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You're Being Conditioned to Obey - Future IQ

6,368 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jul 25, 2025
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Slog Reference: Persuasion (part 2)

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You’re being persuaded every day — by ads, by experts, by friends, by strangers in suits — and most of the time, you don’t even realize it. Nearly half of all human activity is persuasion. It’s happening in conversations, in headlines, in the way choices are framed. And unless you know how it works, you’re not deciding — you’re being directed. In this episode of Future IQ, we go deep into the science of persuasion — not just how it works, but why it works on you. Drawing from the psychological “Bible” of influence, we break down two of its most powerful principles: Authority and Scarcity. You’ll hear how a man in a suit can make a crowd jaywalk, how actors in lab coats influence your medical choices, and why a nearly empty cookie jar messes with your brain. From the shocking obedience revealed in the Milgram experiments to luxury cars getting VIP treatment at green lights, this episode exposes just how easily our minds surrender to signals of power and urgency. The scariest part? These tactics work even when we think they don’t. Especially when we think they don’t. This isn’t just a breakdown of manipulation techniques. It’s a cognitive self-defense class. If you don’t understand persuasion, you're not protected from it. This is Part Two of our deep dive on persuasion. If you haven’t already, check out Part One now live on the channel — then come back and level up your mental Armor.

More Videos:
Sunk Cost Fallacy: https://youtu.be/pgH79XsGlo4
Why You Say Yes, When You Actually Want to Say No - Persuasion Part 1: https://youtu.be/zAJaWdESS8M
The Internet Is Making You Stupid: https://youtu.be/ftSJN9R-IY4

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

00:00: Introduction to the principles of persuasion.
01:07: Explanation of the Milgram experiment.
03:31: Discussion of real-life misuse of the authority principle.
04:08: Discussion of doctors as an authority figure.
05:27: Introduction to the commitment and consistency principle.
06:17: Explanation of the safe driving experiment.
07:12: Explanation of the low-ball technique.
08:35: Bonus tip to counter persuasion principles
10:47 James Cook & Scurvy
13:23 The Chocolate Chip Cookies Experiment
15:55 Commitment Consistency
19:40 Tip for parents
21:44 Conclusion

#futureiq #persuasion

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Persuasion (part 2)

