774: Jonah Berger | The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior

774: Jonah Berger | The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Peloton for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:04] Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:07] Jonah Berger: You know, we love to see ourselves unique special snowflakes, but in a working-class context, well, being similar is more okay. We like being similar to our friends. Why wouldn't one want to be similar to their family members that they love and care about?

[00:00:22] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. If you're new to the show, we have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional armed dealer and neuroscientist. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker.

[00:00:49] Today on the show, Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of Business, one of the top schools in the nation. He's an expert on word of mouth, viral marketing, social influence, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch. Today, we'll discover that humans have an anti-influence and anti-persuasion system. Of course, we'll also learn how to work around this, hopefully, for good. This episode centers around persuasion, especially as used in marketing and influence campaigns. We'll also learn why we don't even see influence in real time, even when we're trained to do so, and how we can sharpen ourselves to be more aware of influence attempts, subversive marketing, and of course, our own bias as well. This is one from the Vault recorded a long time ago, different gear. The content from this one is just too good not to air. It's a little bit Skype-y. You'll know when you hear it. It's not quite the same as what we put out now.

[00:01:38] Speaking of influence, if you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and celebrities every single week, it's because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they help contribute to the course. So come join us, you'll be in smart company.

[00:01:57] Now, here's Jonah Berger.

[00:02:02] Jonah, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. The book is interesting. Influence and anything having to do with influence and forces that shape behavior is always interesting for us. So we appreciate your time.

[00:02:13] Jonah Berger: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

[00:02:15] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me why Wharton, being a business school, is interested in influence and forces that shape behavior. It should be obvious, but I'd love to make that business connection immediately.

[00:02:23] Jonah Berger: Yeah. You know, I think whether we're a leader of a big company, a manager of a small business, or just an individual within an organization, even in our personal lives, influence is a powerful toolkit that we can use to help make better decisions, help shape our companies, and make ourselves more successful. And so it's a toolkit that everyone needs to use and understand.

[00:02:43] Jordan Harbinger: Excellent. Book title, by the way, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. And we'll link that in the show notes as well, of course, as we do with all the resources.

[00:02:52] One thing that I found not surprising, but really interesting, I suppose, about the concept of influence is that our choices are driven by our own personal preferences and opinions. It seems really obvious. It's not even worth mentioning except that's wrong. Our choices are not driven by our own personal preferences and our opinions. It's driven by something else.

[00:03:12] Jonah Berger: Yeah. I mean, I was talking to my dad a number of years ago now telling him I was working on social influence. He was lamenting influences' effect on others. God, you know, looking around, he was saying, you know, DC where my dad lives, he was saying, "DC lawyers, they're all the same. They all make it big. They make partner, they go out, and they buy a BMW." And I said, "Well, dad, aren't you a DC lawyer?" And he says, "Yeah." And I said, "And don't you drive a BMW?" And he says, "Yeah, but you know, I drive a blue one and everyone else drives gray ones." What I love about that, the story is we don't see influence. Sure. Maybe we see it in others. We see people dressing the same or listening to the same music, but when it comes to ourselves, we just don't see it. We think we're completely different. We think we buy what we buy because we like it or we like the color. It was on sale. We don't realize these subtle and often surprising effects that others are having on our behavior. But second, influence isn't just one flavor. It's not just that we do the same as others, which is what we often think of when we think of influence. Just as often we do something different, we avoid something because others were doing it or sometimes we're similar and different at the same time. We buy the same car brand, but we buy it in a different color.

[00:04:15] Jordan Harbinger: We can deconstruct a lot of this. Why do you think people don't notice their own influence? Why are we biased against our own bias?

[00:04:22] Jonah Berger: There are two reasons. I mean, one, in American culture, influence is a bad word, right? You say influence, people think of manipulation. Americans love to see, we love to see ourselves as independent, like special, unique snowflakes that's so different from everybody else. You know, particularly the millennials, our parents raised them to say, "You know, we're different." So, if difference is good, then we don't want to think that we're influenced that we're the same. Now, we don't want to think that others are affecting us, but we've actually done a bunch of research on this, and it turns out that even when influence is good, even when it would be a good thing to be influenced, people still don't think they're susceptible to it. It's not just about self-presentation. People don't see it. And the reason is that it often happens non-consciously, below our awareness.

[00:04:59] Take for example, how people name their kids. Everybody says if you ask them how they named their kid, they say, "Oh, my aunt or uncle, this is to honor them." Or you know, "This was my best friend's name growing up." They talk about their own likes, their own preferences. We actually looked at the data. We sifted through hundred years of baby names, how popular each name was every year for the last 125 years. And what we found is that names tend to be popular when other names have been popular recently. So let's say Lisa was popular last year. Well, now, other names like Larry and Lindsay might be more likely to be popular this year. Even though people think they're picking them based on their own likes and dislikes, they show up at kindergarten with their kids and everybody has the same name. And the reason is we're being affected by others. We don't realize that hearing Lisa, for example, makes Lindsay or Larry sound better, but the more fact that we've heard that sound makes the name more appealing.

[00:05:49] Even hurricanes, we would think hurricanes would hurt the popularity of names. Hurricane Katrina, for example, should decrease the number of babies born with Katrina, and they may, but if you look at other K names, well, 10 percent more babies are born with K names the year after Hurricane Katrina because people heard that K name a lot. Katrina made K name sound more familiar, and so they were more likely to pick those names even though they thought it was their own preferences that were driving their choices.

[00:06:13] Jordan Harbinger: It sounds like subliminal messaging, right? When you're in the movie theater and it's like, "You are thirsty, go buy a Coca-Cola," or whatever that sort of concept was that they came up with what was in the '60s maybe, or '70s that became illegal, delay messages in certain video frames so that you would do things. Is that even real? Now that I say it out loud, it doesn't sound real.

