So hello and thank you for joining this session this evening. My name's Becky Mayer. I'm a vet.

I've got experience in small animal clinical practise. I'm also a marketer. I've spent the last 18 years or so working in global pharmaceutical companies in the veterinary sector in a different, you know, in a range of different commercial roles.

I'm also a consumer psychologist, having done a master's level qualification in consumer psychology, and it's that blend of clinical experience, commercial experience and consumer psychology that I want to bring to you, and it's my aim to apply that blend. To help practises make really small changes and tweaks to the way in which you communicate with clients in order to have really big psychological impacts on those clients, all with the aim of helping to make a bigger difference to animals and their lives. So consumer psychology is an arm of the wider discipline of behavioural science and it draws on all the different aspects of psychology.

And it's the study of how our thoughts and our feelings and our beliefs affect how we buy and how we engage with products and services. So over the next 50 minutes or so, I'm going to encourage you to think about a really important question, which is how do we influence other people? How do we encourage them to see things from our point of view without them feeling as though they're being coerced or pressured in any way?

And obviously this needs to be ethical too, we need to be doing it authentically and ethically, encouraging people to make decisions that are in their best interests. Because whether we like it or not, the key competency of the most important things that we do is influence. Whenever we're communicating, whether it be as leaders, as colleagues, as veterinary professionals, as parents, as friends.

Whenever we communicate, we're influencing and we're being influenced. So we need to understand what the science and what the psychology can tell us about how to influence more authentically, more powerfully and more effectively. So through this webinar, we'll take a look at how we think and how that impacts on the decisions that we make.

We'll also look at the role of memory and the importance of helping our clients and our colleagues lay down memory if we're going to influence their decision making. We'll also look at some heuristics which are mental shortcuts, mental rules of thumb that our brains use and see how we can tap into those to be more persuasive. And then at the end of the webinar, we'll take a look at some really tiny tweaks that we can make to our language, which will help increase the chances of hearing yes from the client or the colleague or the friend or whoever it is that you're hoping to influence.

So let's start by taking a look at how we think. And, you know, to be able to influence, we really need to understand what's actually driving people's behaviour. And how we think is a really critical part of that.

So the Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, he coined this, idea of System one and System two thinking. And it's a really nice way to understand the role of our subconscious in how we think and how we make decisions. Soy one is super fast, it's, it happens automatically, it's not within our conscious awareness at all.

So this is sort of gut instinct, these are the, the, the decisions that are made in our brain without us having to think about it at all. So, system one is driven largely by emotions, by habits, by subconscious cues, and by heuristics. So there's mental shortcuts that I mentioned a moment ago.

So an example of System one thinking from my day earlier on this morning would be the school run. I've driven that route so many times, I can do it from my eyes closed. I certainly don't think consciously about where I'm going or what I'm doing along that route.

So System one is in charge. I'm acting automatically. And it would only really be if something was to happen, if there was to be an incident in the road or I needed to divert for any reason, then I would operate on System 2 and I'd start to engage my mind and start to think about it.

So System 2 is really slow and deliberate. It takes a huge amount of effort and as a result, our brains don't like doing System 2 thinking at all. We tend to avoid it at all costs.

So system two is, you know, what's happening when we're very consciously wearing the cogs. We're crunching data, we're trying to work out, what's going on or, or assess something really thoroughly. And an example, if we stick with the driving analogy, an example would be reverse parking into a really tight space.

So you're having to maybe turn the radio off so that you've got the mental bandwidth to think you're looking in your mirrors really carefully to see what's behind on either side of you. So you're consciously wearing the cogs and thinking about the information in front of you and making decisions based on that. So whether or not we engage System 1 or 2 will depend on lots of different factors.

Typically if we're in a really good mood, we will engage system one, so we won't think consciously, we will just go with gut reaction when we're in really good moods. System 2 is more likely to be used where we are making a really big decision. So things like what house am I going to buy, what job am I going to do?

Much more likely to engage System 2 at that point. But I think it's really important to understand that whilst in those scenarios, we will no doubt look at particular criteria, we might make, we might even weigh things up very rationally. System one still plays a really big role in those big decisions.

So it's certainly not the case that once we engage System two and we start thinking that emotions and heuristics and habits and bias are are out of the picture, they still play a very important role. You know, if I think about, seem to be on, car analogies today, but if I think about a car that I recently bought, I can tell you some very rational reasons why I chose that car, but if I'm honest, the thing that really clinched it for me was the fact that it has a sunroof, and that's a very emotional reason for me to want to buy a car, you know, it's not, it doesn't help me get to A to B, faster, better, cheaper, . So even though we might think we're making decisions with System 2, System 1 is still very much in charge, and we'll tend to use System 2 to post rationalise those decisions.

And that brings me onto this quote from Rory Sutherland, who, if you don't know him, he's a bit of a marketing guru and he's a big believer in behavioural science. And he came up with this quote that the conscious mind thinks it's the Oval Office, when in reality it's the press office hastily constructing explanations for decisions taken elsewhere. And I love this quote because it really describes that interplay between System One and System 2.

