KeAnZu

A new P.T. Barnum Psychology Clinic has just opened at your local shopping mall and is offering a Grand Opening Special on personality tests. You have always wanted to know more about yourself, so you sign up. Here is Barnum’s true-false test.

Questionnaire for Universal Assessment of Zealous Youth (QUAZY)

You turn in your answers. A few minutes later a computer prints out your individual personality profile:

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times, you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extraverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic. (Forer, 1949, p. 120)

Do you agree with this assessment?

An experiment along these lines has been conducted a number of times with psychology classes (Forer, 1949; Marks & Kammann, 1980; Ulrich, Stachnik & Stainton, 1963). Students started by filling out a questionnaire - one that looked fairly reasonable, not something as preposterous as the QUAZY. Several days later, each student received a sealed envelope with his or her name on it. Inside was a “personality profile,” supposedly based on the student’s answers to the questionnaire. The students were asked, “How accurately does this profile desribe you?” About 90% rated it good or excellent. Some expressed amazement at its accuracy: “I didn’t realise until now that psychology was an exact science.” Of course, none of them realised that everyone had received exactly the same personality profile - the same one you just read.

The students accepted this personality profile party because it vaguely and generally describes almost everyone and party because people tend to accept any statement that an “expert” makes about them. Richard Kammann repeated the experiment but substituted a strange, unflattering personality profile that included statements like “Your boundless enthusiasm is a little wearisome to your friends” and “You seem to find it impossible to work out a satisfactory adjustment to your problems.” More than 20% of the students rated this unlikely assortment of statements a “good to excellent” description of their own personality (Marks & Kammann, 1980).

The moral of the story is this: Psychological testing is tricky. If we want to know whether a particular test measures a particular person’s personality, we cannot simply ask whether or not that person thinks it does. Even if a test is totally worthless - horoscopes, palm reading or the QUAZY - many people will describe the results as a “highly accurate” description of themselves. To devise a psychological test that not only appears to work but actually does work, we need to go through some elaborate procedures to design the test carefully and to determine its reliability and validity.

Introduction to PSYCHOLOGY 6edamazon.com

James W. KALAT

ISBN 0-534-53988-2



Chapter 13 : Personality

pp 562-563 (in 3ed)

Early in this century, Mr. von Osten, a German mathematics teacher, set out to prove that his horse, Hans, had great intellectual abilities, particularly in arithmetic. To teach Hans arithmetic, he first showed him a single object, said “One,” and lifted Hans’ foot once. Then he raised Hans’ foot twice for two objects, and so on. Eventually, when von Osten presented a group of objects, Hans tapped his foot by himself, and with practice he managed to tap the correct number of times. With more practice, it was no longer necessary for Hans to see the objects. Von Osten would just call out a number, and Hans would tap the appropriate number of times.

Von Osten moved on to addition and then to subtraction, multiplication, and division. Hans seemed to catch on amazingly quickly, soon responding with 90-95% accuracy. Von Osten began touring Germany to exhibit Hans’ abilities. He would give Hans a question, either orally or in writing, and Hans would tap out the answer. As time passed, Hans’ abilities grew, just from being around humans, without any special training. Soon he was able to add fractions, convert fractions to decimals or vice versa, do simple algebra, tell time to the minute, and give the values of all German coins. Using a number-to-letter code, he could spell out the names of objects and even identify musical notes, such as D or B-flat. (Hans, it seems, had perfect pitch.) He responded correctly even when questions were put to him be persons other than von Osten, in unfamiliar places with von Osten nowhere in sight.

Given this evidence, many people were ready to assume that Hans had great intellectual prowess. But others were not. Why not? Certainly the evidence was replicable. The problem was parsimony. No previous research had led us to assume that a nonhuman animal could perform complex mathematical calculations. Was there a simpler explanation?

Enter Oskar Pfungst. Pfungst (1911) discovered that Hans could not answer a question correctly if the questioner had not calculated the answer first. Evidently the horse was not actually doing the calculations but was somehow getting the answers from the questioner. Next Pfungst learned that Hans had to see the experimenter. When he experimenter stood in plain sight, Hans’ accuracy was 90% or better; when he could not see the experimenter, he either did not answer or made a wild guess.

Eventually Pfungst observed that any questioner who asked Hans a question would lean forward to watch Hans’ foot. Hans had simply learned to start tapping whenever someone stood next to his right forefoot and leaned forward. As soon as Hans had given the correct number of taps, the experimenter would give a slight upward jerk of the head and change facial expression in anticipation that this might be the last tap. (Even skeptical scientists who tested Hans did this involuntarily.) Hans simply continued tapping until he received that cue.

