The Secret to Get More Help From Others

When do we help someone? Helping is something social, and we often need help from others. Maybe you want help from a colleague on a rapport that’s due this Friday or maybe you want your children to clean their own mess up. Or maybe you want visitors on your website to fill out a Usabilla, Qualaroo or Hotjar survey. The point is, we need help from others and we don’t like asking for help, because it basically says that we’re not competent enough to perform the task on our own. Neuromarketing to the rescue!

So, what do we want?

We want people to help us out, even when we’re not asking for help. The article from Charles-Sire, Stefan & Guéguen (2016) found the secret to implicit compliant or helping behavior: show people the word ‘Loving’ and they’re more likely to help you out – without having to ask for it.

Yes, it’s that simple. Previous studies already found the magic effect of the word ‘Loving’ on donations (Guénguen & Lamy, 2011, Guénguen, Jacob and Charles-Sire, 2013), but in these cases they found out that the slogan ‘Loving = Helping’ increased donations.

Still, participants were asked to donate to a well-known organization. Thus, perhaps ‘Loving’ influenced donations only when it was presented in a request for a donation to a well-known and legitimate organization.

In the present study, Charles-Sire, Stefan and Guénguen (2016), actually found out that merely placing the word ‘Loving’ on the back of the T-shirt the actor was wearing resulted in much more people offering help.

450 people, walking alone in a park, walked past an actor, who was obviously having difficulties placing a heavy carton in the back of the car. The people who were walking by could only see the actor’s back, which either displayed ‘Loving’, ‘Helping’ or nothing.

The word ‘Loving’ doubled the amount of people offering their help.

How can you apply this knowledge?

If you need help, make sure the person you’re asking sees the word ‘Loving’. And there are tons of examples to think about:

• If you have a survey on your website; try to use an image on the background which states ‘Loving’: more people will behave compliant and fill in the survey.
• If you have your own spot in the office, print out a paper with ‘Loving’ on it and place it somewhere in the back. This way, if a colleague walks by and you need their help, he/she’ll be influenced subconsciously by that word.
• Use it in a slogan like for example McDonalds does: ‘I’m loving it!’ This will trigger more compliant behavior.
• Whilst trying to get your kids to behave better or clean up their mess, work the word ‘Loving’ in your sentences.

Written with love, yours truly. P.S. If you have other cool ideas what you can do with this knowledge, please contact us!