Vanessa Bohns: Misunderstanding Influence Could Be Your Biggest Mistake

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Hey everyone, it's Kwame Christian, host of Negotiate Anything, asking you to please do not skip forward because this is not a commercial. Ok, I've got something for you. So we want to hear from you, our incredible listeners, because your feedback is super helpful in making the show even better. We've created a quick and fun form to get to know you, and this is your chance to make the show even closer to what you love. And here's the best part. You if you fill out the form before December 31, 2024, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a signed copy of my book delivered straight to your door. It only takes a few minutes, and your input will help to shape the future of Negotiate Anything. Find the form in the description of this episode and we'll announce the winner in January. Who knows, it might be you. Thanks for helping us to make the show even better and even more connected to you. Good luck in the raffle. Vanessa, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, it's our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Yeah, so I am an experimental social psychologist and a professor here at Cornell, and I've been studying social influence for over 15 years now. But I study social influence in kind of a different way than many other people tend to study it. So most people look at the ways that you can get people to do things or more influential. But I actually focus on our misperceptions about what we think is going to make us influential and the influence that we think we have, sort of how we imagine influence is going to go and then how that compares to reality. And so one of the main findings that I've uncovered over these 15 years of studying this question is that we tend to underestimate the influence that we have. And so I've written a book about that now called you, have More Influence Than youn Think. That kind of goes into how and why we do that.

This is exciting. And I know the listeners are probably going to say, oh, no, Kwame is going to talk about psychology, but I am. You are essentially living the dream of who I wanted to be. I lost my way and became a lawyer, but my undergrad degree is in psychology. So I really like this approach. And I appreciate that you're approaching it from a different angle, because you're right, a lot of people think about it in terms of how we can get other people to do what we want them to do. I think the majority of, if not all, books on influence are approaching it from that angle. So I'm really interested to explore a little bit deeper your approach. I think what would be a fascinating thing to discuss is how you came to approach this in this way when everybody else is doing it in a different way. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, definitely. I started out as just an ordinary generic social influence researcher with a professor I was working with at Columbia when I was a graduate student. We were doing a typical influence study where we had to get participants, and we wanted, you know, a nice diverse and adult demographic. So I went down to Penn Station, as opposed to doing it on campus with students, as we tend to do. And I would go down to Penn Station every day and basically ask people to fill out a survey. And I would go up to these strangers sitting there in Penn Station, waiting for their trains, one after the other, and say, will you fill out my survey? And, you know, see what happened? And at the end of all this. So I had to do this for, you know, day after day until we had enough participants that we could actually look at the data. And when I. We eventually looked at the data, my professor and I, we realized that the study didn't work. And so all of this kind of survey asking had been in vain. And I was just so distraught because I was like, this was such a horrible experience, like, going down, asking strangers to do this thing day after day. It was traumatic. And. And he looked at the data and he was like, you know, what you're describing does not fit what I'm seeing in this data, because I recorded how many people actually agreed each time I went up to them and asked them to complete a survey. And it turned out that most people were actually saying yes. Most people were, even if they said no, quite kind about it. And so there was this disconnect between how I thought influence was happening and how I was experiencing this situation of asking for something and how. How the other person was experiencing it and the reality of how influential I was. And so we talked through that kind of this disconnect between what was in my head and what was really happening and realized that maybe even though our initial hypothesis didn't work in the study we were running, maybe that was the interesting finding and that maybe we could see if other people similarly had this sort of overly pessimistic view of whether they could get other people to do things and how sort of awkward the interaction was going to be. And we could kind of see if their reality wound up being as sort of positive and more positive than they expected, just like mine was. And so we started running these studies where we brought people into the lab and basically put them in the same situation I was in and sent them out into the world to ask for things and had them sort of guess how the interactions were going to go and then keep track of how the interactions actually went.

Oh, this is great. This is really interesting. So what kind of things were you asking the people to do in your study?

