If you’re into pop psychology like I am, you’ve probably heard this one. A UFO cult was expecting a UFO to land in Chicago on December 21, 1954. The plan was to whisk away the believers before a massive tidal wave wiped out the Earth. December 21 came and went. No UFO. No tidal wave. The cult was headed by a woman named Dorothy Martin, who was in contact with the aliens via automatic writing – and sometimes over the phone. In the hours after the no-show, Martin got a message. The aliens had decided to spare the Earth because of the cult’s good work spreading the word. Here’s where it gets interesting. The cult, which had been secretive, hostile to publicity, and closed to outsiders, suddenly launched a full PR blitz. Announcing to the world the good news. It was no longer enough to be in direct contact with powerful aliens who’d decided to spare humanity – everybody else had to know about it too. I’ve written about this before. Got the story from Cialdini’s Influence, in the chapter on social proof. Cialdini got it from When Prophecy Fails, a classic of pop psychology, written by researchers who infiltrated the cult to study it. One problem. I was wrong. Cialdini was wrong. The story was tainted, exaggerated, or possibly made up. As many as half the cult members were actually researchers. One of them became a cult leader and started telling people what to say and do – things that would look good in the book. Several real cult members just walked after the UFO failed to show, which completely undermined the whole “cognitive dissonance” angle the book was built on. Over the past few years, it’s felt like all the good social science stories have fallen apart. The marshmallow test – kids who delayed gratification did dramatically better in life? Doesn’t hold up when you control for obvious variables. The Harvard power poses research – standing like Superman raises testosterone and lowers cortisol? Sloppy data and wishful statistics. The Stanford prison experiment – ordinary people turned into monsters when given power? The guards were apparently told what part to play. So what’s left? A mountain of boring, incremental progress. Unintelligible to anyone outside the field. Growing bigger decade by decade, century by century. Here’s why that matters to you. I’ve been listening to some serious behind-the-scenes marketers lately. People who make real money and don’t primarily sell courses or build personal brands. One thing keeps coming up. “There’s really no secret to it. Just a bunch of small, incremental improvements over time that added up.” Every one of them says some version of that. We’re wired to look for the dramatic breakthrough. The story that upends everything. It sticks in the memory, invites sharing, feels satisfying. The real story is usually less exciting. Small improvements. Boring fixes. Accumulated over time. That’s it. Regards, P.S. Small, incremental improvements, huh? What have I been talking about for the last few months? Doing small things. Stacking them. Watching for the breakthroughs. But to do lots of experiments like this you need to be able to speed up the boring stuff. That’s where this helps https://link.ckv.to/prompt-guide. |