You know, as human beings, we tend to believe that we're very much more rational than we are. We tend to listen to our system too, and those rational explanations it's giving us for the things that we're choosing to do and the decisions we're making. But the reality is that most of the time, system one, our emotions, our subconscious judgments, those are the things that's driving our behaviour and helping us make decisions.

And the system two is providing the, the sort of rational post rationalisation so that we can feel comfortable with that decision. And I think this is really key to bear in mind when we're trying to influence, when we're trying to influence colleagues, friends, clients. It's really important to understand that whilst they need that rational explanation, so that they can post rationalise it and feel comfortable and know that they've chosen the right thing.

We also need to understand that the thing that's likely to be forcing them to choose is gonna be their system one, and we need to understand what's prompting that to make decisions so that we don't get in its way and inadvertently stop it making the right decision. And all of those drivers of System one have a really strong evolutionary basis. You know, if we think about our ancestors stood in front of a saber-toothed tiger, in that moment, it's probably not ideal to start using System 2 and to start rationally assessing all the information in front of you in that moment.

You know, the, the instinct is gonna save the day. And you know, that is the very important role that System one has played through thousands of years of evolution. And, and if we think about the value that it gives us now, it stops us being completely paralysed by having to assess all the information available to us at all times.

A lot of the things that we do through the day, we can do without really any conscious thought at all. And that just enables us to get through the day much more smoothly and much more easily and to cope with living in this really complex world that we live within. So these subconscious drivers of behaviour have a really strong grounding in our evolutionary past, and it makes them incredibly powerful.

So if we fight against them, we're fighting against thousands and thousands of years of evolution. So we really need to understand them so that we can help influence as powerfully as possible. And just to show you how powerful our mental shortcuts can be, I just encourage you to have a look at this visual illusion.

So it's probably no surprise to you will have, most, most people will have seen this before. But even knowing what the illusion shows doesn't stop us from being able to, doesn't stop us from being, from being sort of conned by it, as it were. So I've seen this hundreds of times, but I still can't tell my brain that these two lines are the same length.

So for most people, certainly for me, the line on the left with the arrow pointing inwards looks much longer than the line on the right with the arrows pointing outwards. But if we overlay two identical length blocks onto the slides, you can see that the lines are exactly the same length. And so our subconscious is is using the arrows as an indicator to make a snap judgement on the length of the line overall.

So we're overlaying meaning, our subconscious is overlaying meaning without us even being aware of it. And actually, even when we're aware of what the illusion is showing us, we can't stop our subconscious from doing that. And this is an evolution of the previous version from the, from the slide before.

But if you have a look at these, the, the blue and the black long lines are not changing in length at all. The only things that are moving are the arrowheads. And It makes us feel as though the blue and the black lines are getting shorter and longer and shorter and longer.

And again, it just demonstrates the fact that we're not seeing things perfectly as they are, our subconscious is jumping in and making snap judgments. So we're meant to be talking about influence, so why am I sharing visual illusions? Well.

I'm trying to communicate that our brains aren't perfect computers, and I know that you know this, we're not perfect calculators, but it's really important to understand that we don't navigate the world viewing information exactly as it is. Our subconscious is overlaying meaning, making, jumping to conclusions, making judgments which may or may not be correct all of the time. And our survival's relied on this.

We survive on being right enough, enough of the time, and that's all we need for this subconscious to be valuable to us. But it does mean that it makes mistakes. Sometimes things aren't exactly as they seem.

And as a result, our perceptions are really heavily influenced by our experience, by our expectations, by the context and the way in which information is presented. So it's really important that we understand this when we come to influencing people because we need to be able to present that information in such a way that we enable the subconscious to be able to see it clearly for what it is. So armed with that knowledge that we're not perfectly rational computers, it's probably no surprise to learn that being right or having all of the strongest arguments is not enough when it comes to influence a lot of the time.

You know, how many of us have, have been in situations where we felt like we've had really strong sets of arguments. We knew we were in the right. We just haven't been able to persuade somebody of something because we haven't been able to frame it in the right way.

And I know I certainly have felt that many, many times. So let's have a look at what psychology and science can teach us about how to influence more successfully in the future. And we'll start by having a look at learning and memory and the role that that plays in persuasion.

So learning plays a really important role in preference formation and our preferences will affect our future behaviours. And, of course there's lots of different ways to learn, but it all comes back to laying information down in our memory, laying down mental associations, and these become these sorts of webs of association within our memory. So this is the principle that neurons that fire together wire together.

So what we're constantly organising information in our brains and connecting it to other bits of information that are already in there. And when we need to think, we draw information out of our long-term memory and into our working memory. And the stronger the webs of association, the deeper the paths, the more well travelled those paths in the brain, the easier it is for us to pull those bits of information out and into the working memory.