Yeah, so we started out, you know, trying to keep it as similar to my experience as possible. And so our very first study was really simple, and we brought participants into the lab, and we said, you're going to go out and ask people just to fill out surveys. And we said, you're going to get five people to fill out these surveys. How many people do you think you're going to have to ask before five people agree? And so our participants first of all said that, you know, I think I'm going to have to ask about 20 people before 5 will agree. So that was kind of around the average. They also asked us a bunch of sort of illuminating questions. So they'd be like, you know, well, what if nobody agrees? What do I do? What if it takes way longer than you've allotted for the study? Like, what? You know, what if I'm out there for hours? So they clearly just thought this was going to be a really difficult task. They were really anxious about it and thought maybe they wouldn't even be able to accomplish the task of getting five people to fill a survey. And then they went out and did it, and they had this little tally sheet where they kept track of what, how many people they asked and how many people agreed? And it turned out they had to ask about 10 people before 5 agreed. So they had to ask about half as many. In other words, twice as many people were agreeing as they expected. And so that was our very first study. And we've gone on to replicate it with all sorts of other requests, like asking someone to borrow their cell phone to make a call asking for charitable donations. We teamed up with team in training and organization that you kind of get someone to sponsor you for a fundraising race. We have had them ask people for directions and then we could talk later, potentially about. We've also kind of moved on to having people ask other people for unethical things to see if this also kind of translated into those kinds of scenarios.

There's so much to address here, Vanessa. Okay, so a little micro negotiation note. I think when we talk about it from a negotiation perspective, we always say, ask more questions, ask more questions. Improve the good point where you said that the questions that the participants were asking were quality of questions that you asked. But we don't often address enough the fact that you can learn a lot about the other person and where they're coming from and their perspective from the questions that they ask you. And so I think that's just an important note to answer there. And now when it comes to the confidence part, this is something that we've identified as a gap in performance, too, because we have a skills gap and we have a confidence gap because it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen because they can have all the skills in the world. But if they don't have the confidence to use the skills, then they're not going to use it. And so, based on what you're showing in this study that you gave an example of right there, people are twice as effective at having these difficult conversations than they expected.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that is you're just nailing so many of the takeaways that we talk about when we talk about this research. Because on the one hand, right, if you think that you are twice as likely to be rejected if you ask someone for something as you actually are, you know, what are you going to do? You're going to, first of all, probably hold back and just not ask half the time. So as you said, you're not actually going to get in the kitchen at all. So what's the point of having the recipes? And then you also might negotiate yourself down before you actually ask for something, because we kind of approach other People and negotiation and asking for things in this way where we feel like we're getting past no. Right. We think other people's default is to say no to us. Us to be resistant and disagreeable. And so we try to often make our ask more palatable to the other person. So, like, I may think I really want this, but they would never agree to that. So I'm going to ask for this thing I think they would agree to. Right. As opposed to. Actually, they're going to agree to whatever I ask. So I'm going to ask for what I think I deserve and what I, you know, actually want. And so this kind of confidence gap, which I think is just a beautiful way of describing it, really does have all these effects on what we ask for and whether we ask for things at all.

