Fox Factor

Many years ago now I sat down one Sunday and read a short article in a magazine. After reading the article I gently put down the magazine and thought, “My God, this is happening everywhere. All the time. This explains it all!”

“Explaining it all” may be an exaggeration but what I suddenly realised is that the effect I had just read about which seemed like a simple humorous experiment was what made the world go around. Now, many years on I now understand some of the underlying influences. And this is why I decided to write the Fox Factor. To share this with the world. But you may now be curious what is the Fox Factor and what on earth is it about?

The driving story of the book is the Dr Fox experiment from 1972. This experiment was testing something called “educational seduction”. The experimenters (Naftulin, Donnely and Ware) were testing to see how much an audience would be taken in by lack of content and seductive ways of presenting material. The results were surprising - it showed that content played almost no role - an actor took the audience through a load of gobbelydegook, while speaking powerfully and received excellent ratings. Content was therefore playing a small role in perception of quality. And the audience were not students they were professionals. That made it even more surprising. This ability to be carried away with the perceived image of the person standing in front of the room, or whom you encounter in everyday life is what the Fox Factor is about.

Firstly I take you through various “Fox” cases. 1. where image overrides the content. 2. Where image is weaker than the content. 3. Where a person’s image will allow you to get away with murder. Many of these are famous cases such as Bernie Madoff and O.J. Simpson. From here the books takes you through why we fall into this trap and indeed how difficult it is to avoid it because of the way our brain is wired, it is almost impossible not to be falling into it! Finally the books takes you through the techniques and the research that shows how you can boost your own personal image and become more powerful within yourself.

The Fox Factor is a journey through the way image will override ration and reason and the unconscious processes in the mind that are controlling this. Inspiring and eye-opening!