And the easier it is, the more likely we are to believe it. And I know that's not entirely rational, because just because something is laid down very strongly in our memory, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. But it's just a mental shortcut that we all have that if our brain can pull it out very, very easily and we can retrieve it very, very nicely, then we're much more likely to believe it to be true and to like it.

So it's really important that we are able to impact. Memory, when we're trying to influence people, in fact, if we don't, if we, if, if when we're trying to influence somebody, they, they're not able to lay down any memory at all, then we'll have no impact on, on them as, as far as influence is concerned. So how can we help our clients or colleagues or whoever it is we're trying to influence lay down a really rich web of association?

Well, the first step is to make sure they can perceive that information, and I know that sounds really super obvious, but it is a really critical step in terms of laying down memory. I've laid it out on this slide as a sequential process, but the reality is that it happens in an instant. So if we're trying to persuade someone, we'll typically start off by talking to them or providing them with some information, so they have a sensory input as they take that information in.

The next hurdle we need to overcome is to make sure that they're able to pay attention to it. And it, you know, it's fairly self-evident that the things we don't pay attention to aren't gonna get laid down in our memory. And I'm sure you've experienced that if you've, ever driven on a journey like the, school run that I mentioned this morning, where it's, an incredibly familiar journey, you do it without paying any attention.

And as a result, when you get there, you might think, oh, I don't really remember doing any of that journey. And it's simply because you weren't paying attention. None of those sensory inputs that you had during that time have been laid down in your memory.

You may also have noticed that if you're paying attention to one thing, then you can't pay, you can't pay attention to something else. So the classic would be during a Zoom call or perhaps even during this webinar, where you get distracted by email or someone talking to you or something else, and you lose the thread of that Zoom call or you lose the thread of what's happening in the webinar. So it's really important when we're influencing people to make sure we choose a time and a place with minimal distractions so that we optimise the chances that that person is going to be able to pay attention to what we say.

If they're not paying attention, it won't be laid down in memory and therefore it won't influence their behaviour. So having got them to pay attention, the final step in the perceptual process is to make sure that the, the information is comprehended. So we interpret and we assign meaning to that new information, and we relate it to knowledge in our brains that's already there.

So our brain works out which of those webs of association it should be connected to. So attention and working memory are really key when it comes to learning new information. Attention allows us to take it in and the working memory allows us to make sense of it and lay it down in our long-term memory.

So all thinking and reasoning happens in our working memory. So all of that conscious thought, the system 2 thinking happens in our working memory. And as we mentioned before, we need to be able to pull things from those webs of association in the long-term memory into the working memory to be able to do that thinking.

And remember that the ease with which we can do that is going to affect how believable we find that piece of information to be. Now of course, we've already mentioned the fact that our brains aren't perfect computers. We're not perfect calculators and we don't lay down information in a perfect way, and our memory is no different.

It comes with its problems. So sometimes we might forget things, so perhaps either the memory hasn't been laid down as thoroughly as it could have been in the first place, or perhaps it's been overlaid by new information that can happen too. The second way in which our memory can fail us is that we can block information.

So that sometimes happens where there's interference from other information. So the classic would be when you feel that something's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't quite find the right word or you can't quite think what you're trying to think of. You forgot someone's name, for example.

Or it happens to me when I go upstairs and I go upstairs to get something and I get upstairs and think, oh, what have I come up here for? And I have to bring, come bring myself back downstairs into the environment where I had that initial thought to be able to unblock it and think it again. The third problem with memory is that we distort.

So, this can happen when we misattribute information, so we might remember a fact, but we might link it to the wrong source, for example, in our brains. The other thing that can happen is that we can have completely false memories. So this often happens where we remember the gist of something, but there's quite a lot of gaps in what we've remembered.

And rather than remembering it as something with gaps, our brain decides to fill those gaps for us and it just creates the content that sits in the middle. So as far as we're concerned, it's a real memory, we remember it. It's laid down in our memory.

But some of the detail in there has been created by our brain, it's not real, and therefore it's a false memory. It will feel real to us, but it won't be true. So if our memories aren't perfect, and we know we need to elicit strong memories in order to influence people, what can we do?

You know, we need to think about how we can lay those memories down and try and combat the challenges of poor memory. So there's 3 simple tips here and we'll go through each of these in a bit more detail, but the first one is around thinking about the order of the information that we convey, and that can have a really strong impact on whether or not the bit of information we need to be remembered sticks in your client or your colleague's brain. The second is to think about the role of emotion, and we'll talk about that more in a in a moment, but emotion plays a really key role in enhancing memory.

So that's something that is very important that we think about. And the third is through repetition. Repetition is again very key to help us lay down memories, but it also helps us like things more, and we'll talk a little bit about why that's important.

So if we look at those ordering effects, where should we place bits of information in our conversation if we want them to be most memorable? And you may have come across primacy and recency effects before. So the primacy effect talks about how, first impressions count.

So very often this relates to meeting new people, and we will make system one gut instincts judgments about people when we first meet them. We will probably decide very quickly whether or not we trust them, whether we deem them to be credible, and it won't be a conscious thought that we have. It will just be our subconscious making these judgments.