[00:06:30] Jonah Berger: Yeah, so the short answer is somebody said they did that and they were actually lying. So they didn't actually flash whether it was, you know, eat popcorn or drink soda on the screen, that didn't actually change sales. But there's actually been a bunch more recent research that shows that subtly on the margin these things do matter. Where we vote, for example, take whether you vote at a school versus a church. We did a bunch of research a few years ago showing that if you voted a school, you're more likely to support a school funding initiative. Why? Well, you see school-related things, you're in a school-related building, it makes you feel, even non-consciously like you should support this initiative. Voting in a church, for example, might change how we vote on gay marriage or stem cell initiatives. These subtle things in our environment often affect us even without us realizing it.

[00:07:14] Jordan Harbinger: What about things in our environment that are maybe so to say, permanent, like social class? How does that influence us in what we do and what we like and how we live?

[00:07:24] Jonah Berger: Yeah, so a friend of mine did some great research on this. She went around, she asked a bunch of MBAs, "Hey, imagine you're about to buy a new car and you find out a friend of yours that you told about this is buying the same car as you. How would you feel if someone else had the same car as you?" And MBAs said, "Oh god, I'd be angry. I'd be annoyed. I mean, they're buying the same thing I have. How could they do that to me?" Okay, then that makes sense. They wanted to be different. They wanted to be unique. They wanted to feel special, but then she asked that same question, that same scenario to a slightly different group of people, a group of firefighters. And she found that firefighters actually felt very differently about it. When they were told that a friend of theirs bought the same car, they said, "Great, let's start a car club. You know, why wouldn't it be cool if the two of us had this thing in common that we could share?"

[00:08:09] And it turns out that social class, whether you're a working-class environment or a middle-class environment, or even culture more generally, part of an American cultural context versus say an East Asian context, affects how much difference we want. You know, we love to see ourselves unique special snowflakes, but in a working-class context, well, being similar is more okay. We like being similar to our friends. Why wouldn't one want to be similar to their family members that they love and care about? And same thing in East Asian context. You know, in East Asia, fitting into the group is good. Why wouldn't you want to be part of a larger whole? And so it really depends on how we're raised. It's not that one thing is right or wrong, it depends on the environment that supports us.

[00:08:46] Jordan Harbinger: And this can get negative and it can get insidious. It can go beyond cars and get into things like academic success. In the book, you mentioned that there were a lot of schools that you had looked at where academic success was seen as, quote-unquote, being too white among African-American students. So smart kids would purposely blow off exams or do poorly in school because they wanted to clinging to a certain cultural identity, which had the unfortunate side effect of also being really bad academically and it ruins lives. Can you explain that a little bit and maybe we can get into how we can prevent some of these?

[00:09:21] Jonah Berger: Yeah, and there's this very insidious, actually, but quite important idea about "acting white." So some researchers looked into race school performance, and obviously, this is a very contentious issue. Lots of debate here and there are lots of things that affect school performance. There's a well-known gap, minority students, particularly from lower income neighborhoods. Tend to have lower school performance, there are many reasons for this gap, obviously. Some of them are lack of resources and minority schools that have more minority students tend to have less funding and have larger classrooms where tend to be discrimination, which obviously hurts minority students. But even going beyond all that, there was an additional reason that researchers found.

[00:10:00] When they interviewed students, they found that many of these students had a high aptitude, but they avoided doing well in some cases because they didn't want to seem like they were "acting white." There was a stereotype that doing well in school, you know, being a high performer, raising your hand in class, working really hard, doing your homework, that was a thing that white Caucasian kids did. And as a result, minority students didn't want to seem like they were "acting white." So they avoided some of those behaviors. Their peers would chide them or make fun of them for working hard or stay in after class. You know, "What are you an Oreo? You're black on the outside and white in the middle. Why are you trying so hard? Why are you trying to be white."

[00:10:36] Now, first off, obviously, there's no reason that academic success is a white thing. You know, everyone should and can do well in school. But this stereotype, this notion that acting and trying hard in school was a signal of being white was really detrimental. It caused students to actually work less hard in school and do less well. And even skin tones research have a really interesting paper study that students that look more white, so let's say Latino students, that have a lighter skin are more susceptible to this than Latino students that had darker skin because they had outward markings already of being more a member of that group.

[00:11:09] And so it's not just about what something does or its functional reasons, of course, people should work hard in school. It's about what it signals. What does it communicate about us to do one thing rather than something else? Not just simple stuff like buying a certain product, but even trying hard in school or espousing a particular political idea. What does that signal about us and how does that change our behavior?

[00:11:30] Jordan Harbinger: How does this affect our politics as well? Because this is sort of the thing that stuck out at me was, all right, we've got this in academia, but we certainly, certainly have it in politics, which seems really timely right now.

[00:11:41] Jonah Berger: So I was working recently with a group that wanted to get clean energy, whether we're talking about wind power or solar power to catch on among Republicans. And if you look at it, Republicans, conservatives should actually like clean energy a lot. It reduces our reliance on foreign oil, which is a good thing. It helps national security, something Republicans like. It focuses on smaller government rather than bigger government, something Republicans should like. Yet, when they went around interviewing conservatives, they found that most conservatives didn't support clean energy. And so they were wondering why, and finally they got to this politician, I think, said it really nicely. He said, "Look, you know, I've looked around and it seems like people like Al Gore support clean energy. And if someone like Al Gore supports clean energy, it's probably not for me."

[00:12:22] And what's so interesting to that, just like the idea of "acting white," you know, even in politics, it's not just about what an issue is, it's about what that issue signals about you. What does it say about you as a politician or as a voter to support clean energy or in the most recent, you know, in the campaign we're in, what does it say about you to support Donald Trump? Many of the people who supported Bernie Sanders, for example, get it not just cause of his policies but what it signaled about them. You know, they wanted to be anti-establishment. They wanted to show they were young and hip, and so supporting Bernie was a way to do that. It's not just about policies, it's also about parties and about the identity signals they have.