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Transcript

Shant did you know that Einstein said the biggest superpower anyone can have is persuasion. Oh h yeah actually that makes sense. If you can persuade anybody of anything actually Einstein never said that. Okay. I used the name Einstein because I knew it would convince you easier than if it was just oh Naven said it. Okay. But Einstein is smart. Einste I can believe Einstein said that. Yeah. So what I was using is proof by authority. That is one of the principles of how you can convince people, how you persuade people. Okay.
Yeah. Persuasion is one of the most important things in life. It is truly a superpower. Yeah. And it has been studied a lot by psychologists and they have come up with principles of persuasion. So today we are going to talk about three of them. Yeah. And let's start with proof by authority. Okay. So that's one principle of persuasion. The most deadly proof of how authority works for persuasion. Okay. Is something called the Mgrim experiment in psychology. Stanley Mgram. Okay. Yes. So first let me describe the overall setup. Okay.
Okay. Two subjects come in. They pick chits. One of them gets a chit saying learner. The other gets a chit saying teacher. The learner is strapped to a chair hooked up to electrical wires. M the teacher is supposed to give them math problems and if they get it correct all good if they get it wrong the teachers administers an electric shock to the subject that's supposed to make them learn faster. Yeah. But the more mistakes they make the voltage of the shocks is increased. Yeah. Okay. Now the machine giving shocks is marked with 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts. M there are markings there where the beginning is slight shock but all the
way up here is like danger severe shock. Yeah. Okay. So the teacher knows that as the as the shocks as the number of shocks increase the intensity of the shock is also increasing. So that is what the teacher sees. Right now there is a trick here. The learner is not actually a subject. The learner was part of the experiment. always picked learner check. Yeah. And always pretended to get the answer wrong. Yeah. And there was no actual electric shock. But the learner would scream, plead for mercy. Right. Say he has a heart condition, start banging on the wall. They were kept in different rooms. So the learner would bang on the wall and then after a while would fall
silent. Okay. And while the learner was doing all these things, if the teacher stopped and said, "Oh, I don't want to continue this experiment." There was an experimental standing there in a white coat whose job was to make sure that the experiment completed and the experimenttor would say stuff like no no you have to continue. Okay, before we go on let me ask you this question. What fraction of people do you think would actually go on and administer shocks even after the person is screaming, banging on the wall, falls silent and the machine there says danger, severe shock and you know it's giving like a 300 volt, 350 volt, 400 volt. What fraction do you think will do
that? I would hope that the fraction is zero but I'm pretty sure the fraction is non zero and also a very scary fraction. Yes, 60 plus%. Yeah. Okay. Now, the other thing about this experiment is that it has been replicated very well. Okay. Lots of psychology, classic psychology experiments haven't replicated, but this one has replicated. And what this proves fundamentally again and again is that the subject went on and did this crazy thing simply because a person in a white coat who was an authority said you have to do it right just authority says something and we follow this is like a clearly established principle in psychology right why does this happen all of society is geared for this right starts
with parents who sort of teach children that you have to listen to me. Then school where the teachers expect children to listen and then you get a job where you have to listen to your boss. Right? And all of this is an assumption that these people know better, my parents know better, my teachers know better, my boss knows better, right? And usually this works very well. Right? 90% of the time the world is working so smoothly. Yeah. Because this is working as expected. People are listening to authority as expected.
Correct. The small fraction of the time where it doesn't work is where there is a problem. Yeah. Also, this is routinely misused by authorities, by salespeople and so on. Right? Let me give one example. Sure. Okay. Doctor, a doctor is an authority on healthcare. Yeah. So you pretty much listen to what the doctor is going to say. Pharma companies misuse this. I have a friend who used to be a pharma company saleserson. Okay. What he used to do is go to a doctor saying we have started this new drug. I have kept it in all the medical stores nearby.
every month I will give you so many% of the sales of this drug that happen in a 1 kilometer radius around your clinic what that's it right and this kind of incentives given to doctors to prescribe their drugs is extremely common and it works very well because doctors are authority we just listen to them right yeah when my doctor tells me to take a specific drug I will not even Look at the alternative formulation of the drug. I tell you the funny thing here, right? When an actor dressed as a doctor in a commercial tells you things, your brain registers it. Okay? You think of yourself as an intelligent person. And you say, "Oh, I'm not listening to Shah
Ruk Khan because he's pretending to be a doctor." But in reality, your brain is listening, right? Otherwise, advertisers are not idiots. The reason they are doing it is because it works. Yeah. I don't really think nine out of 10 dentists actually prefer a specific toothpaste or a toothbrush. I think that's that's not quite right. There's something wrong there. And this authority thing, right? It's so weird the way our brain works. Just authority by clothes. Okay. Imagine there is a housing society and there is a gate with a watchman and a guy in a suit on a phone talking just walks past the watchman and the watchman says sir sir sir he doesn't listen goes in you can imagine that person going in
without a problem. Yeah. Now imagine the same thing except that this person is dressed as a laborer. Zero chance of that person going through. The only difference is the clothes and the clothes fancy suit is authority, right? Clothes to grooming. Like around 15 years ago, I remember a case in Pune where people dressed up in tennis attire and got a tennis bag and racket and all that would come in a car, enter a society, go to empty houses, burgle them, walk out with all kinds of things, put it in their car and leave. in daylight burglary. Right.
