Consider your mind as a light.  Sometimes it is brighter; others, not.  The energy and effort you bring to thinking, changes from moment to moment, event to event, relationship to relationship, from fancy to desire to need, and so the light of your mind ebbs and flows, the tide of light surging through your days.  Under the press of immediacy, salience, or want, your mind’s light burns brightly illuminating the moment, casting in high relief all the elements around you, exposing even the smallest, darkest thing.  And, with the release of press, in the absence of urgency, relevance, or desire, your mind’s light diminishes, leaving only those exterior bright beams from the world around you to attract your attention and guide your thoughts.  You make the flow or you go with it.

The energy and effort your give to your mind turns the dial.  The light of your mind reveals the world around you and reveals you to the world.  And the brightness of the light of your mind is the central character in the performance, the drama, the narrative of your life.

When you possess both high willingness and ability to think, the light of your mind brightens to full intensity and illuminates everything in the room of your mind.  With this high WATT mind, you can see details, cracks, and facets and you can contemplate them for all their nuance, subtlety, and worth.

By contrast at low WATT, the light of your mind barely burns and you see less in the room of your mind.  Now, you focus only on bright shiny pieces.  The room of your mind is illuminated not by the light of your thinking, but by the bright light of those external ideas.  You draw light from those ideas.

WATTage is the fundamental fact of human nature.  Your willingness and ability to think, cleverly compressed as WATT, determines what you see in the world; controls how you think about, react to, and remember it; drives what you will think, feel, or do now and in the future.

If you understand only one persuasion idea, it must be WATTage.

With WATTage, you see why the same person can be persuaded so differently, sometimes working diligently trying to chose a new sweater as if solving a math problem and other times grabbing a top and cooing, “What a pretty red color!”  Variations in WATTage cause us to prefer either Arguments or Cues to guide our persuasion choices.

From WATTage you can see the two fundamental routes of persuasion, the Central and the Peripheral.  The high WATT mind seeks Arguments – crucial pieces of information about the persuasion event – and travels the Central Route to change.  By contrast, the low WATT mind seeks Cues – those bright, shiny things that shake and jiggle – and ambles along the Peripheral Route to change.

Through WATTage you realize that when people change through that high WATT, Argument-driven Central Route, the change will persist over time, resist counter-arguments, and be highly predictive of future actions; Central Route change is strong change.  By contrast, you see that when people change through the low WATT, Cue-propelled Peripheral Route the change will be less persistent, easily counter-argued, and less predictive of the future.  And, all these differences can be explained with the one large persuasion concept:  WATTage.

With WATTage you can understand the bewildering and baffling range of human behavior, how at one time we are rational, systematic, thoughtful, efficient, and detailed, then at another we are simple, categorical, shallow, superficial, and mindless.  What controls this maddening variation in ourselves and others is variation in WATTage.

WATTage is the Main Point.

Get the bleach my Green readers!  Toss all your green t-shirts in the wash with a cup of Clorox to stay color coordinated with the newest eco-discovery:  If we all paint our rooftops white, we can stop Global Warming.

So says President Obama’s Secretary for the Department of Energy, Steven Chu.  Chu claims it would work.  And, for those of you who don’t have the Cabinet lineup card, Chu isn’t a run of the mill political hack appointment, some out of office Governor.  He’s a Nobel prize winning physicist.  So, not only can he do the math, Dr. Chu’s already done it to arrive at that conclusion.  Wow, whodda thunk that the 150 year harms of the Industrial Revolution could literally be whitewashed away?  I guess you need a Nobel prize just to imagine such a thought.

Such science stimulates the practical persuader in me.  We’ve nearly exhausted every persuasion tactic tied to the color green and its semantic equivalent “eco,” but now, we’ve got a new weapon.  White!

Consider the classically conditioned Ding-Dongs with the color white.  Purity.  Truth.  Honesty.  Virginity.  Chastity.  Look for green and white flags, pennants, banners, shirts, and street puppets coming soon to an eco-rally.

Of course, left unsaid in all of this is how we get the entire world to do this.  A smart and proven tactic, specifically aimed at getting people to whitewash is available to us, courtesy of that well known persuasion agent, Mark Twain.  Just read “Tom Sawyer,” for the details.  It might work on a global scale, too.

P.S. Read these related Green posts.