[00:12:57] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, interesting. So we kind of see this with brands. We see this with insiders of all groups. So you have a really interesting, I guess, memory test, for lack of a better description in the beginning of the book that for the most part proves that influence is invisible or that we don't realize it.

[00:13:13] Jonah Berger: Okay. I'm going to give you a list of seven words, and I want to see how many you can remember, and so we can take as much time as you need. I'm going to tell you the seven words. I'll wait a couple of minutes, and then I'm going to ask you again the answers to those words. Okay. Are you ready? Here we go. The first word is reckless, the second word is furniture, the third word is conceited, the fourth word is corner, the fifth word is aloof, the six is stapler, and the last is stubborn. And I'll read that one more time. Reckless, furniture, conceited, corner, aloof, stapler, and stubborn. Okay?

[00:13:50] Now, before I give you the test, I want a little bit of time to elapse, so I'm going to read you a passage before I ask you to spit back the words. Okay. Sort of clear your mind. I'm going to tell you about a guy named Donald. And by the way, this isn't supposed to be Donald Trump. It's just supposed to be a guy named Donald. So Donald spent a great amount of his time in search of what he liked to call excitement. He's climbed Mount McKinley, shot the Colorado Rapids in a kayak, driven in a demolition derby, piloted jet-powered boat without even knowing much about boats. He risked injury and even death a number of times. Now, he was in search of new excitement. He was thinking perhaps he would do some skydiving, maybe cross the Atlantic in a sailboat. By the way, he acted one could readily guess that Donald was perfectly aware of his ability to do many things well. Other than business engagements, Donald's contacts with people were rather limited. He felt he didn't really need to rely on anyone. Once Donald made up his mind to do something, it was as good as done, no matter how long it might take or how difficult it might be. Only rarely did this change his mind, even when it might as well have been better if he had.

[00:14:43] I realize you've never met this guy Donald before, but based on this description, if you had to pick one word to describe Donald, what word would that be? The test was really about this Donald passage. When people were asked similar question, most people describe Donald somewhat negatively. They thought he was reckless, a bit conceded. Crossing Atlantic in a sailboat, it's kind of risky after all. The fact that he was aware of his ability to do many things well, makes him sound sort of stubborn. So it's not surprising that you thought he was negative.

[00:15:11] Here's what's interesting. A different set of people were asked to remember a different list of words before they heard about Donald. So rather than the list I gave you, starting with words like reckless and having words like conceited, aloof, and stubborn. Instead, they were asked to remember a different list of words. Now, if I asked you, "Hey, do the words affect how you see Donald?" You'd say, "Of course not," right? "Why should the words you told me in a memory test affect how I saw this person?" And you'd be unfortunately wrong. Because when people are given a different set of words, more like adventurous, confident, independent, right? When they heard those words forced, those were the way they perceived Donald. Even though were not aware of it, the things that happen in our environment, the words we hear, the people we're exposed to, change how we see the things that come after them. And so same Donald, but judge completely differently because the words activated different ideas in people's minds.

[00:16:02] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Jonah Berger. We'll be right back.

[00:16:07] This segment is sponsored in part by Peloton. It's the time of year when people are making New Year's resolutions, and I want to share with you how I've been able to keep up with my goals in the past. I made a goal in early 2022, like in January, like everyone else, to lose some fat. I didn't think I was going to lose 40 pounds, but I lost 40 pounds of fat. I started the year at about 190, and now I'm at my goal weight of 150. Give or take some holiday cookies here and there. I've got six-pack abs, which I've never had in my life. Not even the fittest days when I was working out twice a day in college or high school. I never looked like this. I've never been this fit or healthy in my entire. And I want to share what's worked for me. So I'm going to be divvying up this knowledge in these segments here. But one is friction and habits. We talked about this on the show, on the episode with James Clear here on this podcast. That was episode 108, by the way. Friction and habits are obviously a total game changer for any routine. Now, if you want to go to the gym, but you have to get up, pack a duffel bag, change, get in the car in the winter or jog there, that's just a lot of friction to get a workout in, and that is one of the reasons that I like Peloton. It's just sitting there. I can be super flexible. There's no friction. I can get a workout in if somebody cancels a call. If I've got something that's delayed or my lunch is early or finishes early, or a meeting stops, I can just shuffle things around and get a workout in. I mentioned before, you got to protect your time when there's a workout. You know, treat it like a business meeting. I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago. But low friction plays a large role on whether or not you're going to get something done. It's like the opposite. If you want to watch less TV, unplug the thing, put it away, turn it around, whatever you got to do. If you want to play less video games, unplug it and put it in the closet so you have to get it out and do it. This is the opposite. You have something that's low friction, lower the friction to zero with a Peloton. Peloton is really famous for their bikes, but Peloton also makes a top-notch rowing machine that stores upright and rowing is a full-body workout that's low impact. You can work 86 percent of your muscles in only 15 minutes. If you're like me and you're a newbie to rowing, the Peloton Row has sensors that can track your movements to determine whether you're performing each stroke correctly, and then, of course, warn you if you are doing something wrong like any good trainer would do. It's also got a really neat feature called Form Assist, which gives you a real-time indication of how to improve your rowing stroke in the class. And then you get a grade just like we all want, right? We want more grades. You get a grade at the end of the class. And show you where you're messing up, where you're doing well, what you can improve, how you can row harder next time, and improve your times and your scores and your form. I personally find it kind of addicting. There's no friction. It stores upright. You just lower it to the floor and boom, you're ready to go.

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[00:19:06] Jordan Harbinger: And now back to Jonah Berger on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:19:11] Yeah, it's really interesting because I can see this being applied pretty much everywhere, at least tested pretty much everywhere from shopping malls and walking into a store and what's at the front. Priming you to look at the brand in a certain way to commercials, to even slogans that are in parts of advertising. I mean, there's so many things here that we can use to prime other people. If a list of, quote-unquote, "random words" can influence the way that we perceive the person, the protagonist of a story that you tell a few minutes later, a few seconds later. The ability for us to be influenced in ways that we can't see or don't realize is kind of infinite.

