Science and art of persuasion and gain influence.

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science and art of persuasion and gain influence.

Over the course of an average day, how many times do you think someone tries to persuade you to do something? This could be, for instance, to buy something or to go somewhere – any situation where someone tries to make you do something you wouldn't normally have done.

People generally say 20 or 30, tops. Actually, the number is closer to around 400 times – per day. When you stop to think about it, that number starts to make sense.

There’s advertising of course – billboards, commercials, pop-ups on the internet. Pretty constant and unavoidable. Then there are regular interactions whenever we leave the house – the guy handing out flyers at the bus station, the policeman telling you to wait for the kids to cross the road, the religious man trying to save your soul. It adds up.

Pretty shocking to see how often others are trying to influence us – but what about the alternative? Imagine a world based on coercion – persuasion’s aggressive cousin. The guy tries to beat you up for not taking his flyer. The evangelist wrestles you to the ground for not listening to his spiel.

You see, persuasion isn’t just common – it’s essential for our society to function. And there are some people and methods that can make persuasion incredibly effective and incredibly fast.

In this content, let’s learn about this fascinating phenomenon – from its biological origins and practical components to real-world manifestations and the masters of persuasion who make it look like nothing.

An instinct for persuasion

There’s something about the Job Centre that brings out the worst in people. Many employees leave after just a few months, worn down by regular threats and acts of violence from angry and frustrated job seekers. Fire extinguishers are known to have been thrown against the protective plexiglass. One customer even pulled a gun.

Marco, on the other hand, has worked at the Job Centre for over two years and hasn’t once been attacked. He even sits out in the open, dealing with people face to face, completely unprotected. There’s just something about him that persuades even the craziest person to relax in his presence.

What’s his secret?

To answer this, we can look to the animal kingdom. Animals are extremely good at persuading their own, and sometimes other species, at an instinctual level. Ever heard a cat’s urgent yet contented purr and been unable to resist giving it a scratch? How about Golden Orb spiders which spin a web the exact color that bees are drawn to?

These automatic, primal persuasive triggers are called key stimuli, and once known, they can be used to your advantage. Architects have used silhouettes of predator birds to “persuade” real birds not to fly into windows, for example.

In advertising, there are a lot of synthesized key stimuli – models with exaggerated hips, breasts, abs, or other sexual features persuade people to buy products without a second thought. Sex sells, after all.

So, how does Marco use a key stimulus to persuade the Job Centre customers to treat him with respect? Simple. He sits on his hands.

This simple gesture of submission – combined with a touch of empathy and confidence – serves to appease the threat and defuse any conflict. Is someone really going to throw a fire extinguisher at a guy who’s sitting on his hands?

This is persuasion in its purest and most natural form. Songbirds warble to attract mates. Spiders spin colorful webs to catch food. Marco sits on his hands to pacify angry job seekers.

Using key stimuli comes easily to animals. They don’t need to plan anything or think about what they’re doing. Humans start out great at this – babies, by necessity, come into the world with an innate ability to persuade others to take care of them. But this is lost as language and consciousness develop.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few tricks about persuasion.

How to steal someone’s mind

Keith Barrett is a psychopath, a con man, and possibly one of the best persuaders you could ever meet. A master of the long con, he considers himself a scientist, and the human brain is where he conducts his experiments.

To him it’s simple. You just have to know people’s mental blind spots. He calls these the three A’s, and anyone can take advantage of them with the right knowledge.

First is Attention. We’re constantly bombarded with a lot of stimuli – more than we can take in at once. If this cognitive load is deliberately increased, people are more likely to tell you the truth, among other things. Lying takes mental effort, which is harder to do if your attention is elsewhere.

The next A is for Approach. Keith describes this as our attitudes and beliefs about a situation. Our brains are constantly taking shortcuts to file the information they receive, which is helpful most of the time, but leaves us prone to mental slipups. There are many interesting examples of this. A clever and useful one is called the representative heuristic. People make assumptions about things based on what they expect. Put a $100 price tag on a cheap bottle of wine and even the most seasoned connoisseur will swear it tastes amazing.

The final A is for Affiliation. Humans have an urge – a strong urge – to be part of a group. But if the group’s characteristics aren’t obvious, then a cunning con man like Keith can take advantage.

You see, if a social situation is ambiguous, people don’t know which group they’re part of – they look for cues to decide what to do. Like how you glance at the person next to you if you don’t know how to behave at a fancy dinner party.

This process – called social proof – was famously used in advertising to persuade more people to call a home shopping network. When infomercial writer Colleen Szot changed the phrasing from “Operators are waiting, please call,” to “If operators are busy, please call again,” it drastically increased the number of callers.

By suggesting the possibility of operators being busy, it made more people want to be part of the perceived “popular” group of callers.

These are just a few examples of how the three A’s can subconsciously persuade. And you don’t have to be a psychopathic genius like Keith to take advantage of that.

Experts of persuasion are all around us

John’s driving home, 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. He’s realized that he left his parents’ anniversary present on the kitchen counter and they could visit at any moment and stumble upon it! He speeds around the corner, only to slip on a patch of oil on the road! Losing control of his vehicle, he smashes into a parked car, resulting in damage, a few cuts, and most tragically of all, his parents’ surprise ruined.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how much is John to blame for the accident?

Now run that same scenario past a friend, except replace the anniversary present with a brick of cocaine that John is rushing home to hide from his parents. Chances are your friend will hold John a bit more culpable for the accident than you did – despite the exact same physical circumstances.

This is known as the fundamental attribution error – the tendency to let perceived internal factors influence your interpretation of external behavior. There’s a profession that’s very much aware of this error of thinking, and the members of this profession often deliberately use it to persuade and convince: lawyers.

