You may not be a hot shot Instagram influencer, but you probably have more power to influence other people's decisions than you think. But on the flip side, some people wrestling with social anxieties and nerves, are overestimating how much other people think about their actions and judge them.

So why are people so unaware of their actual place in other people’s worlds, and how can we find the sweet spot in which to interact with the people around us?

Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist, professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, and the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power Of Persuasion, And Why It Matters.

Today’s episode covers this core question of over vs. under confidence, where popularity fits in the persuasion mix, the invisibility cloak illusion, and the results of her library book vandalism study.

Episode Quotes:

Influence is more than just changing people's minds:

It's also the time we ask people for things throughout the day. It's all the ways we model behavior that other people follow along and copy. It's the way we run meetings and either create space or don't. So it's all the little ways that social psychologists have studied influence for a really long time. But I think that when we're thinking of the psychological definition of influence, it's a lot broader and more subtle.

Why saying no is often harder than saying yes when someone asks you to do something:

Part of it is that we think saying no is the default when we go to ask someone for something. But saying no is the hard thing; saying yes is the easier thing. Yes is just yes. You might be a little annoyed, but saying no, you need to come up with the words. You risk the potential for a confrontation. Often we want to make an excuse, so we don't make the person feel bad, so we have to come up with that, what that excuse might be. And we tend to forget how hard it is to come up with a no. 

Why some people shout and get aggressive in arguments:

Under confidence can lead you to sort of push too hard. Because you're expecting pushback or you think you're sort of shouting into the void, right? Like we also underestimate how many people are paying attention to our social media posts and things like that, so we think we can just put whatever out there.

Show Links:

Guest Profile:

• Vanessa Bohns Website
• Vanessa Bohns on Linkedin
• Vanessa Bohns on Twitter
• Faculty Profile at Cornell University

Her work:

• Vanessa Bohns on Google Scholar
• You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters