“All those chimps who get trained in American Sign Language — one of the first words they master is ‘tickle’ and one of the first sentences is ‘tickle me.” In college, I worked with one of those chimps. He’d do the ‘tickle me’ sequence correctly, and you’d tickle him like mad — chimps curl up and cover their ribs and make this fast, soundless, breathy giggle when they’re being tickled. Stop, he sits up, catches his breath, mops his brow because of how it’s all just too much. Then he gets a gleamy look in his eye and it’s, ‘Tickle me,’ all over again.”
— Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
In chapter 16 of his Zebras book, Robert Sapolsky attacks the question of why we can’t tickle ourselves. It’s not as trivial as it seems.
According to Sapolsky, pleasure requires an element of surprise and lack of control. Like the chimp story above shows, getting tickled is a kind of pleasure. But you can’t tickle yourself — because you can’t surprise yourself and you’re always in full control.
I thought of this because I’ve been beating my head against a related question lately. Let me set it up with a quote from Oren Klaff’s Flip the Script:
“Make people feel like the idea is coming from them and they will place more value on it, believe it more deeply, adopt it more quickly, and remember it more easily.”
This makes a lot of sense to me. In fact, I’m writing a book right now on this topic, which I call insight marketing. The problem is, I’m not sure it’s true. At least not all the time.
Here’s my reasoning:
If Klaff is 100% right, then what’s the purpose of coaches, hypnotists, and inspirational speakers? Those people earn their bread by standing around and planting ideas in others’ heads. For most people who hire hypnotists, coaches, and inspirational speakers, the effect wouldn’t be the same if they simply had those ideas themselves.
Another example:
When I was a kid, I would ask my grandfather to tell me a story each night. He only knew one story, Little Red Riding Hood. It didn’t matter. I loved hearing it over and over, even though I knew it by heart. Why didn’t I just play it in my own head?
Let me make it clear I don’t have good answers to these questions. In fact, I am hoping you can help me out.
My guess is that there are situations where coming to a realization yourself is more powerful… while in other situations, having an idea come from outside is better. But what determines which side of the mountain you end up on? At this point, I don’t know.
So if you have any theories about this, or if you can point me to some research on the matter, please write me and let me know. I’ll be grateful to you, and the science of insight marketing will take a step forward thanks to your contribution.