This is so fascinating because it reminds me of the negotiation tactic of anchoring. Anchoring is one of the most powerful negotiation tools at our disposal. Essentially, from a psychological perspective, it's priming, where thinking of one thing makes it likely for you to think about another thing, too. I did a whole episode on this back in August 2017. So if people want to reference that, they can check that out. But essentially, the more aggressive the request you make, as long as it's within reasonable parameters, the more likely you are to get closer to that request. It is a psychological impossibility for anchoring not to occur. It's just a question of whether or not we are using it with intentionality. But we're not going to be able to use the technique of anchoring effectively if we are already anchoring ourselves before we make the offer.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And as you said, anchoring is so powerful in negotiations. There's these studies showing that that first offer, that first ask, is so highly correlated with the final decided, negotiated outcome. So it's a hugely important phenomenon, and it's right. So we. I think one of the things is we are so worried about rejection, we hate to be told no. We're uncomfortable with conflict so often. And so we want to. Instead of sort of coming in with something that someone might reject or balk at, potentially, we want to come in with something that people are going to be, you know, amendable to. The problem is that, first of all, we miss that anchoring opportunity. Right? It's okay for someone to say no. You've started at a point, you've anchored it, and that's going get the discussion going. But also our idea of what someone would say yes to is wrong. We have these misperceptions Right. So we underestimate how much we can actually ask for, how much other people are willing to agree to. And so when we do negotiate ourselves down, it's often farther than we have to go. And so you wind up with these, you know, phenomenon like the winner's curse, right. Where you ask for something and other person is like, yeah, sure. And then you're like, oh, shoot, I totally should have asked for more, but I just couldn't have imagined that the person would have agreed to more.

Right, Exactly. Okay, now I cannot help myself, Vanessa, how do we get around that?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think one of the recommendations I often make is to sort of rethink and reframe situations where you ask for things or when you're going to go into a negotiation, as this person is likely to say yes to this. So we often, as I said, kind of frame it as, how am I going to get past no. We have an impression of other people as disagreeable, but research shows that actually when people just mindlessly are asked for things, their default is to agree. It's hard to say no to people. It's hard to argue against someone. And so we tend to default, even when we're just not thinking about it, to just going along with what people ask because we want to minimize that kind of conflict. But when we're asking for something, we don't think that. Right. We assume that the other person is actually going to default to saying no. And I think just a reframe of actually, in this case, this person, there's a good chance they'd say yes. Now, let's start from that. How am I going to ask now? What am I going to ask for? And that simple reframe, I think, is something that can be really powerful. It also changes your tone when you go into the negotiation or into a request. So you're not super aggressive necessarily. You have a little more confidence and comfort because you're like, okay, this isn't a situation where, you know, I'm trying to get past this disagreeable person. This person is an agreeable person because they're human and they want, you know, to come to an agreement. And so if I assume they're going to say yes, I can ask for a way that's kind of not unassertive. Right. But not too aggressive.

Yeah. Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the Folks on your team have better difficult conversations. At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed. Like that Goldilocks zone of tone, essentially. This is interesting, Vanessa, because I'm thinking about some of the challenges that I've heard a lot of times in these difficult conversations. So we've had a lot of people talking about people pleasing, oh, I have trouble saying no. I have trouble setting boundaries. You don't hear people say, you know, I'm too good at setting boundaries. I say no too often. That's not what people say. And so if we just think about it kind of logically, considering the outcomes of your studies, it shouldn't be that surprising because it seems like people struggle more by tipping too much towards saying yes rather than saying no. They struggle with the same thing that we struggle with. So it makes a lot of sense that they are oriented toward saying yes in. I don't want to say the majority because I'm not sure, but in more cases than we would initially assume.