So how you show up and how you build trust and credibility in those first few seconds of meeting somebody and it is only the first few seconds, is really critical. When it comes to relaying information in some circumstances, the first bit of information you deliver is going to be the most memorable. So that's primacy effect.

On the other hand, we have the recency effect, which is that the way in which we close a conversation matters because that's the last impression we leave somebody with. And very often the last piece of information that we communicate is going to be most memorable. Now these are obviously very contradictory, which is it?

Is it the first or is it the last? How do we know? Well, the answer to that is that it depends, but we know that the primacy effect tends to come into its own when we're talking about delivering just two bits of information quickly, one after another.

And in that circumstance, the first bit of information that we share is most likely to be the one that sticks in our minds. The recency effect comes into its own when there is a gap between those two arguments. We deliver one bit of information and then we come back later and and deliver the second.

In that circumstance, we're more likely to remember the 2nd than the 1st. Also, the recency effect comes into its own when there's a lot of information, you know, perhaps there's a long discussion or there's multiple bits of information that are being conveyed, and in that circumstance, the last bit of information is much more likely to be memorable. So if we think about our veterinary context, if we're talking to clients at the reception desk or in the consult room or in a vet nurse clinic, often there's quite a lot of information that's being conveyed.

So the recency effect is probably the one to focus on the most. However, I would encourage you to consider the primacy effect, particularly in your personal impact, in the way in which you show up. And the trust and credibility you can, you can build in those first few seconds because once you've lost that or you've missed it, it's very hard to go back and regain it at a later date.

So that gives you a little bit of an idea around some of the ordering effects that are important. And it's very important to think about which bits of information you need the client to remember. Make sure you close with them.

So that's talking to the recency effect. So coming back to our three tips on affecting memory, we've talked a little bit about the order of information and let's just talk now about how we can elicit emotion and why it matters. So numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories that we have tend to be of emotionally charged events.

And that's probably no surprise to you. You know, if you look back, you've probably got early memories from, earlier in your life, that are very emotionally charged, and they, you remember them with a huge amount of detail. You might, for example, remember your first kiss or where you were when a particular emotional event happened in your life.

And brain imaging studies have shown that the amygdala is activated during emotional events. And that has a very strong impact on boosting memory. So it enhances attention and perception and it also triggers the release of hormones which boost arousal, and again that helps with memory formation.

So what we want to do when we're trying to influence people is to make sure that we're not just talking to people on a rational level, but we're helping them feel something too. We don't want to just talk to the rational mind, we want to talk to their hearts as well, and that's going to be much more persuasive and influential. It's gonna also be much more memorable to them, and that's going to help you in the longer term, be influential.

So how can we do that? Well, there are two ways that are really key, and the first is to use imagery. Images are much more memorable in and of themselves, and they tend to evoke much more emotion than words do.

Now how you use the images is likely to change depending on the context in which you're trying to influence. So if you're trying to influence through writing, you're producing maybe a leaflet that you're hoping will influence behaviour. Then using imagery that you know will evoke strong emotions.

For example, we know that pictures of cute puppies and cute kittens tend to evoke very strong emotions in people. So using images like that will help you evoke a positive emotion which will make the information they're consuming more memorable. Now that may not be appropriate in a 1 to 1 interaction, for example, in the consult room or at the reception desk, but it may well be that there are other ways you can use images to increase memory at that stage.

So for example, Using radiographs to illustrate a point will make that point much more memorable to the client than if you were just try to try to explain it to them in words. Perhaps you can draw a diagram to illustrate your point. And there are lots of different ways you could use photographs of similar cases that you've seen, surgical cases, for example, to show what the wound might look like post op, so that the client gets a very visual feel for what they can expect.

That will stay with them in a much stronger way than just describing to them what they might expect. The other way that we can evoke emotion is through describing the emotional benefits of what we're trying to persuade them to do. And, as humans we tend to focus very much on the rational.

And so the rational benefit would be, for example, If we were to do this procedure, there's an 80% chance that Freddie's leg will return to normal use. So it's very rational, it explains that if we do this, Freddie's leg is going to get better. It's not very persuasive in and of itself, although it might seem to us at a rational level as though that should be persuasive, you know, an 8 out of 10 chance of success seems like a great, a great idea.

But at a, at a subconscious level, it's not very persuasive to us. So what we need to do is to think about the emotional benefit and layer that on. So the emotional benefit is how that will affect how they feel.

What is it going to make them feel? So here we could add, and that would mean that Freddie would be pain free and able to enjoy family life fully again. So it's perfectly authentic, it's true, it's correct, but it's talking much more to their heart than to their head, and that makes it very much more memorable for them.

So it's really important when we're conveying rational clinical information that we layer the emotional onto it in order to help with memory formation and to help be more persuasive. So you may also have come across the peak end effect which describes how the way that we feel about an experience after the event is generally an average of the most emotionally intense moment, the peak, and how we feel at the end. And I think this is a good reminder that whilst we do want to evoke emotion, emotion is really important in terms of driving decision making and forming memories.