A lawyer’s job, essentially, is to control the narrative, to make the jury see things a certain way. That’s why the prosecution in a sexual assault case focuses on the character and history of the offender, while the defense calls into question the promiscuous or flirtatious qualities of the victim. Not the most honorable strategy, but it’s their job to persuade.

It’s not just lawyers who select and frame information to control how you think and feel. Market researchers have made people taste the exact same 7-Up as more like lemon or lime by changing the color of the can to yellow or green, respectively.

Politicians, journalists, and countless other professional persuaders also create this influence through their choice of words. This has far-reaching implications. Call it “deep sea exploration” instead of “oil drilling,” and people find the activity a lot more palatable. Call it “climate change” instead of “global warming,” and the uninformed are a lot less alarmed.

These masters of persuasion are all around you, carefully and deliberately controlling what you do and think. Be wary, stay present.

The persuasive power of the masses

November 18, 1978. Over 900 innocent yet misguided Americans living in an isolated community in the jungle commit mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide at the instruction of their powerful and charismatic cult leader, the Reverend Jim Jones.

More recently, in London in 2005, a shop assistant, a teacher, a carpet fitter, and a teenage boy set off a series of explosives, killing 52.

The people behind these shocking losses of life were more or less all born with the same capacities for love, empathy, and critical thinking, but something happened to make them commit horrible acts in the name of a larger group or ideology. Call it brainwashing or radicalization if you want – it’s still persuasion, just at the group level.

Our inclination to conform – even against our better judgment or clear evidence – is well documented. Social psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated this in a famous experiment where he showed participants lines of different lengths and asked them to say if one was shorter or longer than another.

This wasn’t a trick, the correct answer was clear and unambiguous. But if the participant saw everyone around them giving the wrong answer, a large majority conformed and gave the same wrong answer. Think about that – they’d say something that they clearly didn’t believe to be true, simply to fit in with a group.

Unfortunately, this type of conformity isn’t restricted to line length under test conditions. It’s been shown that when prejudiced people are put together, they become more prejudiced. This is how extremists start recruiting and radicalizing otherwise peaceful individuals.

And once you start believing something, you favor evidence that supports it. A story about a police officer restraining an unarmed Black man is interpreted differently depending on your worldview, which influences which facts you choose to prioritize.

This extends to how you interpret the actions of others in your group. If someone who shares your beliefs helps a stranger, it’s unsurprising. If someone who holds an opposing belief does the same thing, then it’s uncharacteristic and circumstantial. This works the other way too – if someone from your group does something horrible, then it’s much easier to rationalize it away.

Is the power of group persuasion the only reason why 900 people drank the Kool-Aid, or a teacher decided to blow up a train? Of course not. There are many other circumstances that leave someone in that position.

But in the modern world of competing ideologies and beliefs, it’s good to remember that you don’t always act as individually as you’d like.

The formula for split-second persuasion

Ron Cooper is a cop with a very clear but difficult task in front of him: he needs to stop a man from jumping out of a 10-story window. He has some persuading to do, and he needs to do it quickly. He’s been around long enough to know that a simple “Let’s step back and talk about this …” isn’t always effective.

So what does he do? He asks if he can take his jacket off. “Just trying to get comfortable,” he tells the man, as he comes to join him on the ledge. Cooper is wearing a novelty shirt which reads: “Piss off – I’ve got enough friends.” The man eyes him suspiciously but doesn’t jump.

“Now,” Cooper says, looking him in the eye. “Can we talk about this?”

What happened here? What made Cooper’s split-second persuasion so effective? Situations like this will always be different, depending on what is said, how it’s said, and how the audience interprets it. So is there a generalized formula that can be applied to different situations?

The answer is yes, and it comes in the acronym: SPICE.

The S is for Simplicity. Your brain loves it when things are simple. Keep your statements short, to the point, and concise.

The P is for Perceived Self-Interest. This means you need to appeal to what your audience thinks is best for them. The key word here is thinks. Control what their self-interest is – what they want becomes what you want.

Next in SPICE is I for Incongruity. Here’s a timeless principle used by magicians and pickpockets alike: if two things move at the same time, we generally pay attention to the bigger or stranger movement. This was the technique used by Cooper when he took off his jacket. The strangeness of that decision and the out-of-place humor of the slogan on his shirt threw the man on the window ledge off balance – not literally – and gave Cooper the persuasive edge.

Next, there’s C – for Confidence. If you’re confident, then so is your audience. We’re all surprisingly good at picking up on confidence cues. Sometimes all it takes is to lean forward a little bit.

Finally, there’s E for Empathy. If you can get your point across in a way that makes your audience relate to you or has a more personal connection to them, then your persuasion is more likely to be successful. Humor is particularly effective in getting people on board – just look at Cooper’s shirt.

The principles of SPICE come easier to some people, but with a bit of practice, anyone can become a master of split-second persuasion.

Persuasion is all around you, and you don’t always have to be on the receiving end. Whether you’re a con man, lawyer, magician, or simply a public servant trying to have a more peaceful time at work, you can apply a few basic principles and start exercising a little more influence over those around you.

Just remember SPICE: Simplicity, Perceived self-interest, Incongruity, Confidence, and Empathy – the five ingredients of effective persuasion.

At the same time, be aware of who might be taking control of your mind, and why. There are those out there who’ll persuade you to hold certain beliefs or join questionable causes. By knowing the tricks, you can keep yourself at least partially inoculated against these nefarious agents.

On the same note, don’t be afraid to use your newly found persuasion powers for good. A lot can be done, if people only had a little encouragement.