In short, Hans was indeed a clever horse. But what he did could be explained in simple terms that did not involve mathematical calculations of any other advanced cognitive process. We prefer the explanation in terms of facial expressions because it is more parsimonious.

Introduction to PSYCHOLOGY 6edamazon.com

James W. KALAT

ISBN 0-534-53988-2



Chapter 2 : Scientific Methods in Psychology

pp 36-37 (in 3ed)

First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a tune or sing. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy. Here is the way the psychologist and philosopher William James put it:

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there…”

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. It depends on inner conditions.

It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have an equal amount of money and prestige - and yet one may be miserable and the other happy. Why? Because of a different mental attitude. I have seen just as many happy faces among the poor peasants toiling with their primitive tools in the devasting heat of the tropics as I have seen in airconditioned offices in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

“There is nothing good or bad,” said Shakespeare, “but thinking makes it so.”

Abe Lincoln once remarked that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He was right. I saw a vivid illustration of that truth as I was walking up the stairs of the Long Island Railroad station in New York. Directly in front of me thirty or forty crippled boys on canes and crutches were struggling up the the stairs. One boy had to be carried up. I was astonished at their laughter and gaiety. I spoke about it to one of the men in charge of the boys. “Oh, yes,” he said, “when a boy realizes that he is going to be a cripple for life, he is shocked at first; but after he gets over the shock, he usually resigns himself to his fate and then becomes as happy as normal boys.”

I felt like taking my hat off to those boys. They taught me a lesson I hope I shall never forget.

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART TWO - Six ways to make people like you

2 - A simple way to make a good first impression

pp 70-71

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is the secret set down in his own words - words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live by them:

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.”

“There is nothing else that so kills the ambition of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART ONE - Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

2 - The Big Secret of Dealing with People

pp 24-25

On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln lay dying in a hall bedroom of a cheap lodging house directly across from Ford’s Theater, where John Wilkes Booth had shot him. Lincoln’s long body lay stretched diagonally across a sagging bed that was too short for him. A cheap reproduction of Rosa Bonheur’s famous painting The Horse Fair hung above the bed, and a dismal gas jet flickered yellow light.

As Lincoln lay dying, Secretary of War Stanton said, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men that the world has ever seen.”

What was the secret of Lincoln’s success in dealing with people? I studied the life of Abraham Lncoln for ten years and devoted all of three years to writing and rewriting a book entitled Lincoln the Unknown. I believe I have made as detailed and exhaustive a study of Lincoln’s personality and home life as it is possible to make. I made a special study of Lincoln’s method of dealing with people. Did he indulge in criticism? Oh, yes. As a young man in the Pigeon Creek Valley of Indiana, he not only criticized but he wrote letters and poems ridiculing people and dropped these letters on the country roads where they were sure to be found. One of these letters aroused resentments that burned for a lifetime.

Even after Lincoln had become a practicing lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, he attacked his opponents openly in letters published in the newspapers. But he did this just once too often.

In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lampooned him through an anonymous letter published in the Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter. Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation. He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse, started after Lincoln, and challenged him to a duel. Lincoln didn’t want to fight. He was opposed to dueling, but he couldn’t get out of it and save his honor. He was given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, on the appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but, at the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped the duel.

That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealng with people. Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he almost never criticized anyone for anything.

Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a new general at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and each one in turn-McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Meade-blundered tragically and drove Lincoln to despair. Half the nation savagely condemned these incompetant generals but Lincoln, “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace. One of his favorite quotations was “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

…

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it. But why not start on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others-yes, and a lot less dangerous. “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbour’s roof,” said Confucius “when your own doorstep is unclean.”

…

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism-no mattter how certain that we are that it is justified.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was the American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, “…and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain-and most fools do.

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART ONE - Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1 - “If You Want To Gather Honey, Don’t Kick over the Beehive”

pp 8-13

Although this is a simple point, it can often escape us when we experience the heightened desirability that scarce items naturally possess. I can cite a family example. My brother Richard supported himself through school by employing a compliance trick that cashed in handsomely on the tendency of most people to miss that simple point. In fact, his tactic was so effective that he had to work only a few hours each weekend for his money, leaving the rest of the time free for his studies.

Richard sold cars, but not in a showroom nor on a car lot. He would buy a couple of used cars sold privately through the newspaper on one weekend and, adding nothing but soap and water, would sell them at a decided profit through the newspaper on the following weekend. To do this, he had to know three things. First, he had to know enough about cars to buy those that were offered for sale at the bottom of their blue-book price range but could be legitimately resold for a higher price. Second, once he got the car, he had to know how to write a newspaper ad that would stimulate substantial buyer interest. Third, once a buyer arrived, he had to know how to use the scarcity principle to generate more desire for the car than it perhaps deserved. Richard knew how to do all three. For our purposes, though, we need to examine his craft with just the third.

