Wild Turkeys, Cults, and Kids Ministry

I recently finished a book by a guy who has to be the coolest social psychologist ever named Robert Cialdini, who wrote a book called Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things. I'll bet you didn't think social psychologists are cool, but boy, you would be oh so wrong.

In this book, Cialdini shares his many, MANY studies of "compliance professionals": people whose main task is to persuade someone else to do something. So everyone from sales associates to fundraisers to cult leaders. And he's got some pretty convincing conclusions about all of it: namely, seems like (he thinks) he's figured out why you and I will ever agree to anything, ever. All stories were great reads, but perhaps my favorite involves an ethologist who studies wild turkeys.

Female wild turkeys, he writes, are naturally excellent mothers. They preen, protect, and care for their young. But the ethologist noticed something quirky. It seemed as though wild turkeys went into "mother" mode at the sound of their young's "cheep cheep" sound. So he put it to the test. You see, a wild turkey's natural predator is the polecat. So the ethologist's team got a giant, stuffed polecat, tied it to a string, and dragged it slowly towards the mother. As expected, the mother tore into the stuffed polecat, charging, clawing, screaming, etc. Then they did the experiment again, except this time they put a small recorder into the stuffed polecat with the "cheep cheep" sound recorded and ready to play. They pulled the polecat towards the mother. When the mother began to charge, they played the "cheep cheep" sound. The mother went docile. She actually climbed atop the polecat and began preening it! Cialdini calls this a "trigger".

Cialdini's argues that you and I look upon these creatures and say to ourselves, "What a stupid animal. It goes into auto-pilot at the sound of such a silly and obvious trigger!" And then Cialdini goes on to show quite convincingly that we, superior humans, all have compliance triggers. When they're played, most people will behave very predictably. He references an in-depth study of the Jonestown, Guyana mass suicide of 1978, electro-shock experiments, and simple telemarketing strategies. And, well, he sold me.

Well, this got me thinking. What does my personal "auto-pilot" look like? What are things that I do in Kids Ministry that I don't even think about - I just do them because, *cheep cheep*, I've been conditioned to respond that way? Do share with us, what's been helpful for you to re-evaluate recently?