Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

by Robert B. Cialdini

For a fundamentally related reason, used-car salespeople are taught not to describe their cars as “used”—which links to notions of wear and tear—but to say “preowned,” which bridges to thoughts of possession and ownership. Similarly, information technology providers are counseled against telling customers the “cost” or “price” of their offerings, which are terms associated with the loss of resources; rather, they are to speak of the “purchase” or “investment” amount involved—terms that make contact with the concept of gain.

I once asked Professor Carstensen how she first got the idea that many elderly have decided to make the most of their remaining days by concentrating on the positive over the negative. She reported having interviewed a pair of sisters living in a senior home and asking them how they dealt with various negative events—for example, the sickness and death they witnessed regularly all around them. They replied in unison, “Oh, we don’t have time for worrying about that.” She recalled being puzzled by the answer because, as retirees with no jobs, housekeeping tasks, or family responsibilities, they had nothing but time in their days. Then, with an insight that launched her influential thinking on the topic of life span motivation, Carstensen recognized that the “time” the sisters referred to wasn’t the amount available to them in any one day but in the rest of their lives. From that perspective, allocating much of their remaining time to unpleasant events didn’t make sense to the ladies.

I once attended a conference of infomercial producers. I’d assumed that the sole reason they commonly place ads in late-hour slots was the lower broadcast fees charged at those times. I quickly learned differently. Although that started out as the main reason most such programming begins far into the night, there is a more important reason: the ads perform better then. At the tail of a long day, viewers don’t have the mental energy to resist the ads’ emotional triggers (likable hosts, enthusiastic studio audiences, dwindling supplies, and so on).