Have you ever lived through something like this? You bump into a good friend you haven't seen for months — sometimes years — and over the course of the conversation they seem like a completely different person. The shared memories of the days you once studied hard together feel as though they've been wiped clean, and the talk keeps circling back to themes of "your prospects" or "hedonism": "How much are you pulling in these days?", "Don't you think it's about time your salary doubled, or even tripled?", "I've already booked a trip to Switzerland, picked up a few watches — only 300 grand, that's all." If your answer is, "Yes, I've seen it, I really have!", then your friend has very likely fallen into pyramid selling. I'm sure that you, reading this article right now, are no stranger to the term "pyramid selling", and that you can recognise just how absurd these industries' tactics are. And yet the pull of pyramid selling's "allure" has not eased off just because the market has slumped and businesses have shrunk in recent months. On the contrary — this is exactly the peak job-hunting season for fresh graduates, and against a backdrop of widespread anxiety among jobseekers, pyramid-selling groups wave banners promising a "fast-track promotion ladder" or "a monthly salary of a hundred thousand is no dream, a million-a-year salary is within your reach", scheming to draw in more young people to become their "downlines" (though, of course, those who get sucked in span other age groups too). Why are pyramid-selling groups able to "brainwash" so effectively, trapping their targets in a state of lost reason and an inescapable, irrecoverable abyss?
The "Brainwashing" Trilogy of Pyramid Selling
One Small Step at a Time: Give an Inch, They Take a Mile
If a stranger suddenly walked up and started pushing a product on you, chances are you'd assume they were up to no good and give them a wide berth. Pyramid sellers have this aspect of human nature figured out too, so when they first approach a potential "client" they will usually ask the person to do something simple and undemanding first. The most common version is filling in a questionnaire on the street or near a school (for instance, a questionnaire about confidence in further study / job-hunting, or about physical and mental health), then recording the respondent's personal details (note: they often dress this up as a "market survey / promotional activity"). After a while they phone the person to say the group currently has job openings or products and services tailored to them, and then invite the person to come in to the group's office in person to hear a member's presentation.
Back in the 1960s, the American social psychologist Freedman and his research team carried out an experiment on "prosocial behavior". Their ultimate goal was to get residents to agree to put up, in front of their homes, a large "Drive Carefully" sign that was extremely ugly in lettering and a serious eyesore, in order to reduce traffic accidents in that neighbourhood. First, in Community A, the research team made this request to residents directly, and were met with refusal by the great majority — only 17% of residents were willing to display the sign. In Community B, however, they took a very different approach. The research team first went door to door asking residents to sign a "petition in support of safe driving" to show their backing. Since this was a trifling matter, almost all the residents went along with it. Two weeks later, the team called again on the same batch of homeowners in Community B; they first thanked them for their help two weeks earlier, then went a step further and asked whether they would be willing to put up the sign in front of their homes. This time, a remarkable 55% of those visited agreed to the request — compared with Community A, a success rate fully 38 percentage points higher. Why does such a gap appear? It's because once we have initially agreed to one request, when faced with another request that carries a higher "cost", we tend, in order to maintain a consistent self-image of being "kind and charitable", to go on and agree to the later request (or, looked at from another angle, we find it harder to refuse that request). Psychologists call this the "foot-in-the-door effect". So once a target has agreed to visit a pyramid-selling group's office, that is the first step into the inescapable trap.
Intensive Lessons, Mounting Group Pressure
Once the target has visited the pyramid-selling group in person, the company will arrange for them to go to a particular room to attend a talk / sharing session run by so-called "successful people" or "star guests". Besides introducing the products the group is promoting, the talk also features "guests" sharing their testimonials, invariably about how that product / service utterly transformed their lives, leaving them feeling that life was full of meaning and that they could enjoy wealth and freedom. A more "aggressive" pyramid-selling group might, on that very day, already lay on a "training session" running a good ten-plus hours, during which students are forbidden from using their phones, and are required to attend the intensive training on the remaining days as well. The aim of this is precisely to cut off, by every means possible, the students' contact with the outside world, immersing them inside the circle of the course; psychologists call this classroom environment an "enmeshed society". Long hours of contact with the other students and the guests are, to be sure, exhausting to the point of breaking down one's defences, but another major effect at work here is to bring the target's values gradually into line with the pyramid-selling group's, and to make them embrace the belief that "every other path in life is beneath them — only pyramid selling is worthwhile".
If you reckon you think clearly, can see through the absurdities and would never "get taken in", then please don't overestimate yourself just yet. In essence, human beings are social animals, and to be praised and accepted by the group we belong to is a natural psychological need in every one of us. Research even indicates that the brain's response when rejected by others is comparable to physical pain. So in this "enmeshed society" led by the "guests", the only way for students to gain a sense of acceptance is to fall in with what the "guests" want, rather than turning to a student's usual social circle. On top of that, the "guests" will join with the other students to chastise anyone who doesn't follow instructions, ensuring every student is "thinking correctly" — and even those with reservations in their hearts are forced into silence. As a result, a person's ordinary morality and social common sense become clouded over, and they turn into someone who is "all about the money", who looks down on other occupations or professions, and who runs counter to mainstream values. (A point to add here: the Stanford prison experiment is proof enough of how fragile people's conscience and rationality are in particular environments — turning from angels into devils is but a matter of an instant.)
