The ILRAA Women's Council and Cornell Women's Network invite you to join us for: You have more influence than you think: How we underestimate our own powers of persuasion and why it matters, a program featuring ILR Associate Professor, Vanessa Bohns.

Date:   
Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Time:  
6:30 pm - 7:00 pm: Networking and Refreshments (wine, soft drinks, and light bites)
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm:  Program
8:00 pm - 8:30 pm: Continued Networking

Location:  
NYC ILR Conference Center, 570 Lexington, 12th Floor

Cost: 
No charge for ILR alumni and full-time students.  $10 for non-ILR alumni and guests

The popularity of books and articles teaching us how to have influence, confidence, and poise suggests that we are hopelessly underconfident. That we think we need some magic something if we want to make an impact. But is this really the case? Professor Bohns’ research suggests that it’s not about the influence we don’thave, but about the influence that we don’t realize we do have. Bohns will present research on the misperceptions that make usfeel as if we have little impact, when in fact people see us, listen to us, and agree to do things for us more often than we realize-for better, and worse. The upshot of this research is that in our search for ways to gain influence, we fail to recognize the influence we have already. That lack of awareness can cause us to miss opportunities for influence, or, to be careless with the influence we do wield. The research Professor Bohns will be presenting is also described in her forthcoming book, You Have More Influence Than You Think, which will be published by W. W. Norton next year.

Vanessa Bohns is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell’s ILR School. She holds a PhD in psychology from Columbia University and an AB in psychology from Brown University. Her research on social influence and the psychology of compliance and consent has been published in top academic journals in psychology, management, and law (e.g., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Yale Law Review), and has been covered by numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and NPR. She is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was previously editor of the social influence section of Social and Personality Psychology Compass, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Social Cognition. In 2018, Professor Bohns was the inaugural winner of the Provost Research Innovation Award in Social Sciences, awarded to one mid-career social scientist across Cornell.

We hope you will be able to join us and we look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, March 11th!