How social contagions reach critical mass part 2 Sticky messages

Before reading this text I recommend you to read part 1 of how social contagions reach critical mass. 

You may have heard this story before: A friend of a friend was abroad. He went to a hotel bar to have a drink. He met a nice girl, who wanted to talk to him. The next thing he remembers, is that he woke up in a bathtub full of ice. He started to look around and found a note next to him, which said: ”Do not move and call this number!” Next to the note he found a mobile phone and he called to the emergency room. Pretty calm voice answered and asked ”Is there a tube in your lower back attached to you? He touched it with his hand and noticed it and he said yes to the operator. The next thing he heard, was calm words: ”Do not move, just tell us in which hotel you are and we will help you, you are a victim of the kidney heist.”

Composing a sticky message is not easy. The first story is an urban legend, which is a sticky message too. Sticky messages have many similarities and this post is about composing one. Everybody has probably heard some version about this story from somebody they know. Sticky messages are understandable, remembered and they have long-lasting consequences, which can change behavior.

Sticky messages have some certain characteristics, they are

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. They are explained through stories

Simple messages are squeezed into the core idea. They are easily understandable. Finding the core means squeezing the message into its most critical essence. You have to find the most important idea from your message and forget everything else, which seem to be critical, but do not belong to the core idea. To form a sticky message, you have to know how much of the message you can lose without killing the core idea. Simple messages are compact and the core idea is easily understood. You should use sentences instead of paragraphs, short sentences instead of long ones, and you should use easy words instead of hard ones. The idea gets stickier, when you can reduce the amount of information.

Unexpected messages contain surprise(s) at some point. You need a surprise to get people´s attention. Surprise means breaking the pattern the audience is used to hear. The surprise makes you give more attention to the idea. The extra attention then moves unexpected ideas into your memory easier. You have to fix the broken guessing machine, which is in your brains. The goal is to make people care about something and then tell people what they want to know.

Concrete message is examinable through your senses. For example, you can show photos or some other live media to make people sense the idea. Concrete ideas are easier to remember. Concreteness creates a shared understanding. Abstraction moves you into other way. Concrete language is used to help beginners to understand some complex ideas. It is a lot easier to use complex and abstract language and professional jargon instead of keeping things concrete. The problem is, without concreteness of the message it may be too hard to be understood.

Credible messages need details. Yoy need to define details, which can symbolize and support the core idea. Sometimes you can use statistics to enhance the credibility of the idea, but they need to be related to the idea you want to share. You can also use authority or antiauthority to get more credibility to your idea. For example, some success stories are good, when you want to show our solutions to problems are working.

Emotional messages work better than trying to give a reason for something. Most people believe in telling many reasons to do something, but most often message fails. By trying to make people care, you inspire people to act. You should do this by associating people with feelings they already have. Trying to associate the message with identity may help you get your message through. By doing this, you associate the message into people´s self-interest. People most often ask ”What´s in it for me?”.

Story-telling is a best way to make people take action. Stories provide mental simulation and inspiration to people who are listening. Mental simulation works, because you cannot imagine events without evoking modules of the brain, in which the same physical activities are evoked. These mental simulations help you manage your emotions. Stories provide content that is missing from abstract ideas. They are almost always concrete, emotional and they have unexpected elements. When you can tell a good story with only the core of the idea, you get almost every component of the sticky message. This way you can get your message through in a best way and it sticks longer in the mind of your audience.

You should use a checklist of these 6 things before sending the message. You don´t have to have all the components, but some of them are needed. If you can get your core idea through with the other components, your message should be sticky. Just try it and see what happens.

-TT

How social contagions reach critical mass, part 1 The law of the significant few

Critical mass in social contagions is the point where they start spreading exponentially. The speed is so fast that spreading takes care of itself. These contagions can happen either suddenly or slowly. An example of a sudden case was a change in using aeroplanes after 9/11. Instead of using a plane, many people used their own cars. Their probability of having lethal accidents became much higher. And after 9/11, there was much more deaths in transportation compared to the time before 9/11. An example of slow contagion can be any product that has been sold for many years before a big success. And then suddenly its popularity accelerates exponentially. Social contagions have three main components: people who spread it, stickiness of the message and the environment it spread. This text is mainly about the people behind social contagions.

