Aesoph Group

By Christopher Aesoph, MA

     People are easily manipulated, maddeningly, frighteningly so. In an experiment, people were asked to write the last two digits of their Social Security number on a piece of paper, between 00 on the low end and 99 on the high end. They were then asked to bid on various items, like a bottle of wine. The study showed, conclusively, that the people who had higher values in their Social Security numbers always bid higher, and those who had lower values consistently bid lower. In other words, by writing down high or low numbers, people’s thinking was influenced upward or downward.

In another experiment, people were asked to estimate something most people wouldn’t know: the number of African countries represented in the United Nations. The presence of a wheel of fortune played a major part in the outcome. When the wheel was spun, estimates swelled or diminished based on the value of the random number that turned up. The tendency of a number to become lodged in our minds and influence our thinking is called the anchoring effect,¹ and has been studied primarily in understanding economics, for instance, how a retailer might attract customers to a higher-priced item by pricing it even higher, and then marking it “on sale.”

The anchoring effect also manifests itself when we take a few traits or characteristics of someone or something and fit them to a stereotype. For example, when told that a man is quiet, shy, reserved, and self-effacing, what do you think his likely profession is, salesman or brain surgeon? Most people would probably choose brain surgeon because their stereotype of a salesman is of an outgoing, gregarious person. But the odds² of any given man being a salesman are much higher than the odds of being a brain surgeon—because there are many more salesmen than surgeons—so the probability is greater that the fellow is a salesman.

If we are so easily misled in our thinking on hard issues like numbers and statistical realities, how pliable are we in our perceptions and judgments on soft issues, like who is trustworthy and reliable? The idea that our attitudes, our offhanded comments, our hidden agendas—hidden as well from ourselves—can and do influence others powerfully, well this thought should strike fear in anyone who has ever made a decision, raised a child, partnered with someone in marriage or business, or held anything akin to a leadership position. I wish I had the answer on how to be something other than a random number generator when it comes to influencing people for good. Our ability to manipulate, upward or downward, people’s perceptions and reactions, is unpredictable and mysterious.

As a recovered Trekkie, I have a large mental file of significant moments available for reference. In the case of this writing, this will have to suffice rather than a quote from Shakespeare or Byron. In the original Star Trek series, one of the aliens describes our race—he calls us hue-mons—as ugly bags of water that make noise. Even at age 14, I knew I had just heard something that was dreadfully, wonderfully true. Now I can add to that wisdom the fact that we're easily led or misled by randomness. It’s amazing we can get anything done. All I can say for sure today is, to keep our spirits up, think of the number 99 as often as you can.

1 Ariely, Dan (2008) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, HarperCollins

2 The Skeptic’s Dictionary, Robert T. Carroll

Further reading: Gardner, Daniel (2008) The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger, Dutton

Gilovich, Thomas  (1993) How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, Free Press

Gilovich, Thomas, Dale Griffin and Daniel Kahneman  (2002) eds, Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Cambridge University Press

Groopman, Jerome. M.D. (2007) How Doctors Think, Houghton Mifflin