Page 57 - The Power to Change Anything

46 INFLUENCER

his colleagues could then come up with a method for getting
them to act differently. Just like the rest of us, he was interested
in exerting influence.

LEARNING FROM PHOBICS

When we last visited Dr. Bandura, he was watching a little girl
in a frilly dress straddling a Bobo doll and whacking it with a
mallet. His goal had been to demonstrate that humans can
learn from observing others, thus averting the often tedious and
painful school of trial and error. Having found that people do
in fact learn from watching others in action, Bandura next
turned his attention to helping people who suffered from
highly inaccurate views. Albert turned his academic eye on
finding a way to cure snake phobics.
Phobics provide a perfect set of beliefs for learning how to
change people’s thinking. First, phobics’ feelings are not accu-
rate, and they would benefit from having them changed.
Second, phobics resist change at every turn. Learn how to alter
the inaccurate beliefs of people who have clung to a wild idea
for years despite the constant nagging of friends and loved ones,
and you’ve got something to crow about.
To find plausible subjects, Bandura ran an ad in the Palo
Alto News asking people who had a paralyzing fear of snakes
to descend into the basement of the psychology department to
get cured. He had hoped that at least a dozen subjects would
respond. Despite the creepy tone of the ad, hundreds of peo-
ple made their way to the research site. All had been seriously
debilitated by their unreasonable fear of things that slither.
Most had horrible nightmares, many were veritable shut-ins,
and since their irrational fear extended to even harmless garter
snakes, the possible subjects suffered endless ridicule and indig-
nity. It’s little wonder that they showed up for therapy; they were
desperate.