Social Hacking

  To persuade someone is an art that needs a lot of practice to master (hmm.. it might not be possible to master..). I have already talked about some ways that might help you persuade someone, like showing the other part that you are smart or make them trust you. This time I am going to talk about a technique that you can use during your conversation. I would like to call this technique vague persuasion. The technique itself is not vague, but it involves you being vague.

  Vague persuasion is used in many commercials everywhere. Once you know about it, it can easily be spotted in many places. It's important to realized the vague parts of, for example, a commercial. If you don't spot these there is a big chance that your subconscious mind will “believe” what is said. I have to say “believe” because there is no real fact in a vague statement. You will understand once I give you some examples.

  Say that you are watching a commercial for Pepsi (yes, you should know what Pepsi is..). The commercial might say that Pepsi is better than Coke, it might even say that Pepsi is the best. So what is wrong with such a statement? Well the meaning of better or/and best is vague. When comparing two brands of soda, how can one soda be “better” than the other? One might refer to that Pepsi tastes better than Coke, but it might also might mean that Pepsi contains less calories than Coke, so that it's better for someone on a diet.

  Stay in the same commercial. The next thing the said is that Pepsi now contains 50% less sugar. This statement is wrong in almost the same way as the last example. However, this time there is no reference at all. We don't know if they mean that Pepsi has 50% less sugar than Coke or if it has 50% less sugar than a previous version of Pepsi or even something else.

  Sales people are often very skilled at vague persuasion. I discussed this with some friends earlier today. It might not just be vague persuasion, it might also contain minor lies. You should be careful when a seller sneaks in things like “I assure you that”, “I am completely sure that”, or “I believe that”. Whatever comes after these word does NOT have to backed up by any actual fact at all. Yes, as a costumer you want the cold hard facts. Of course there are many other forms of these words and they can be placed in the middle or the end of a sentence.

  I would recommend to think about this technique even if you don't want to become a better persuader yourself. Knowing about what tricks are used is the first step towards not getting hacked. If you do want to become better at persuasion I would recommend t carefully listen to what some of the worlds biggest leader have said and try to spot what techniques they're using.

  As a last note this time I would like to say that persuading someone is most often not about fooling them. Vague persuasion is just one of countless techniques. Depending on what you are trying to persuade your target about, it is often important to be honest and present the real facts.

  I did not think that I was going to talk about seed planting this soon, but since one of my lecturers skillfully and hopefully unintentionally used it today, I will mention it now. In a nut shell seed planting is to sneak in information or leave out information when talking to someone. In most cases this will greatly confuse your audience. I would not recommend using it during an informational lecture or when having a conversation with a friend. However, it can be used as a sneaky persuasion or trust elevation.

  What my lecturer did today was leave out information. He was doing an example from our physics book and during the calculations, which took up around 5 black boards, he pointed out a lot of things that I though where obvious and he left out some things I did not understand. When talking about things your audience already knows, the audience will get board and you, as a speaker, will lose their attention. When leaving out information you will lose you audience because they will be trying to understand what they missed instead of listening to you. I am not saying that my physics teacher is a bad lecturer because it is close to impossible to keep the attention of so many students and appeal to everyone.

  I have already mentioned one type of seed planting once before, in my very first post. In that case it was to get the other part to believe that you are smart. This is a very effective type of seed planting. It both causes a sense of confusion and it gives the listener the appearance that you are well educated. The confusion is both caused by the actual fact that the listener did not get the meaning of the word and also by that his or her brain will subconsciously try to figure the sentence out. This might though vary between different people. Some people will be able to “get over it” almost at once and try to focus on what you are saying next. However, other people, like myself, will have a hard time letting go of it.

  I might be an extreme case but this is what happened to me at a exam not too long ago: I was sitting and minding my own business, with complete focus at my exam. Then the examinator comes in to the room and ask for Alex Wessinger (yes, I just made that name up). There is a brief moment of silence then the examinator says “ok” and leaves the room. I looked down at my exam again and was completely lost, thinking about what the examinator wanted with this Alex Wessinger. I guess that it took around 15 minutes for me to completely get into the exam again. (and as a little comment I did pass the exam and got a decent grade.)

