The Art of Persuasion

Do you want to be an agent of change? Psychological research reveals how to tip the balance in your favor.

All human societies are alive with the battle for influence. Every single day each of us is subject to innumerable persuasion attempts from corporations, interest groups, political parties and other organizations. Each trying to persuade us that their product, idea or innovation is what we should buy, believe in or vote for.

In our personal lives the same struggle is played out for the supremacy of viewpoints, ideals and actions. Whether it’s friends and family, work colleagues, potential employers or strangers, each of us has to work out how to bring others around to our own point of view. We all play the influence game, to greater or lesser degrees.

Psychologists have been studying how we try to influence each other for many years. I’ve been covering some highlights of this research, which are collected below.

 Three Universal Goal to Influence People– Effective influence and persuasion isn’t just about patter, body language or other techniques, it’s also about understanding people’s motivations. The art and science of persuasion is often discussed as though changing people’s minds is about using the right arguments, the right tone of voice or the right negotiation tactic. But effective influence and persuasion isn’t just about patter, body language or other techniques, it’s also about understanding people’s motivations.

The Persuasive Power of Swearing– Show your passion and people have one more emotional reason to come around to your point of view. Light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can help influence an audience. Lack of passion can be fatal to our attempts to persuade others of our point of view. Even if all the right facts are trotted out in an intelligible order, even if the argument is unassailable, when the speaker doesn’t appear to believe it themselves, why should anyone else bother? Show your passion, however, and people have one more emotional reason to come around to your point of view.

Loudest Voice=Majority Opinion – Even if only one member of a group repeats their opinion, it is more likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group. New research reveals even if only one member of a group repeats their opinion, it is more likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group. A group of us are sat around shooting the breeze, talking about this that and everything else besides. Like all British people we always end up with a bit of weather-related chat when the conversation flags. And sure enough, before long, James is complaining about the unseasonably cool and wet weather that we’re having at the moment.

Don't take No for an Answer – You ask someone for a favor and they say no. Where do you go from there? Dealing effectively with objections can be more powerful than other standard methods of persuasion. You ask someone for a favor and they say no. Where do you go from there?According to two experiments conducted by Boster and colleagues, you ask: “Why not?”, then try to deal with the objections (Boster, et al, 2009). The key is transforming the ‘no’ from a flat refusal into an obstacle to be surmounted. If you can deal with the obstacle, the theory goes, your request is more likely to be granted

The Influence of Fitting Attraction– Friendship is a fantastic lever for persuasion and influence, a lever we happily push on every day.Compliance to a simple request can be doubled by the most innocent manipulation. There’s little doubt that friends are easier to persuade than strangers. That emotional connection and shared history is often enough to get the poor wretches doing things they’d rather avoid, like helping us move home. Forgive the mercenary language, but friendship is a fantastic lever for persuasion and influence, a lever we happily push on every day. But how much does someone have to like us before we can start to influence them? And, more to the point, can only the most fleeting attraction help us persuade them to comply with a request

Caffeine Makes us Easy to Persuade– Of all the effects caffeine has on our minds—enhanced attention, vigilance and cognition—perhaps least known is its tendency to make us more susceptible to persuasion.Experiment finds caffeine drinkers more influenced by a persuasive message than a placebo group. Eighty per cent of adults in the US and the UK are moderate users of the psychoactive drug, caffeine. Of all the effects it has on our minds—enhanced attention, vigilance and cognition—perhaps least known is its tendency to make us more susceptible to persuasion. This was demonstrated in a study by Pearl Martin and colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia (Martin , et al 2005)). In their experiment they tried to convince participants to change their minds about the controversial issue of voluntary euthanasia.

