Page 149 - The Power to Change Anything

138 INFLUENCER

hen seeking influence tools that have an impact on
profound and persistent problems, no resource is
W more powerful and accessible than the persuasion
of the people who make up our social networks. The ridicule
and praise, acceptance and rejection, approval and disapproval
of our fellow beings can do more to assist or destroy our change
efforts than almost any other source. Smart influencers appre-
ciate the amazing power humans hold over one another, and
instead of denying it, lamenting it, or attacking it, influencers
embrace and enlist it.

THE POWER

In 1961, when psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to find U.S.
citizens similar in disposition to what society believed were the
crazy misfits, blind fundamentalists, and psychological wrecks
who had marched Jews, Poles, and Romanies into the gas cham-
bers at Auschwitz, the world was surprised by what he discovered.
In fact, Dr. Milgram’s findings were so disturbing that he fell
under attack from every corner. Nobody wanted to believe the
data.
Mystified by what had happened in Hitler’s Germany, Dr.
Milgram was interested in what type of person could be com-
pelled to annihilate his or her innocent friends and neighbors.
Naturally, blind fundamentalists who followed unspeakable
orders all in the name of political zealotry would be hard to
locate in the suburbs of Connecticut. Nevertheless, Milgram
was determined to track down a few of them and put them
under his microscope.
Of course, as a respectable researcher, Milgram couldn’t
create circumstances under which his neighbors actually killed
each other. But maybe he could trick subjects into thinking
they were killing someone else, when in truth their victims
would remain unharmed. To create these odd circumstances,
Dr. Milgram ran an ad in the New Haven newspaper asking