Your parents, your teacher, the police, the doctor; just a couple of authority figures that we have been taught to listen to. People with the knowledge, experience and insight upon which we rely. We do it en masse and we do it with pleasure. That’s why it’s handy to know the ins and outs of how you can work authority into your script.
Adam and Eve
The phenomenon of authority is definitely nothing new. The oldest and biggest religious authority in the world is probably God. In the Old Testament Abraham listens willingly to the demands of God even when he asks him to stick a knife in the heart of his own son. Adam and Eve let themselves be sent out of paradise without protest. It’s baked deep into our culture that we gladly listen to someone with proven leadership qualities. We have learned that it yields structure, productivity and progress; and we prefer that to anarchy. Let’s take a little look at how we can apply that authority principle when developing content.
Signs of authority
If you want to use authority, you need to know what signals belong to it and how we react to them. The uniform of officials is a good example. But even the difference between a man in a T shirt and jeans, as opposed to a man in a suit, is enormous. Research suggests that people follow a jay-walking man´s behaviour quicker if he is wearing a suit than when he is in leisure wear. Have a good think then about what the people in your productions need to wear.
If you have someone in a video telling the audience something, it helps if they have a title which we attach values to. So, choose a real expert, someone we can look up to. Or at least think long and hard about how you introduce that person. ´Looking up to´ can be taken pretty literally in this context actually. Did you know that we generally estimate a professor to be taller than a student? Research shows the estimated height difference is 6cm, while in reality the professor may actually be shorter than the student.
The seeming authority of bigger cars can have an influence on our behaviour too. Researchers found drivers honk the horn 50% more often at small cars who take too long to accelerate when a traffic light goes green, than at larger cars. Most of the time we are completely unaware of these effects but you, as a script writer, can make good use of them.
Dangerous shocks
Perhaps you are familiar with the famous 1963 experiment into authority conducted by Professor Stanley Milgram when he was at Yale University? As a professor in a white lab coat he gave study participants the task of delivering electric shocks to a student whenever the student gave the wrong answer to a question. With every incorrect answer the student received a more painful shock, until they demanded and begged for it to stop, before hopelessly banging on the door. Two thirds of study participants ignored this and continued to deliver the dangerous shocks.
Fortunately the students were in on the act. The research suggested how slave-like we are when it comes to following authority. Of course, we probably knew that already, from the rise of Nazism in Germany decades before. In content it can be a bit less shocking! But, never underestimate the power of a professor, or someone else, in a lab coat!
Relativise
The opposite of an authoritarian is someone who relativises. But if you combine these things, you get an even more powerful effect. How does that work? A person in a position of authority who is very self-confident and exhibits expertise, can make us doubt them at a certain point. It sounds too good to be true that this person knows so much and is never wrong. That’s why their story becomes stronger as soon as vulnerability or failure is included. The evidence for this can be found, for example, in businesses who took responsibility for their failings in their annual reporting, a year later they were found to be worth more than those businesses you didn´t. So, in addition to authority do play with humanising and relativising. It makes your story far more convincing.
Authority and reciprocity
Relativising in combination with authority works well then. And the same goes for combining multiple principles from this Positive Influence series. Restaurants are a great place to test them out. Good catering staff often know precisely how to get their clients in just the right mood to order more and give a generous tip. In one study a waiter was so ´honest´ in telling his guests about particular dishes on the menu – that they weren’t so good today as normal, because of problems in the supply chain – that they felt pretty much obliged to do something good in return; he had after all given them a heads up about a potentially bad choice. Ordering the expensive wine was an easy choice then, as was leaving a large tip. In your story, to combine authority with freely giving something of value away, whether that is something physical or good advice. In that way you trigger the instinct to reciprocity and you can steer that in your desired direction.
In short then, following authority is part of human nature, and you had better take account of it when you want to tell a story. Are you, or do you know, an expert who can talk with true authority? If so don’t be shy of deploying that knowledge. Look too at which authority signals you can include in your script to give its power of persuasion a boost. Try to build in a bit of relativising in as well, for example in the form of self-deprecation or humour. And give your viewer, listener or reader something which makes them want to do something in return. Good luck!
About this series
The blog post series ‘Positive influencing’ by Voicebooking explores the psychology behind influencing. The goal is to attract and persuade your readers, viewers and listeners, not manipulate or mislead them. The series is based on the six fundamental principles of persuasion, as researched and described by Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and Stanford University.