Persuasion The right Ear Advantage– If you want someone to comply with a random request for a cigarette, you should speak into their right ear. If you want someone to comply with a random request for a cigarette, you should speak into their right ear, according to a new study by researchers in Italy.(Marzoli & Tommasi 2009) had a female confederate visit a disco and approach 176 random people asking for a smoke. Clubbers were about twice as likely to hand one over if the request was directed at the right ear, whether or not the clubber was male or female. Whether these findings will hold good for other types of request is unknown. These findings confirm previous studies which have found a right-ear preference for attending to and processing verbal stimuli. It is thought that this is because language is preferentially processed by the left side of the brain, which receives its input from the right ear. This right-ear preference was confirmed in an observational study also carried out by Marzoli and Tommas. Both men and women in the club were observed to use their right ear 72% of the time to listen to their conversational partners.

Balance Arguments are more Persuasive – The instinct to paper over weaknesses in our argument is wrong—so long as we counter criticism. The instinct to paper over weaknesses in our argument is wrong—so long as we counter criticism. Every argument has at least two sides, even if sometimes, we’re not prepared to admit it. But in the heat of battle many people present their own side of the argument as though there’s no alternative. You don’t have to go far online to find numerous examples of just that; take your pick of the issues from climate change to the Middle East. The instinct is to avoid drawing attention to weaknesses for fear of undermining our own point of view.

The Battle Between Thoughts and Emotions in Persuasion– Nowadays people tend to use ‘I think’ and ‘I feel’ interchangeably. Does it make any difference whether what you say is couched in ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’ terms? Our Secret Attitude Changes – When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? “I think” or “I feel”, which persuades?Nowadays people tend to use ‘I think’ and ‘I feel’ interchangeably. For some this is a linguistic faux pas, but what about psychologically? Does it make any difference whether what you say is couched in ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’ terms? On the surface the difference seems very slight. “I feel economic recovery is just around the corner,” and “I think economic recovery is just around the corner,” send much the same message. Nevertheless a new study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds this tiny difference can influence the power of a persuasive message (Mayer & Tormala 2010).

Are Fast Talkers More Persuasive – Beware the fast-talker, the person with the gift of the gab—the friendly salesman, the oily politician—running through the ‘facts’ faster than you can keep up. Be aware of the silver tongue: So it seems we might well have reason to fear fast talkers if they are delivering a message we’re not inclined to agree with. It seems the fast pace is distracting and we may find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. Similarly when faced with an audience gagging to agree, the practized persuader would do well to slow down and give the audience time to agree some more. All this assumes the audience is interested in the topic in the first place. If it isn’t relevant, people are likely to judge it based solely on much more peripheral matters, like how fast they are talking. So once again, when talking to a disinterested audience, the fast talker is likely to be more persuasive.

Persuasion The Sleeper: Effect– Any time we receive a persuasive message before we find out who the source is, the sleeper effect can come into play. How to change attitudes months after a persuasive message is delivered. In the 1940s during WWII, the US Department of War wanted to know if their propaganda films were really working. So they carried out a series of experimental studies into how they affected soldier’s attitudes. The complacent assumption was that the films should easily influence the average GI. Producers and psychologists alike expected to see a huge shift in attitudes towards the war after they were viewed. What they found was nothing of the sort and the results came as a bitter blow to propagandists everywhere. While the films were informative and did strengthen some existing attitudes, experiments showed they were extremely unlikely to make soldiers more optimistic about the war in general (Hovland et al, 1949). In retrospect this should have come as little surprise since the soldiers knew these were propaganda films designed to change their attitudes, so their defenses were up. What they did discover, though, was that some of the films did have an effect on soldiers after months had passed. While attitudes didn’t change immediately, subtle shifts were picked up nine weeks later. US soldiers who watched one film about The Battle of Britain showed little extra sympathy towards the British five days later, but, after nine weeks, they had softened. Yale University’s Carl Hovland and colleagues called this the ‘sleeper effect’.