  A funny reference to seed planting comes from Dane Cook (a famous stand up comedian). In one of his acts he refers to girls as so called “Brain Ninjas”. In his example a guy and a girl are fighting (not physically). After a couple of argument exchanges the girl says: “You are stupid like you father” and this completely confuses the guy. The guy does not know what to do, or how to respond and thinks about this a long time after the fight. He had no clue that the girl just had, as Dane Cook expressed it, “ninjaed” his brain.

  So there are many different ways to perform seed planting. This can be a fun exercise to try on one of your friend. Be careful though to not use words that you don't know the real meaning of and don't make up words. And as always; have fun and be careful with your friends.

  There is a lot more to say about seed planting and I will (as always) probably talk more about the future.

  The human mind reacts in really interesting ways in different situation. Many of our most common actions can be traced back to animal instincts. These instincts are often not needed and not preferred in today's society. We don't need to hunt for food anymore. Knowledge is power and that is what we have to live by. I don't think we ever will be able to completely get rid of our instincts even though we do everything to hide them. This does not have to be a bad thing, however, it's important to realize that these instincts still exist.

  So how does this connect to public speaking? Well, there are not many people who are comfortable with making a speech for a larger group. If we look at the most basic instinct this does not really make sense. When making a speech you are never in any real danger (no, yes, true in 99.99% of the cases..). On the other hand, if we look at today's society it's “important” to be “popular”. We have the basic fear of how other will judge and that our performance will affect our social status.

  I am not going to lie, if you make a speak before a group of strangers, they will have judged you before you even have started your first sentence. I would not say that this first judgment is all important, however, it is something to take into consideration when preparing oneself for a speech. Think of what you are wearing and how you are standing. Being and looking confident is one of the most important factors here.

  The next thing to think about is knowing you audience. One of the worst mistakes a speaker can do is making a speech targeted to a different audience. Think of who you are speaking to, do they know the subject? I think that most of you reading this have already heard this a thousand times. So, think about this instead: How well does the audience know you? If the audience already knows you they will already have a judgment about you and expect you to act a certain way.

  I guess that the first paragraphs have not really improved your thoughts about public speaking. I will try to change that a little. I already said that it is important to be confident. To get this confidence you have to be prepared and know what you are talking about. Treat the subject like it's you life and never say anything that you are not completely sure that it is correct. Maybe I shouldn't say correct in this case since there are many theoretical subjects out there, however, have a reliable source for your information.

  Another suggestion that I would like to give is to try to talk freely. This is a hard to do, but it works really well if you are prepared and have practiced the speech many times. What I mean with talking freely is to not read all the information for a paper. I would suggest only having small notes, just a few scattered words to help you get back in track if you lose your mind. This also helps the point I was trying to make earlier about treating the subject as it's your life. You need to know what you are talking about, and if you know what you are talking about you don't need all the information on a paper.

  There is a lot more to public speaking that I might come back to later. I have just mentioned the parts that I think are the most important. Think about how you really feel about your speech, what is the worst that could happen? I know that it is a lot easier to say these things than actually doing them. But it is like that with most things in life. I would recommend trying to be more confident, it is not important what other think about you and even if you do something embarrassing or something goes wrong during your speech it's not the and of the world. You know this, and the audience knows it too.

  Small side note this time; Think of being a good member of the audience when listening to a speech. Try to make the speaker comfortable and give him or her you attention.

  I have gotten some interesting comments about my blog the last couple of days, and I need to make some things clear. I never trick people into thinking what I want them to think and I rarely lie. I am not writing this blog to help you take over someone else's mind and making him or her your slave. I am writing this blog to give you some tips on how to interact with other people and hopefully give you a new view of how the human brain might work.