For a car he purchased on the prior weekend, he would place an ad in the Sunday paper. Because he knew how to construct a good ad, he usually received an array of calls from potential buyers on Sunday morning. Each prospect who was interested enough to want to see the car was given an appointment time - the same appointment time. So if six people were scheduled, they were all scheduled for, say, two o’clock that afternoon. This little device of simultaneous scheduling paved the way for later compliance because it created an atmosphere of competition for a limited resource.

Typically, the first prospect to arrive would begin a studied examination of the car and engage in standard car-buying behaviour, such as pointing out any blemishes or deficiences or asking if the price was negotiable. The psychology of the situation changed radically, however, when the second buyer drove up. The availablity of the car to either prospect suddenly became limited by the presence of the other. Often the earlier arrival, inadvertently stoking the sense of rivalry, would assert his right to primary consideration. “Just a minute now. I was here first.” If he didn’t assert that right, Richard would do it for him. Addressing the second buyer, Richard would say, “Excuse me, but this other gentleman was here before you. So can I ask you to wait on the other side of the driveway for a few minutes until he’s finished looking at the car? Then, if decides he doesn’t want it or if he can’t make up his mind, I’ll show it to you.”

Richard claims that it was possible to watch the agitiation grow on the first buyer’s face. His leisurely assessment of the car’s pros and cons had suddenly become a now-or-never, limited time only rush to decision over a contested resource. If he didn’t decide for the car - at Richard’s asking price - in the next few minutes, he might lose it for good to that … that … lurking newcomer over there. For his part, the second buyer would be equally agitated by the combination of rivalry and restricted availability. He would pace on the periphery, visibly straining to get at this now more desirable hunk of metal. Should two-o’clock appointment number one fail to buy or even fail to decide quickly enough, two-o’clock appointment number two was ready to pounce.

If these conditions alone were not enough to secure a favorable purchase decision immediately, the trap snapped surely shut as soon as the third two-o’clock appointment arrived on the scene. According to Richard, stacked-up competition was usually too much for the first prospect to bear. He would end the pressure quickly by either agreeing to Richard’s price or by leaving abruptly. In the latter instance, the second arrival would strike at the chance to buy out of a sense of relief coupled with a new feeling of rivalry with that … that … lurking newcomer over there.

All those buyers who contributed to my brother’s college education failed to recognise a fundamental fact about their purchases: The increased desire that spurred them to buy had little to do with the merits of the car. That failure of recognition occured for two reasons. First, the situation Richard arranged for them produced an emotional reaction that made it difficult for them to think straight. Second, as a consequence, they never stopped to think that the reason they wanted the car in the first place was to use it, not merely to have it. And the competition-for-a-scarce-resource pressures of possessing it. Those pressures did not affect the value of the car in terms of the real purpose for which they wanted it.

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasionamazon.com

Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D

ISBN 0-688-12816-5



Chapter 7 Scarcity : The rule of the few

pp 268-270

The story of the Werther effect is both chilling and intriguing. More than two centuries ago, the great man of German literature, Johann von Goethe, published a novel entitled Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). The book, in which the hero, named Werther, commits suicide, had a remarkable impact. Not only did it provide Goethe with immediate fame, but it also sparked a wave of emulative suicides across Europe. So powerful was this effect that authorities in several countries banned the novel.

Professor Phillips’ own work has traced the Werther effect to modern times. His research has demonstrated that immediately following a front-page suicide story the suicide rate increases dramatically in those geographic areas where the story has been highly publicized. It is Phillips’ argument that certain troubled people who read of another’s self-inflicted death kill themselves in imitation. In a morbid illustration of the principle of social proof, these people decide how they should act on the basis of how some other troubled person has acted.

Phillips got his evidence for the modern-day Werther effect by examining the suicide statistics in the United States between 1947 and 1968. He found that within two months after every front-page suicide story, an average of fifty-eight more people than usual killed themselves. In a sense, each suicide story killed fifty-eight people who otherwise would have gone on living. Phillips also found this tendency for suicides to beget suicides occured principally in those parts of the country where the first suicide was highly publicized and that the wider the publicity given the first suicide, the greater the number of later suicides.

If the facts surrounding the Werther effect seem to you suspiciously like those surrounding the influence of suicide stories on air and trafffic fatalities, the similarities have not been lost on Professor Phillips either. In fact, he contends that all the excess deaths following a front-page suicide incident can be explained by the same thing: copycat suicides. Upon learning of another’s suicide, an uncomfortably large number of people decide that suicide is an appropriate action for them as well. Some of these individuals then proceed to commit the act in a straightforward no-bones-about-it fashion, causing the suicide rate to jump.

