How to induce initiative from others?

Hello! We interact with a lot of various people through our lives. Someone we meet once, and with someone we keep in touch. The sure way to maintain a contact is regularly go for it yourself. But there is also may be a personal need to keep it the other way: have other people: friends, family members, or strangers – reaching out to you first.

Who reaches out to us?

Family members, friends; people from school, college, university, workplace (colleagues); potential partners, strangers online and offline – we contact with all kinds of people. And sometimes, to build relationships with them, the person has to experience that they are interested in that too: by seeing an initiative from them.  

Initiative: a relational need

To clarify, there is no issue with a need to have people reaching out to you first from time to time. There is a system of 8 relational needs we like to refer, introduced by Richard Erskine [1]. It basically says that any person has psychological needs related to others, and their happiness depends on how well they are addressed.

One of these needs is the need to have the other initiate. "Relationships become more personally meaningful and fulfilling when <that need> is satisfied. Initiation refers to the impetus for making interpersonal contact with another person. It is the reaching out to the other in some way that acknowledges and validates the importance of him or her in the relationship."

We may not account for the fact that some behaviour appears passive may actually be an expression of the relational need to have the other initiate.

High level principles

First, let's consider high-level principles of what is necessary to achieve, so people would reach out to you more. This is just math and probability reasoning, so don't take this pretty seriously. There are two conditions:

• More people seeing / knowing you (pure amount)
• More people react on something about you (% of the first stage)

Of marketers and men. These two metrics are pretty familiar to every marketer: "more people seeing" are impressions and "more people reacting" are conversions. Impressions provide the upper limit base, while the conversions measure how well people react to what they encounter. Both are important.

There are by default two ways how one can fulfill those conditions: actively (reaching out to people) or passively (showing something about themselves but not initiating a contact). Sticking to the topic of this article, we focus on the passive exposure.

More people see

At first glance, there is nothing to talk about. More people see, some of them might get interested and reach out, that's just numbers.

So, let's discuss the slightly different setting: the connection between the number of exposures towards a particular person, and their interest. This is related to to the mere exposure effect. Mere exposure is a psychological effect of increasing preference for the object through a series of repeated exposures.

Montoya et.al (2017) conducted a meta analysis of different mere exposure effect studies [2]. As a result of 81 articles analysis, they inferenced a statistically significant quadratic (U-shaped) effect of mere exposure. They provide the model that for the first tens of exposures the normalized "liking" towards a person grows: from 66% to 74% at the peak (not much). Then liking starts to decrease, and some boredom might kick in. Although, the authors point out that existing models for the mere exposure effect do not adequately account for the findings, and provide a framework to help guide future research.

More people react

Another part of the reaching out condition is what happens with the people who see you. Are they impressed? Remember something interesting about you? Or just understand that you are open to talk, and it would be nice to approach? We outlined the three factors that account for the personal outreach: emotional (immediate) reaction, prior knowledge, and social cues.

• Emotional response (see person and feel attracted immediately)
  People react under the influence of emotions: positive or negative. Some describe emotions as a complex reaction pattern by which an individual attempts to deal with a significant matter or event [3]. The brain and other body parts produce call to action as a response to processed stimuli.
  Emotions is a huge topic by itself (do they "exist" in a sense we understand them?). Here, it is convenient to consider that emotions impact in a roughly the same place where one sees the other person, online or offline.
  To set up for emotional response, you can start with general expectations and trends. What people like and don't like in the place where you at, on average? What usually makes them surprised, excited, awed, etc.? Make the target group narrower or larger, depending on whose spontaneous reaction you would like to capture.
  
• Prior context or information (knowing something about the person beforehand)
  That's a domain of reasoning and long-term planning. There are goals and aspirations one attributes to every person. If these can be fulfilled as a result of interaction, it is more likely to happen. But these connections don't occur immediately: the person has to think and come up with some reasons to reach out ("Why would I need to talk with them?").
  To help that, one has to share relevant information about their occupation, personality, objectives over time, letting communication ideas to build up. For example, the person giving a public talk would like to introduce themselves at the beginning, so the audience would have a time to process the personal background. As a result, the people might have more questions in the end (but does it even matter?).
• Social cues (implicit / explicit signals from the person that they are open to outreach)
  Commonly understood social cues may include: tone of voice, posture, facial expression, eye contact, location in the room, current activity, verbal tips (in a multiple people conversations).
  > Tone of voice. Warm or cold; fast or slow; high or low; quiet or loud. These parameters can signal the other person about your willingness to start or continue conversation. There is a great TED Talk on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIho2S0ZahI
  One might ask: how voice, being observed when you already talk, can influence other people into reaching out? Well, they hear how you talk to others or remember how you talked to them previously.
  > Posture. Open or close; vulnerable or confident. The way you arrange your body can tell something about your readiness to talk. For example, head up, relaxed shoulders, and hands laying comfortably on the table/waist/hips show that you are open to talk or listen. And, another TED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc
  > Facial expression and eye contact. Here, nothing special should be added. If you look interested and let the person know it by looking them at the eyes – that's a great invitation to speak.

Another classification of social cues

keyboard_arrow_down

That scheme is presented by the author of Rori Care blog [4]. It dissects three biological factors (voice, body, and tone) and one spatial (personal space). We think that might be useful, especially the branches from "Elements" nodes.

Handle these parameters altogether, to summarize: 1) how people react when they see you for the first time, 2) what do they know about you already, and 3) how you express your openness to conversation. That may help you to increase the share of people who talks to you first.

Conclusion

Remember, that you are the person who can change the chances that other people reach out to you. Work with who sees you, how much, and what do they might feel and think when around. Tailor your actions and online/offline presence, to encourage others into reaching out to you first. And don't be uncomfortable about it: everyone needs some incoming initiative.

References

• Erskine, R. G. (1998). Attunement and involvement: Therapeutic responses to relational needs. International Journal of Psychotherapy, 3(3), 235.
• Montoya, R. M., Horton, R. S., Vevea, J. L., Citkowicz, M., & Lauber, E. A. (2017). A re-examination of the mere exposure effect: The influence of repeated exposure on recognition, familiarity, and liking. Psychological bulletin, 143(5), 459.
• "Emotion" definition, APA Dictionary of Psychology, https://dictionary.apa.org/emotion
• Rori Care Blog. Defining Social Cues: Understanding Their Role and Importance, https://www.rori.care/post/defining-social-cues-understanding-their-role-and-importance