Dr Cécile Emery, a senior lecturer in Leadership at The University of Exeter Business School, spoke at a recent Playful Lab session, teaching participants about influence tactics. She showed how these can be put into practise and change the behaviour of others using the social deduction game “Werewolf”.
Rules of the Game
A group of players are given an identity card of either a villager or a werewolf. The assigned werewolves secretly choose a villager to kill by night, but by day they must behave as honest citizens when there are group discussions as to who the werewolves could be. Before nightfall, players must defend themselves, persuade others and vote to try and reveal the werewolves amongst them, but if they are wrong more villagers will pay the price.
Influence Tactics
The influence tactics she outlined are as follows:
1) Personal appeals: Reminding your target of your personal relationship with them.
2) Rational persuasion: Using facts and logic to argue your position
3) Exchange: Evoking reciprocity norms (helping each other out)
4) Inspirational appeals: Appealing to your target’s values, ideals, and goals
5) Coalition tactics: Getting support from others
6) Consultation: Getting other people involved
7) Pressure: Demanding or threatening
8) Ingratiation: Agreeing with your target and pointing out similarities
9) Legitimating tactics: Claiming a position of authority
Reflecting on the game Cécile noted that, “After playing a first round of “werewolf”, participants usually realise that they rely on a very limited number of influence tactics (usually two or three). By learning about other influence tactics and by trying to apply them to the second round of the game, participants up their game and realise the usefulness of relying on multiple tactics to boost their influence over a group.”
Joe Pearce, the Business Support Manager at theUniversity of Exeter’s Innovation Centre, took part in the session and said: “It was a fun and really interactive way to think about how you can put influencing tactics to use”.
As a new intern at the Playful Lab, this was my first session and I really enjoyed seeing how these skills were incorporated into play. Although I was the first person chosen to be killed by the werewolves, it was interesting to watch the game develop. Most people relied on rational persuasion to convince others of who they thought the werewolves were. Despite the voting and accusations made by the participants, the werewolves managed to conceal their identity and win the game. However, by expanding the number of influence techniques used, next time the villagers might stand a chance!
The online version of “Werewolf” has been added to the Playful Lab Games Library and I hope that you enjoy playing either online or in person and can put some of the influence tactics into use.
-Bethan Pepler
Intern at the Playful Lab 2022