These are the more familiar of many approaches for manipulating people into complying with your wishes (another example is reverse psychology, which you definitely shouldn’t look up yourself). Does this make much evolutionary sense? It’s supposed to be “survival of the fittest,” but how is being easily manipulated a useful advantage? We’ll look at this more in a later section, but the compliance techniques described here can all be explained by certain tendencies of the brain.?
A lot of these are linked to our self-image. Chapter 4 showed the brain (via the frontal lobes) is capable of self-analysis and awareness. So it’s not so far-fetched that we’d use this information and “adjust” for any personal failing. You’ve heard of people “biting their tongue,” but why do that? They may think someone’s baby is actually quite ugly, but stop themselves from saying this and instead say, “Oh, how cute.” This makes people think better of them, whereas the truth wouldn’t. This is something called “impression management,” which is where we try to control the impression people get of us via social behaviors. We care what other people think of us at a neurological level, and will go to great lengths to make them like us.
A 2014 study by Tom Farrow and his colleagues of the University of Sheffield suggested that impression management shows activation in the medial prefrontal cortex and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, along with other regions including the midbrain and cerebellum.12 However, these areas were noticeably active only when subjects tried to make themselves look bad, when choosing behaviors to make people dislike them. If they were choosing behaviors that made them look good, there was no detectable difference from normal brain activity.
Coupled with the fact that subjects were much faster at processing behaviors that made them look good as opposed to bad, they concluded that making us look good to others is what the brain is doing all the time! Trying to scan for it is like trying to find a specific tree in a dense forest; there’s nothing to make it stand out. The study in question was small, only 20 subjects, so it’s possible specific processes for this behavior might be found eventually, but the fact that there was still such a disparity between looking-good people and looking-bad people is striking.
But what does this have to do with manipulating people? Well, the brain seems to be geared towards making other people like it/you. All the compliance techniques arguably take advantage of a person’s desire to be seen positively by others. This is such an ingrained drive that it can be exploited.
If you’ve agreed to a request, rejecting a similar request would probably cause disappointment and damage someone’s opinion of you, so foot in the door works. If you’ve turned down a big request, you’re aware that the person won’t like you for this, so are primed to agree to a smaller request as a “consolation,” so door in the face works. If you’ve agreed to do or pay something and then the demand suddenly increases, backing out would again cause disappointment and make you look bad, so low-ball works. All because we want people to think well of us, to the point where it overrides our better judgement or logic.
It’s undoubtedly more complex than this. Our self-image requires consistency, so once the brain has made a decision it can be surprisingly hard to alter it, as anyone who’s tried explaining to an elderly relative that not all foreigners are filthy thieves will know. We saw earlier how thinking one thing and doing something that contradicts it creates dissonance, a distressing state where thinking and behavior don’t match. In response, the brain will often alter its thinking to match the behavior, restoring harmony.
Your friend wants money, you don’t want to give it. But you just gave them a slightly smaller amount. Why would you do this if you didn’t think it was acceptable? You want to be consistent, and liked, so your brain decides you do want to give them more money, and there we get the FITD. This also explains why making an active choice is important for low-ball: the brain has made a decision, so will stick to it to be consistent, even if the reason for the decision no longer applies; you’re committed, people are counting on you.
There’s also the principle of reciprocity, a uniquely human phenomenon (as far as we know) where people will respond in kind to people being nice to them, more so than self-interest would suggest.13 If you reject someone’s request and they make a smaller one, you perceive this as them doing something nice for you, and agree to be disproportionately nice in turn. DITF is believed to exploit this tendency, because the brain interprets “making a smaller request than the previous one” as someone doing you a favor, because it’s an idiot.
As well as this, there’s social dominance and control. Some (most?) people, in Western cultures at least, want to be seen as dominant and/or in control, because the brain sees this as a safer, more rewarding state. This can often manifest in questionable ways. If someone is asking you for things, they are subservient to you, and you stay dominant (and likeable) by helping them out. FITD fits nicely with this.
If you reject someone’s request, you assert dominance, and if they make a smaller request they have established they’re submissive, so agreeing with it means you can still be dominant and liked. A double whammy of good feelings. DITF can arise from this. And say you’ve decided to do something, then someone changes the parameters. If you then back out, this means they have control over you. To hell with that. You’ll go through with the original decision anyway, because you’re nice, damn it: low-ball.
To summarize, our brains make us want to be liked, to be superior, and to be consistent. As a result of all this, our brains make us vulnerable to any unscrupulous person who wants our money and has a basic awareness of haggling. It takes an incredibly complex organ to do something this stupid.
Achy Breaky Brain
(Why a relationship break-up is so devastating)
Have you ever found yourself in the fetal position on the sofa for days on end, curtains drawn, phone unanswered, moving only to haphazardly wipe the snot and tears from your face, wondering why the very universe itself has cruelly decided to torment you so? Heartbreak can be all-consuming and totally debilitating. It is one of the most unpleasant things a modern human can expect to experience. It inspires great art and music as well as some terrible poetry. Technically, nothing has physically happened to you. You haven’t been injured. You haven’t contracted a vicious virus. All that’s happened is you’ve been made aware that you won’t be seeing a person you had a lot of interaction with much any more. That’s it. So why does it leave you reeling for weeks, months, even for the rest of your life in some cases?