The Principle of Unity: How “We” Beats “You vs. Me” Every Time

Let me highlight a study that I love. People were asked to sit at a table with headphones on and listened to audio tones.

From those who listened to the same tones and the same rhythm and tapped the table in concert with their partner, 49% stayed behind to help. I remember reading this and going, are you kidding me? They tapped together. That was all.

The persuasive Principle of Unity is a powerful engine available to us. All we need to do is kick it into gear just by doing some homework and finding out if our audience and ourselves are part of a community.

Well, research shows in international soccer matches, if the referee is from the same country as one of the teams, they can expect 10% more beneficial calls.

Which Dr. Cialdini has referred to as one of the biggest developments in social science in the last two decades.

A man who is trusted by Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies. A man who was part of the leadership team of Barack Obama’s election campaigns.

There is something we all do. We decide who around us we can refer to as ‘we.’ Those groups of people we can refer to as ‘we’ are a community, a group that we feel part of. If we are part of someone’s we-group, this has a massive impact on our ability to be ethically persuasive.

Because those who fall under the label of ‘we,’ get more agreement, trust, help, liking, cooperation, emotional support and forgiveness. They are also judged as being more creative, moral and reliable.

The fact that someone is part of our tribe makes it harder for us to distinguish between our own traits and those of fellow members. And this qualifies also as a shortcut for the decision-making brain to make an easier decision. If you’ve missed episode two about Human Decision-Making, then you really need to go listen to that soon.

For us to identify people as being part of one of our we-groups, it is all about shared identities. Things like race, ethnicity, nationality, family, and political and religious affiliations.

Here are some examples of how this affects us. If you had to prioritise people you didn’t know and get them on a list in terms of urgency, for a kidney transplant.

Would you be fair and equal? Research shows that when people were asked to make a list and rank who was most deserving for the next available kidney transplantation, they favoured people from the same political party as theirs. If you found a letter on the ground somewhere, addressed to someone, postage already paid.

Would it make any difference to you what name was on it? That letter could be important for someone, right? You’d likely think that any letter, regardless of the name, would have the same chance of being picked up by you and put in a mailbox somewhere. Would you agree? When researchers dropped seemingly lost letters, in various city locations in Poland, a predominantly Catholic country, they were significantly more likely to deposit that letter in a mailbox if the recipient name was Catholic versus an Arabic, likely Muslim, name.

How do you feel about tax fraud? If a politician had engaged in tax fraud, would you want to report it? Would you do so no matter who it was or what party they belonged to? Research showed that people who identified strongly with a political party reported a greater willingness to hide evidence of tax fraud by a politician from the party.

If you worked for a bank as a loan officer, would you approve people you didn’t know more easily and give them better terms if they were born in the same town as you? Or if you went to the same school as them? Or if they had the same religion as you?

Your career is on the line, it shouldn’t matter, right? You do your job and follow the guidelines set by the company, you would think. Indian bank records revealed that loan officers approved more loan applications and gave more favorable terms to applicants who were from the same religion as they.

Sports then. Have you ever watched a soccer match where your country played against another country and the referee was also from that other country? Ever felt like they were more lenient towards the other team from their own country? You thought some calls that they made were unjust?

But they are professional referees, surely, they would be aware that everyone would see straight through it if they favored their own country’s players, right? Well, research shows in international soccer matches, if the referee is from the same country as one of the teams, they can expect 10% more beneficial calls. And that applies to senior referees as well as junior referees.

Interesting, right? That’s the power of the Principle of Unity. Let me give you a definition for the Principle of Unity. People have a tendency to cooperate with people who they consider one of them. Now, you’ve heard me mention that persuasion science is not just about sales and it’s not even just for a professional setting. It also works in a private setting.

Do you and your partner always agree on everything? Probably not. Maybe it’s a discussion about achieving a certain look or atmosphere in the house. Perhaps it’s a destination for the next holiday or a change in diet that you would like to implement. How the kids should be raised or treated, how you treat each other or perhaps a purchase you’d like to make.

You’re going to have to have a discussion, and if you’d like your idea to prevail, you’re going to have to convince your partner about your point of view. Research shows that in discussions where one partner tries to convince another, often three approaches or tactics tend to be used. Two of them are very ineffective.

One of them is a total winner. I wonder which one you would default to. Shall I share it with you? Shall I show you in a nice way how you can increase the chances that you’ll get agreement from your partner? Okay, let’s do it. You’re such a nice audience, right? We’re all part of this group of people who want to do better in business and life, but we don’t want to lie and cheat others either.

And to know that many of you have been supporting this podcast and helping your friends and colleagues by sharing these episodes with them, which is appreciated by them and me. So thank you. I wasn’t going to include this, but let me tell you how to be more persuasive at home in a nice way.