What we, what we need to be aware of is that it is possible for emotion to be so intense that it will affect memory formation and the taking in of information around it. So, you know, it's not gonna be a surprise to anybody working in a veterinary practise that there will be conversations that you're gonna have. Some of them are going to be so emotionally intense that it's gonna be very mentally hijacking for the client.

And then they're not going to be in a position to pay attention to the rest of the words that you're throwing at them in that conversation. So you'll be very adept already at knowing when those conversations are happening and knowing that actually this is the time where I need to perhaps provide some written information and come back and revisit this conversation when that emotional peak has dipped a bit and the client is then able to pay attention and commit to memory the things that you need them to, to hear. So whilst emotion is really important, it's also crucial that we understand at what point it becomes so intense that it becomes a hindrance to the memory formations that we're trying to achieve.

OK, so we've talked about ordering of information and we've talked about emotion. Let's talk now a little bit about repetition and the role that that plays in memory. So repetition's really key for memory formation, and that'll be no surprise to anyone who's ever revised for an exam or tried to learn something for a particular reason.

So working out ahead of time what it is that you need your colleague or your client to really take on board, what are your key messages and then making sure that you reiterate those several times. I mean, not so that you sound like a broken record, obviously, but so that it's authentic and, and it feels natural, but so that you're making that point multiple times with, so you're giving it the best chance of sinking in and, being laid down in memory. The other thing you can do to help enhance memory here is to use catchy phrases.

So if you have something that you're regularly communicating to clients and you really need it to be able to stick into their memories, it might be worth thinking about what form of words can you use, perhaps a bit of rhyming or alliteration that will make it more memorable and easier for them to lay down in memory. The other thing to be aware of here is something called the mere exposure effect. And the mere exposure effect describes how the more we like something, the more, sorry, the more familiar something becomes, the more we like something.

And so you may well have watched a TV series and over a period of weeks grown to really like the characters in that series. And we tell ourselves it's because you know we've got to know their personality and therefore we like them a bit more than we did at the start where we didn't really know them. But the reality is that that's the mere exposure effect in in action.

So the more familiar something becomes, the more our brains like it. And that will be the same for words that we hear, for people we meet, for information that we're given. Now the really important thing is that, is that our brains are programmed to shortcut.

When we like something, we shortcut through to other positive judgments that aren't really rational. So we will, if we like something, we are much more likely to decide it's credible, that we believe it, that it's true, that we're going to run with it. So, you know, that's not necessarily rational just because we like something that doesn't mean all those things are true, but our brains will shortcut to that in any case.

So it's really important to think about how we can use repetition to not just enhance memory, but also increase liking, because by doing so, you'll be increasing the chances that your clients will be influenced by the information, that they're gonna believe it, they're gonna trust it, they're gonna think it's true. OK, so we'll move on now to talk a little bit about heuristics and how we can use heuristics to be more persuasive. So heuristics are mental shortcuts, and we all use them.

Our system one uses them without us thinking, without us knowing. They're basically mental rules of thumb. So if this, then that, and our brain will just decide that, you know, I've seen this, therefore that.

So it's really important to understand the client stood in front of you or the colleague stood in front of you is gonna be using these mental shortcuts all the time. So having an understanding of them is really important so that we can understand how we can influence those, tap into those heuristics to influence more powerfully. It's also useful to understand them so that you can see how somebody else may be influencing you, and so you can understand some of the heuristics that might leave you open to influence at different times.

And that's not a bad thing, but it's, it's important to be aware of it so that you know when you're being influenced. And the guru on this is Professor Robert Chaldini. You may have read his book, Influence, and in his most recent version of Influence he describes seven really key heuristics which we can tap into to be much more persuasive and much more influential.

I'm just going to talk about 3 today. There are hundreds of different heuristics that our brains use, but, in terms of influence, the 7 that Robert Chaldini cites are, are the most key in terms of influence. So we'll look at, authority, liking, and loss aversion today.

So the authority heuristic is the shortcut that we use, which is if you look credible then to me you are credible, I believe you. And we look to people with superior knowledge or experience or wisdom all the time to work out how we should act in a given situation. But the really interesting thing is that often we don't validate any of it at all.

So, you know, we will make snap judgments based on how people look, and we will, our brains will decide whether or not they're credible without questioning should we believe them. Does the fact that they're wearing that uniform really give them that credibility? We will just decide, I see a uniform, therefore I believe this.

And it's happening in our subconscious. We're not aware of any of this. It's just snap judgments that are being made and so subtle signals like a uniform or the clothes that we're wearing can really impact on how credible other people see us as being.

And you know, we've spoken a little bit about webs of association in our memories. And this is really key here because cues like looking at a uniform will elicit a flurry of other thoughts and feelings that are associated with that uniform, other judgments that we associate with, for example, a police uniform or a farmer's uniform. And it will all be triggered by these interconnected pathways in our brain.

