The Art of Persuasion and Social Influence

We often encounter many social situations where others get the best of us, and we often think later how we could have responded or tackled differently- something more favourable, or self-compliant.

Such skills facilitate are social transactions and interactions, yielding more favourable and positive results for the individual. We can look at salespersons as an excellent example, who use the art of persuasion and make us comply with their requests quite often.

“I think the power of persuasion would be the greatest superpower of all time.”

–Jenny Cullen

An integral element of having good social skills is being perceptive and sensitive to the cues present in our current surroundings, and knowing when and how to act on them, or more importantly when not to. Compliance, obedience, conformity and persuasion may not always work desirably the individual wishes for, but these techniques/phenomena do make life convenient! 

Here are a few commonly used techniques of persuasion and compliance used by people in different settings and fields.

Similarity

According to Newcomb’s (1956) Similarity Hypothesis, individuals tend to develop more liking towards similar people than dissimilar people. This similarity could be in any form, such as nationality, state, mother tongue, liking similar television shows and music, colours and even food. This similarity on a subliminal level creates a favourable impression of the person we share similarities with, and thus it is more favourable to harness favours. For example, in The Perfect Date (2019), the protagonist who is a college applicant finds information about the college interviewer, such as his hobby of beekeeping, and shares the same information in a well-informed manner with the interviewer the next day along with other similar hobbies, which led to high rise in the probability of selection of the protagonist as an applicant. It has also been observed by organizational psychologists, that job interviewers tend to favour applicants similar to them, such as those from the same town, having similar names or colleges, and even of the same sex!

Another form of this similarity can be in mirroring. The mirror neurons in our neural circuitry automatically engage us in mimicking or mirroring the body language, gestures and voice tone of the people we are communicating with. However, engaging in this consciously can create a subliminal understanding of similarity, which also acts in favour, as similarity reinforces and validates the individual’s schema and perception of themselves, positively affecting self-esteem.

Ellsberg Paradox

The Ellsberg Paradox is based on the fact that people choose to deal with risky situations by engaging in the choice where they more or less know the probability of the outcomes than those where the result is uncertain. This technique is highly used by salespersons who deliberately highlight one product of the two (mostly the expensive one), by luring the customer with life-expectancy of the product, for example, furniture, and draw a comparison with the other product as not certain of the longevity and phrases like I shouldn’t be saying so about my products, but it is my duty to sell you the best good…the similar phenomenon can be very often seen in shares sale and the stock market, or the movie The Wolf of Wall Street(2013).

Foot-in-the-Door

This technique by Freedman & Fraser (1966) based on the principle of consistency involves engaging people with small requests and then turning them in for bigger favours. For example, free samples or small requests such as a dollar a month subscription to a newsletter, and then pitching in for bigger goals such as purchasing the free sample product or increasing the price of the subscription, and adding different services. Another great example of this is the sales’ pitch line Can I have a moment’s attention from you and nothing else.

Reasoning

Simply requesting for something may not always get us what we want. However, since the age of reason, modern society emphasizes reasoning and logic, contrary to post-modern ideas. Providing an explanation or reason, even if something not sensible seems to work in getting our requests approved. Langer (1978) designed a social experiment of individuals requesting people to break in line for using the copy machine. A placebo rationale was given along with the request Can I use the copier because I need to make copies. Of course, anyone would use the copier to make copies but the results shocked the researchers when 93% of people complied with the request and let people cut in the line.

Another way of providing reasoning is by using analogies. Using similes and analogies indulges in people making connecting of the newly presented data with the prior present schema which makes the new request or data seem more believable, favourable and thus compliable.

Anchoring

Like the self-explanatory word, the anchor is like the baseline which is set about any topic, discussion or transaction by an individual, which subconsciously is agreed upon and later other facts can be developed and negotiated on these bases. For example, in an evening conversation about what is to be prepared for dinner, if an anchor or a baseline is set like today is the perfect day to feast on Italian, it forms a favourable base, and most likely something in the same line would be chosen, other than Chinese or Indian food.

Scarcity and Loss Aversion

People want to make the best out of a deal, or what might seem like the best. Manufacturers and salespersons make a fortune out of this with cues like limited edition, hurry till stock lasts, once in a lifetime offer. People do not want to lose and thus strike when the iron is hot, or so it seems. This is quite prevalent in settlement cases of powerful companies versus complainants, creating dissonance and coercing the victims to settle for what is favourable for the accused.

Door-in-the-face

Based on the principle of reciprocity, and also heavily worked upon by social influence scientist Robert Cialdini, this technique involves making unreasonable and large requests out of people and then sharing the real request which seems much smaller and realistic than the initial request, to which people are more inclined to comply. For example, requesting the boss to provide a week-long paid trip to Hawaii as a bonus, and then suggesting tickets for the local band concert over the weekend.

Apart from these techniques, again said, persuasion is an art. In general, have a confident and appropriate body language, pay attention to expressions cues of others as well as our own, be mindful of your language and last but not the least, observe, observe, observe!