Pyramid-Selling Products – The Opening of a Bottomless Pit
Once a student has completed the training course, members of the pyramid-selling group will invite the student to join up, and the student must purchase a set amount of products as a "membership fee" (the sum is usually in the tens of thousands). At this point, the overwhelming majority of students who have been "won over heart and soul" will spend a tidy sum without the slightest hesitation. Even if, in the moment, you still have misgivings and choose not to buy, you can easily be coerced and enticed into submission under the group pressure of the moment (pyramid-selling groups will even go so far as to ask students to take out a loan from a financial group on the spot). From then on, the target's "intoxication" with the pyramid-selling products only grows more unbreakable, and they will go on to lure close friends and relatives into joining the pyramid-selling team. On one hand, beyond wanting to recruit "downlines" so as to "make their money back", another, more complex reason is the psychological phenomena of "cognitive dissonance" and the "effort justification" that follows hard on its heels playing their tricks.
The American social psychologists Aronson and Mills conducted a classic experiment in the 1950s. They first recruited a group of young volunteers, telling them they were going to take part in a small-group discussion about sexual experiences. However, to ensure that the volunteers' embarrassment would not affect the quality of the group discussion, the researchers said they might require the volunteers to read aloud, to a researcher, an article on sexual behaviour before taking part in the discussion (note: this exercise would cause them embarrassment and discomfort). At this point the volunteers were divided into three groups: those who did not have to read anything aloud, those who read aloud an article describing sexual behaviour in a "mild-embarrassment" manner, and those who read aloud an article describing sexual behaviour in a "severe-embarrassment", highly provocative manner. In theory, the last group of volunteers paid the highest "price" to take part in the discussion, because they had to endure the greatest psychological obstacle. The researchers then claimed, however, that since the group discussion had already begun (the participants in the discussion were in fact all "shills"), the volunteers could only listen to the group discussion from another room, rather than take part in person. The volunteers later discovered that the content of their discussion was nothing more than animal sexual activity — utterly dull and tedious. Finally, on leaving the room, the volunteers had to rate the group discussion they had just listened to, so as to indicate how much they had wanted to take part in it. And the result? The volunteers who had first had to read aloud the article describing sexual behaviour in a "highly provocative" manner gave the group discussion the highest ratings. Why is that? It's because they had paid the greatest "price"; when they found that the content of the discussion was not as "stimulating" as they'd expected and a kind of "cognitive dissonance" arose, they would, on account of the enormous "sunk cost" they had paid in the past, revise their ratings of the group discussion upwards, judging that the discussion wasn't all that dull after all, but actually rather interesting. To put it another way, because of their past "effort", this particular group of volunteers "justified" their own act of staying in the room to listen to the discussion. If you apply the psychological phenomenon described above to pyramid-selling salespeople, it explains why pyramid-selling groups require salespeople to purchase large quantities of products in advance: beyond "moving stock", the more important aim is to make the salespeople afterwards throw themselves wholeheartedly into helping the group promote its products and expand the business.
Conclusion
The opening two lines of Hacken Lee's song "The Voice of the Waves" run: "Hard to tell the true from the false, faces full of treachery." This author urges everyone: if you encounter the situations described above, you must refuse every unreasonable request with iron resolve, for a small request is the prelude to all manner of evil. Pyramid selling is just like taking heroin — "not even once, never again".
Afterword and Reflections
The depth of my hatred for pyramid sellers is beyond what words can describe. The most crucial reason for it is not that they sell overpriced products with little real benefit, but their contempt for moral principles, integrity and friendship. While studying for my counselling and psychology degree at Shue Yan University, the author got to know a male classmate who, though no smooth talker, was an honest and straightforward sort of person. Seventeen years after graduation, the author went into research work, while he took up a post as a counselling worker. Later, the author was astonished to learn that he had actually joined the ranks of pyramid selling, and he invited my university friends to come to the pyramid-selling group's office for a health check and to be sold health products. At the time, my friend bought several hundred dollars' worth of "blueberry juice", and kindly reminded him under no circumstances to try to sell anything to the author. Later, the author invited my university friends, in a WhatsApp group, to a birthday party at my home, and he indicated he would attend too. (Although there were many reasons at the time that I'd rather he didn't, I still gave him the nod to come to my home, for the sake of the other friends.) During the banquet, he paid no attention whatsoever to the conversation among friends, only minding the texts on his phone. As he was leaving, he actually produced packets of a product he claimed was "Alaskan wild blueberry juice" and handed them out for us to enjoy. After that, he even took the initiative to explain to me how the group operated and its "commission" model. At the time I simply couldn't bear it any longer and rebuked his conduct directly in the group texts; he in turn accused my criticism of being a symptom of "paranoia", and questioned how someone of my character could possibly still survive in society.
In every profession there are always a few black sheep — it's true of the social-work field, true of the psychology field, and true of the counselling field too. This is the lesson conveyed by the "Lucifer effect".
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