There was one study that was run in New York where they looked at somebody jaywalking and seeing how they might influence people following them, and they got one gentleman to dress up firstly in a suit and then secondly in casual clothes, and they asked him to jaywalk across the street and they counted how many people followed him. And what they found was that when he was wearing a suit, 350% more people followed him across the road. So those people were sort of mental shortcutting to he's wearing a suit, he looks like he works in the city.

He must know how to cross the road safely. You know, they're not thinking about that. That won't have been a conscious thought that they had, but their system one was sort of making a very snap judgement.

He's wearing a suit, he must know how to cross the road here. So these subtle cues can have a really profound impact on behaviour and understanding this is really important. I've done a bit of research on what authority looks like within the veterinary world.

In my study, I mocked up social media posts, and you see some of them on the screen, although there were a lot more of them than this. And, I changed the way in which these pretend vets, these weren't aren't real vets, I changed the way in which they were dressed. So either we had, business casual dress as you see on the right, or clinical dress, so lab coats or scrubs and a stethoscope round the neck, as you see on the left.

I also changed the way in which their professional credentials were communicated. So for example on the right you see that I used postnominals to demonstrate the qualifications that they had. Next in, next to that, I use the role title and the hospital name.

And on the far left you can see that I use the specialist status to communicate the credentials. And these went out to 200 pet owners. And they were asked to choose the social media videos that they were most and least likely to click through and watch.

And for those two, they were asked a range of different questions to assess how credible they thought that the person delivering the information was. And we explored, I used validated scales from the psychology literature and I explored three key criteria of credibility, again, all published from the psychology literature. And that was, attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness.

And I also asked them to indicate how likely they were to view the videos. And what I found was that for the vets wearing clinical dress, so lab coat or scrubs and a stethoscope round the neck, people rated those people as more credible across the board, regardless of which of the credibility criteria I was looking at. So more attractive, more expert, and more trustworthy.

And, this is really important because the only real differences were the way in which they were dressed. So, they also rated their intention to engage with the content as much higher for those wearing clinical dress than wearing business casual dress, and these results were statistically significant. The take home here is that actually by looking like a vet, or looking like a nurse or looking like a clinical receptionist, by wearing a uniform, we can have a really strong impact on how credible our clients deem us to be.

And the important thing is that the more credible you are seen to be, the stronger the intention to listen to what you have to say, and that's gonna really help you be more influential when you're having these, these conversations. So when we went on to look at how the the professional credentials were displayed, what I found was that by using postnominals, so letters after the name showing the qualifications, we saw a much higher rating for credibility again across all three, attractiveness, expertness, and trustworthiness. And this was statistically significant for attractiveness and trustworthiness.

And again, with for people that had their credentials shown as postnominals, the intention to engage and listen to that content was much higher than for those where there was hospital name and role title or specialist status. So what's happening here is that we're, we're giving the subconscious cues, the postnominals enable us to look at it very quickly and see a long list of letters, and our subconscious can shortcut through to, oh, lots of qualifications, very well qualified, they're credible. When we describe in words, the, the professional credentials of that person, whether it be through role title and hospital name, or whether it be through specialist status, we need the brain to then read the words and understand them.

So then we're asking them to engage system two thinking. So we avoid that subconscious shortcut through to highly qualified, must be credible. So again, this this tells us something that we can tap into within our clinics, whether it be on name badges, on plaques on the door, certificates on the wall, wherever it may be, to try and make sure that we provide those shortcuts for the brain to be able to go highly qualified, professional, and therefore credible.

I believe this person. One of the other interesting findings from the study was that veterinary professionals are no different in this regard. So I did a similar study using mock CPD events instead of social media posts, and I found the same trends, the same effects when these were given to veterinary surgeons.

So if you want to see be seen seen as credible to your colleagues, then the same applies. You know, pop a stethoscope around your neck, whether you're a, whether you're a vet or a vet nurse, wear clinical dress, regardless of your role within the clinic, wear something that looks like uniform that's going to give you a professional credibility. It's really important and we we can underrate those things very easily.

So that's the authority heuristic. We'll move on now and look at the liking heuristic. And this is the shortcut that we all use, which is I like you, so you must be right.

And we're all very much more persuaded by people that we know. But this can also be evoked by complete strangers. So we'll look now at how we can do that.

So we are hardwired as people to like people who are similar to us, who are familiar to us. Remember the mere exposure effect that I mentioned a minute ago, the more familiar something, the more we like it. We're also hardwired to like people who are attractive, and I know that may not feel completely palatable, but it's true, it's hardwired into us at a psychological level.

One of the really key things that enables us to use this heuristic is that we're programmed to like people who like us, and importantly, who tell us that they like us. So this is something that we can use and it has to be authentic, it has to be true, but using praise and compliments is a really useful way to dial up how much people like you. So when I think about my kids, and tidying bedrooms, which is a sort of ongoing battle in our house, my, my natural instinct is often to focus on what's not been done, where the mess is.