Yeah, I think this is such a good point. And it comes up a lot like, why don't people get this? Right? It's not like we don't experience this ourselves. It's not like we're not asked for things all the time and feel obligated to say yes to them. So why, when we're in the position of asking for things, do we make this huge error? Right. Why can't we see that? And so there's a few reasons for that. One is something that, you know, comes into play in all sorts of situations, and that's negativity bias. And that's just the tendency for negative events and negative memories and things like that to loom larger, be more painful. We have a longer memory for those things. And so if I do ask, you know, five people for something and four of them say yes, but one says no, what do I remember? The one that said no. Right. And that's the painful salient memory when I go and need to ask somebody else. So that's one. And then the other is that we have something called egocentrism, which is this really diff. This difficulty with taking perspectives of other people and really putting ourselves in their position when we're not in the immediate position of the other person. So even though so many of us have been in this position of being asked for something and struggled to find the words to say no. Right. And gone along with things we maybe didn't even want to, it's hard in that moment when we're asking to remember what that feels like. I love. So there's a sort of a comparable comparison that people use where it's like, if you're really hungry, right. Versus when you're full, right? We've all been hungry. We've all been full. Say you eat dinner and you have these leftovers and you're totally stuffed and you're looking at your leftovers and you're like, there's no way I could eat this spaghetti for breakfast, right? So you're just like, I can't imagine eating the spaghetti for breakfast. It's just incomparable. The next morning, now you're hungry again, and you're like, oh, yeah, I could totally imagine eating spaghetti for breakfast. Right? Like, that actually looks pretty good. Even though we've experienced both states, hunger and fullness, we forget how much that motivational state, that hot sort of emotional state, can change the way we feel about a situation. You know, actually, that would look pretty good if I was hungry, right. So it actually would be really hard to say no if I was in that person's perspective. And so we're just really bad at drawing from our previous experiences, even though we've had them when we're in the moment of. In another sort of perspective in that experience.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's so interesting. What do you think about this perspective? Because I was thinking about the reason why people are afraid of these conversations. What kind of leads to the confidence gap. A big part of it is kind of going a bit further is the fear of rejection, too. And as a fellow psychology nerd, tell me what you think about this. So thinking about it from an evolutionary psychology perspective, if I am rejected today, Kwame Christian. Today, that's cool. I have other business opportunities. I'm fine. I'm good. But. But, Kwami, way back in the day, where we have a tribe and we have a small group of people, if I'm rejected from that society, I'm dead. I can't survive by myself. We're social animals. I'll either just die because it was a brutal time, but also just sadness. That's not how humans are supposed to live. The people who survived or the people who carried that fear of rejection And I think a lot of times we have these very visceral evolutionarily based fears that don't carry the same consequences in today's world, but they still feel the same.

Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. And this is the exact explanation I often give, which is that it is supposedly theoretically, evolutionarily, sort of, it comes from these evolutionary roots. And just to add to that, what I think is fascinating is being rejected is socially risky. Right. Which has this sort of I'd be expelled from the group evolutionary kind of risk. But we often forget that rejecting someone is also socially risky. Right. If I reject another person, I'm saying basically, you know, maybe I'm the relationship doesn't mean as much as they might have thought. You know, maybe you're going to think I'm not a nice person, maybe I'm going to damage my relationship with this person or your impression of me. And so there's also a social risk to rejecting. So being rejected, rejecting. It's all this way of kind of pushing yourself away from the evolutionary tribe. Right. And we do have these fundamental emotions that keep us attached to the tribe, which is that kind of emotional, fear based, kind of physiological experience you were talking about. And those are things like embarrassment and guilt and these kinds of moral or pro social emotions that still keep us connected. So I feel incredibly guilty if I reject you because I'm evolutionarily wired to stay with my tribe.

This is so cool. Yeah, you're spot on. When we think about going back to the book, because I want to be able to say that name as many times as possible so people know where to go to buy the book, you have more influence than you think. I think when you think about the prescriptive end, as we go deeper into what people can actually do with this information, what are some other things that we haven't discussed that you would suggest people do in order to maximize the opportunities that are presented to them.