[00:19:48] Jonah Berger: Oh, it's amazing. I mean, you know, think about how we pick our relationship partners. So the people we marry, our spouses, our boyfriends, our girlfriends, we think it's all about the moment we see them we knew. There's just one person for us, a soulmate. We were looking around to find that person. One Cinderella or Prince Charming, that has the perfect foot for the glass slipper. When you kind of look at the data though, there's something interesting or quirky. Most people meet the person they end up marrying at one of two places at work or at school. And that makes a little bit of sense. We spend a lot of time at work or at school, except what's the chance, right? That if there's one perfect soulmate for us, we happen to meet that person. They happen to work at the same office. We do happen to take the same introduction to humanities class, first year of college many years ago, and so might it be something else beyond but they happened, we happened to get so lucky.

[00:20:36] A scientist actually did a great study to look at this. He took a bunch of students. So imagine you're in this guy's class, the end of the semester, you're done with the semester, he says, "Look, I'd like your help on a quick survey." Shows you a couple pictures of different people and asks you how much you like them and how attractive you find those folks. And so you rate the different people and you're done with the study. Well, it turns out those weren't just people. Those people were actually folks that had been in the class during the semester, but they weren't students, they were actors. The professor had picked people and asked them to come to class different numbers of times. So one of those actors came to class a couple times. One came more times and one came almost the whole semester. And what he found is when he looked at the ratings that people gave their photos, people thought the folks were more attractive that had come to class more often. The mere fact that they had seen them more often wasn't, they were more attractive to begin with, but the mere fact that people had seen them more often made them look more attractive. The mere fact they were more familiar made people like them more, even though they're exactly the same people.

[00:21:31] And so again, we think, you know, we pick our friends that are romantic partners based on our own personal preferences, our likes, and our dislikes but really having seen someone more, really having interacted with a brand more frequently can make us like it more.

[00:21:42] Jordan Harbinger: Is there a limit to how familiar something gets where it then becomes boring? Like is there sort of a Goldilocks' theory here where something that's too familiar is boring, something is too novel, is too unfamiliar and strange, but is there a middle ground that's ideal or is it just more familiar is better?

[00:21:58] Jonah Berger: There is, and I love the word you use Goldilocks. Sometimes we think it's all about being different. We want to be so different from what people have seen before. Yet, on the other hand, you might think similarity is good. Is it good to see something more or might new be good as well? It turns out that right in the middle is an ideal point. It's called sort of moderate similarity or optimal distinctiveness. Just like Goldilocks, you know, too familiar, if we've seen something too many times we don't like it, and if we've seen it, not enough, we don't like it. But once we see it just enough times, we come to like it more.

[00:22:28] Jordan Harbinger: So how do we blend the appropriate amount of similarity and difference, like your dad with the automobile? "Well, it's a BMW, but it's a different color." I mean, is there a tool that you use when you're helping people with this or when you're looking at this that you can — is there a percentage of difference? How do you measure it, I guess is what I'm asking you.

[00:22:46] Jonah Berger: Yeah, I mean when I work with companies or individuals to help them apply this stuff, I give them that idea of being optimally distinct. I say, look, you know, you don't want to be so different because if you're so different from what people have experienced before, you know your product is so new and no one's ever seen it before, it's going to be hard for people to adopt it. If you're pitching something, let's say you're pitching your company or your idea to somebody, that idea is so different. They're going to say, "Well, that's really different than what we're doing already. Probably cost a lot to implement. I'm not sure if we want to do it." At the same time, if it's so similar, it's exactly the same as what's going on. Now, people say, "Why do we need anything new? Why do we need to change if what you're doing is exactly the same, I'll just stick with what I'm doing already." But in between similar and different at the same time, just like Goldilocks is just right.

[00:23:28] And so essentially, we need to pitch ourselves and our ideas like Goldilocks, we need to focus on how we're similar and different at the same time, similar enough to evoke that warm glow of familiarity but different enough to feel novel and new. So like we take technology products, for example. You know, when introducing a really complex or new technology product companies often cloak it in a similar shell to make it look more similar. And TiVo came out, they put it in something that looked like a VCR didn't have to. TiVo is nothing like a VCR inside. It's digital. There's no tapes. Yet they made it look like a VCR cause they thought it would help people feel more comfortable adopting it. At the same time, if your idea's not very new, well, then maybe you need the surface or the outside to look more different. When Apple came out with one of their new products a few years ago, the guts were basically the same of the prior generation, but they made the outside look really different to make it feel more new and different. And so depending on whether you're more similar or more different, sometimes pitching in and pulling a little bit of the other can make you more successful.

[00:24:25] Jordan Harbinger: Right. There's so many almost infinite application of this, and I think if we start looking around our house at things that we bought because they looked new, or things that we bought because they looked like something we were familiar with, even though they were totally different things, maybe we bought for our parents, like TiVo, we could see the stuff works on us.

[00:24:41] But how do brands use things like pricing? For example, elite brands use elite-style pricing that shows the brand, right? There's less of the pricing as the item gets more expensive. This is a little cryptic, so I'm trying to give an example here. Maybe sunglasses where the mid-range Chanel sunglasses have the giant logo on the side. The whole thing is one giant big logo, but the super top-level item in the line maybe has a tiny logo and maybe it's only on the inside and it's only recognized by insiders. Can you explain this concept? It's almost like a curve where the branding is most prominent in the middle.

[00:25:17] Jonah Berger: We've all heard of the idea of conspicuous consumption, and the idea very simply is, look, if you want to show status buying expensive products with logos on it is one way to do it. You want to show people that, yeah, you're wealthy. Well, you need a signal that they can see. And so buying something with a big logo is one way to do that. And so you'd expect that cheap stuff sort of has no logos, but expensive stuff has a large logo. It lets you show that you spend a bunch of money. And that's half true. Cheap stuff does have small, almost no logos. If you buy something from Walmart, buy t-shirt from Walmart, it doesn't say Walmart and big letters on the front. Most people don't want to advertise that they bought something on Walmart. If you buy something a little more expensive, more expensive sunglasses, for example, or a more expensive handbag, sure enough stuff, as it gets more expensive, has a larger logo. Up until, though, a certain point, as it gets more expensive, the logo actually gets smaller, and even in some cases disappears. The really expensive sunglasses, the really expensive handbags actually have almost no visible logo on them. And the reason is simple. You know, people who are buying something more expensive want to show they didn't buy the cheap stuff.