There is a study which you can find summarised in Dr. Cialdini’s book, Influence, in which couples agreed to discuss an ongoing problem in their relationship and find a resolution for it. They had been in a relationship for an average 21 months. One interesting fact was that they noticed that one partner would typically take on the role of influencer, trying to persuade the other partner towards that point of view.

When it came to the way they tried to accomplish this, it seemed they resorted to three different approaches. One was the coercive or pushy approach, which relied on demeaning comments and threats. Comments like, ‘You better change or you’ll be sorry.’ Which did not only not work, it also pushed the other person further away from the position they were wanting them to agree with. In other attempts, they recognised the logical or factual approach. Here comments were used like, ‘If you just think about it, you’ll see that I’m right.’ This didn’t work either. The other party would just dismiss the argument and there was no cooperation.

But the third approach was very different and much more successful. The approach is referred to as the partnership raising. All they did was to bring to the surface in consciousness, the shared identity they had as a couple. They would mention feelings that they had had and times that they shared and spent together using words like we,

our and us, they made statements like, ‘You know, we’ve been together for a long time and we care for one another. I’d appreciate it if you could do this for me.’ Only these persuasive attempts obtained the change that they were after.

Instead of using logic and reason, which are explained in detail in episode two, Human Decision-Making, which would attempt to engage System two in our audience’s brain, which as we learned is the lazy controller that people have less and less time for. Instead, the appeal in which we raise to the surface our commitment to each other as a couple or family appeals to

the loyalty to the relationship. And because people have that tendency to agree and cooperate with those who they consider one of them, it qualifies as a shortcut for System one.

Let’s sway back to a professional setting. Once it becomes evident that a unity relationship exists between you and those who you’re trying to be more persuasive with, we often experience favouritism to come our way. Remember the list of positive effects that happen as a result of being part of someone’s we-group. Think for a moment what would happen to the success of your teams in sales,

advertising and PR if they got more trust, liking and agreement. How more effective would your admin department and customer service team be if they were met with more agreement and cooperation? Would it help to get the bills paid on time? Your HR team. Would it help them to increase buy-in and enthusiasm for new training programs?

How would it affect your leadership capabilities and effectiveness with your management teams if you forward strong relationships through liking and you got more cooperation? What if you implemented new strategies and ideas and by chance some new ideas did not produce the effect or profit you were hoping for or they backfired, but you were met with

forgiveness, loyalty and trust. Well, all of that is on the table right now for you as a leader and for all your teams that are trying to achieve their goals. All of this success has been available to you for years and maybe you’ve used a strategy or two that produce a little bit of results in these areas, but without truly understanding

the science of persuasion and its subtle nuances without having developed proper application skills and confidence to use it. I can tell you that a lot of agreement, help, trust, cooperation, forgiveness and loyalty that was yours to have is being wasted every single day.

The persuasive Principle of Unity is a powerful engine available to us. All we need to do is kick it into gear just by doing some homework and finding out if our audience and ourselves are part of a community. We can start to benefit from the power of unity simply by bringing this into awareness.

Talking about being part of a group, we have created a membership portal, which you can access for free, where you find my episode conveniently in one place for you to access. It’ll also be housing the discussions with our guests. And as they are likely to have some complimentary tools for you to access, the membership area conveniently brings access links to all those complimentary tools together for easy review and access.

We will likely, a few times per year, host special events for our community, which you can have exclusive access to. There’s also the possibility to gain access to extra content and lessons not shared in our podcast episodes. One deeper lesson will be available for each of my episodes on persuasion and likely also for many of our guests. To find out more, follow the links in the show notes.

As with all the principles, there is also a dark side to them. A way in which others can use this on us in an effort to manipulate us. We’ll dive into persuasive self-defense classes another time, but have no doubt about it. The power of the principle of unity can lock us in with groups we feel part of. For us to not stand up or voice our opinion or take action,

when the behaviour of the group crosses the line. This could be any sort of group or community, a country, for example, or a political party you voted for and associate with, a group of people that a person might hang out with. And this puts pressure on us all. This includes your team members, but also loved ones. Learning more about how

persuasion principles can be used to manipulate us is a crucial life skill, but it is also important to know how these principles can act within ourselves. Even without someone actively trying to manipulate us, our own mind can lock us in misplaced loyalty to a group, to a commitment or a statement you’ve made, or to a person when it is no longer appropriate.

Dark side explains how, for example, people can be raped and murdered while crying and screaming within earshot of hundreds of people walking by and no one lifts a finger or raises the alarm. Yet, if as a victim you knew what to do, help would come your way readily. Sorry to go a little

dark on you there for a moment, but you need to be aware that the Persuasion Principles can be used on you unethically and that they can act within us, all on their own, in ways that prevents us from reaching our goals and ways that threaten our well-being or life. I don’t know you personally yet, but I know I care enough about you

to want to spare you and your loved ones from that. So while it might not fit the business growth topic, I’ll likely circle back to the dark side of persuasion in the future. If you’d like that, engage with me a little and leave another review or comment on this podcast or episode, explaining what you like about what you’re hearing and what I’m sharing, but also if you’d like more help to defend yourself against the dark side. I would appreciate it.