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I love Clif, my father-in-law, for two reasons.  First, he and his sweet wife, Clair, gave me their daughter Melanie, the light of my life.  And, second, he fought in Patton’s army during World War II.  Clif served as a tank commander in the 712th Tank Destroyer Battalion and fought from Normandy through Operation Cobra to the Battle of the Bulge, the race across the Rhine, then to V-E Day.  Then he shipped back to the US and was preparing for the invasion of Japan when the war finally ended.  Let me share some images from his service.

These maps show the movement of his Battalion from landing at Utah Beach to the fight at Falaise Gap, to Paris, then Bastogne, southern Germany across the Rhine, then finally into Czechoslovakia where they liberated death camps.

He did have some time off with a shot in Paris.

And, his son, Phil, my brother-in-law, gave this homage to his father during Phil’s trip to Paris many years later.

Clif did have a chance for a beer now and then . . .

. . . and an occasional time out from fighting.

We can forget that people much like ourselves risked their lives, faced daunting challenges, and came home to be just folks.  Especially when we see the old boys and girls who did their best back then, we can easily forget what they did.  We shouldn’t.  We should remember and thank them.

I appreciate the service that Sergeant Clifton Booth gave to our country in 1944-45, the risks he took, the pain and loss he suffered, and the beautiful family he and Clair made.  He’s a good man and I am proud to know him.

This photo is from the wedding of Clif’s first grandson, Clifton, to his wife, Julie, in 2006 on the gardens of the campus at Michigan State University.  Clif Booth is seated in the center, backed by his loving family, from left to right, Steve Booth-Butterfield, Melanie Booth-Butterfield, Clair Booth, Cheri Booth, and Phil Booth.

Thanks, Clif, for Melanie and for your service to our country.

I’ve got five words for you that will double charitable contributions people give you.  That’s five, f-i-v-e, 5, cinqo palabras, that will double, times 2 it.  Magic words, baby.  And I know them.

Nope, nothing about sex, drugs, money, fame, fortune, or film at 11.  Not even close.  You aren’t even close with your guesses.

You know what?  I like you.  You interest me.  I’m gonna tell you for nothing.  Those Five Magic Words.  That will double the success rate.  You’re a good kid and I want to help.

Robert Cialdini devised these ingenious Magic Words over 30 years ago.  While going door-to-door to solicit charitable contributions for the American Cancer Society at 84 households, experimentors either made a simple request, “Would you please contribute to ASC?,” or made the request plus the Magic Words.  Thus, half the households, 42, got the Normal Request while the other half, 42, got the Normal Request plus Magic Words.

Got that?  Either, “please contribute” or “please contribute and Magic Words.”  A five word addition to a simple request for a chartiable contribution.

And what happened?

When hearing the Normal Request, 28% of the people gave some money.  When hearing that Request plus the five Magic Words, 50% of the people gave some money.  In total the Normal Request earned $18.55 in contributions while the Magic Words earned $30.34.  Interestingly when a person made a contribution, they averaged about $1.50 regardless of whether hearing the Normal or the Magic Words request.  That’s nearly a 100% increase in both the number of people who contribute and the amount of money.  With five Magic Words.

Cialdini replicated the effect in another study that tested other Magic Words, but nothing worked better than the original five Magic Words.  And, 30 years later, a team of researchers working in Poland found the same effect for the same five Magic Words, although in Polish, not English.

Now here’s a wrinkle.  Both the American and Polish tests occurred face-to-face with people actually talking to each other in real time.  A few years ago, another American team tested the Magic Words, but used printed signs next to collection bottles in stores for a worthy cause.  Instead of speaking the Magic Words, they just wrote them.  Guess what?  The magic went away.  No effect.

So, we know that there are five Magic Words for increasing charitable contributions, that these words work in America and Poland, and that they work when you speak them, but not when you write them.

Now.  Here are the MAGIC WORDS:  “We’re asking for your help.  Would you please contribute?  EVEN A PENNY WILL HELP.”

How does this work?

The five Magic Words function as persuasion cues with low WATT processors.  Realize that all those nice folks standing at the door, listening a prosocial appeal, are not thinking carefully and effortfully at what you say.  They are distracted, perhaps even mildly annoyed.  Then they get cued up in a most simple way – Even A Penny Will Help.  So easy.  Just give the nice person a penny, then go back to watching TV, and you’ve done a good deed!

This is called peripheral route persuasion and as long as you deliver the cue so that the receivers can easily and immediately act upon it, you will get the change you desire.  But, remember, the five Magic Words only work when:

1.  You make a prosocial or charitable request.

2.  You say the Magic Words in person as you are talking.

3.  You make sure they can act on your request immediately.

The Magic Words will NOT work if you make a selfish, profit-oriented request, if you write them on a sign, or if you make the request, but the target cannot quickly or easily act on it.

