5 insights from behavioral science that can make you better at influencing others

The biggest misperception about changing minds is that you need to do it at all. A lot of our behavior doesn’t reflect any conscious thinking; that’s why the best predictor of behavior is ease. It’s more powerful than motivation, price, quality, satisfaction, or intentions.

Ease makes people happy, and effort can really annoy people. So whenever you want to influence behavior, make that behavior as easy as possible.

You can become more charismatic—someone people want to pay attention to—with a few tweaks to your language, body language, and your attention.

The simplest charisma hack is to practice focusing your attention on people one at a time. Start by asking questions and using people’s names more often. Pronouns reveal where your attention is focused (and I don’t mean gender pronouns). To have charisma is to shine so that other people feel like they’re the only one in the room, and people want to say yes to you.

Few of history’s turning points can credit just one hero. Instead, there was an army of poeple who spread the word, or they stepped up and did it.

In Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of boat owners rescued people—single moms, toddlers, grandfathers—stranded in attics, on roofs, in flooded housing projects, hospitals, and school buildings. None of these people said, "I can’t rescue them all". All of them said, "I can rescue someone, and that’s work so meaningful and important I will risk my life and defy the authorities to do it". And they did.