Communicating Persuasively: Email or Face to Face  – Face-to-face communication is usually most persuasive but it’s not always possible to meet in person. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Male-female interaction, Bear in mind that this study is ironing out the spectrum of differences amongst both men and women. In other words, clearly not all women are always relationship-focussed and not all men are always task-focussed. It seems an obvious point but it’s a mistake often made in mainstream media presentation of psychology research. Additionally, one of the drawbacks of the study was that it only concentrated on same-sex communication. Although, I would suggest it’s better not to think of this study in terms of men and women but in terms of individual relationships. So, if you want to persuade someone with whom you have a competitive relationship – whatever your and their gender – email might be a better choice. On the other hand, if your persuasion attempt is aimed at someone with whom you have a more cooperative relationship, face-to-face could be a better choice. Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to see someone face-to-face, so it’s very useful to be aware of the processes operating in both face-to-face and online interaction.

The Influence of Positive Framing– Do people really pay more attention to frightening messages? Actually emphasizing the positive can be more persuasive than pointing out the negative. Say you’re the government and you want to stop people smoking. Should you put really scary warnings on the packets emphasizing the health risks? Or maybe you should tell people about the positive side of becoming a non-smoker, like having whiter teeth, smelling better and being able to run more than 20 meters without having a coughing fit.Our instinctive reaction is to go with scaring people witless. Throw away the carrots and start wielding the big stick. The theory being that people pay more attention to frightening messages, so they are more likely to take them to heart.As you’ll have noticed, most government agencies agree. Billions are spent each year in countries across the world on campaigns that focus on the negative. This is the way persuasive health messages are normally targeted at the public. We, the downtrodden masses, must be frightened into changing our foolish ways. But what does the research say? Originally it agreed that framing messages in terms of losses tends to get people’s attention, but research has begun to question this ‘common sense’ conclusion.A recent analysis added up the results of 29 different studies, which had been carried out on 6,378 people in total (O'Keefe & Jensen 2008). They didn’t just include health messages like smoking cessation, but also consumer advertising. What they found was none of the expected advantage for loss-framed messages, indeed there was a slight persuasive advantage for messages that were framed positively. But this advantage for gain-framed appeals seemed to be mainly confined to disease prevention, such as encouraging people to use sunscreen. However another review of the field also found an advantage for gain-framed appeals in encouraging healthy eating (O’Keefe & Jensen, in press). All of these findings are weird because normally bad things attract our attention more than good things and so they are processed more thoroughly. That’s why the newspapers and TV are full of alarming stories: like it or not, that’s what we pay attention to. We don’t really know why loss-framed appeals turn out to be no more effective, and in some cases worse, than gain-framed appeals. O’Keefe and Jensen suggest it might be because we don’t like to be bullied by the government—or by anyone for that matter—into changing our behavior. Could be true but I prefer their second explanation which is simply that we prefer to think about nice things. Given the choice between visualizing lung cancer and contemplating a dazzling white smile, I know which one I prefer to think about. And if I spend more time thinking about it, then it’s got a better chance of persuading me than if I put it straight out of my mind.

The Illusion Of the Truth– Repetition is used everywhere to persuade: advertising, politics and the media. Repetition is used everywhere—advertising, politics and the media—but does it really persuade us? Psychology studies reveal all…We see ads for the same products over and over again. Politicians repeat the same messages endlessly (even when it has nothing to do with the question they’ve been asked). Journalists repeat the same opinions day after day.Can all this repetition really be persuasive? It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that’s exactly what psychological research finds (again and again). Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion. In fact it’s so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is. People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they’ve heard for the first time. They even rate statements as truer when the person saying them has been repeatedly lying (Begg, at el 1992). And when we think something is more true, we also tend to be more persuaded by it. Several studies have shown that people are more swayed when they hear statements of opinion and persuasive messages more than once.

Propaganda Techniques  in Michael Moore's  Fahrenheit 911 Film– Back in the Summer of 2004 Michael Moore brought out ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, his personal view of how terrorist attacks in the US were used to pursue illegal wars. Back in the Summer of 2004 outspoken documentary-maker Michael Moore brought out ‘Fahrenheit 911‘, his personal view of how the terrorist attacks in the US were used by George Bush to pursue illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The response to the film was huge, but rarely ambiguous – audiences either loved it or loathed it. Some saw it as a brilliant indictment of the lead-up to an unjust war. Others saw it as unfounded liberal/left-wing propaganda designed to give the Democrats a boost in the lead-up to the 2004 US presidential elections. At the time Dr Kelton Rhodes an expert in the psychology of persuasion, wrote a piece detailing the psychological techniques of persuasion used by Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11, and it provides a good introduction to propaganda techniques. Each psychological technique is explained with one example from the film.

