Waaaaay back on June 6th, 2006 I wrote to my then-much-smaller list\u00a0about how people were acting kinda bitchy, rude, and weird on that\u00a0day.<\/p>\n
I can still remember that day clearly.<\/p>\n
And, I made a little conjecture about it:<\/p>\n
Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion”\u00a0talks about how people are unconsciously influenced by what’s going\u00a0on in the news. Specifically, how people with suicidal tendencies\u00a0will be more likely to “all the sudden” get into a fatal car and\u00a0even plane crashes following news stories of suicides. In fact, Dr.\u00a0Cialdini is so freaked by this he says in the book he even tries to\u00a0avoid traveling after news stories about suicide.<\/p>\n
And so it was that day.<\/p>\n
The date itself was literally influencing peoples’ behavior.<\/p>\n
For example:<\/p>\n
Women refusing to give birth due to the stigma left on the child’s\u00a0birth date, schools upping security in case someone wants to use\u00a0today to pull another “Columbine”, and people all around the world\u00a0basically expecting something bad to happen that day.<\/p>\n
Anyway, so it was.<\/p>\n
Speaking of Robert Cialdini:<\/p>\n
Tomorrow’s “Ben Settle Show” podcast talks about another ditty\u00a0written about in his famous book “Influence: The Psychology of\u00a0Behavior” — specifically, something inside a lot of marketers\u00a0think they’re being “clever” using, but is most likely killing\u00a0their sales.<\/p>\n
What is this trick people are using?<\/p>\n
You shalt see tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Until then, check out past episodes here:<\/p>\n