Science behind the skill to convince others
“Ask yourself why you keep going to the circus, credit goes to the clown for acting the clown.”
We meet different types of people, some can convince us while many may not. Some people are so convincing that they can sell us the same product or idea that we rejected to buy for somebody else just a while ago. Have you ever thought - why?
Next time when you go for shopping, analyze your behavior. Once you make a purchase, retrospect what influenced your buying decision? Let’s say you wanted to buy something about which you don’t know much, so you relied upon the sales rep to help you. If you bought the item, ask yourself — what motivated you to buy? Did the sales rep’s confidence motivated you, or her choice of words, or the sequence of the items she showed you? If you chose not to buy, then too question yourself — why.
In another scenario, imagine you’re standing in a queue to submit your daughter’s school fee and a lady approaches you with a request to allow her to bypass you. You have a very important meeting for which you need to get back to the office as soon as possible. What would you do? Accept her request or deny? Again, the point to ponder is how you take these decisions.
The answers to these questions can be found in human psychology. Interestingly, there are theories that explain our behavior.
The Theory of Automatic Actions
This theory says that we have thoughts and behaviors present in our brains that are automatically activated to allow us to do things without having to think consciously. These are thoughts or behaviors that trigger automatic actions. Like when you drive, you need not to think about how to turn the steering wheel or change the gear, it just happens, automatically. We develop these thoughts or behaviors gradually as we grow. For example, if you belong to a well-off family where you have been taught that never compromise on quality and all valuable things come with a price, it is most likely that you will develop a thought that expensive things are better. And this is how you become bait for a skilled sales rep who knows by your behavior that you’re most certainly under the thought — ‘EXPENSIVE IS BETTER’. You would not even realize, but a skilled sales rep can very easily convince you, or play with your mind, as your brain will trigger the action unconsciously, stimulated by the environment.
The answer to our second scenario, would you have allowed the lady to break the queue to submit the fee before you, lies in this theory. This theory is built upon a notion that we (humans) are very logical, and henceforth, almost all of us are more likely to accept a request when it has a ‘BECAUSE’ or you can say — a logical reason. This theory is extremely effective, easy to implement, and purely based upon common sense. But as you know, common sense is not common.
In the queue scenario, your decision will actually entirely depend upon the way that the lady makes the request. So, if the lady knows the theory of reasoning, it is almost certain that you will accept her request.
To absorb this theory, test it out. Ask yourself what you would have done if she had said this to you:
“Hey. Can you please allow me to submit the fee before you? I’m in a hurry!”
I don’t know your answer, but it is more likely that many of you would have said ‘No’. And the simple reason is, why should you say ‘Yes’, or allow her, as there is no reason.
However, if the request was something like below, it is certain that you would have accepted her request.
“Hey. Can you please allow me to submit the fee before you BECAUSE I’m in a little hurry. My mother is not well and I need to take her to the doctor.”
When you feed the reason to the brain, it accepts the request unless it has another solid reason to counter the request. In the latter case, the brain evaluates both the reasons and in most cases, compels you to compromise so that you do not hurt others. If there is no reason, the brain will completely ignore the request or reject it outrightly without evaluating it.
So, now you know what you to do when you need to convince others to break the queue :).
Last, but not least, this theory is my personal favorite. This trick is a little difficult to implement, but when used cleverly, you can convince anybody of anything. It is like Brahmastra, the weapon which can’t be defied, success is guaranteed.
The theory of contrast says that we (humans) are very evaluative in nature and mostly all our decisions are based on the comparison, or usually relative, rather than absolute. And hence, we tend to like an average thing more when compared to an inferior substitute. Similarly, we dislike an average thing more than it deserves to be disliked when compared with an outshining alternative.
To prove this theory, some researchers did an experiment in which they divided men into two groups. One group of men was taken to a room with a TV on which Baywatch was being played, and the second group was in a room with no TV. To the researcher’s astonishment, men in the TV room rated their wives too low on looks despite the fact that this group of men had very beautiful wives.
What would you have done? I bet, you would have done the same. Why? It’s not your fault, the credit goes to Pamela Anderson.
To summarise: a highly valuable skill such as the ability to convince others is something which can be learned. Fortunately, there is no rocket science behind this. It’s all a science of a few logical psychology theories that can be understood easily and used practically. So, next time when you want to convince others, try to predict the thought process of your target that can trigger automatic actions in case you want to sell him/her your product; never make a request without a ‘BECAUSE’; and try to bring in comparison to prove your point or get your idea accepted as people will weigh down a bad idea to accept yours even if it is mediocre.
The most important trait of any successful individual the world has known is his/her ability to convince others.
If you can convince yourself, you can convince a lot more people around you!
Manager Program Management @ Publicis Sapient | Technical Delivery Manager @ Lloyds | Product driven Engineering delivery lead
4 年Key messages are there in book titled “Switch” by Chip and Dan Health and “The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert?Ciadini?that you may find interesting:?? 1. How do you convince people to change??? Always start with Rationale arguments?like “This program has more features, and This will save more time” Such statements will be more convincing and why? Every person has two self’s a) Rationale Self (Planner) b) Emotional Self(doer). Instead of convincing them motivate them and make them feel good about the Change.?? 2.?It is you who needs to?Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant and Shape the Path.?? Direct the Rider : What looks like resistance is usually a lack of clarity. If you don’t know where to go, you will go in circles or decide to stop moving at all. To direct the rider, you need to formulate crystal clear strategic goals and personal objectives.?? Motivate the Elephant : What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. Facts and analytics data do not move the elephant. Without a compelling and personally relevant goal, the elephant will eventually become unmotivated, worn out and stop walking. Break the goal down into smaller pieces until it no longer spooks the elephant.?? Shape the Path :?What looks like a people problem is often a?situation?problem. Remove escape routes in the?environment.?