Persuasion:  The Third Person Effect– Attractive woman holding a bottle of beer? Hah! How stupid do they think we are? Why people think they are less influenced than others by adverts and persuasive messages. One of the most intriguing things about the psychology of persuasion is how many people say that persuasion attempts have little or no effect on them. Other people, oh sure, adverts, work on them. But not you and I, we’re too clever for that. Attractive woman holding a bottle of beer? Hah! How stupid do they think we are? We know what they’re doing and we wouldn’t fall for such cheap tactics. Would we?Persuasive experiments: So pervasive is this feeling that only ‘other’ people are influenced by things like adverts that many studies have explored the idea, with an initial surge in the 1980s and 90s. Psychologists wanted to see how much people thought they were influenced by persuasive messages like adverts and compare it with actual attitude changes, if any. Typically these studies first got participants to watch an advert, read a newspaper article or other medium containing a persuasive message. Then they were asked how much it had influenced them and how much it might influence other people. Since the experimenters measured actual persuasion and knew from previous research how influential the messages were, they could compare people’s guesses with reality. What they found, in study after study, was that participants thought others would be influenced by the message, but that they themselves would remain unaffected. When psychologists looked at the results, though, it was clear that participants were just as influenced as other people. This was dubbed the ‘third-person effect’. Reviewing the research in this area, (Perlof 1994) found that studies on political adverts, defamatory news stories, public service announcements and many more all showed a robust third-person effect. Similar conclusions were reached by Paul et al 2000), who looked at 32 separate studies. Perloff also found that when people don’t agree with the message or judge its source as negative, the third-person effect became even stronger. The effect is also stronger when messages aren’t directly relevant to people. In other words people are likely to be influenced more than they think on subjects that are currently of little or no interest to them. An everyday example would be seeing an advert for a car, when you’re not in the market for a new car. We’d probably guess it has little or no influence on us, but this research suggests we’d be wrong.Take back control : The third-person effect is unusual because it goes against the general finding that we overestimate other people’s similarity to ourselves. This is what psychologists call the full consensus effect: we tend to assume that others hold more similar opinions and have more similar attributes and personalities to ourselves than they really do. The third-person effect, though, goes in the other direction. When it comes to influence, instead of thinking other people are similar to us, we think they’re different. There are two facets of human nature that support this exception:

• Illusion of invulnerability. People prefer to believe that they are, on average, less vulnerable than others to negative influences, like unwanted persuasion attempts. We all want to protect our sense of control over our lives. One way we do that is to assume that ads only work on other people.
• Poor self-knowledge. Although it’s an unpalatable idea, we often don’t know what’s really going on in our own minds . Not only does this make scientific psychology a tricky enterprise, it also means that many of our intuitions about the way our own minds work are scrambled and subject to biases like the illusion of invulnerability. The effect of persuasive messages is a good example of this.

People often react to this sort of research by saying it’s disheartening, which it is. It’s not a happy thought that we don’t know how easily we are influenced because we don’t really know what’s going on in our own minds.However, sticking our heads in the sand and pretending influence attempts don’t work is likely to increase our vulnerability. On the other hand, if we acknowledging our lack of insight into our own thought processes, we can raise our defences against the power of advertising and messages of influence, and take back control for ourselves.

Twenty Simple Steps To The Perfect Persuasive Message  – Perfection is hard to achieve in any walk of life and persuasion is no different. Craft messages that change minds using these 20 principles of persuasion, all based on established psychological research. Perfection is hard to achieve in any walk of life and persuasion is no different. It relies on many things going just right at the crucial moment; the perfect synchronization of source, message and audience. But even if perfection is unlikely, we all need to know what to aim for. To bring you the current series on the psychology of persuasion. I’ve been reading lots of research, much more than is covered in recent posts. As I read, I noticed the same themes cropping up over and over again. Here are the most important points for crafting the perfect persuasive message, all of which have scientific evidence to back them up.