Let’s get back to the light side of persuasion, shall we? We were talking about, well, I was talking about, we-relationships and how we can engage their power just by bringing those relationships into the awareness of our audience. But what if those we-relationships don’t exist? What if we are not part of a community? Well, you’d be pleased to hear that there are other ways to activate the principle of unity.

One dynamic I have always found fascinating and the other I find jaw-dropping from a human behaviour perspective. Let me just lift the veil a little on both of them so you can start to use them a little immediately. One of them is co-creation, which Dr. Cialdini has referred to as one of the biggest developments in social science in the last two decades.

I don’t know about you, but I pay attention when this man makes a statement like that. A man who is trusted by Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies. A man who was part of the leadership team of Barack Obama’s election campaigns. A man who is respected by both business and the academic community and is quoted nearly everywhere when you investigate the subject of influence or persuasion.

If you’ve missed episode number three in which I explain who Dr. Cialdini is, then you really ought to go and listen to it. Not only to understand where this is all coming from and how powerful it is, but you will also hear how some of the great business and academic minds of our times are raving about Dr. Cialdini.

So what is co-creation? Co-creation is what happens when you work towards something with other people, when you work towards a common goal. This can be done with clients, potential clients, coworkers, partners, anyone really. When you co-create, we form we-relationships and the Principle of Unity gets activated. This means that we form a bond and we are more loyal to each other.

Your sales team could start co-creating more actively and effectively with potential clients and discover more loyalty to them when it came to accepting the proposal they had made.

Your HR department could co-create with staff to get more engagement on the training programs. Your people in accounts would see more bills paid on time more readily if they knew how to co-create with clients. Let me give you a simple example of using co-creation with a team of people that you might have.

If you had five tasks that needed doing, and you had five staff members that you could allocate those tasks to, then you could approach each of them separately and ask them to do one of the tasks, and you probably get most of them or all of them done. You could instead also ask the group of five staff members to take care of the five tasks as a group. Now they have to co-create an approach

to assign a task to each of them. You can expect to get the same tasks done or possibly even more of them, but they would also be building more loyalty to their team members, which will produce better cooperation, liking, and all the benefits mentioned at the start of the session.

Another dynamic or element in unity is acting together. This also activates the Principle of Unity. How subtle and powerful this is will never cease to amaze me. If you or members of your team do presentations to a group, this will explain why there is a much deeper meaning to getting audience participation. Let me highlight a study that I love. People were asked to sit at a table

with headphones on and listened to audio tones. They were instructed to tap the table in the rhythm that they heard. Pretty simple instructions, pretty simple situation. As they were doing that, another person would be near them doing exactly the same thing. For some of the people involved in this experiment, the audio tones they were listening to were different. The rhythm was different. And so,

the tapping on the table would not match or would not be synchronised with the tapping of the person they were in the room with. For others, the audio tones were the same. So they ended up tapping the table at exactly the same time because the audio and rhythm matched. And this is where I expect you to go, so what difference could that fact possibly make on

anything. After this experiment, individuals were told they were free to leave, but that their partner had to stay behind and that they were answering a lengthy series of maths and logic questions. If they wanted, they could leave or they could help the other person who they didn’t know by taking on some of the task.

I know how this sort of stuff blows me away and I’m really hoping you’re as fascinated by this as I am. And so I’m imagining you sitting there with a puzzled expression on your face, waiting for the punchline. If you’re driving, I hope you’re still paying attention or at least that System one is. So here we go.

From the people that listened to the tones that didn’t match and therefore did not tap the table in a synchronised manner, 18% stayed behind to help their partner.

From those who listened to the same tones and the same rhythm and tapped the table in concert with their partner, 49% stayed behind to help. I remember reading this and going, are you kidding me? They tapped together. That was all.

There are so many ways how someone could use this to build relationships and loyalty. But it explains how marching together of soldiers or singing together of kids, sports fans or those visiting music concerts builds loyalty and group cohesion. Have you ever asked an audience if they had experienced something and asked them to raise their hand if that was the case?

If most people agree with the question, then most hands will go up and practically at the same time. This is acting together, synchronised, synchronised behaviour. But if you as presenter don’t raise your hand with them, you’re left out of this feeling of unity. So make sure you participate and build unity with your audience.

Don’t forget to follow us and let us know if you’d me to go into the dark side of persuasion in more detail through a review or comment. And please, only share this episode with those who you’d like to see more successful. Till next time, I wish you an influential future in which you’ll hear yes more often.