Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

by Robert B. Cialdini

he and the visitors became novel (new) stimuli that hijacked the dog’s attention, diverting it from the bell and food while directing it to the changed circumstances of the lab.

investigatory reflex. He understood that in order to survive, any animal needs to be acutely aware of immediate changes to its environment, investigating and evaluating these differences for the dangers or opportunities they might present. So forceful is this reflex that it supersedes all other operations.

trip. Before cursing your faulty powers of recollection, consider the possibility of a different (and scientifically documented) reason for the lapse: walking through doorways causes you to forget because the abrupt change in your physical surroundings redirects your attention to the new setting—and consequently from your purpose, which disrupts your memory of it. I like this finding because it offers a less personally worrisome account of my own forgetfulness. I get to say to myself, “Don’t worry, Cialdini, it wasn’t you; it was the damned doorway.”

bodily reaction to change is no longer called a reflex. It’s termed the orienting response,

One such category of cues—associated with change—deserves our consideration, as it possesses intriguing implications for the psychology of influence.37

But to give equal standing to cuts—the mere shifts to and from aspects of your content—that’s new to me; that’s different.” And, true to the larger point here, it was that difference that grabbed my interest.

“You use your cuts to get people to swing attention to the parts of your message you really want them to focus on.” In other words, cuts are crucial to persuasive success because they can be manipulated to bring into focus the feature of a message the persuader believes to be most convincing—by shifting the scene to that feature. That cut will instigate an orienting response to the winning feature in audience members’ brains before they even experience it.

Predictably, viewers end up confused as to the point of the ad and irritated by having their focus whipped around so often and so haphazardly. As a result, even though cut-heavy TV commercials draw more total attention, they produce significantly less memory for the ad’s persuasive claims and significantly less persuasion. It’s easy to understand why: viewers’ attention isn’t fixated on the ads’ best points but is scattered all over the material’s relevant and irrelevant attributes. For everyone concerned, it’s a case of death by a thousand cuts.

Indeed, almost anything a persuader can do to set an item apart from competitors has this effect. And as long as the spotlighted item has worth, its allure can leapfrog over that of equally worthy or even more worthy rivals.

After performing multiple studies on the topic, the researchers are confident they know: adding three models with durable cushions made the Dream stand out as distinct from the other four possibilities on the feature of cushion softness and comfort—and distinctiveness, as we’ve seen, swings attention to the distinguishing factor, which

in this instance led to cushion comfort’s greater perceived importance. Unfortunately, the great majority of scientific data on persuasion goes unused by practitioners—even valuable findings such

The Magnetizers

The communicator who can fasten an audience’s focus onto the favorable elements of an argument raises the chance that the argument will go unchallenged by opposing points of view, which get locked out of attention as a consequence.

If your friends are anything like mine—or like me, for that matter—they will look first, longest, and last at themselves.

THE SELF-RELEVANT

There is no question that information about the self is an exceedingly powerful magnet of attention.

when recipients get a message that is self-relevant because it has been tailored specifically for them (for example, by referencing the recipient’s age, sex, or health history), they are more likely to lend it attention, find it interesting, take it seriously, remember it, and save it for future reference—all of which leads to greater communication effectiveness,

The focus-fixing impact of self-relevance applies to commercial appeals, too.

new underarm antiperspirant to NASCAR dads. Let’s call it Pit Stop.

work. They won’t have to anymore.” What seemingly minor wording change could you suggest to improve the odds that the Pit Stop campaign will be a big success,

It would be to replace the externalizing words people and they in the opener with the personalizing pronoun you.

your small modification will enhance audience attitude toward the product. Of course, because self-relevant cues only bring attention—not automatic approval—to a message, a strong subsequent case for Pit Stop was necessary within you...

if the rest of your ad had provided feeble evidence for Pit Stop’s effectiveness, the switch to a personalized introduction would have made the now-more-attentive audie...

Here, then, is another lesson in pre-suasion available for your use: when you have a good case to make, you can employ—as openers—simple self-relevant cues (such as the word you) to predispose your audience toward a ful...