1. Multiple, strong arguments: the more arguments, the more persuasive, but overall persuasive messages should be balanced as two-sided arguments fare better than their one-sided equivalents (as long as counter-arguments are shot down).
2. Relevance: persuasive messages should be personally relevant to the audience. If not, they will switch off and fail to process it.
3. Universal goals: In creating your message, understand the three iniversal worlds for which everyone is aiming: affiliation, accuracy and positive self-concept.
4. Likability: ingratiating yourself with the audience is no bad thing—most successful performers, actors, lawyers and politicians do it. Likeability can be boosted by praising the audience and by perceived similarity. Even the most fleeting similarities can be persuasive.
5. Authority: people tend to defer to experts because it saves us trying to work out the pros and cons ourselves read the classic experiment on obedience to authority.
6. Attractiveness: the physical attractiveness of the source is only important if it is relevant (e.g. when selling beauty products).
7. Match message and medium: One useful rule of thumb is: if the message is difficult to understand, write it; if it’s easy, put it in a video.
8. Avoid forewarning: don’t open up saying “I will try and persuade you that…” If you do, people start generating counter-arguments and are less likely to be persuaded.
9. Go slow: If the audience is already sympathetic, then present the arguments slowly and carefully (as long as they are relevant and strong). If the audience is against you then fast takers can be more.
10. Repetition: whether or not a statement is true, repeating it a few times gives the all-important illusion of truth. The illusion of truth leads to the reality of persuasion.
11. Social proof: you’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again—despite all their protestations of individuality, people love conformity. So tell them which way the flock is going because people want to be in the majority.
12. Attention: if the audience isn’t paying attention, they can’t think about your arguments, so attitudes can’t change. That’s why anything that sharpens attention, like caffeine makes people easier to persuade. And speaking of attention…
13. Minimize distraction: if you’ve got a strong message then audiences are more swayed if they pay attention. If the arguments are weak then it’s better if they’re distracted.
14. Positively framed: messages with a positive frame can be more persuasive
15. Disguise: messages are more persuasive if they don’t appear to be intended to persuade or influence as they can sidestep psychological reactance (hence the power of overheard arguments to change minds).
16. Psychologically tailored: messages should match the psychological preferences of the audience. E.g. some people prefer thinking-framed arguments and others prefer feel-framed arguments (see: battle between Thought and Emotion ). Also, some people prefer to think harder than others.
17. Go with the flow: persuasion is strongest when the message and audience are heading in the same direction. Thoughts which come into the audience’s mind more readily are likely to be more persuasive.
18. Confidence: not only your confidence, but theirs. The audience should feel confident about attitude change. Audience confidence in their own thoughts is boosted by a credible source and when they feel happy (clue: happy audiences are laughing).
19. Be powerful: a powerful orator influences the audience, but making the audience themselves feel powerful increases their confidence in attitude change. An audience has to feel powerful enough to change.
20. Avoid targeting strong beliefs: strong attitudes and beliefs are very difficult to change. Do not directly approach long-standing ideas to which people are committed, they will resist and reject. Strong beliefs must be approached indirectly. Change minds, You should be aware that many of these factors interact with each other. For example when the message is strong but the source is dodgy, the  sleeper effect can arise.

Argument strength is also critical. The basic principle is that when arguments are strong, you need to do everything to make people concentrate on them. When they’re weak, it’s all about distracting the audience from the content and using peripheral routes to persuade, such as how confidently or quickly you talk. Weaving all these together is no mean feat, but look at most professionally produced persuasive messages and you’ll see many of these principles on show. Incorporate as many as you can for maximum effect.