[00:26:19] So there's an incentive for the mid-tier brands or the middle expensive stuff to have a logo on it to let people show that they're different, that they didn't buy the cheap stuff. But then if you're really wealthy, you don't want to buy something with a big logo on it because it makes you look like, just like the mid-tier folks, it makes you look just the same as someone who didn't spend as much money. So really expensive stuff actually takes the logo, it makes it more difficult to see what someone bought, but it's not that there's no logo at all. Often they use subtle signals. They talk about the idea of dog whistle fashion or you know, things that are only visible to those in the know, whether it's red bottom shoes or clothes with just the right detailing on it. It allows you to signal to other people that have that insight that are part of the same group as you or the same culture that you're smart and you know what's going on.

[00:27:00] Jordan Harbinger: Right. So you see folks who are, quote-unquote, "insiders" using things like boats, which are obviously expensive, but all the way down to handbags and watches, which can be super expensive and look just like something that is not. And then there's different types of investment that you discuss in the book as well. For example, hipster bikes, which is an example that I think may not be from the book, but something I noticed while I was reading it in San Francisco, it's kind of a rarity, right? You see these bikes, they only have one gear. There's no brakes or no hand brakes anyway. They're so rare that it shows that you kind of get it right. You're willing to invest in that. You're willing to buy something or become a part of this subculture where the rest of us look at it and say, whatever, it's a bike. But if you're in the fixie bike click, you get it. Even college ball, you mentioned college football or basketball as part of an example of this. Can you explain that? I thought that was super interesting.

[00:27:50] Jonah Berger: Yeah, so I lived in San Francisco for a number of years, and if San Francisco has one thing, it has hills. Huge hills that are really difficult to run up or bike up. And so you'd expect that if someone lived in San Francisco, probably, first of all, they wouldn't bike. They'd take a car. But secondly, if they had to bike, well, then they'd get one of those big mountain bikes that have lots of gears that makes it really easy to bike uphill. But if you look around San Francisco, particularly among hipsters, you'll notice something weird which is a lot of them ride these bikes that have essentially no gears or one gear. These bikes called fixes even, which can only pedal around if the wheel is moving. To brake, you actually have to pedal backwards almost, or hold your feet on the pedals. So why in one of the hilliest cities in the world would you want to buy a bike that makes it difficult to bike up and down hills that makes it difficult to ride? And it turns out it has a lot in common with what we were talking about before, the power of signal.

[00:28:42] Signals are really good, but they're particularly good if they're costly. If they're difficult for people to do. The more difficult for something is the less likely people are to do it, and so the better it is to signal that you're really into something. You know, it's hard, for example, to learn about indie music or the hip is new technologies. You have to be in the right industries. My brother-in-law, for instance, is always me putting me up on new game, the newest social media technologies like Yik Yak or Peach, or whatever these things are. Every time I see him, he tells me about the new. , but it takes time or effort to know about that stuff, right? It's not something you just know offhand. You have to spend time in that culture. And so as a result, that signal, that cost keeps out outsiders.

[00:29:22] It's almost like a Mohawk, for example. You know, sure, we'd love to have a Mohawk if that signals something desirable, but make it really hard to get a job. And so as a result, Mohawk is persisted as a signal of outsider culture. Even language, right? You know, I tell this funny example in the book, but often in my MBA class, I put up a name on the board and I ask someone who doesn't know anything about college basketball to read out that name aloud. And they look at the name and they hem and haw for a couple of minutes, they're puzzled and they go "Krizz-zee-eew-ski" and they spell it out. If you spelled it out, it looks like Krzyzewski. It turns out that name is "Sh-sheff-ski," famous college basketball coach, but if you don't know anything about college basketball, that name doesn't look like "Sh-sheff-ski." There's nothing about that name that makes it look like "Sh-sheff-ski," but if you're in the know, you know it.

[00:30:07] And so those signals, those subtle signals of group membership, just like subtle signals in all sorts of domains, show that we're in the know, show we're special, we're part of a subculture, and we're different from everybody else. There's a keyboard, it has keys, but no markers on. So no letters that you can see on the keys of the keyboard. And you would think, why in the world would someone buy a keyboard that makes it harder to type? Well, again, it's a really good signal of being knowledgeable about something. The only person that can use a keyboard like that is someone who knows where all the letters are. And so really great touch typist can get a keyboard like that. Or I use another example in the book of buying a watch that doesn't tell time. Like, why would anyone buy a watch that makes it harder to tell what time it is? But it's a really good signal of identity, buying a watch, a functional watch shows you've got the wealth to throw away on something that you don't actually need.

[00:30:54] Jordan Harbinger: Right. It's completely form and zero function.

[00:30:57] Jonah Berger: Yeah.

[00:31:00] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Jonah Berger. We'll be right back.