The missed experience is one of my enduring regrets—it was Balanchine, Stravinsky, etc., after all. I’d been the victim of what behavior scientists call the next-in-line effect, and, as a consequence, I have since figured out how to avoid it and even use it on my behalf. You might be able to do the same.

Deciding on your strategy for the upcoming meeting is easy: you’ll secure a seat next to Alex, so that he’ll be able to take in everything you say in your carefully wrought initial statement. That would be a mistake. Whether you offer your statement just before or after his, according to the next-in-line effect, Alex will have a hard time processing your solution, no matter how good it is.

The pulling and holding power of my heightened self-focus within those underprivileged moments prevented me from appreciating the event’s merits.

next-in-line effect and the what’s-focal-is-presumed-causal effect.

Alex where (1) he’ll be sufficiently distant from his own presentation to hear yours fully, and (2), because of your visual prominence, he’ll see you as fully responsible for the insights within your fine recommendation for resolving the problem.

Of course, if you haven’t come up with a creditably reasoned solution to the problem, you might want to grab a chair right next to his so that in his self-focus-indu...

As soon as the waiter correctly placed the last dish in front of the last diner at the table, his task of serving the group changed from unfinished to finished.

And unfinished tasks are the more memorable, hoarding attention so they can be performed and dispatched successfully.

Unfinished tasks are more memorable and command more focus.

but while the initial activity is under way, a heightened level of cognitive focus must be reserved for

We can increase our cognitive focus by writing a quick first draft and then walking. Use write until you die program for five minutes. perhaps set a timer for completing the exactly150 word essays. Write a checklist for essay and use timer. Post checklist in forum.

Zeigarnik effect.

now over six hundred studies on the topic. First (and altogether consistent with the beer garden series of events), on a task that we feel committed to performing, we will remember all sorts of elements of it better if we have not yet had the chance to finish, because our attention will remain drawn to it.

Second, if we are engaged in such a task and are interrupted or pulled away, we’ll feel a discomforting, gn...

That desire—which also pushes us to return to incomplete narratives, unresolved problems, unanswered questions, and unachieved goals—ref...

The first of these conclusions—that not completing an activity can make everything about it more memorable—helps explain certain research results I never would have understood otherwise. In one

Write an essay on this. It's generally not possible to fully develop a150-word essay. That may be a good thing. Interested reader's may take the time to fill in the blanks. The uninterested reader's may direct cognitive attention to the topic because it's not fully developed.

The researchers wanted to know which of these male raters the women, in turn, would prefer at a later time. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the guys who had rated them highest. Instead, it was the men whose ratings remained yet unknown to the women.

when an important outcome is unknown to people, “they can hardly think of anything else.” And because, as we know, regular attention to something makes it seem more worthy of attention, the women’s repeated refocusing on those guys made them appear the most attractive.43

And that’s the dilemma. Writers all want to get to the place of having written, but getting there is no straightforward, trouble-free

So it becomes easy to submit to the impulse to turn our attention to some other activity such as organizing our desk, checking the news,

I have not been immune. However, one of my colleagues seemed to be.

She never lets herself finish a writing session at the end of a paragraph or even a thought. She assured me she knows precisely what she wants to say at the end of that last paragraph or thought; she just doesn’t allow herself to say it until the next time. Brilliant!

learned that I could increase my classroom effectiveness, pre-suasively, by beginning each lecture with a special kind of unfinished story: a mystery.

THE MYSTERIOUS

the most successful of the pieces each began with a mystery story. The authors described a state of affairs that seemed perplexing and then invited the reader into the subsequent material as a way of dispatching the enigma.

When presented properly, mysteries are so compelling that the reader can’t remain an aloof outside observer of story structure and elements.

Whereas descriptions require notice and questions require answers, mysteries require explanations.

When I challenged students to engage in the process of providing explanations to account for states of affairs that otherwise wouldn’t make sense, their test scores went up.