Why Stories Sell: Transportation Leads to Persuasion– Stories which transport people are more likely to be persuasive. How to Encourage People to Change Their Own Mind– Let people talk themselves around to your point of view.When Does Reverse Psychology Works – Reverse psychology works best with people who are contrary or resistant.The Only  (Really Easy) Persuasion Technique Everyone Know– It’s supported by 42 studies on 22,000 people and it’s the easiest, most practical persuasion technique available.The Single Most Effective Method for Influencing People Fast– Works like magic: a little-known influence technique that out-guns the usual suspects.

Nine Ways The Mind Resist Persuasion and How to Sustain or Overcome Them– Persuasion is about far more than just argument and counter-argument.Persuasion is about far more than just argument and counter-argument. What runs through your mind when someone tries to persuade you? Say they start telling you about their preferred make of car, the right area to live in or why you should vote this way or that. How do you react?And what if you are actively trying to persuade other people; do you know what is going on in their heads? What internal mechanisms are swinging into action as you start to try and convince them?

Here are the top 9 ways that the mind resists persuasion and how to both break them down or sustain them.

1. Inoculation

Medical inoculations work by giving you a little of the disease so that your body can get used to it and fend off a full attack in the future. Psychological inoculations against persuasion work the same way.

When people have already been prepared with counter-arguments they find it easier to fend of persuasion attempts.

? When persuading: what counter-argument will people already know? Avoid the ‘usual’ arguments in your persuasion attempt. Instead use a new angle they haven’t thought about before.

? When resisting persuasion: expose yourself to different types of arguments and counter-arguments you will likely face. When you know what’s coming it’s easier to defend yourself psychologically. Look for indirect persuasion attempts: perhaps it’s the same old argument made in a slightly different way.

2. Forewarned is forearmed

When we can see the persuasion attempt coming, it’s much easier to marshal our defenses. Blatant advertising, party political broadcasts and the rest: our defenses are up so it’s harder to get through.

? When persuading: don’t signal your attempt in advance. Try to divert attention from the persuasion attempt by hiding it within an apparently innocuous message. Emphasize how you are ‘just talking’ or ‘only discussing’ something.

? When resisting persuasion: try to spot persuasion attempts that are wrapped up in social pressure or as entertainment. For example: “A little won’t hurt. Come on, we’re all doing it!” or: “Find out more about [insert politician here]’s secret love child! Tonight on [insert TV network here]”.

3. Reactance

People don’t like being told what to do or having their freedom restricted. It can even lead to a ‘boomerang effect’ where telling people not to do something makes them want to do it more.

? When persuading: avoid restricting people’s freedom; instead make them feel they have options and room for maneuver and this can work to your advantage

? When resisting persuasion: think about whether the persuasion attempt is restricting your freedom. If it is then should you go along with it? Alternatively, is the person emphasizing how free you are in order to persuade you?

4. Reality check

After being persuaded, people often perform a sort of reality check. Have I agreed to something I didn’t mean to? Would I have agreed if I knew then what I know now? If not, then cancel the whole thing!

? When persuading: don’t give people the time for a reality check. Under time pressure people find it difficult to think.

? When resisting persuasion: take a time-out afterwards to think about whether you would still agree to it. Watch out for time pressure or limited deals—these are designed to short-cut rational processes and make us jump right in.

5. Counter-arguing and bolstering

It’s the most natural defense of all: thinking about why they are wrong (counter-arguing) and you are right (bolstering).

? When persuading: strongly held beliefs are difficult to attack. Try being sneaky and sidestepping them. Minimize your point to make it less threatening or make the relationship seem more collaborative (“Hey, I’m just trying to work out the truth as much as you buddy.”)

? When resisting persuasion: think about who else agrees with you. This bolsters your position by using social confirmation. Be wary of camouflaged attempts to persuade.

6. Resistance breeds more resistance

When people successfully defend themselves against an attempt at persuasion, their original position gets stronger. Say I’m trying to talk you into dying your hair blue and you think you’ll look ridiculous. Unless I put forward a better case than, “Because it’ll be funny”, you’ll be even more against it afterwards.

? When persuading: make your first attempt to persuade a strong one, don’t go in half-hearted or you could just increase resistance in the long-run.