Others, however are less direct. For any of several reasons - to protect their reputations, to spare their families the shame and hurt, to allow their dependents to collect on insurance policies - they do not want to appear to have killed themselves. They would rather seem to have died accidentally. So, purposively but furtively, they cause the wreck of a car or a plane they are operating or are simply riding in. This could be accomplished in a variety of all-too-familiar-sounding ways. A commericial-airline pilot could dip the nose of the aircraft at a crucial point of takeoff or could inexplicably land on an already occupied runway against instructions from the control tower; the driver of a car could suddenly swerve into a tree or into oncoming traffic; a passenger in an automobile or corporate jet could incapacitate the operator, causing a deadly crash; the pilot of a private plane could, despite all radio warnings, plow into another aircraft. Thus the alarming climb in crash fatalities we find following front-page suicides is, according to Dr. Phillips, most like due to the Werther effect secretly applied.

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasionamazon.com

Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D

ISBN 0-688-12816-5



Chapter 4 Social Proof : Truths are us

pp 145-147

There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a heavy object, we will estimate the second object to be heavier than if we had lifted it without first trying the light one. The contrast principle is well established in the field of psychophysics and applies to all sorts of perceptions besides weight. If we are talking to a beautiful woman at a cocktail party and are then joined by an unattractive one, the second woman will strike us as less attractive than she actually is.

In fact, studies done on the contrast principle at Arizona State and Montana State universities suggest that we may be less satisfied with the physical attractiveness of our own lovers because of the way the popular media bombard us with examples of unrealistically attractive models. In one study college students rated a picture of an average-looking member of the opposite sex as less attractive if they had first looked through the ads in some popular magazines. In another study, male college-dormitory residents rated the photo of a potential blind date. Those who did so while watching an episode of the Charlie’s Angels TV series viewed the blind date as a less attractive woman than those who rated her while watching a different show. Apparently it was the uncommon beauty of the Angels female stars that made the blind date seem less attractive.

A nice demonstration of the perceptual contrast is sometimes employed in psychopshyics laboratories to introduce students to the principle firsthand. Each student takes a turn sitting in front of three pails of water - one cold, one at room temperature, and one hot. After placing one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water the student is told to place both in the lukewarm water simulatanouesly. The look of amused bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though both hands are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold water feels as if it is now in hot water, while the one that was in the hot water feels as if it is now in cold water. The point is that the same thing - in this instance room temperature water - can be made to seem very different, depending on the nature of the event that precedes it.

Be assured that the nice little weapon of influence provided by the contrast principle does not go unexploited The great advantage of this principle is not only that it works but also that it is virtually undetectable. Those who employ it can cash in on its influence without any appearance of having structured the situation in their favor. Retail clothiers are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men’s store and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you were the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him likely to spend the most money? Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to purchase a suit, he may be reluctant to spend very much more on the purchase of a sweater. But the clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first because when it comes time to look at the sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison. A man might balk at the idea of spending $95 for a sweater, but if he has just bought a $495 suit, a $95 sweater does not seem excessive. The same principle applies to a man who wishes to buy the accessories (shirt, belt, shoes) to go along with his new suit. Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence supports the contrast-principle prediction. As sales motivation analysts Whitney, Hubin, and Murphy state, “The interesting thing is that even when a man enters a clothing store with the express purpose of purchasing a suit, he will almost always pay more for whatever accessories he buys if he buys them after the suit purchase than before.”

It is much more profitable for the salespeople to present the expensive item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result - hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organisations. So, just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear hotter or colder, depending on the temperature of previously presented water, it is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher or lower, depending on the price of a previously presented item.

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasionamazon.com
Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D
ISBN 0-688-12816-5

Chapter 1 : Weapons of Influence
pp 11-14

Who needs a truck?

Living in SE Asia you get to see a lot of motorcycles. A whole lot of motorcycles. People cart their entire families on these motorcycles and manage to transport all manner of goods. Take a look at some of the innovative uses below.

I saw the new LG chocolate and thought it looked pretty cool. Luckily I read this review before buying one:
Heavily Hyped Cellphone Won’t Make You a Chocoholic

“Whenever I review a product this badly designed, I just stare at the ceiling and try to imagine how it could possibly have gotten out the door. Haven’t successes like the iPod and the Treo taught the marketers anything about making things work simply and well? It’s stunning that nobody in a position of power at LG or Verizon actually tried this thing, tried pressing those infernal passive-aggressive buttons, and realized that the Chocolate is a usability disaster.”

Got myself a new Nokia instead.