Sometimes, persuasion really is that simple.  But, there’s never any magic to it.  You can change the five words here to anything else that means, “give something even if it’s small” AND a specific, concrete comparision like a “penny.”  The “magic” here is not found in the exact words, but rather in the plea for small help and a particular example of “small.”

Only because of the proximity to Al’s Beefs on Ontario and Wells did I carry Melanie’s purse while she attended the 57th annual meeting of the International Communication Association convention held at the North Michigan Avenue Marriott Hotel this past week.  It’s a dirty job, but I promised to love, cherish, and honor 30 years ago and dammit, I’m going to do it.

My teen years were spent in the greater Chicago area where I attended high school at West Aurora High with Tom Skilling, the WGN weather guy, his little brother Jeff, formerly of Enron now residing in a Federal facility, and Eric Halfvarson, operatic basso profundo, plus a larger cast of 2,000 really good kids from the late 1960s some of whom are my fbff.  While the mountains of West Virginia are my home now, Chicago is an old stomping ground.

Sure, the ICA conference was heady, bright, and nuanced, but for me the best part of the trip is the food.  I ate a yard (okay, only 28 inches) of Al’s beef sandwiches.  Al’s makes, hands down and thumbs up, the greatest sandwich in the history of Western Civilization.  As long as Al’s is open, everything is going to be okay in the world regardless of who’s President, the current S&P 500 index, or who won American Idol.  My college roommate, Mo, introduced me to Al’s back in the early 1970s.  Even if Mo sold me into the sex slave trade, I’d still be thankful for that initiation.

Sated on beef, we went looking for something different on Saturday and literally stumbled into Le Colonial on Rush Street.  Hubba-hubba.  It is a French/Viet fusion place that aims for the look and feel of Saigon circa 1950.  Le Colonial is a beautiful room (check out the shots on the website) that also possesses an upstairs mahogany bar the likes of which they don’t make any more.  I could sit up there all day sipping small vodka martinis.  And the food!  Good grief, well done Asian resides in a class all its own and Le Colonial provides well done Asian dishes to suit any taste or appetite.  We’ll be back in Chicago this November and I plan to take up residence at Le Colonial (and it’s just a few blocks from Al’s!).

For dinner we had a fun time a Bin 36, just down river from the new Trump Tower.  [BTW:  The Trump place does not encourage walk in hoi polloi traffic.  Be warned.]  Bin 36 is a trendy place with an emphasis on value, food, and wine.  It offers an extensive cheese and wine menu with a focus on flights.  Thus, you can sample a range of tastes, yet eat just one regular sized serving.  The whole flight strategy, whether with wine or cheese or even Vienna sausages, is a bright and effective persuasion play.  Combinations of bites that sum to a whole dish provide interesting and provocative choices.  Yet, most places don’t use the idea.  Back to the opera!

Café Spiaggia was a delight.  Very pretty room, excellent service, nice views out the second story window of North Michigan avenue and the Drake Hotel.  And, the food’s pretty good, too.  Melanie loved it and I appreciated it.  I’ve got a junkie palate and prefer fat, salt, and sweet tastes.  The chef preferred bright, sharp, bitter, and sour tastes.  And, they were well done.

Vivere has a great room that looks like a 1950s Las Vegas show room.  Very interesting layout and décor.  The food and service, however, were simply poor that night.  Perhaps the stars, the moon, and Uranus aligned for a harmonic dissonance, or maybe they’re just not that good.  Hard to say with one meal.  We won’t be back.  Whenever I have a poor experience at a restaurant, I always want to leave a copy of my Persuasion Guide with the manager.  While good food is an argument all its own, how a place surrounds that food is also an argument.  It seems that failures arise from a “good enough” attitude when there is so much more that could be done to enhance, expand, and elaborate the experience.  If by any chance, you are in the restaurant business, please read up on persuasion whether my book or someone else’s, like Robert Cialdini’s outstanding, “Influence.”  There are so many possibilities.

We’ll leave Chicago with a funny, artistic moment that demonstrates the City of Big Shoulders also owns a Big Sense of Humor.

Perhaps this is what Melanie and I will look like someday.  She keeps talking about a game preserve with land, lottsa land, and the starry skies above with critters and gardens and trails.