When you actually gave the example of the man in a suit walking past on a phone, I was actually thinking, hm, that's an interesting way for a thief to enter a It was actually something complex. Turns out somebody's already done that idea. Right now there is a scam going on called the FedEx scam where a person apparently from FedEx or some career company calls you up and says, "Oh, well your package is stuck and we found drugs in a package that was sent by you." Oh. And then later that person connects you to cops who make you a zoom call to you and you can see people in policeman's uniform in a police station and I am not kidding people have lost
cres of rupees to this scam just because they think the person at the other end is a policeman. Okay. Wow. Authority. Yeah. And I can imagine this scam being rampant during the pandemic when we were not allowed to step outside the house because back then Zoom was the only method of public communication maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Wow. This authority stuff affects parts of our brain that we don't even understand. Okay. Okay. So there is a lovely experiment which shows this. Okay. In an Australian college, there were five different classes of students and in which the same man was brought in as somebody from Cambridge and he gave some little talk to the students and then at the end
the students were asked to estimate the height of this man. Seems simple enough. Fair enough. Simple enough. Yeah. The only difference is that in each class he was introduced differently. In the first class he was introduced as a student. In the second class he was introduced as a demonstrator. Okay. In the third a lecturer, in the fourth, a senior lecturer, and in the fifth, a professor. Okay. I was wondering what a demonstrator is, but then looking at the sequence, I realized it's something between a student and a lecturer.
Just depending on the title, each increase in credentials of that person resulted in a half in increase in the average estimate. Right? So the professor was a full 2 and a half inches taller than the student. Our brain sees people differently depending on what we believe about their authority. Wow. So forget listening and the effect psychologically just even the height looks different to us. Uh this is actually used in a very interesting way in cinema. Yeah. Where uh a person of authority is always framed from a slightly lower angle.
Yeah, because it makes them feel bigger. Yes. This is one principle. Okay. A second principle of convincing is pretty easy to understand. Okay. Okay. It's called scarcity or creating FOMO. Right. Okay. Very simple. So James Cook, Captain James Cook, the sailor, right? He used this very well. Okay. In those days, scurvy was a very big problem. Uh lots of sailors used to die because of scurvy. Okay. You must have learned in school. Do you know what prevents scurvy? Vitamin C. Simple, right? At that time, this was not well known.
James Cook knew that if you eat sauerkraut, then you don't get scurvy. But sauerkraut is this German thing that tastes pretty bad. Okay. So, no offense meant to Germans. I have never tasted sauerkraut. I'm just believing him because he's the authority. Yes. Yes. Listen to me. No, but I mean the serious problem James Cook knew he would have is that soldiers would refuse to eat sauerkraut. Okay. So he did the following. Okay. He made sauerkraut available only to officers. Okay. Interesting. Right. And then only once in a while would let sailor have it. So after a while sailors began thinking, "Oh, what is this food that only officers are supposed to have? Seems to be something
special." And so by the middle of the trip, pretty much everyone was eating sauerkraut. And they were eating it happily. And this was the first voyage where nobody died of scurvy. Zero. Very smart of Captain Cook. The only Captain Cook I remember is the salt. But never. So and you know you see this all over the place, right? So many sales will say, "Oh, hurry until supplies last. Limited offer only." Right? If you go to a hotel booking site, it'll say, "Well, only two rooms left." Right? I'm not making this up that only two rooms left is not even checking the database. It is generated in the front end by JavaScript code saying whenever somebody says pick
a random number between 1 and 12 and show it saying only so many rooms left, right? that is done because you want them to feel FOMO. Yeah. Fear of missing out, right? So, um a lot of new platforms are by invite only because they want people fighting to like get in. Uh okay. You don't want to open it and say, "Oh, it's free to anybody." Then it's not that cool, right? Yeah. Uh I think Gmail was the first to implement this. Facebook was one of the first to implement this on on the internet because until then everybody was like yeah come sign up and have a login and work just to prove that this works at a very basic level
right there was a series of studies carried out where subjects were asked to eat chocolate chip cookies and then rate them how good those cookies are right the thing is that some of them were given chocolate chip cookies where the jar contained 10 cookies and two were given out. Others were shown a jar containing only two cookies and this were the last two being given out. Okay. And it turns out that the subjects rated the two cookies which seemed scarce higher than the one where there like so many cookies in the Okay. Yeah. I mean if I got one of those two cookies, I would probably be thinking, hm, eight people have already eaten it. They must
have definitely liked it. So these are nice. Another experiment was carried out. Okay. In one case, people were given a jar with just two cookies as before. The other case, they were given a jar with 10 cookies and then eight were taken away. Oh, right. This time the once where they got 10 and then eight were taken away. They rated even higher than the ones where they just got two cookies in the beginning. Why? Because scarcity where you have something and it is taken away. That is much worse than when you didn't have it at all.
We've discussed a similar example in the loss aversion episode with Arijit Singh tickets, right? Absolutely. Yes. Our brain hates losing things. Okay. One more experiment was done. Okay. Both sets of people got a jar with 10 cookies and then eight were taken away. Okay. But the reason given was different. In the first case, they were just said, "Oh, this was a mistake. We shouldn't have given you 10 in the first place." Okay. In the second case, they were told there's too much demand for these cookies. We can't give you all of these and everything.
