THINKER'S ALMANAC - October 22

What can a free mint given to you with your check at a restaurant teach you about influence and persuasion?

Subject:  Reciprocation - Kennedy’s Deal with Khrushchev

Event:  Cuban Missile Crisis, 1916

It seems ironic and regrettable that for many years and even today, the factor that “saved the world” -- the power of reciprocal exchange -- has been underrecognized and has been assigned instead to a factor -- unwillingness to compromise -- that might well have destroyed that world. -Robert B. Cialdini

On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed the American people, informing them that the Soviet Union had shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba, where they were now aimed at the United States.  He further explained that he had ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and directed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to remove the missiles from Cuba.  For the next thirteen days Khrushchev and Kennedy stared each other down in a tense situation that threatened to turn the Cold War into full-fledged nuclear war that might destroy a third of the world’s population. Finally, Khrushchev backed down and agreed to return the missiles to the Soviet Union.  

                                                    John F. Kennedy - Image by WikiImages from Pixabay 

It turns out that there is more to this story than was initially reported at the time.  Recently declassified documents reveal that Khrushchev didn’t back down solely because he was intimidated by Kennedy; instead, his decision to remove the missiles from Cuba was contingent on a negotiated concession by Kennedy:  that the U.S. remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy.

In his book Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini uses the Cuban Missile Crisis as a classic example to illustrate the power of reciprocation -- a key rule of influence that says that when another person provides us with something, we feel obligated to return and repay the favor.  Long before Kennedy and Khrushchev, the human species survived and thrived because people learned the value of sharing resources with one another. 

Historians see reciprocation in the relationship between Kennedy and Khrushchev, but more importantly, sociologists and anthropologists confirm that the rule of reciprocation is a basic norm of human culture.  Knowing how the rule works will help us understand how we are influenced by it and how we might use it to influence others.

The rule of reciprocation tells us that humans are very sensitive to give-and-take interactions.  Whether or not we’re conscious of it, we keep track of what others give us and what we give them, such as favors, gifts, or money.  We are especially sensitive to being in debt to others.  Restaurant servers understand reciprocation; the one or two pieces of candy that you get with your bill is not a purely altruistic gesture; instead, servers know that by giving you a small “gift,” what they get from you, their tip, will be substantially larger.  This is because of the rule of reciprocation:  when given something, we feel obligated to reciprocate.

In one study conducted by psychologist Dennis Regan, he wanted to see how a small, unsolicited gift would impact his ability to sell people raffle tickets.  Half of the subjects received a can of Coca-Cola.  Then, after a brief time delay they were asked to purchase raffle tickets.  The other half of the subjects received no gift before being requested to purchase tickets.  Despite the fact that he never made any reference to the original gift, Regan documented that the people who were given a Coke purchased twice as many raffle tickets than those who did not.

In his Inaugural Address in 1961, John F. Kennedy proclaimed, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  Based on his understanding of the rule of reciprocation, he might have said, “ Ask not what someone else can do for you, ask first how you can do a favor for someone else.”

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the rule of reciprocation, and how does the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 illustrate its power?

Challenge - Tools But Not Hardware:  Reciprocation is just one of the powerful tools of influence that Robert B. Cialdini has identified.  Do a bit of research on one of the remaining six tools (Liking, Social Proof, Authority, Scarcity, Commitment and Consistency, or Unity).  Define what the tool is and how it specifically works to influence others.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:  

October 22, 1804 and 1837:  On this date in 1804 and 1837 two famous writers, one British and one American, waged their own personal battles with writer’s block by writing in their journals.  The first was the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).  Writing in his journal the day after his thirty-second birthday, Coleridge expressed his exasperation at being unable to produce the kind of great poetry he had written in his mid-twenties:  “So Completely has a whole year passed, with scarcely the fruites of a month. --O Sorrow and Shame . . . . I have done nothing!”  Although Coleridge was writing in his journal, he never again managed to write anything like his great narrative poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” which was published six years earlier (1).

 

The second writer was the American Henry David Thoreau.  After graduating from college at Harvard in 1837, Thoreau returned to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts.  There he met and was mentored by essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who encouraged the fledgling writer to keep a journal in order to record his thoughts and to develop his craft.  On this date, Henry opened his first journal and began writing.  He started by recording the questions that Emerson had first asked him:

'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day.

 

Thoreau’s journals gave him a place to develop his ideas and to avoid writer’s block.  In the course of 24 years he produced over two million words in 39 notebooks.  As explained by Odell Shepard, editor of Thoreau’s journals, writing this way helped Thoreau in a number of ways:

 

It sharpened his observation and deepened his thought.  By preserving the memory of his best hours -- those that had “a certain individuality and separate existence, aye, personality” --it enabled him to survey long stretches of earlier experience and thus to estimate his development or decline.

 

No doubt the journaling habit gave Thoreau the kind of confidence in his own ideas that lead to his two great works, the book Walden and the essay “Civil Disobedience.”

 

One interesting note is that the social networking messaging service Twitter used Emerson’s question as its prompt when the online service began in 2006.  Each tweet composed was prompted by the question “What are you doing?” In 2009 Twitter changed its prompt to the more succinct “What’s happening?” (3).

Sources:

1-Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, New and Expanded.  New York:  Harper Business, 2021.

2-http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/06/14/blocked

3-The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals (Edited by Odell Shepard).  New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1961.

4-http://mashable.com/2009/11/19/twitter-whats-happening/