SYW (staring blankly): Huh?
C: Look. What I told you during your fake survey doesn’t matter. I refuse
to allow myself to be locked into a mechanical sequence of commitment
and consistency when I know it’s wrongheaded. No click, whirr for me.
SYW: Huh?
C: Okay, let me put it this way: (1) It would be stupid of me to spend
money on something I don’t want. (2) I have it on excellent author-ity,
direct from my stomach, that I don’t want your entertainment plan. (3)
Therefore, if you still believe that I will buy it, you probably also still
believe in the Tooth Fairy. Surely, someone as intelligent as yourself
would be able to understand that.
SYW (trapped like a stunning young rat): Well...uh...I...uh...I guess so.
Stomachs are not especially perceptive or subtle organs. Only when
it is obvious that we are about to be conned are they likely to register
and transmit that message. At other times, when it is not clear that we
are being taken, our stomachs may never catch on. Under those circum-
stances we have to look elsewhere for a clue. The situation of my
neighbor Sara provides a good illustration. She made an important
commitment to Tim by canceling her prior marriage plans. That com-
mitment has grown its own supports, so that even though the original
reasons for the commitment are gone, she remains in harmony with it.
She has convinced herself with newly formed reasons that she did the
right thing, so she stays with Tim. It is not difficult to see why there
would be no tightening in Sara’s stomach as a result. Stomachs tell us
when we are doing something we think is wrong for us. Sara thinks no
such thing. To her mind, she has chosen correctly and is behaving
consistently with that choice.
Yet, unless I badly miss my guess, there is a part of Sara that recog-
nizes her choice as a mistake and her current living arrangement as a
brand of foolish consistency. Where, exactly, that part of Sara is located
we can’t be sure. But our language does give it a name: heart of hearts.
It is, by definition, the one place where we cannot fool ourselves. It is
the place where none of our justifications, none of our rationalizations
penetrate. Sara has the truth there, although, right now, she can’t hear
its signal clearly through the noise and static of the new support appar-
atus she has erected.
If Sara has erred in her choice of Tim, how long could she go without
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 83