Obviously, in the second case where they thought there was a lot of demand for these cookies, the rating was higher. The cookies tasted better to the people just based on what they thought. The demand was wow. Okay. And not just not just the demand, what they thought about everything. The demand, the supply, uh the intent. Yes. Wow. Right. Huh? And these techniques of scarcity are used uh as persuasion techniques by people who are trying to sell us something all the time. Yeah. Third principle of persuasion is a very subtle one but a very deadly one. Okay.
Okay. And this is called commitment and consistency. Okay. Instead of trying to explain, let me just describe an experiment. Okay. Okay. experimenters pretended to be activists for safe driving. And they went to houses and told people that we want to put up this sign board saying drive carefully in your front lawn. Okay? And they showed photographs of what that is going to look like. It was a large sign and it was just covering much of the front of the house and it looked ugly. Okay? 83% of the people refused. This was experiment one.
Okay. But it was for a good cause, right? driving and it's ugly. Big ugly sign. Fair. Fair. Yeah. It blocks light and Yeah. Yeah. Different experiment. First the experimenters went again. They said they're activists for careful driving. They gave a small card 3x3 in. Okay. Right. Be a safe driver. Okay. Yeah. And they said, "Oh, this little sign, can you just put it in your window?" Okay. Okay. 3x3 cha sign in a window. Yeah. Absolutely. pretty much most people kept it. Yeah. 2 weeks later they went back to the same people and then they did the same thing as before which is huge big sign saying drive carefully. I want to put it in your front lawn. Show a photo showing
how ugly it would be. Still 76% allowed that big sign to be put in. Why? Why? Because for two weeks they have been thinking of themselves proudly as we support safe driving, right? They've probably been telling their friends, see I support safe driving. I put up this sign in my window. Then two weeks later when you have had two weeks to think of yourself as a person who supports this good cause. You find it hard to refuse the good cause because at that point you've committed to becoming a person who supports safe driving. You have in your mind you have become that person right plus you have told other people you are that kind of a
person now you can't go back on your word right you have to be Salman Khan sales people use this okay and this is a technique called the low ball okay imagine you want to buy a car salesperson gives you a very good rate on that car Okay. And you're like, "Oh, this is good." Right? So, you say, "Yeah, yeah, I want it." And then salesperson goes through all the details of buying the car and the financing is arranged and this and that. Maybe they might even give you the car saying, you know, for one day, why don't you drive it around and so on. Next day the salesperson suddenly discovers some problem because of which that low price
cannot be given. Okay? And say, "Oh, well, sorry. You know what? There is this higher price and that's what it is. Yeah. Lots of people who would have refused if the higher price was quoted to them directly take the car anyways because they have spent all this time now thinking of themselves as the owner of that car, right? They have in their mind committed to buying the car and they're not going to let a little thing like price increasing by 20,000 let them stop it. Right? The example I gave in the other episode also matches with this part.
Yes. Because I had mentally committed to buying that car. Correct. Because I had already gotten an offer on that car that had accepted. Yes. I didn't want to go back. And when the saleserson said my boss is being the bad cop, right? I relented. Yes. This technique can be used by parents or should be used by parents for child rearing also. Parents, please pay attention. Yes. If you want children to do something or not do something, do not threaten them into temporary compliance, right? Okay. Then they're just doing it under duress.
Try to convince them that this is the right thing to do. Okay. Here is an experiment, Jonathan Freriedman. Okay. There was a toy robot, very nice robot that any children would like to play. Yeah. Okay. He showed this to two sets of students. Okay. For the first set of students were told that okay I'm keeping this here but do not play with it. If you play with it I will get angry there will be severe consequences. Okay. Second set of students he didn't threaten them with consequences. Right?
He just told them that you know don't play with this robot because playing with this robot is wrong and you're not the kind of child who does wrong things like this. Okay. Then like a couple of weeks later, five toys were kept. One of them was this robot and four other toys less attractive than the robot. Robot was clearly the best toy toy, right? And then the children were left alone with these toys. From the first set who were threatened with severe consequences, 66% were not able to stop themselves from playing with the robot.
Okay. Okay, only 33% didn't play with the robot. But in the second set where the students thought of themselves as good students who don't do wrong things and playing with the robot is a wrong thing, right? 77% didn't play with the robot. Only 23% succumb to the temptation. Right? Because the students at that point had taken it upon themselves as had committed to themselves that they were good kids and good kids do not do not play with robot. So they had to remain consistent to that persona. Correct.
Exactly. Parents. So you know these techniques are from a book called influence the psychology of persuasion by a psychology professor who took a job as a car salesman to learn the tricks of salespeople and then every day whatever tricks of sales he learned he would go back discuss with the students do psychology experiments to understand and he came up with these principles right six principles three we have discussed in a previous episode these three what I want you to do is think about these principles, right?
Learn to use them for good, right? To convince people to do good things. Yeah. And learn how salespeople and other bad people are misusing them against you, right? One of the most important things you will learn in your life. And because you stayed with us till the very end, here is a bonus tip for you. Pick up a book called Never Split the Difference by Christopher WS. He is or rather he was an FBI hostage negotiator and he's written some brilliant brilliant techniques to counter these six principles of persuasion. Yes.
So learn both of them. Use persuasion when you need to convince someone and use never split the difference when you need to be sure that you are not convinced by someone else. See we play out both sides because that way we always end up on top. Top being Sri Kant Navin, future IQ.