I really appreciate this. And before you go, can you remind the listeners again how they can get in touch with you and the books that you've written too?

So two books on this topic, the Choice Factory and the Illusion of Choice. And then if they want to get in contact, LinkedIn's great. So it's Richard Shotton. I often tweet or just tweet about psychology and marketing. And that's at R. Shotten on what I guess I should call X now rather than Twitter, but people know what I mean.

Fantastic. Richard, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before.

Just kidding.

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