  With that out of the way, lets get one with the next lesson. This time I will try to teach you how to become a better listener and also better understand your own memory. So, what does a good listener do? Being a good listener is not only about listening, it is also about giving the right response. Depending on the situation the response should be thought out carefully. I am going to focus on a emotionless conversation. What I mean with emotionless is that you are not trying to help or comfort someone because in that case you have to act differently. I might talk about those types of conversations later. As a good listener you should obviously focus on what the person you are talking to is saying. Say that you are talking with Alex who is telling you a great story about her heritage. Pay attention to the details you think are interesting. Later on you can use these details and either ask question about them or comment that they are interesting. If you want to make the story more into a discussion, mention eventually connections that you might have to the story. If you want to just listen, it is good to repeat some of the detail you remember to reassure. A good way to find interesting things is to imagine yourself in the Alex's shoes. What is important during the whole conversation is that you give Alex all of your focus and reassure her visually by nodding or something similar every now and then.
  With the basic rules established I will now give you some advice on how to use your own head. I said that detail is important, so how do you remember details. I (and many others too) have found that what you remember are the things that have the most paths to them. A path in this case is a connection to the thing that you want to remember and some other thing you already know. Example: Alex told you that her grand grand father, George, is from the capital of Ohio, which is Columbus. So how do you remember this?
  I would not remember this for more than a few seconds. However, with some effort you will remember this for a long time. So lets create some paths! First obviously we connect George, Ohio and Columbus. Secondly, my grandfathers name happens to be George, I'll connect that. If you have any feelings or know people in Ohio, think about that. And for a last path think of something outrageous. I would do this: The only Columbus I know is the one who “discovered” America (yes, “discovered” ). So as a last path I am going to picture Columbus and my grandfather sitting in the “O” from Ohio, sailing towards America. If you can think of more paths do so, but 2 or 3 should be enough. Oh, and you will probably remember what the capital of Ohio is, and my grandfather's name for a long time now. If you want try this method before a conversation you can try this: Write down 15 random nouns on a paper. In some way you need to remember the first noun, try making a path to it from something you already know. Then go through the list, making a path between the current word and the word before. The important thing here is to make the path as outrageous as possible. A crazy path is much easier to remember. Go through the list once only. Then put the list aside and do something else for 30 minutes. At the end of 30 minutes, try to recall the list. I think you will be surprised.

  So in the first lesson I tried to establish that trust is one of the, if not the most important thing when it comes to hacking someone. In this lesson I will discuss some more ways of gaining someones trust.
  The first way is to pretend that you are someone else. This is a well known strategy from social engineering. I realized that I am going to use a lot of examples, so I'll just make the examples a little more fictional and less “wordy”. Example: Alex works as an accountant at MedCorpes. You need Alex's local system password. Easiest way to do this is to call up Alex and say that you are the network administrator and that you need her password. This will probably work in 9 times out of 10. However, there are more interesting ways.
  Another way to gain trust or at least make someone listen to you is to pick up on small details. If you have watched the show Psyched you'll know exactly what I mean. For you who don't; the show is about a detective who pretends to be a psychic and he uses his ability to solve different cases. However, he is not really psychic, he just has a really good memory and pays attention to details. Then he uses the knowledge gained to “act” like he has psychic abilities. This does actually work in real life too. Maybe not as good as in the show but good enough to be considered. One example for my life (I heard you moan..) was when I was traveling by bus somewhere, I can't recall the exact destination, however it was a long trip. I was sitting next to a girl who had brought a magazine from home. She was subscribing to the magazine so her address was on the back side. Discretely I read the address at the beginning of the trip. We later started to talk and I had some fun with the information I had obtained. She was pretty impressed when I “guessed” her last name and then mentioned the street she lived on when she told me what city she lived in. This is also a good exercise when you are traveling somewhere. Look at the people around you, what information can you obtain without even talking to them? Doing this will both exercise your memory and social skills.
  One big source of information are cell phone conversation. Most often people don't think about what they are saying when talking on cell phones publicly. Even if you don't plan to talk to the person, listen to what they say and think of how you could use the information obtained. I know a lot of you who are reading this will think that I am really creepy at this point, spying and trying to get information about strangers. Well as I see it, I do it because I can and it teaches me how others think and act. This is an important realization to do when trying to understand someone: everyone has different thoughts and different views on the world. Understanding how someone else thinks is a really hard task. I know that there are some people that I will never be able to understand how they think.
  The last recourse of information about others is to look at the appearance of a person. To get accurate information this way is close to impossible and not something I would recommend. I would even say that you should try to not even involve the way people look when trying to figure them out. It is a animal instinct to judge people from the way the look, we need to know if we should run, fight or make friends. I have change my appearance a few times in my life and even though I am the same person, with the same line of though, people did treat me differently. Try to ignore the way a person look and try to see how they act instead. A confident and happy person is probably easier to talk to then a person who looks sad and insecure.

  As a last note this time I want to add that I do care about others privacy. However, I think that listening in on a cell phone conversation on the subway is acceptable. However, going through someones mail or personal belongings without permission is wrong. There is a clear line and I hope you are able to see it. It does seem like I am talking about objects when I am writing this, however, other people are humans too. They have their own set of feeling and that what makes social hacking so interesting.