Social Influence and De-escalation: Liking

It's no surprise; people are more likely to cooperative with people they like, and who like them. People prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like.  Liking can create influence and when responding to an angry or agitated person you may emphasize certain factors and/or attributes to increase your overall attractiveness and subsequent effectiveness.

Several factors can be used:.

Physical attractiveness often may help to create some influence. Physical attractiveness seems to engender a "halo" effect that extends to favorable impressions of other traits such as talent, kindness, and intelligence. As a result, attractive people are more persuasive in terms of getting what they request and in changing others' attitudes.While physical characteristics are only marginally changeable, how one dresses and grooms is under one's control. Smiling enhances physical attractiveness.

Similarity influences both Liking and cooperation.  We like people who are like us and are more willing to say yes to their requests, often without much critical consideration.

Praise produces Liking. Insincere flattery, however, can backfire when it is crudely transparent.   Generally compliments most often enhance liking and can be used as a means to gain cooperation.

Familiarity through repeated contact with a person or thing is yet another factor that normally facilitates Liking. This holds true principally when that contact takes place under positive rather than negative circumstances. One positive circumstance that may works well is mutual and successful cooperation.

Association is a final factor linked to Liking. By associating with positive things or ideas those who seek influence frequently share in a halo effect by association. 

Applications/examples:

When approaching, smile, at least initially, and introduce self, ask the person his or her name if you don't know it. Use the person's name. These are all signs of friendliness.

Pay attention person's verbal patterns and match these. If the person is angry you don't want to match anger in the voice, but you do want to match the importance and urgency in the voice. Match the rate and rhythm of his of her speech. Match expressions. For example if he says he is "pissed off" use the term "pissed off"; if he uses the phrase "mad as a hornet", use the" phrase "mad as a hornet." Match verbal patterns evokes similarity, which enhances liking. Be cautious, however, that this matching is only used initially, as you want to eventually lead the angry person towards more a cooperative frame.

Express appreciation for any cooperation received.

All these applications are to engender the feeling that you like the person you are talking to. Unless you genuinely do like people, they will all seem fake and can escalation anger. The most important application, therefore, is to genuine like people.

Flight-Fight-or-?

In the face of danger all vertebrates (many, but not all invertebrates as well) respond with a heightened state of physiological arousal that prepares them for either fight of flight--or more correctly in order of preference, flight or fight. Many people point to a third response, "freeze". Freezing, however is a variation of flight, many animals become virtually invisible to their primary predators when they remain motionless. So freezing is not itself the third path.

The third path I am referring to is another stress response that anthropologist have recognized in primates. Primates when confronting danger will sometimes follow a third path, that of increasing pro-social behaviors. In other words, primates, humans included, will respond to stress by increasing social bonding. This has been called the "friend", "connect" or "cuddle" response by various anthropologists.


Not surprisingly, there are gender differences. Females more than males exhibit this response, although male chimps and apes display increased social behavior when confronting danger as well.

The implications of this third path when dealing with stress are profound. It is clearly a more highly evolved characteristic (strictly speaking, the notion of any trait being "more highly evolved" is an anthropocentric value judgment--but I am an anthropoid after all). The fight or flight response we share with most animals. The connect response we share only with primates.  There is, I believe a purely human response, as well.

When other primates display the connect response they do so only within family groups. Humans have the capability to connect outside family groups. Just as humans are the only animal that trades with others of its species outside its own family clan, we are able to extend pro-social behaviors to other humans, to strangers.

The third path is this path of connection with others. It's not fight-flight-or-freeze, but flight-fight-or-friend. De-escalation/conflict resolution/assertiveness is the third path.

De-escalation and Social Influence- Consistency

Cialdini:  "Consistency is a principle that asserts that people want to be and to be seen as consistent with their existing commitments. Those commitments can be things they've either said or done in the past, especially in public, that give them a position or a stand on some issue."

No one wants to be known as a liar or as wishy-washy or erratic. People much prefer to be considered honest and trustworthy. When they make public commitments or promises, they will tend to want to back up those words with action. 

When de-escalating an angry person consistency can be a powerful tool. When confronting an angry person you need to find ways to shift from an adversarial to a collaborative frame. It's no small challenge. But it's one that can be tackled, by asking for small concessions of favors. 

Examples of use:

An angry individual is yelling at you. Your response: "I can tell how angry this is making you, and I will do what I can to resolve it, and for that I would really appreciate you bringing down your voice..." When person lowers voice, whether it's immediate or after more venting,  express appreciation, "Thank you for being willing to work with me on this."

Patients involvement in treatment planning promotes collaboration and compliance, as their acceptance of a treatment plan is a prior commitment .

Example of misuse: "I know you don't want to, but you said..."  (Holding people accountable for their words is appropriate. To do so when one is angry is wrong timing.)

As with all verbal tools they need to be applied skillfully and at the right time.

Six Universal Influences part 1

Dr. Robert Cialdini is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on social influence. He describes six universal social influences. De-escalation is a social interaction. A skilled de-escalater can apply each of these six influences. The six influences are:

Consistency--  Each time we comply with a request, even a trivial request we will tend to act more consistently with that initial act of cooperation.

Liking-- People prefer to say yes to the requests of people they know and like. Increasing the degree to which you are liked by someone will increase the probability that they will cooperate with you. 

Authority-- Once someone has accepted you as an authority, they will more likely follow your instructions.

Scarcity--People are more motivated to avoid a loss than gain a benefit.

Social Proof--People determine what is correct, especially in the presence of uncertainty, by finding out what other people think is correct 

Reciprocity--When people receive things from others, they are naturally inclined to repay the favor.

I'll explore each of these in following posts.