@aestheticsgroup
@aestheticsjournaluk
Aesthetics
aestheticsjournal.com
– a study cited by Cialdini saw individuals asked to make a series of difficult economic decisions while hooked up to brain scanning equipment.2 When they made their own choices, the scanner picked up activity in the areas of the brain we know are used to evaluate options. But the scanner did not pick up activity when the study participants received expert advice from a distinguished university economist – suggesting they not only followed his advice but did so without actually evaluating the pros and cons of the decision he was suggesting.
Using your authority ethically
Building Trust by Establishing Authority Business consultant Alan S. Adams discusses how authority can impact customer decisions and shares some practical suggestions for clinic owners Building trust is essential in most businesses, but even more so in the aesthetics sector which provides a service not a product: procedures cannot be simply be returned or refunded. Trust is even more vital when you consider the potentially serious negative outcome if the proper practices aren’t upheld. Patients are putting their health, wellbeing and appearance in the hands of practitioners – and they simply must trust a clinic or they won’t hand over their money, and they definitely won’t become repeat customers. Trust not only engenders loyalty, but the majority of customers will also recommend you to others, as well as spending more money, if they trust you and your clinic.1 There are many ways to build trust, some of which can take a fair amount of time. But, foremost, psychology and marketing professional Dr Robert Cialdini (among many others) suggests there’s a simple shortcut you can take: establish your authority and people will trust the information you give them. When considering how businesses can ethically persuade a customer to make a decision, he states that sometimes information is only persuasive because its source has authority (think of all the facts you believe to be true because a teacher told you them, or the societal norms you follow because your parents encouraged abiding by the rules when you were a small child). This authority-based belief system is especially true at times when the recipient is unsure what to do.2 This is especially pertinent for clinic owners with potential customers who are new to the world of aesthetics, have been displeased with treatments received from other clinics, or may be keen to try a new treatment but have reservations based on something untrue they’ve read or heard elsewhere. Being an authority is also incredibly useful when dealing with customers who are uncertain
Of course, from a professional, legal and ethical viewpoint it’s imperative that authority is used with utmost caution – for example, persuading a potential patient to use your clinic rather than a competitor’s by establishing your authority would be fine, but encouraging a teenager to have an antiageing treatment they clearly don’t need would be a violation of the ‘power’ you have by virtue of being the authoritative figure in the exchange between yourself and the teenager. Questions have since been raised around the ethics of an experiment on obedience to authority figures, which most people have heard about, conducted in the 70s by American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Participants thought they were giving their peers electric shocks of increasing intensity, guided by a person dressed in a lab coat.3 Of the 40 participants, two thirds continued to give the highest level of 450 volts, while all administered 300 volts; potentially fatal levels had they been real. While the ethics might be disputed, the Milgram Shock Experiment shows the impact of an authority figure on the behaviour of the general public.
Clothing In the Milgram study, authority was established through the use of a lab coat; this shows how something as simple as clothing can make a huge impact on the way you are perceived. Similarly, pedestrians are far more likely to comply with a stranger’s request about picking up something or moving to a different position in the street if they are dressed in a security guard uniform than they are in ordinary clothes.4 In Texas, where crossing the road in the wrong place or at the wrong time is against the law, researchers looked at how many
Reproduced from Aesthetics | Volume 7/Issue 10 - September 2020