The law of the significant few

Throughout the history, there has been people who have had enormous effects on others. These people are crucial for spreading social contagions and creating social proof. Sometimes they are people who are not known to have so much connections with other people and sometimes they are well known all over the world or in their own field of expertise. All these people have great social skills. They are efficient accelerators of epidemics. Being at the right place at the right time also matters. But it is not enough without great social skills. Getting assistance from these people help you to accelerate and widen the amount of listeners of your message. You can widely divide these people into three different groups: connectors, experts, and salesmen. Most effective of these people are some kind of combinations of these groups.

Connectors

If you don´t know many people, you cannot be a connector. These are the people who know everyone. Connectors are the type of people who are natural in getting to know new people. When you talk to them, you can be surprised how many people they know. I am sure you know at least one person who is like a connector. Ask his help for spreading your message. Connectors create so called weak links between people. They tell you that ”you should contact this person to talk about getting a new job”, or ”you can ask this person about a car he is selling.” Connectors are not important only because they know many other people. It is also highly likely that they know some people who can help you. They know the most important influencers and introduce them to other people. These people probably know more experts and salesmen, the other groups of people that are effective in spreading social contagions.

Experts or mavens

Malcolm Gladwell calls these people Mavens in his book Tipping Point. A maven means a ”one who accumulates knowledge” in Yiddish. Experts are not the people who have a similar effect on others than connectors. Experts are sources of information and connectors are more like the messengers. Experts have natural tendencies to gather new information. They figure out the best options for whatever you are trying to seek and want to deliver them to you. They have a natural desire to help other people solve their problems. They know the tiniest details about the things that rest of the people have no idea. Experts are both like teachers and students. They can also be seen as databanks.

Salesmen

Connectors and experts are not persuaders. They cannot change people´s minds. You need different type of people to get people change their opinions. These people are charismatic, they have lots of energy and you can feel their enthusianism before you even talk to them. Salesmen are capable of bringing rational and uniform arguments when they talk to you. These people are not only good in giving verbal arguments to you. They express their feelings and emotions well by changing their physical appearance. They do all of this by timing their facial and bodily expressions with your natural rhytm of communication. Most successful politicians are examples of salesmen. They have an ability to persuade you without even always having a personal contact.

Have a reasonable doubts about the advantage of having contact with these people

Be aware of the effects these people can have on you. All the effects are not good. This applies especially to experts and salesmen. People who you think are experts can be just fools in disguise. Many people follow their messages and life and think they are real authorities. They lead people to wrong directions. They may have lots of detailed information to share, but have no understanding about which pieces of their information are relevant. It is hard to find real cause-effect relationships from complex information and events. Even real experts are wrong sometimes. If you are not capable of knowing if these experts are real deals, you shouldn´t listen to them. Salesmen are very persuasive and they have power to change people´s opinions into wrong direction. You should always be especially mindful while you listen to them.

Next week I will introduce you to sticky messages.

-TT

Changing habits

Before reading this, you should see mental models and new habits.

The most important rule of habit change

The most important rule about changing habits is that you cannot remove your existing habits. Each repetitive action compounds in your brains. After you have done enough repetitions, habits are formed. After they are formed, a positive feedback loop strengthens it by repeating the action all over again. The longer your feedback loop has worked, the longer it takes to change the existing habit. It also means that the longer you have had a habit, the harder it is to change it.

Four components of habit change

It is possible for you to understand how to change habits only after you understand how to create new ones. Changing a habit is much harder than creating a new one. Your habits are your paths of least resistancepaths of least resistance. Changing them requires lots of effort. What I really mean about changing a habit is to change your routine and what you associate as a prize. Triggers are normally much less important than two other components of the habits. Sometimes you can think that routines and prizes are self-evident, but you may be wrong. There are four components or steps in changing the habits:

1. Identifying a routine
2. Experimenting with prizes
3. Isolating a trigger
4. Making a plan

The first part is the easiest. You have to identify a routine of the habit you want to change. For example, you want to buy less crap when you go to a grocery store. Routines are easy to identify. These steps are obvious for most people. And I am sure they are easy for you too. I am sure you have many habits you want to change, but you should proceed cautiously. If you have never succeeded before, focus on one habit first.

