Read The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence for Free Online Page A

hurricane an unofficial fear-inducing name leads to an increase in donations after the event, there is evidence that the official name given to a hurricane can have a surprising influence on whether certain individuals will donate. Not only is this evidence surprising, it can also offer some important insight into how a small change you can make to your messages can make a big difference when it comes to persuading others.
    Psychology professor Jesse Chandler highlighted an intriguing finding from an analysis of donations made in response to fundraising appeals after devastating hurricanes. Curiously, people were more likely to donate if the initial of their first name matched the name given to the hurricane. Chandler found, for example, that people whose names began with the letter R, such as Robert or Rosemary, were 260 percent more likely to donate to the Hurricane Rita relief appeal than people whose names didn’t begin with the letter R. He found a similar effect after Hurricane Katrina, with folks whose names started with a K significantly more motivated to donate funds to help relieve the devastation and displacement caused. In every case going back many years, a similar pattern emerged, with disproportionate numbers of donations coming from those with the same initial as the hurricane.
    In his book Drunk Tank Pink , marketing professor Adam Alter makes a noteworthy point. If people are more likely to donate to hurricane relief programs that share their initials, then the entity responsible for assigning hurricane names, the World Meteorological Organization, has the power to increase charitable giving simply by giving hurricanes more commonly occurring names. Given the advances in meteorological forecasting in recent years, it should be possible to identify the areas where storms will hit, take a look at the voting register for those areas, and then choose a name for the hurricane that closely matches frequently occurring names in that area.
    At first glance, insights such as these seem like idle curiosities researched by wacky scientists in an attempt to provide an eyebrow-raising headline or an inane topic of conversation for next weekend’s dinner party. But to dismiss these findings as inconsequential would dismiss a fundamental and powerful feature of human psychology. The truth is, our names matter to us.
    You can probably recall a time when you have found yourself deep in conversation with a colleague or a friend, perhaps at a conference, in a business meeting, or at a party. The kind of conversation that captured your complete attention. In fact you were so focused on what was being said that you were oblivious to all the other activities and conversations going on around you. But then you heard your name mentioned from another part of the room and instantly your attention was diverted. It’s almost as if you possessed an invisible antenna that was constantly scanning the environment, ready and waiting to tune in to any mention of your name. Such is the prevalence of this phenomenon that psychologists even have a name for it: “The Cocktail Party Phenomenon.”
    Should you need further convincing of how important people’s names are to them, then you might like to try this little experiment next time you’re in a meeting or with a group of friends. Hand out a blank piece of paper to everyone in the room and simply ask them to write down their five favorite letters of the alphabet. If they are anything like the subjects in the studies where this has been done, when you review their choices you will likely notice an uncanny similarity between the letters they have chosen and their own names, especially their initials.
    So how can insights such as these help you to successfully influence others?
    Given that a necessary part of any persuasion strategy is to get someone’s attention, it seems logical to explicitly use someone’s name more often when seeking to influence them or, at the very least, signal