Perception, Context and Permission

All situations of influence - whether in sales, therapy, or relationships - boil down to three elements:

Perception, Context, and Permission.

This is Chase Hughes' framework; I'm using this blog post as a way of better understanding his ideas.

To best understand what this means and how you can use it to become more influential, we need to say a bit about two fundamental mechanisms of the human mind:

Prediction and abstraction.

---

The purpose of the human brain is to predict.

If that seems simplistic, it is; it also happens to be correct. Human brains are evolutionarily costly: they are so large that we need to be born prematurely just so we don't kill our mothers during childbirth. Making this tradeoff shows us that there is significant survival utility to having a big ol' brain.

That survival utility exists almost entirely within the realm of prediction. We can predict better, and at greater degrees of remove, than any other species on Earth. We can predict when and where the food will grow, how other animals will react to given stimuli, the passing of the seasons and the eclipse of the sun. We can predict what will happen moment-to-moment and what will happen years in the future. We are always predicting.

This is true in a literal sense. According to predictive processing theory, everything we do is based on complex feedback loops of prediction and analysis of those predictions. Our brains continuously predict what should happen next, then compare the incoming sensory stream to that prediction. If all goes according to plan, we remain completely unaware of the entire process.

What's interesting is what happens when things don't go according to plan. Have you ever had the experience of absent-mindedly reaching out for something and then feeling something...unexpected? Perhaps what you thought would be cold is furry. Or you expected to feel the sensation of your bedsheets against your body and instead feel your foot bump up against something you didn't know was there.

These unexpected moments produce a sudden shock to the system - a radical and immediate bringing of full attention to the unexpected stimulus. This is a prediction mismatch, and we are wired on a biological level to attend to them. The stronger the prediction - the more certain we were that our prediction was correct - the more dramatic the shock when it's not. After all, inaccurate predictions got our ancestors killed. We are all the sons and daughters of people who paid a lot of attention to the things they got wrong.

Prediction does not happen simply on a physical level ("my coffee should be cold, moving through space should feel a certain way"). Instead, we predict upon multiple levels of abstraction.

Part of what makes human beings such powerful predictors is that we don't just predict based on individuals, but on classes. We see patterns, identify similarities, figure out which of those similarities correlates with predictive accuracy and then begin to predict based on the class rather than the individual.

While this seems obvious, this is a massive increase in the amount of accurate predicting we can do. If I can only predict based on my experience with an individual, I am limited in what I can accurately predict. Everything depends on how much time I've spent in a given situation, and I can never predict the outcome of something I haven't directly experienced.

Abstracting fixes this. I no longer need to have specific lived experience with this dog; instead, I can reason about how dogs behave in general and go from there. While predictions based on such abstractions aren't as powerful as predictions based on our lived experiences, they nonetheless allow us to make useful guesses about what might happen next ("dogs often like to smell people and sometimes they jump up, so I should expect something like that").

Adding a layer of abstraction to our predictions enables cultural transmission of predictive data. Someone who has an experience with one tiger can come back to the group and add to the general store of knowledge on tigers and what they do. Class traits ("they tend to hide tall grass; you see them more at night than during the day; they eat meat") can be updated and made more accurate over time ("most tigers don't eat people, but THIS one sure does"). Indeed, the story of our technological advancements is mostly a story of efficiently passing along more and more accurate predictive data over time (i.e., going from no language to language, from language to oral history, from oral history to writing, from writing to print, from print to digital, from digital to AI, etc...)

Where does all this leave us?

Human behavior is essentially a product of:

Predictions about what will happen next...

Along multiple lines of abstraction...

Some are based on personal experiences, and some are based on cultural transmission.

Finally, that brings us to Perception, Context and Permission.

In any situation, certain elements determine a person's behavior. To influence them, these are the elements we need to change and direct.

The first is Perception.

Perception refers to how a person perceives the meaning of an interaction. Who are these people, and what do they mean to me? How is this situation going to play out? What is going to happen next?

The critical point here is that all of these predictions are based on personal experiences. This can be understood, using our framework from above, as all the predictions we can make in the absence of cultural transmission; the sum total of our experiences with people and situations and what we've learned about it.

Perception also applies to how they think about themselves: what they are capable of and what they like or not like.

We can see Perception as the base layer of influence: people's individual experiences, traumas and joys deeply inform what they do and what they predict. If we want to influence someone, we need to, on some level, shift their Perception.

Context is the prediction layer above Perception. It consists of the environment or circumstances that shape someone's predictions. While this refers literally to the physical environment (for example, seeing a turnstile inside a building recruits certain predictions about the environment we're entering that are very different from those recruited by a red carpet or a revolving door), it also refers to the predictions informed by social customs, mindsets, traditions, etc.

Thus, in any situation of influence, we are dealing with and working on at least three separate layers:

The final element of influence is Permission.

Permission is the degree to which a person feels free to act.

If we expect to be punished, we will not act. This punishment can range from the direct (physical violence) to the abstract (ostracism), and from the explicit (legal repercussions) to the vague (social judgment).

Certain people in a given situation have the authority to act. We aren't as free to act as we often think; our possible set of actions is often pre-determined by the amount of authority we assume we have. As such, it doesn't occur to us to tell people to move to a different table at the coffee shop, although we could do so at any time. If we worked there, we'd have the situational authority to do so and it would be no big deal. Put a cop uniform on someone and sooner or later, they'll start acting like a cop. The more permission we have, the freer (and more likely) we are to act.

In situations of influence, our goal is to align someone's Perception and Context in such a way that it gives them the Permission to act. Someone can want to do something very badly and still not do it if they feel they don't have permission. However, if we:

• align their personal experiences to give them permission to act, and
• align the context to give them permission to act...

They will act.

You can analyze any situation of influence from within this framework. What's the person's perception? What's the context influencing their decision? Do they feel they have permission to act? Find the missing element and go to work.

Anything worthwhile - making the world a better place, creating interesting things, building a power base or getting someone to change a bad habit - requires influence. Use this framework for good and see where it takes you.

Yours,

Dan

SOMETHING I'M READING:

I can't decide if I think this article is depressing or not, but it's worth a read - an interesting look at "authenticity."

The True Self is the Person You Want Others to Believe You Are

The psychology of authenticity

Rob Henderson's NewsletterRob Henderson