The Psychological Trick That Lets You Subtly Influence Human Behaviour

Imagine you’re walking down the street with your friend when a random woman comes up to you and abruptly promises you $20 — on the condition that you share the cash with your friend. The split is up to you, but if your pal doesn’t like it, the woman takes the money back.

This is the ultimatum game. It’s a fascinating experiment that has revealed very interesting findings about the human psyche. Logically, no matter what the split is, you might think your friend would accept it. Even if it’s $19 dollars to you and $1 to them, they’re still $1 richer than three seconds ago.

But here’s the catch: humans aren’t logical. According to researchers, the folks who were made offers they found too low would often reject them.

Here’s the truly wild thing: one study found that the amount of money people offered to their experiment partners varied hugely depending on the objects found in the room. For example, if they were exposed to a backpack, 100% of the participants proposed an even split. If they were shown a briefcase and fountain pen, they would instantly become more competitive, choosing to keep more of the money for themselves. That’s right: simple household objects radically changed human behavior.

How can a briefcase and a fountain pen affect behavior so much? The phenomenon is called material priming. You may not realize it, but every stimulus nearby affects how you act and react.

Your Brain is Smarter Than You Think

The reason material priming works is that even when you don’t realize it, your brain is working overtime to collect as much information about a situation in order to behave in the most appropriate way.

It’s not just objects, either. Other researchers have found that if you’re exposed to even the concept of age, you walk more slowly. And if I tell you right now to think of the word, “yellow,” you may already be thinking about a banana, because those two words are closely linked in your mind. I primed you.

This has a whole host of possible applications — psychologists see it as a way to help people learn, for example. But if you start thinking about the many ways it can be useful to influence the behavior of yourself or others, you can immediately start thinking of other potential uses.

How to Use Priming to Affect Behavior

You can easily see how this would be beneficial when working with others. For example, if you’re beefing with your coworker, it makes sense to suggest meeting at a neutral coffee shop or even outdoors rather than in a business-like meeting room.

But in addition to influencing others, it’s much more powerful to subtly influence yourself. What goals do you want to accomplish? It may be that you’re one everyday object away from being able to achieve them.

Personally, especially lately, I’ve found my productivity slipping. I want to be better at focusing on my work when I’m at my desk.

Next, I considered what objects make me feel that emotion I’m trying to elicit. For me, a cup of tea, a pencil, and a notebook make me feel more scholastic. I’ll note that I don’t actually write in the notebook, but just seeing it brings me back to my school days where I easily focused for 7 hours a day on classwork.

Finally, carefully analyze not your feelings, but the outcome, both with and without the priming. Do you achieve what you wanted, more so than without the priming?

For me, I discovered that priming myself with objects I view as “productive,” did help me achieve more in the same time.

No matter how unbiased you think you are, you have opinions and thoughts that are influenced by your environment. This is one of the most beautiful things about human nature, in my opinion — you are a product of everything around you.

Priming is just one example of your brain collecting as much information as it can before spitting out a recommendation for you to do or think. Use that to your advantage to provide yourself with the very best conditions to accomplish your goals.

This story originally appeared on Medium.