The Hour

Drew McAdam recently appeared on The Hour as the human lie detector. One by one he picked out a liar from a line-up of five in a very entertaining way. Other appearances on the show have included Drew explaining body language and what it means and showing us how to tell if your partner is lying.

More recently the mentalist showed Grant Stott techniques on how to improve his memory. He returned to The Hour this week to show us how to use simple persuasive techniques to influence others and encourage them to make specific decisions.

“A lot of these techniques are used by sales people,” Drew said. “For example, a salesman might ask you if you want a car in red or if you would prefer it in blue. Now he’s not really giving you a choice there. He’s asking you a very small question but the result is going to be very big. By saying what colour you want you have basically bought the car”

This is called the alternative close technique. By giving someone the option of choosing one or the other they are going to make a choice, and once they have made that choice they have committed to going with that decision.

“You can use the same technique at home,” Drew told The Hour. “If, for example, your child wants to go to school wearing a T-shirt then you don’t really give them that choice. You say do you want to wear the grey pullover or would you prefer to wear the blue one, which one do you think would suit best. In their agreement to wear a particular colour they are agreeing to wear a particular pullover, so you’re kind of influencing their choices and decisions without them being aware that you’re doing it.”

You can also use pseudo-subliminal techniques to encourage a person to do something. Drew was involved in an experiment using real families for She magazine and the results were remarkable.

“A lot of parents have problems getting the children out to school on time so you can do it using psychology,” he said. “One of the ways we tried was we got the mothers to make a tape with various tracks of music on it, starting with a slow kind of music and picking up the tempo so that the last song is pretty quick. The tape would be exactly an hour long - the length of time it should take a child to get up and get ready.

“The mother would start the tape when the child got up in the morning and get them used to doing particular actions along to particular tracks. Then all they would have to do is start playing the tape a little bit earlier each morning so that the children were being conditioned.”

MORE ON THE MENTALIST

• For more information on Drew McAdam see the website
• Mentalist Drew McAdam explains the art of deception recognition
• Drew McAdam: unleash the power of your mind
• Interview techniques: Drew McAdam says let your body do the talking