Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior

by Nick Kolenda

Standard Schema. If you want to trigger a more open-minded perception in your target, why not simply prime a schema of open-mindedness? In fact, exposure to words merely relating to open-mindedness (e.g., flexible, elastic, rubber, change) have been found to trigger more open-minded perceptions (Hassin, 2008). Bingo!

Door-in-the-Face Technique. To help spread the word about my book to other people, would you mind purchasing additional copies to give to your friends or coworkers? What? You don’t want to do that? Alright, well, would you mind just purchasing a copy of my next book for yourself?

Suppose that your friend Debbie is introducing you to her friend Emily. Before you meet Emily, Debbie describes her as cold, standoffish, and unfriendly, which causes you to develop the expectation that you won’t get along with her. And upon meeting Emily, you find that your expectation is met: her personality seems very distant and unapproachable, and you can’t seem to connect with her. When the conversation ends, you leave with no future intention of interacting with Emily again because of her unfriendly demeanor.

If you want people to perceive something more favorably, you should convey high expectations because those expectations will become a lens that will mold their perception.

First impressions are absolutely critical. People’s initial exposure to your message will mold their perception for the remainder of your message. In order to maximize your persuasion, you need to create a strong initial impression so that you convey high expectations for the rest of your message.

That conclusion can help explain why body language can trigger congruent attitudes. If we display certain body language (e.g., head nodding), and if that body language is inconsistent with our inner attitude (e.g., we’re in disagreement), we feel a state of discomfort known as cognitive dissonance, and we become motivated to resolve that discomfort. How do we resolve it? We often resolve that dissonance by changing our attitude so that it matches our behavior (e.g., we change our attitude from disagreement to agreement to match our body language of nodding our head).

If you want to persuade people to develop a certain attitude, you should get them to display behavior that’s consistent with the attitude that you’re trying to elicit. When they display that particular behavior, they’re more likely to develop an attitude that’s congruent with their behavior. This section will explain a few strategies that apply that concept.

When you need to persuade people to comply with a somewhat large request, you can put the odds in your favor by first asking them to comply with a smaller request.

From a biological perspective, researchers have recently found that social rejection and physical pain share the same “neural circuitry” (the anterior cingulate cortex) (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004). Social rejection is so powerful because it’s literally painful.

Upon discovering a similarity, don’t hesitate to reveal that shared similarity so that you can appeal to her implicit egotism, especially if that similarity is uncommon.

When trying to persuade someone, how can you demonstrate that you belong to the same ingroup? Not only can you use the first technique of revealing any type of similarity, but you could also simply use words like “we” and “us” to reinforce that you belong to the same ingroup. Research shows that these pronouns can trigger a feeling of pleasure because they convey that you belong to the same ingroup (Perdue et al. 1990).

That result occurred because of conceptual fluency, a type of processing fluency related to how easily information comes to our mind (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). Generally, the faster a concept enters our mind, the more we tend to like it.

For example, one study showed that consumers found a ketchup ad more favorable when the ad was presented after an ad for mayonnaise (Lee & Labroo, 2004). The mayonnaise ad primed consumers’ schema for condiments, and when the ad for ketchup was presented afterward, the idea of ketchup came to their minds more easily.

When the boss judged the monthly report by lightly flipping through the pages, she was using heuristic processing, a simple-minded evaluation that relies on quick decision rules. When we use heuristic processing (also known as the peripheral route to persuasion), we’re more influenced by simple, irrelevant, and “peripheral” cues, such as: The sheer amount of information or support The aesthetics of a message The person presenting the message (e.g., his likability, attractiveness, perceived expertise, etc.) Those peripheral cues don’t necessarily relate to the strength of a message, yet people often use those “heuristics” to make quick judgments about the overall content of information.

The first factor is someone’s motivation to evaluate your message. When your target’s motivation is high, your message will be evaluated using systematic processing; when your target’s motivation is low, your message will be evaluated using heuristic processing.

In fact, research shows that caffeine significantly enhances systematic processing.

People were more likely to purchase a gourmet cheese when an advertisement described it in a difficult-to-read font because people misattributed the difficulty in processing to the uniqueness of the cheese, a perception that made it seem more appealing. When the advertisement was depicting an everyday cheese, that effect disappeared; people were more likely to purchase an everyday cheese when the advertisement described it in an easy-to-read font because that ease of processing generated feelings of familiarity.

Here’s the overall strategy: if you know that your target will use systematic processing, you should focus on enhancing the strength of your arguments; if you know that your target will use heuristic processing, you should focus more attention on enhancing the peripheral aspects of your message.

Counterintuitive to our current beliefs, presenting a little bit of negative information about your message can actually benefit you. Research shows that two-sided arguments (arguments that present both positive and negative aspects of a message) can produce favorable changes in attitude and behavior (Rucker, Petty, & Briñol, 2008).

Whether you’re writing a school essay, crafting a business proposal, or simply listing the reasons why your target should comply with your request, you should position your most compelling arguments first and last in your sequence. Those arguments will carry more weight in those positions due to the primacy and recency effect.

For example, when students read a speech about acid rain, students who were told that the speech was written by an environmental studies major were more persuaded by the speech than students who were told that the speech was written by a mathematics major, even though the speech was exactly the same (Mackie & Worth, 1991).

Some marketers argue that website aesthetics are unimportant because “the only thing that matters is the strength of the content.” Don’t listen to those so-called marketing “gurus.” Website aesthetics are crucial for a number of reasons. First, people use aesthetics as a heuristic for quality; if your website is aesthetically pleasing, they’ll assume your content is above average, and vice versa. This benefit leads to a second benefit: aesthetics will influence website visitors to actually evaluate your content, a decision that’s usually made within 50 milliseconds (Lindgaard et al., 2006). The strongest content in the world won’t matter if people don’t actually stop to evaluate it.

Research has even confirmed that adding category labels, even if they’re completely arbitrary, can make a list of options seem more appealing (a principle known as the mere categorization effect; Mogilner, Rudnick, & Iyengar, 2008).

The takeaway: whenever you need to communicate a new concept to people, you should compare it to something with which they’re already familiar.

To keep your product or message at the top of someone’s mind, you should associate it with something that people encounter on a frequent basis. Each time someone is exposed to those “naturally occurring primes,” they will likely think of your product or message.