Yeah. So there are a few things. So the book is divided into sort of two halves and the first half is really about all the positives of this. Right. People are more likely to do things for you than you think because they're inclined to be agreeable and it's hard to say no. And so actually you can get a lot more things from other people than you expect. And in many cases that is actually a good thing. And some sort of prescriptive recommendations that I give about that that are also sort of evolutionarily based. So one is that these findings are very much based on face to face interactions. And so when we have people ask for things over email, for example, we have a study where we had people ask for things face to face or over email. And face to face in that study was 34 times more effective. So just wildly more effective. But again, since I'm interested in people's perceptions, people actually didn't realize this when they guessed they thought they would be equally effective because they thought people would just do a cost benefit analysis and decide if they want to do this thing. But in fact, as we're talking about, it's so much more emotionally rooted and rooted in these fundamental human sort of aspects and emotions that when you're face to face with someone, that's when it's really hard to say no and you feel compelled to be agreeable. So that's one is ask for things face to face if you want a yes. Another one is asking for things directly. So a lot of us think that if we hint or beat around the bush, that that's kind of polite and that if someone really wants to help us, they'll just offer. And so we might say something like, you know, I could really use a phone to make a call right now. Right. And we think that that's just as effective as saying, hey, can I please use your phone to make a call? But we find in our studies that even though our participants actually think that it's more polite and effective to kind of gently hint at what you want, it is actually more effective to ask directly for the thing you want. Again, for many of the same reasons and also because it's just clearer communication. Right. You're trying to guess what someone really wants if they're hinting. And so, as I said, the book is divided into two parts. So that's like the prescriptions for getting more yeses. But I had the second half of the book is kind of a big caveat and all that, which is that if it is hard for people to say no to us, and if people actually feel like they have to be agreeable to kind of maintain relationships and stay in the tribe, they may feel like they have to agree to things that they feel uncomfortable doing, and that could be unethical things. It can be, you know, these me too situations. It can be situations where a boss asks you to do something you feel really uncomfortable with. And in those cases, we may also not realize how hard it is for someone to say no to us and how much they struggle with being disagreeable. And so we may ask for things in ways that are actually kind of irresponsible because we aren't taking that perspective into account. And so the second half of the book is like, okay, yes, when it's something that's reasonable and it's not going to hurt anybody. Ask for things in person directly. You know, do all these things to get that. Yes, because it's more likely than you expect. But if you're not sure, if you want to make sure someone is consenting, not just complying to something, if, you know, you have the sense that you're asking for something that may be a little bit ethically gray, those cases, you want to give people more space and not ask them face to face and actually be more aware of these dynamics in a way that makes you pull back as opposed to sort of ask more.

This is very good. I'm taking notes. This is great. This is great. So you sparked some ideas here. I really love these ideas and I love the way that you have. You've broken down the book into, here's a misperception or misconception that often holds people back in these difficult conversations. You're missing out on opportunities because of this. And this is what you can actually do to be better. But in being better, you might be too good, and you might get people to do things that they don't feel comfortable doing. You might tip towards manipulation inadvertently. I think this is really helpful. What do you think about this, Vanessa? Kind of shooting from the hip here, because it's sounding like a lot of these misconceptions that we have where we think that we're not going to be as influential and we think that asking over email is going to be as effective as asking in person. And I'm wondering how much of those initial, those misconceptions are rooted in bias. And so when you think about the brain, what we want to do in general, just big picture thinking, we want to avoid pain, and then we also want to conserve energy. And so when we think about the amount of social energy it would take to ask somebody face to face, we have to muster up a lot. But when we think about the amount of social energy it takes to send an email, it doesn't take as much. And so maybe we're not answering the question of which is more effective. We're asking the question of what do we want to be true? Because I want email negotiations to be as effective as it is in person, because I have to bring up a lot of energy to talk in person. And then also the rejection feels a lot harsher in person than it does via email. So in a lot of ways I'm hiding behind email and I want email to be as effective as in person, but it's not. And we think that we're thinking through it, but we're really just feeling through it.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think there is some motivated reasoning going on there. I definitely do think that people want email to be just as effective because it's just so much easier and because you can kind of email a bunch of people. So it's easier on so many different levels. It's interesting though, because we do ask people directly, you know, how many people do you think are going to basically respond to this request over email and face to face? And they just err in totally the opposite direction with both of those types of both of those ways of asking. So when we ask, you know, how many people are going to agree to this request that we have, you do in person. Right. They're supposed to ask 10 people a request in person or they email 10 people individually. They totally underestimate how many people will say yes face to face. And in that case, you would think the motivated reasoning would still be there. Like you would still hope that you're getting yeses. Right. Because everyone hates rejection. So I feel like it doesn't explain that result as much. And on the other side, we greatly underestimate how many people are. I'm sorry, overestimate how many people will say yes to emails. And so that's where maybe that motivated bias comes in. But I don't know that it explains it all. But I definitely think you're right on some level.

