Speaker 1: It's no secret that people don't like to be told what to do, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody. I know that for me, the more someone tells me that I cannot have fast food, I only want to have fast food all the more. If someone tells me that I can't do something, what do I want to do? Exactly that thing. I think that's a fairly common experience. In psychology, this idea is called reactance, which means that people don't like to feel like their freedom of choice is being threatened. If I feel like you're making me do something, you're trying to control me, I react really poorly to it. And a lot of times what happens is that people go ahead and do the opposite. They'll do something that completely counters the thing that they feel like they're being made to do. This is a problem for persuaders, because what is persuasion and influence but trying to get people to do the things you want them to do? So you need to be careful and know that people aren't going to be super open to the fact that you want to guide their behaviors and opinions. So what do we do? How do we counter reactance? Well, there's a very cool principle in psychology called, but you are free, or at least that's what I call the principle. The idea is that you want to assure people that you're not trying to threaten their freedom to choose, and they completely have freedom of choice in this instance, and then ask them to do something for you. Basically, the idea is reassure people that you're not trying to control them, and they become more influenced by what it is that you have to say. Consider a study that was conducted in France a few years ago. Their goal was to get people to take a simple survey, and they just go up to people and say, hey, we're doing a survey around town. We're looking for people to help us out and complete this five to eight minute questionnaire. Would you please do that for us? And the question is, how many times do people say, yes, I'll take your survey for you? Well, when they went in cold and they just asked like that, it turns out that about 75% of people did say yes. After all, it's only a five to eight minute survey. People are happy to do something like that. In some instances, they added the but you are free tactic, and opened up their request by saying, hello, we have something to ask of you, but you are, of course, free to accept or refuse, and then they ask them to take the survey. Well, in this case, compliance rates shot up to 90%. Even though 75% was a pretty good figure, adding just this one little sentence made people more likely to say yes to the thing that they were asking them to do. And all it took was telling people that they were free to say no. And ironically, that made them more likely to say yes. In 2013, a meta-analysis was conducted, which just means they took a whole bunch of different studies and lumped them all together to see if they were reliable across multiple studies. And they found that across 42 different studies, the but you are free technique is a reliable and effective strategy. They did find that it was more influential when in person, if you're talking to someone in person and using the but you are free technique, it's less effective over email, but overall, this is an effective strategy because it reminds people that they're free to say no. It assures them that they continue to have autonomy. They can say yes, they can say no, ultimately, it's their choice. And it's so strange to me that reminding people that they can say no makes them more likely to say yes. So the next time you have a favor to ask, simply add these simple words, but you are free to say no, and you might find that people become more likely to say yes.