How to Make a Slave Out of a Person

from him, he had been fired. To the business-sharp-

ened eye, his misplaced priorities would have fore-

told his failure.

Likewise, a few years back, I was named manager

of a restaurant to replace a man who had just been

fired. It seems that the fired manager had forgotten

that the customers paid his salary. As a result, he

emphasized jobs like keeping the kitchen clean over

his whole reason to be, serving customers good food.

Such upside-down priorities signal a lack of judg-

ment that inevitably brings on failure in the business

world. So you're better off to steer clear of business

associations with this kind of incompetent.

SHE WALKED toward the cafe table where I waited

anxiously. As usual, she radiated the confident good

looks that made her one of the most striking blondes I

had seen in all my eighteen years. But immediately I

sensed something wrong. I noticed it as she sat

down next to me.

My date's eye shadow made a futile effort to hide

her slightly bruised left eye. This flaw in her other-

wise perfect appearance caused me to ask about the

bruise. And she responded by telling me all the de-

tails of a rocky love affair she was locked into with another man.

As you can imagine, her answer to my unfortunate

question ruined my whole evening. And I considered

the episode a curse at the time-never having cared

for listening to my date recount how she just can't get

over some other guy. But looking back, I realized

that I was having my nose rubbed in my first price-

less lesson in manipulation. And later it hit me that

my rival had almost made my date into his personal

slave by using manipulation.

Her account of the relationship went this way:

"I've been dating Bill off and on for about a year,

even though I know damn well he's no good for me.

Just look at my eye. He even hits me sometimes when

he gets mad.

"Day before yesterday, I told him for the hun-

dredth time that I was leaving him, and that it was all

over. He said, 'Okay, but let me kiss you good-bye

before you go.' That kiss lasted five minutes, and I

wound up spending the night with him. I just can't

get over him. He got mad at me the next morning

and hit me. That's where this came from," she ex-

plained, gesturing toward her injured left eye.

As my date described her affair with this slugger

named Bill, it was obvious that she was addicted to

him. I also sensed that during that five-minute kiss,

Bill had once again grabbed command of her emo-

tions and pulled her back under his control.

After listening to her story, I doubted that she

would ever muster the strength to get out of the situation. And she confirmed my doubts by admitting to

me that the cafe we were talking in-which she had

selected for our date-was, in fact, Bill's favorite wa-

tering hole and hangout. She wanted to be there. She

suspected that "he might show up here with another

girl, and I just wanted to see what she looks like."

I made this my last date with Bill's slave. I was

young and green at the time. But still I was dry

enough behind the ears to know that I didn't have a

chance with her.

As an epilogue, I might add that the last time I saw

Bill's sometime lover, she was planning to make a

clean break. She'd finally decided that the only way

to get over Bill was to resort to moving out of the

state. I hope she went through with it. But if Bill

drove her to the bus station and gave her one of his

irresistible five-minute kisses, I would wager every

penny I own that she never got on that bus.

For months after this scene I tried to figure out

the source of Bill's almost mystical power over this

girl. And finally, several years later, as I read about a

psychological experiment with a pigeon, I came to

understand his manipulation.

This might sound farfetched, but if you'll compare

Bill's manipulation to the pigeon story below, I think

you'll draw the same conclusion I did. At the center

of this pigeon story lies one of the most powerful

traits of human nature. Understanding this human

trait and capitalizing on it will get you w hat you want out of a person.The most important pigeon story you'll ever read

Imagine a pigeon in a cage, with a bar it can peck

on to get a pellet of food that it likes very much. This

pellet of food is a reward, or reinforcement, for its

pecking. You would assume that the more often the

pigeon received the pellet of food, the more often it

would peck the bar. But importantly, this didn't turn

out to be the case.

The experiment yielded these results: First, when

the pigeon never got food as a reinforcement, it

stopped pecking the bar altogether. No surprise. Sec-

ond, when the pigeon got the food reinforcement

every time it pecked the bar, it only pecked the bar a

moderate number of times.

Finally, and most important, when the pigeon got

the food reinforcement intermittently (that is,

sometimes it got the food reward for pecking the bar,

and sometimes it got no reward for pecking), it

pecked the bar like crazy-frantically and incessantly.

The experimenters believe that this intermittent rein-

forcement is the strongest motivator for getting the be-

havior they wanted from the bird.

When you compare the pigeon experiment to my

experience with Bill's woman friend, you'll see a

striking parallel between the two. This parallel pro-

vides us with the key to Bill's appeal. It also gives us

a pretty shocking insight into human nature.

Actually our human nature more closely resem-

bles that of animals like pigeons than we like to think.

We humans can't resist intermittent reinforcement

much more than the pigeon did in the experiment. When we get reinforcement every time we see a

person (that is, when they treat us well every time we

interact with them), we begin to take that person for

granted a little. Just as the pigeon only pecked on the

bar moderately in the face of constant reinforcement,

we humans only respond moderately well to a person

who always treats us favorably. We begin to take him

for granted.

This ingratitude instinct proved to be my undoing

with Bill's woman friend. She liked me, but she

knew I would always be good to her. She knew she

could have me any time. Put simply, if you treat a per-

son well all the time, you are going to be taken for granted.

In fact, some people would say you're almost as well

off to mistreat a person all the time, thus avoiding the

whole relationship.

This situation points up an important facet of

human behavior: people take for granted what they

know they can have. This trait is important, but the

final result of the pigeon experiment uncovers an

even more significant part of human nature. And it's

one that can make you a manipulator.

Human nature's most powerful quirk

Recall the surprisingly potent way intermittent re-

inforcement spurred the pigeon? When it got only

sporadic reinforcement for pecking the bar, the

pigeon never knew whether it could have the pellets

of food or not. So the bird pecked the bar like crazy,

which showed that intermittent reinforcement most

powerfully goaded the pigeon's pecking.