[00:31:05] This episode is sponsored in part by Peloton. A lot of people ask me how I'm able to stick to my fitness routine, especially since I have such a bananas schedule. Must be those six-pack abs I'm showing off. For me, it's really creating a routine that is sustainable and can be duplicated on an ongoing basis. Consistency is the key, right? And Peloton helps me have a sustainable fitness routine because there are thousands of classes to choose from. It's also 24/7. I've always got time for it. I might only have 15 minutes in between calls, but I can still fit in a Peloton class. The instructors are next-level motivating. They do inspire you to push further even when you're ready to quit. They're funny. That's kind of important to me when I'm doing a workout for some reason. Peloton is really famous for their bikes, but they also make a top-notch rowing machine that stores upright, which you think no big deal but when you try to have a rower on the floor, you'll be so glad this thing goes upright. Rowing is a great full-body workout. It's low impact. You can work 86 percent of your muscles and only 15 minutes. It's funny that they measure that. If you're a newbie to rowing, the Peloton Row has sensors that can track your movements to determine whether you're performing each stroke correctly. There's a little like ghost guy. That shows you how your form is doing, and it warns you if you're doing something wrong that could injure you or whatever. It's also got a neat feature called Form Assist that's actually the little ghost guy. It's a real time indication of how to improve your rowing stroke in the class as well as a detailed post-class breakdown. So it'll show you, hey, here's where you're kind of messing up, here's where you're doing really well. Really kind of a fun way to get better at fitness. And the Pelotons Row has definitely helped me, yeah, get towards those six-pack abs, the dad bod.

[00:32:37] And right now is the perfect time to get rowing with Peloton Row. We can promise you've never rowed like this before. Peloton Row offers a variety of classes for all levels in game-changing features that help you get rowing or advance what you can already do. Explore Peloton Row and financing options at onepeloton.com/row.

[00:32:54] This episode is also sponsored by Better Help online therapy. If you're struggling with your mental health, don't worry you're not alone. Half of us are crazy. Actually, more than half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an emotional or behavioral health disorder at some point in their life. So in all seriousness, this is kind of a big deal. When you're at your best, you can do great things, but sometimes, uh, life gets you bogged down. You might feel a little overwhelmed. Working with a therapist, frankly, can help you get back to the best version of yourself. That's one of the reasons that I use it. A lot of people that are new to therapy ask me for suggestions on how to find a therapist. I always recommend better help. It's convenient. It's flexible, it's affordable. Just fill out a brief questionnaire, get mashed with a licensed professional therapist, and if the first therapist is not a good fit, and that happens a lot actually, you can always switch therapists at any time. It's worth finding the right fit, in my opinion. The Better Help app is also really amazing. It's got a journaling feature and a way to text your therapist anytime. So, yeah, don't put that burden on your friends and family, just reach out to your therapist instead. Trust me, that's a better way to do things.

[00:33:53] Jen Harbinger: If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/jordan today to get 10 percent off your first month. That's better-H-E-L-P.com/jordan.

[00:34:04] Jordan Harbinger: Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our sponsors is what keeps us going. Keeps the lights on around here. To get links to all of the deals you hear about on the show, all the advertisers, go to jordanharbinger.com/deals. Don't forget, we've got a worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast.

[00:34:23] And now for the conclusion of our episode with Jonah Berger.

[00:34:28] How do brands protect themselves from negative influence? So for example, what if I start getting things that I'm not supposed to get as a young person? Or what if a certain type of person or a certain type of device falls into the wrong hands? This is putting a very dramatic spin on it, but we saw it with the Jersey Shore and you wrote about this in the book. Tell us what happened with Snooki and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino from that show.

[00:34:51] Jonah Berger: Yeah, so your listeners may remember the Jersey Shore, the show about those rowdy folks. They weren't sort of high culture, but seemed to have a good time hanging out at the beach. One of the most famous ones was a woman named Snooki. That was her nickname. She was known for having a foul mouth, being really short, and using so much fake tanner that she almost looked like a parking cone. Well, a number of years ago, Snooki went down to her mailbox. She opened it up. She saw a package. She opened up the package, and there was a handbag inside. And that was exciting. If you're someone like Snooki, you love handbags, but the story gets even better cause it was a free handbag. Snooki hadn't paid for it. There was a Gucci handbag in the mail, a free handbag that costs probably at least a thousand dollars. And why would a company do this? Why would a Gucci send Snooki a free handbag? Well, maybe, it's product placement, right? Maybe Gucci sends someone like Snooki a free handbag because they hope that she'll wear it and she'll show up in People magazine or In Touch wearing it. And so it will act like an advertisement for the product. But interestingly enough, it wasn't Gucci that sent Snooki that handbag. It was actually one of Gucci's competitors. Why would someone send a handbag from a competing brand? Why would they want to help that competing brand? And it turns out it wasn't Snooki. Actually, Mike, his name was "The Situation" Sorrentino, actually had something similar to him with Abercrombie & Fitch. They sent him a letter offering to pay him money. And again, that kind of makes sense. Maybe Abercrombie is offering to pay him to wear their clothes, his product placement. They think they'll make more money as a result but it wasn't Abercrombie offering to pay him to wear their clothes. It was actually Abercrombie offering to pay him not to wear their clothes. Why would they pay him money not to wear their clothes? And it turns out these two examples actually have a lot in common.

[00:36:27] And what both brands were thinking is, sure, sometimes signals are good. Sometimes people will do something because others they aspire to do are doing them. But just as often signals can act like a magnet, not just a attract, but repel. And the thought was if people like Snooki are wearing Gucci handbags, maybe the folks that buy Gucci already would be encouraged to check out their competitor. They don't want to look like Snooki, they don't want to seem similar. They might actually go out and buy a different brand. Or folks that like Abercrombie & Fitch if they saw Mike "The Situation" wearing it, maybe they wouldn't want to buy the brand anymore. And so people don't only imitate others, sometimes they avoid doing what others are doing because the negative signals associated with it. If we don't want to look like a certain group or we don't want to look like a certain identity, sometimes we have abandoned brands or avoid those brands to avoid signaling undesired groups.

[00:37:14] Jordan Harbinger: And this makes sense. When I heard this, I thought, is that real? Because I remember the episode where Mike "The Situation" was walking outside, I think in Italy or something like that — and yeah, I watched the show, forget about it — and he was walking outside with those green Abercrombie pants and the guy sitting next to me, he said something like, "I'm throwing those pants away tonight," and he was only half joking and we just thought like a little funny comment. Little did we realize that was going to become news as Abercrombie was going to cut him a fat check, never to wear their clothing ever again.

