Buyers are Liars
(Your Customer's Memory Means You
Have to Persuade Differently)
Kevin Hogan
"Buyers are liars."
Maybe...but maybe not.
And the same thing that opens the door to their mind...
opens the gate to you being able to reprogram your mind
for wealth, happiness and a whole lot of other cool stuff....
Analyze this with me:
Forty-five 1st-year psychology students were told 3
stories about their grade-school experiences and asked about
their memories of them. Two of the accounts were of real grade
3 to 6 events recounted to the researchers by the
participant's parents. The third event was fictitious, but also
attributed to the parents. It related how, in grade 1, the
subject and a friend got into trouble for putting Slime (a
colorful gelatinous goo-like toy made by Mattel that came in a
garbage can) in their teacher's desk.
The participants were encouraged to recall the events through a
mix of guided imagery and "mental context re-instatement"--the
mental equivalent of putting themselves back in their grade-
school shoes. Half of the participants were also given their
real grade one class photo, supplied by their parents.
So a bunch of Psych students are told that this event happened
when they were kids. Half of the psych students were shown
photos of their first grade class picture. Make sense?
Question One: Estimate the percentage of students who literally
believed the Slime story to be true in the groups where they
were not given their class photo.
a) 3% b) 9% c) 14% d) 20% e) 25% f) 45% g) 67%
Question Two: Estimate the percentage of students who literally
believed the Slime story to be true in the groups where their
actual First Grade Class Photo was shown to the students.
a) 16% b) 28% c) 45% d) 58% e) 67%
The answers are first, that the mere suggestion of the Slime incident
attributed to the parents caused 25% of the people to believe it
actually happened! That is rather amazing, but consistent with
what we know about suggestibility.
1 in 4 people believed an event to be true, even though no such event
took place in the person's life!