But I've noticed that if I go in there and I say, wow, look how tidy your bookshelf is and wow, your bed looks amazing, you've made it. They will naturally then go and look for the other things that are messy and start tidying themselves. It's really motivating, it influences their behaviour.

And as adults, we're not really any different, you know, so using praise and using compliments can really help drive behaviour, it's a really strong influencer. But as I say, it has to be honest and genuine. So if you're just littering out praise and compliments willy-nilly and it doesn't feel authentic, it's gonna have a counterproductive effect.

But looking for really genuine ways where you can praise and compliment other people will help to dial up how much they like you and remember that the more they like you, the more they're going to assign other positive judgments. They're gonna trust you more, you're gonna seem more credible, they're gonna believe the things that you say more. So it's really key that we try and encourage people to like us when we want to influence them.

The other thing that it's important to consider when you want to make your arguments likeable is to think about how easy they are for us to consume. And it might stand to good reason that if we have very complex ways of explaining things, then they're going to be, confusing and people aren't going to like that. But it runs more deep than that at a psychological level, and that's because of something called perceptual fluency.

So perceptual fluency describes how easy we find it to process information. And the easier we find it to process information, the more we like it, the more credible it's deemed to be, the more trustworthy it is, the more valuable, honest and correct we see it as being. And this is really important because remember the flip's gonna be true.

So if we present information that's really hard for the client or the colleague to consume, they're going to see it as not being credible, not being trustworthy, not being true, honest or correct. So these are things that we really need to consider. So how can we dial up the perceptual fluency when we're communicating?

Well, one way is to use plain language, and I know that sounds really obvious, but as veterinary professionals, we're using words within our clinics all day every day with colleagues that won't be part of the normal language for clients or for people, you know, everyday people on the street. So we just need to remember that. And also think about double meanings.

So one of the classic double meanings I've heard people talk about is when they're talking about an enlarged heart, using the word big, or the phrase big heart. Now Big Heart, we think we're explaining that the dog has an enlarged heart when we say big heart, but to the client, they might think that we're saying that it's a very kind, loving dog, because there's a double meaning there, and we just need to be aware of that, that we're using language that's easy for them to consume, easy for them to understand. We're avoiding acronyms and long words and double meanings.

The second way to improve perceptual fluency is when we're thinking about using written materials, making it really readable. So when we read words, our brains don't typically look at the letters and sound the word out in our head. We tend to glance at the word, look at the overall shape of it, and then make a guess about what it says.

So anything that we do that affects the shape of the word is gonna reduce the readability. So underlining, italics, using capitals, all gonna reduce the perceptual fluency of your written communication, so make sure you don't do that. And using contrast to make it easily readable, typically dark font on a light background is the easiest thing to consume.

And thirdly, keeping it brief, and that's really important because . It's easier for us to lay something down in memory, the briefer it is, and you've already heard about the importance of memory. So the third and final heuristic I'm gonna talk about here before we move on to how we can get to here yes is loss aversion.

And loss aversion is a mental shortcut that we all have, which is that we want to avoid losing something at all costs. We see losing as super painful, even if it's something that we don't really want in the first place, and this is really powerful. So in this study they looked at how they could flip the same information framing it as a loss or a gain.

So the gain being a 2 pounds discount if you pay in cash, and the loss being a 2 pounds charge if you pay with card. Both designed to encourage paying with cash, and it's the same, same end result for the consumer. But just presented in a different way.

And what we see is that by presenting it as a loss, by giving them a 2 pounds charge for paying with card, it's a very much stronger incentive, it drives behaviour much more effectively towards paying with cash. And we see the same in cafes where they're trying to drive down the use of single-use cups. They are much more effective in changing that behaviour where they say perhaps a 5050 pence charge if you don't bring in your reusable cup versus a 50 50% discount if you do.

So framing it as a loss is very much more influential. And that's because of something called prospect theory, which describes how losses are more painful to us than gains are rewarding. So if I walk down the street and I lose 10 pounds, I have to find 25 pounds in order to offset the loss that I feel at losing my tenner.

So losses are 2.5 times more painful to us than gains are rewarding. And if we just put this quickly into the veterinary context, there are lots of different ways in which we can use loss framing.

But, you know, if we have two choices, if we're trying to describe what, you know, how we're going to impact on a patient, we can either frame it as a gain, if we do this procedure, we'll help Bobby feel better, or we can frame it as a loss. If we don't do this procedure, Bobby's gonna continue to feel poorly. And it's the same information that we're conveying, but by framing it as a loss, it will have much more emotional impact on the client and it will be very much more influential and powerful as an influencer tool.

OK, so that brings me to the close of those three heuristics that I was taking you through. Before we close the webinar, I'd just like to give you 3 tips on how to make tiny tweaks to language to increase the chance of hearing a yes. And the first of those is the use of the word because.

And it stands to reason that if we're trying to be persuasive, that we're going to want to provide rational reasons because, you know, provides explanations as to why someone should believe what we're saying. But there's evidence to show that the word because carries a power in and of itself. So in this study, they asked somebody to go into a photocopying room and interrupt somebody who was already making copies.

