Cialdini, who wrote the “Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way To Influence And Persuade,” made an interesting discovery: people who put their attention on something, either positive or negative, will use that in other areas of their life. He gave the anecdote of the Tylenol scare in Chicago as an example; bottles of Tylenol were tampered with by someone who put poisonous capsules in the bottles inside the store. People purchased them, and then several people died from them. This led the company to put out the batch numbers that were tampered with. This had high visibility and was concentrated in the news outlets for several weeks. Later, it was discovered that people playing the lottery were using the same series of batch numbers in sequence to try and win the lottery. Did they know they were using this series of numbers? No! Such a morbid take on what people will recall. So, for persuasion purposes, it seems that it does not matter what the story is or the information…if it saturates the mind of the consumer, they are more likely to recall that information out of context, and repeat it. That seems crazy, and oddly primitive, but it is no different than finding yourself attracted to someone who has your father’s or mother’s eyes…it is predictable, at best. It is fascinating that the memory of information can filter into the subconscious, and we find ourselves influenced by it without even knowing it. Sometimes long after the fact, this is encouraging for trying to influence and persuade for positive change, it seems the less we know, but the more we are bombarded with repetitive information, the more likely we will unwittingly choose one thing over another. Thanks to research and evidence-based information, we can possibly change the trajectory of, oh, I don’t know, global warming? Pretty cool…