Experimenting with prizes is necessary. It is not easy to notice what the real prize actually is. It is easier to notice what you associate for a prize. Prizes can be anything from short-time feelings to hormone-changes in your body. For example, eating something sweet when you are tired can increase your blood-glucose level for a short-term. After a while, you need to eat another sweet. This goes on and on and your eating habits are not good. There is no easy way to find out what your real prize is. You may need to have some help from your loved ones or your friends. You should probably keep a diary about routines and emotions that occur right after them to find out what is the real prize you desire. You can also tell your emotions for your helping hand, whoever that is. You should do this as long as you have found out what the real prize is.

You should isolate the trigger after finding a real prize. Triggers have common denominators. They can be linked to locations, people you are with, emotional or physical states, or actions. Triggers can also be combinations of them all. The best way to isolate a trigger is to keep a diary or write notes for your habit you want to change. Lets keep things simple and use ”Joe” buying sweets as an example. Notes could look like this after some note-taking:

• Location (In front of your grocery store)
• Company (Alone)
• Emotional/Physical state (Hunger and feeling tired)
• Time (5 or 6 PM.)
• Previous action (Standing in a full bus)

Note-taking should be repeated until you have isolated the trigger. This is easier said than done. And not all the things that feel and look like triggers are them. You may find more common things in situations where your bad habits rule than necessary. All the common things do not belong to a trigger for a bad habit.

After you have identified a routine, experimented with prizes, and isolated the trigger, you have to make a plan to change your habit. You have to make a plan that has a trigger, routine, and a prize. Joe´s plan looks like this: When he is in front of his grocery store at 5PM, alone, and is hungry and feels tired after standing in a full bus for half an our after leaving his work (trigger) he goes inside the grocery store and buys a healthy snack with his other healthy groceries, instead of buying sweets like he normally does (changed routine). This is best achieved by changing his route in a way that sweets are least available and healthy snacks are most available for his senses. He does this to get a prize, which is a normal blood glucose level (association changed about the prize). This plan should be executed all over again, until the habit has changed.

The longer you have had a habit, the longer it takes to change one. Sometimes change takes even up to six months. You should also expect failures in the process and plan how to react to them. Failures are not disasters, they provide much needed feedback. It is actually more probable that you will fail at least once than getting a complete success once and for all. Everything should be made as simple as possible. You should focus on the next step all the time without thinking. When you start, you should focus on the first step. Try forgetting the real goal. After you have failed the first time, focus on the next step again.

About timing

Timing matters. It matters when you establish a new habit, but it is even more important in changing habits. Sometimes you have to change your bad habits instantaneously. When you have a time to make a plan and change your habit, you should also think about the right moment to change it. The most common way to start changing a habit is to make a new year´s resolution. When it comes to timing, it is possibly the worst time to start changing habits. Resolutions are not by themselves bad things. If your resolution is based on the assumption that you start executing it 1^st of January, then it is probably the worst time to start the change.

Habit change requires an enormous amount of conscious effort in the beginning. Your willpower is at its lowest level after a new year eve´s party. You will feel tired and you possibly have a bad hangover. Changing your habit then becomes basically impossible. Your first failure occurs and you give up before you have even started. You should start changing your habit when you feel sharp and have recovered from emotional and physical stress. For example, you can start it on vacation. You should always consider the best option for yourself for starting the change. It can also depend on the habit. You cannot change a habit, when it doesn´t normally occur. This might seem like no-brainer to you, but maybe it is better to mention it.

There are only few important mental models to introduce. For the next months I will probably focus on giving more in depth view about how they work in real life and how these models interact in real life applications.

Sources:

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
Stick With It, Sean Young

-TT