And they gave them different phrases to say, and they judged how likely those phrases were to enable them to get that person to stop and let them jump in in front. So the first one was, excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the copier because I'm in a rush.

And in that circumstance, more than 9 out of 10 people said that's fine, stepped out of their way and let them use the photocopier. If no reason was given, and they just said, excuse me, I have 55 pages, may I use the copier, then only 6 out of 10 people stepped out of the way and said yes, that's fine. And then in the third example, they went back to using because, but they gave a reason which wasn't really a particularly powerful reason at all.

So they said, excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the copier because I have to make some copies. So because I have to make some copies is clearly not as valid a reason as because I'm in a rush.

But despite that, a very similar number, more than 9 in 10 people, still stepped out of the way and said, yeah, that's fine, you can go ahead of me. And what we think is happening here is that the system one is hearing the word because and not really listening to the reason that comes after it. It's just shortcutting to I heard because, so they must have a good reason, and that's fine.

So I'm certainly not suggesting that in our veterinary environment that we shouldn't be giving valid reasons why people should agree with us and should comply with the recommendations we're making. Of course we need to provide honest, authentic and evidence-based reasons why our recommendations are as they are. But what I am saying is that when you're delivering those, making sure that you use the word because as part of that delivery is a really powerful way to make sure you increase the chance that they say yes.

The second small tweet we can make to words is to use do you agree? Simply by adding, do you agree to the start of a sentence has been shown to increase by up to 12% the likelihood that somebody's going to agree. So by saying, for example, do you agree that Freddie would benefit from this, is likely to be much more influential than simply asking would would Freddie benefit from this?

And the third and final tweet to language that I'd recommend is to use you are free to choose. And this is so that we avoid something called reactants. So reactant is a very hardwired thing in all of us, that when we feel that we're being strong-armed into something, that our free will is being restricted, we will rebel, and we will rebel regardless of whether or not that is in our best interests.

It's very hardwired and very powerful. We don't like to feel that we're being forced and that our free will is being restricted. So it's important to be able to talk to your client or your colleagues system one, and be able to remind them that you're not strong arming them, that they have a choice to make.

And simply by saying you're free to choose, the choice is yours, you can double the chances of hearing yes from the person standing stood in front of you because you're avoiding the chance of them dipping into reactants and rebelling against the recommendations that you're making. So that was starting to bring us to a close of the webinar now, and the take homes that that I would like you to leave with, I just want to reiterate those now for you. So the first critical point is that the subconscious drives behaviour much more than conscious thought or rational arguments.

And so when we're thinking about influencing others, we really need to be mindful of not just the rational reasons that we're giving them to speak to the system too, but the things that are going to be driving their system one, and therefore how we need to frame arguments, how we need to, frame the words that we use so that we allow the system one to make the right decision. The second take home is that memory plays a really critical role in decision making, so we need to think about making sure we allow the person to have attention and focus on what we're describing to them and also to present it in such a way that we help them lay it down in memory. You've heard about heuristics, the role of those mental shortcuts, and we went through just 3 of them.

If you can start to put those 3 in action, and get those to be habitual for you there, then there are several more that you can learn, and they're really powerful ways to be more persuasive and also to be more mindful about how people might be persuading or influencing us. And then finally, those tweaks to language that can really dramatically increase the chances of hearing yes. So using because, using do you agree, and you are free to choose.

Three really powerful ways of increasing the chances of hearing a yes. So if I've piqued your interest in consumer psychology, then you can find more about my services at Insideminds.com.

I'm going to be running a consumer psychology taster course called Getting Inside Minds with the first intake starting in April. The course is aimed at anyone in the clinic who's interested in understanding more about how consumer psychology can help you, improve your client interactions and help guide clients towards the right things for the patient. There's gonna be 4 1.5 hour online workshops focusing on 4 key areas where driving client behaviour can be really challenging, so influencing.

Talking about value and price, health plan sign-ups and chronic medication adherence. And at the end of those sessions, you'd be armed with all the skills that you need to be able to guide clients much more effectively on those four areas and, and it would overlap into other areas too. And every delegate would get a one hour, 1 to 1 remote consultation with me where they can review any particular client interaction challenge of their choice, as well as receiving a report, a written report afterwards on the recommendations of how to overcome that challenge.

Now that course is normally valued at over £900 but as a relatively new business, I'm really keen to gather a large portfolio of testimonials. So I'm offering this out at a incredible introductory offer of just 185 pounds. Because the discount is so vast, I'm gonna have to limit those spaces to just 5.

So if you're interested in applying for one of those places, please do pop me an email at [email protected]. And let me know a little bit about you, your role, your practise, and what it is that you would like to get out of, this course, and I will be back in touch to let you know whether or not you're able to take one of those limited 5 places.

So thank you very much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the webinar and I look forward to seeing you at my next session later in the spring. Thank you.