[00:37:45] Jonah Berger: Yeah. Signals are really important, right? What we wear, what we drive, but not just desirable signals, undesirable signals too. You know, we did a study at Stanford a number of years ago with those old yellow Livestrong wristbands. People might remember. We sold them to a dorm on campus back when they were popular, and then a couple weeks later, we waited. We measured that people were wearing them, and then we sold those wristbands to the geeks on campus, the academic focus dorm right next door. And as soon as the geek started wearing them, well, the original folks, they stopped wearing them because they didn't want to look like a geek. Right? And so influence doesn't just lead us to the same. Sometimes it leads us to do the exact opposite.

[00:38:19] Jordan Harbinger: So we use identity to persuade, right? We've got positive ID associations like athletes, movie stars and negative associations like slobs, geeks, and people who are on the Jersey Shore. And, when I was reading, I was thinking about this. Early adopters kind of follow the same pattern, right? If they're cool and they're influential, it's great. You know, if you see somebody who's really cool in Silicon Valley, whoever that might be, some sort of tech guy wearing a new device, you think, "Oh, I need to get my hands on that. Is this the new X, Y, Z? Is that the new Apple watch? Oh, this movie star have it," and you've got the cool tech startup guy, but if you have some fat, sloppy computer programmer guy and he's got the shirt on for that brand, or he's got that device, it's not that cool anymore. And people not only won't go out and get it, but they might not wear it or use it if they already do have it.

[00:39:06] Jonah Berger: Yeah, and this is a big challenge for brands, right? Managing meaning making sure you have good meanings and avoid the bad ones. You might think as a brand, you know, you have total control over that, right? You advertise, you play certain music in the stores, you can control what it means, but it's often controlled by the people that use or adopt your brand.

[00:39:23] And you know, early adopters can be good, but they can also be bad as you're saying. You know, sometimes they prevent a product from going mainstream. So, you know, something cashes on among the tech crowd working recently on a project with Google on a new modular phone they have. And one thing they're really concerned about is the phone doesn't just get pigeonholed as a tech crowd phone. It doesn't just get thought of as something, if you're really into tech, it's good, but if you're not so into tech, it's not so good. Sometimes products get stuck. People talk about crossing the chasm. Products fail, or services fail across the chasm because they get stuck being associated just with early adopters. And people say, "Well, if I'm not that type of person, this is probably not for me."

[00:40:01] Jordan Harbinger: We can use this in parenting too. One of the examples that you gave in the book that I thought was genius is showing broccoli as dinosaur-sized trees if you're the dinosaur or if your kid's the dinosaur. And so you've got this big boy identity, right? "Are you the big boy? Are you the big dinosaur?" And he is chewing the broccoli up as fast as he can get it. And then, you've got something maybe on the other side of the fence where, "Hey, this sort of device or this sort of clothing will help you do your job if you're a really boring lawyer or a business type," and you see that to just stop becoming something fun or cool to wear right away. And you end up with this with clothes, with technology, with food, there's almost no end, even the way that women wear fashion and makeup and guys wear things like glasses, watches, shirts, pants, and shoes. I mean, I can't think of many things that are not affected by this.

[00:40:49] Jonah Berger: Yeah, and you know, think about trends in fads and fashion, or trends in music, what music is hot and what music fails to catch on or catches on and dies out. Often things start with a subculture. A group of people, they're kind of seen as hipsters or outsiders or different. You know, a band becomes cool among music heads or you know, socks catch on among the in-crowd in business meetings. But soon enough, it's not just those folks that are doing it, the thing goes more mainstream. So those socks that were really cool originally that were worn by, you know, folks in the tech industry or cutting edge fashion folks, you know, the boss starts wearing them or guys start wearing them with the wrong color suit. Well, what was cool now becomes mainstream and it no longer signals the desired identity. Once that band is known by everybody, once that hip indie band, everybody who likes Top 40 says they like it as well, it's no longer a cool signal of being in the know to like that band. So then the subculture folks, those original adopters, well, sometimes they abandon it, they diverge and move on to something else.

[00:41:45] But then, what's interesting that happens is that the signal starts to lose its meaning as a signal of being cool. The mainstream adopters abandon it, and eventually, that thing dies out and becomes abandoned. And so these ideas, identity dynamics, signaling can help us explain cycles of fads and fashion. Not only why things catch on people imitating others, but why things die out becoming abandoned.

[00:42:04] Jordan Harbinger: In many ways, this whole episode really adds credence to the idea that you're the sum of those who you surround yourself with. And one of the primary goals of what we teach here is surrounding yourself with high-quality people so that their effect, their influence rubs off on ourselves, rubs off on us. Why is it so hard to recognize the effect of influence on ourselves? And how do we harness that influence on ourselves and use it for good?

[00:42:27] Jonah Berger: So often we don't see influence because we're unaware of it. We don't realize these things are affecting our behavior. We want to see ourselves as driving our own choices. So we think we do and we ignore the subtle factors that affect what we do. But the first thing, and, and the reason I really wrote Invisible Influence in the first place, is to help realize these effects that are happening to them. You know, we can't correct for them. We can't use these tools if we don't see them and understand them. So the first place to start is just seeing influence in the world around us. Once we see it, we can take advantage of its upsides and avoid its downsides. We can make better choices and choose our own influence, and we can influence those around us.

[00:43:05] So one simple tip and trick I often share with people is the idea of being a chameleon, mimicking those around you. A cousin of mine was talking about, you know, this big negotiation he had coming up. They were offering him a new job, but they weren't giving him enough money. And so what could he do in that negotiation to be more successful? And there's some great research that was done looking at what makes negotiators successful. They looked across a variety of people. What makes folks successful? What do they have in common? They found that one simple trick led negotiators to be five times as successful, and that trick merely was mimicking their negotiating partner. Subtly going after, whether the mannerisms, the behavior, the actions of others, and imitating them, almost like a chameleon fits into their environment. So if the negotiating partner crossed their legs, they do the same. The person cocked their head to the side slightly, they do the same. And it's not just a negotiation in a sales context. For example, a waiter or a waitress that repeats your order back to you word for word. So if you said, "I like a Caesar salad with chicken dressing on the side and a Diet Coke." They say, "Okay, great, you'd like a Caesar salad, dressing on the side with chicken and a Diet Coke," say the exact word for word back to you, well, they just got a 70 percent higher tip.