? When resisting persuasion: if you know the persuasion attempt is coming and you have counter-arguments ready then your resistance will only make you stronger.

7. Attack authority

Persuasion attempts often use the argument from authority, kind of like: “I’m your father so I know best.” But like any child, we want to rebel so we attack authority.

? When persuading: make sure your credentials are rock-solid. If they’re not, find someone whose authority is unquestioned. People naturally defer to those who have (or appear to have) authority.

? When resisting persuasion: attack the source of the message. Use negative emotions like anger or irritation and attribute them to the so-called authority figure. Be extremely suspicious of anyone who relies purely on authority to influence.

8. Being sharp and alert

Resistance is easiest when we feel sharp and alert. That’s when you are better able to raise counter-arguments, sustain your position, spot persuasion attempts coming and so on.

? When persuading: when people are tired, their defences are down. If they are alert now, can they be worn down or their resistance blunted by a frontal attack? And, can you reduce their motivation to resist?

? When resisting persuasion: beware tiredness. Never go shopping when you’re really hungry, buy a car when you’re desperate or talk to a salesman when you’re half-distracted. Recognize times when you’re likely to be weak and closet yourself until the energy levels are replenished.

9. Not listening

Sometimes the easiest ways of resisting persuasion are the simplest. You walk away, turn off the TV or block out the drone of other people’s point of view by humming the theme to The A-Team.

? When persuading: do you have their full attention? If not, then it’s hard to be effective. Once they are focused on you, start with the most interesting part of the argument to draw them in.

? When resisting persuasion: are you really ignoring it? We are more easily swayed than we think. Most guess that it’s other people who are influenced by adverts or political messages, not ourselves. Don’t just turn it down, turn it off.

How to Make  Persuasive Eye Contact – How situations change the type of eye contact people make with each other. How situations change the type of eye contact people make with each other. Too much eye contact can make other people more resistant to persuasion, a recent study finds. The results fly in the face of the common advice to make strong eye contact with another person when you want to persuade them. People in the study were even less persuaded by eye contact when they held particularly strong opposing views. The findings are published in the journal Psychological Science, and used eye tracking technology to measure where people were looking during persuasion attempts (Chen, et al 2013).

Look ’em in the eye…or not?

In the study, participants watched a variety of videos on issues like nuclear energy, assisted suicide and university tuition, which had been culled from the internet.

While watching them, participants were either instructed to concentrate on the speaker’s mouth or on their eyes.

Afterwards, their attitudes towards the issue were measured and compared to their attitudes beforehand.

People who concentrated on the eyes were less likely to be persuaded, less receptive to the message and less open to interacting with the advocate. The study’s lead author, Frances Chen, said: “There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool.”But our findings show that direct eye contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds, not more, as previously believed.”

The situation rules

The results are a reminder that the amount of eye contact that’s beneficial depends heavily on the situation. Here are some norms from a previous article on how eye contact work. “In groups people tend to look directly at another person for about 3-5 seconds, but when it’s one-to-one this increases to 7-10 seconds before they glance away. There’s also the percentage of time spent looking at someone, compared with looking away from them. Using self-tracking technologies, it seems the normal amount is anything between 30% to 60%. It will generally be more when you are listening and less when you are talking.” People who know each other well, or are having a particularly ‘friendly’ conversation, often engage in more eye contact. However, in some circumstances, high levels of eye contact are associated with dominance and intimidation. That’s probably why people are more likely to comply with a simple request when looked in the eye: “A whole raft of research shows the persuasive power of looking into someone’s eyes when making a request for compliance.

Just one example is (Guegeun and Jacob 2010) who found people were more likely to agree to a marketing survey if looked in the eye.” (from: How eye contact work) When making more subtle arguments that take longer, though, lots of strong eye contact can create an adversarial situation that makes people want to resist. Julia Minson, one of the study’s co-authors, said: “Whether you’re a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you’re trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you.”

Vamos!!!

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@Dr. Guillermo Gomez, MBA, LPsy

Twitter @GGG1959