Yeah, it doesn't explain at all. There are some holes in it. And I think. And again, I might be personalizing this too, so my bias might be showing, Vanessa, because I know a lot of times when I don't want to do something, I'll just say, yeah, it won't work to justify my laziness. And so we come to that conclusion. We say, yeah, if I ask this many people, then they probably will say no. That justifies me just not doing it. Like, ah, why would I even try? And so we hold back. I don't know. But I think what we do know is this. The study is solid and it explains a lot. Right. Whatever the reason why is we know what it is. And I think that's what's most important.

Yeah. And you know, it's funny. So we have this kind of goes in a different direction, but we have another set of studies where we have people go and Give compliments to strangers. So instead of asking for something, you're basically giving something. And in those cases, people think that other people are going to be annoyed and aren't going to appreciate the compliment as much as they actually do, when in fact, you know, the person on the other side getting the compliment is like, oh, that was really nice. Like, why would I be annoyed that someone interrupted me and gave me a compliment? And just thinking about this idea of, like, I'd rather. I just don't want to do it. I think a lot of our participants are just like, I don't want to go talk to strangers. You know, like, I don't want to ask them for things. I don't want to talk to them and give them compliments. It doesn't. Like. Like, there's a lot of. And there is some research showing that, you know, people are really hesitant to go and just talk to people. Like, we don't realize all the positive benefits of asking for things in person, giving compliments and expressing gratitude, and even just having basic conversations with people in person that we tend to underestimate how important all of that is.

That's fascinating. So I'm wondering. You're in a better position to know this, but it's a kind of weird question. So you might not know it, but. But I'm wondering how many times we would. Or in how many experiments, or if there are any experiments where you put somebody in a position where they have to engage in a social interaction where their assumption was that the social interaction would go well.

Yeah, that's a great question. Sort of priming that idea, like, this is going to go well. I don't actually know. I know. So Nick Epley is one of the researchers who's done a lot of this research basically showing that people are under social because they underestimate the value of being social, and they think those social interactions are going to go more poorly than they. They are or than they ultimately do. But I don't know if he's actually directly tried to intervene in that and basically convince people, like, no, this will go well, so go ahead and do it. There's also. So one of my colleagues and collaborators, Erica Boothby, does this work on the liking gap, where people think after they interact with someone and then they walk away from that interaction that the person actually liked them, like, less than they actually did. Because we kind of do this postmortem where we obsess about all the things that we think we said wrong and how awkward we were, but the other person is basically walking away just thinking like, okay, that was a pleasant conversation, and worrying about all the things they think they did wrong. Right. So we do seem to have this. This bias, this fear that, you know, people are judging us more harshly than they are, that we are coming across more awkwardly than we are. And that's the case whether we're asking for things, just chatting, or even giving someone something nice like a compliment.

Wow. Well, let me tell you this, Vanessa, as we come up on time here, in case you were wondering, I did like our conversation and I did like this podcast. This has been really, really helpful. And I know a lot of listeners are saying, hey, I like that Vanessa lady. I think she's super smart. I want to buy her book. So can you remind them again about how they can get your book, what it's titled, and what they will get out of buying the book?

Yes, absolutely. So the book is you have More Influence Than youn Think. And you can find it pretty much anywhere or at my website, which is vanessabonds.com and in addition to sort of hearing about all these sorts of prescriptions for using your influence for good, this influence that you may not realize you have, there's also some fun studies that we didn't get to here, where we have our participants do things like ask people to vandalize library books. And we find many of the same kinds of dynamics, and so they can look forward to reading about those fun studies if they get the book.

Oh, this is great. So excited. Vanessa, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much. It's been a real pleasure.

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