[00:44:13] And so it's not just about listening. We often hear about listening. It's also about emulating subtly going after and mimicking the mannerisms, the behaviors, and the language patterns of others. It makes us feel more similar. It makes other people like us trust us more and it facilitates interactions. If you and I were talking, we found out we had the same birthday. We feel a kinship. We've got something in common, which makes us trust each other more and leads to better interactions. Mimicry does exactly that. It makes us feel like we're similar, like we have a lot in common and it makes those interactions go better than they would otherwise.

[00:44:45] Jordan Harbinger: How do we avoid looking ridiculously mechanical and inauthentic? Because I've noticed when people do this poorly, it's really, really off-putting.

[00:44:53] Jonah Berger: Yeah, and just like any other influence tactic, if you do it badly, it's not going to work. You really have to do it subtly, not do it all the time. You know, politicians often do this very well when they're traveling around the country. They use different language in different areas. They use different words or accents. A simple way to do, it's over email. You know, if someone emails you and they use dear versus hi or hey versus dear, we're using the same language as them. You know, that's a case where they're not going to necessarily pick up that you're doing it, but it'll make you more impactful.

[00:45:21] Jordan Harbinger: We know that we also specifically do not mirror those, we want to distance ourselves from. In other words, things, people, causes that we don't like, people who are really bad at this. And on the very bottom end of some of our email inbox where we see some severe problems we see people with, even physical or emotional disorders that can't see other people's emotions, which really hurts them socially because they can't mimic, because they can't fit in. Book title, by the way, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. And we'll link that in the show notes as well, of course, as we do with all the resources.

[00:45:54] Thanks so much, Jonah.

[00:45:55] Jonah Berger: Oh no, thanks for having me. Yeah, appreciate it.

[00:45:59] Jordan Harbinger: I've got some thoughts on this one, but of course, before we get into that, most of us have big goals that we'd like to accomplish. Anything from getting in better physical shape to quitting a lifelong vice to learning a new language. Habits Academy, creator James Clear shares processes and practicals we can use to incrementally change our own lives for the better. Here's a quick bite.

[00:46:18] James Clear: It's not a single one percent change that's going to transform your life, it's a thousand of them. Remember, I feel like giving up. I think about the stone cutter who pounds a stone a hundred times without a crack showing, and then on the hundred first blow, it splits in two.

[00:46:30] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:30] James Clear: And I know that it wasn't the hundred first that did it. It was all the hundred that came before.

[00:46:35] Newsworthy stories are only about outcomes. When we see outcomes all day long on social and on the news, we tend to overvalue them and overlook the process. Like you're never going to see a news story that is like, "Man eats salad for lunch." Like it's just not right, it's only a story six months later when a man loses a hundred pounds.

[00:46:53] The real reason habits matter is because they provide evidence for the type of beliefs that you have about yourself, and ultimately, you can reshape your sense of self, your self-image, the person that you believe that you are if you embody the identity enough.

[00:47:06] A lot of people watch too much TV or don't want to play as many video games they do or whatever. If you walk into pretty much any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face? They all face the TV. So it's like, what is this room designed to get you to do? You could take a chair and turn it away from the television. You could also increase the friction associated with the task. So you could take batteries out of the remote so that it takes an extra five or 10 seconds to start it up each time. And maybe that's enough time for you to be like, "Do I really want to watch something or am I just doing this mindlessly?"

[00:47:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:47:32] James Clear: The point here is if you want to build a good habit, you've got to make it obvious. If you want to break a bad habit, you just make it in. Your entire life, you are existing inside some environment and most of the time you're existing inside environments that you don't think about, right? You're like, and in that sense, you're kind of like the victim of your environment. But you don't have to be the victim of it, you can be the architect of it.

[00:47:52] Jordan Harbinger: For more with James Clear, including what it takes to break bad habits while creating good ones, and how to leverage tiny habits for giant outcomes, check out episode 108 on The Jordan Harbinger Show with James Clear.

[00:48:07] Thanks to Jonah Berger. His book is called Catalyst, by the way, I think it's really interesting that there's also reverse influencer marketing. We talked a little bit about influence and influencer marketing. There's also reverse influencer marketing, so if you remember that The Jersey Shore, Snooki and Mike "The Situation," they were actually paid to not wear certain clothes. If you remember their behavior, you're not missing anything if you didn't see it. But these were like super trashy low-class folks. They were actually paid to not wear certain handbags, clothing. They were always getting arrested. They were always drunk. SnookI was actually getting handbags from companies that were sending the competing companies handbags. So like Chanel would send over a Gucci bag and be like, "Enjoy," you know, to get them to wear or use the other brand instead of their own, because it was negative branding. These people were so famous for being trashy that people did not want them to wear the clothes. And famously, Mike Sorrentino was paid by Abercrombie to never wear Abercrombie clothing ever again, which I think is hilarious and a weird way to make a living.

[00:49:10] Links to Jonah Berger's book, everything will be in the website on the show notes. Please do use our website link if you buy the books because it does help support the show. Worksheets for this episode in the show notes. Transcripts of the episodes are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel coming soon at jordanharbinger.com/youtube. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or you can also hit me on LinkedIn.

[00:49:32] I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits, and of course, your newfound influence skills. That's in our Six-Minute Networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. Come join us, you'll be in smart company.

[00:49:51] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. And my amazing team that includes Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabe Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's in marketing or interested in influence, persuaions, please share this with them. I do hope you find something great in every episode. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

[00:50:26] Once again, special thanks to Peloton for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show. We really appreciate your support.