International Law

Cialdini Interview on The Wisdom of the Crowd

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Interesting interview with Cialdini on persuasion techniques.

"In our hotel experiment, we considered the finding that the majority of hotel guests who encounter the towel reuse signs do actually recycle their towels at least some time during their stay.

What if we simply informed guests of this fact?

Would it have any influence on their participation in the conservation program relative to the participation rates that a basic environmental appeal yields?

With the cooperation of a hotel manager, two of us and another colleague created two signs and placed them in hotel rooms.

One was designed to reflect the type of basic environmental-protection message adopted throughout much of the hotel industry.

It asked the guests to help save the environment and to show their respect for nature by participating in the program.

A second sign used the social proof information by informing guests that the majority of guests at the hotel recycled their towels at least once during the course of their stay. These signs were randomly assigned to the rooms in the hotel. ...

Guests who learned that the majority of other guests had reused their towels (the social proof appeal), which was a message that we've never seen employed by even a single hotel, were 26 percent more likely than those who saw the basic environmental protection message to recycle their towels.4

That's a 26 percent increase in participation relative to the industry standard, which we achieved simply by changing a few words on the sign to convey what others were doing.

Not a bad improvement for a factor that people say has no influence on them at all."

Interesting interview and more techniques like the one above.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on January 29, 2009 (boomark / email).