Messengers summary

You’re sitting in your car at an intersection; the light turns green, but the car in front doesn’t move. Would you honk? Sure, after a while. But would you be quicker to honk if the car was beat up and cheap or if it was expensive?

The students of social psychologists Anthony Doob and Alan Gross strongly believed they would not be influenced by the apparent wealth of the person blocking their way. If anything, they argued, they’d be much more likely to honk at the rich guy. The opposite is true. 

The records of The Institute for Safe Medication Practices record thousands of errors in medical practice, ranging from the mundane to the, well, unfortunate. Take the curious example titled “rectal earache,” concerning a patient who had correctly been prescribed drops for an inflamed right inner-ear. Unfortunately for him, his doctor quickly wrote out the instructions “place drops into the patient’s R.Ear.” The duty nurse obligingly carried them out and inserted three anti-inflammatory ear drops into the poor man’s rectum. 

This is an especially curious example of a commonplace phenomenon in which when a respected authority speaks – or writes – people generally don’t question what they are saying. Even if it makes no sense to be putting ear drops into a patient’s rear. 

When Lyndon B. Johnson was majority leader in the US Senate in the 1950s, he was a master of using body language to exert power. He would seek out law-makers in the corridors and get up so close to them that they could feel his breath on their faces. Senators wavering on whether to support a bill would find their minds changed after a brief conversation held just inches away from the narrow-eyed Johnson. 

We can all recognize displays of dominance – competitive, assertive, or even aggressive behavior, and a focus on self-interest rather than empathy. In fact, a 2004 study found that when participants were shown a single photo of two co-workers talking together in the workplace, they could easily work out which of the two was the more senior. Dominant people tend to use expansive postures, make open gestures, and are happy to take up lots of space. 

The benefits of being attractive are so inbuilt into the human psyche that even two-month-old babies will reward the good-looking. 

In 1987, Judith Langlois at the University of Texas ran an experiment in which babies were seated in front of two female faces projected on a screen. One face had previously been deemed by adults as attractive, the other unattractive. The babies spent far longer gazing at the attractive faces. 

Grigori Rasputin was, by all accounts, an unpleasant man. Adviser to Tsar Nicholas II in the early twentieth century, Rasputin was nicknamed the “Mad Monk of Russia.” He was reportedly a malignant manipulator, a sexual deviant, and constant braggart. So, unsurprisingly, many celebrated when he was successfully assassinated at the third attempt. 

Rasputin has also been judged harshly by history. When in the 1980s psychologists John Finch and Robert Cialdini brought together a group of people to review Rasputin’s life, almost all found him fundamentally, completely unlikeable. There was just one subset of the group who judged Rasputin more positively – or at least less negatively: those who were led to believe they shared a birthday with him. 

In 1985, Texaco Oil was taken to court by its rival Pennzoil as the culmination of a long and complicated dispute between the two companies. The result? Texaco Oil was ordered by the Texan state court jury to pay damages of $10.5 billion, the largest ever civil penalty in history at that time. Why? Well, it was at least partly because the Texaco lawyers just weren’t very nice people. 

The legal dispute with rival Pennzoil was long, highly technical, and complicated. But when a local reporter asked one juror shortly after the trial why the jury had found against Texaco, he was clear. Texaco’s leading lawyer had terrible manners, the juror said. One of the Texaco executives was pompous, and some of the company’s witnesses didn’t look at the jury. The Pennzoil team, in contrast, were much more likeable. 

When the then British prime minister, Theresa May, was caught on camera dancing with South African school children in August 2018, she was widely ridiculed. She was already seen as robotic and cold, so May’s wooden dancing seemed to confirm this impression. 

So, months later, it was a surprise when, before her keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference, Theresa May boogied her way onto the stage to the tune of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” Her dancing hadn’t improved in the meantime. But while her moves generated some guffaws, the overall reaction to her self-mocking clunky dancing was positive. Why? Because by happily embracing her vulnerability, she came across as much more human than before. Even ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus noted that the display was both brave and touching, given May’s lack of rhythm. 

Trust is a powerful force and an essential ingredient for much of life. From romantic relationships to simple economic transactions, if we don’t trust the people with whom we are dealing, things become difficult quickly. 

For messengers, being trusted means that an audience is willing to take a risk on you. They’ll believe in you not because of what you say, but because of who you are – specifically, somebody trustworthy.