The key do getting someone to do what you want, is making them feel like it is their idea. No one likes to be told what to do unless you are craving a dominant lover. Human nature tends to rebel against supreme authority even though we desire boundaries.

There is a complex relationship between subordination and revolt, which is played out in the famous Milgram experiment. The experiment is one that looks into blind obedience and how far someone will go when told what to do by an authority figure. The logistics consist of a scientist telling a participant to administer an electric shock to another participant every time they get an answer wrong. The person being shocked however is an actor and is just pretending to be physically suffering. The person administering the shock thinks the other person is actually being shocked, and the experiment showed that 60% of men would literally shock someone to death if the man in the white coat encouraged him to keep shocking.

People often interpret this to mean that people will do the most atrocious things because they were ordered to by an authority figure, but that is not accurate. The scientist had four prompts they would say in order to get the “shocker” to continue shocking. Meaning most people would get rather disturbed by the experiment and want to stop, but would keep going because they were encouraged. The first three prompts would embolden them to continue because this is what the experiment called for, but the last prompt was “You have no choice, you must continue.” 100% of the people refused to continue once they were told they had no choice!

So technically the participants shocking the shit out of some stranger considered themselves active participants in the greater good of science. It wasn’t just about authority telling them what to do, but that they were contributing to a greater cause. They didn’t see themselves as passive and their decisions were fully their own. But once they were told “they had no choice” they had absolutely no interest in continuing.

Every time I try and take something from The Munch she has a fit worthy of a reality TV show, but if I just ask her for what she has she will give it to me within seconds. I am getting the same result; her giving me what I want, but when I ask she is an empowered participant in the process and thinks giving it to me is actually her idea.

“Munch, can I have my phone back?”

“Here is your phone!”