What Is Persuasion?
Before we can get down to talking about persuasive writing techniques, we have to look at exactly what persuasion is. How does persuasion influence our lives and alter our decisions? Do we encounter it on a daily basis, or is it something that we only see once in a while? To write effective persuasion, we need to understand persuasion at its core.
Persuasion is defined as a form of social influence where someone is guided, usually by another person, toward an idea, attitude, or action through symbolic, rational, and sometimes logical methods.
Aristotle, who many feel is the father of persuasion with his essays and writings, said that rhetoric is the art of discovering the available means of persuasion. What does this mean exactly? It means that in conversations between two individuals, whether consciously or unconsciously, there is the effort to persuade someone to your point of view.
In persuasion, at least according to Robert Cialdini, who is considered an expert on persuasion, there are six weapons of influence that must be used for persuasion to be effective:
1. Reciprocation. People typically will return a favor. Therefore, a good way to persuade someone is through free samples. Cialdini often uses the example of Ethiopia giving Mexico thousands of dollars in aid in 1985 after an earthquake. This seemed odd to the international community because Ethiopia was going through a civil war and famine at this time. However, as it turned out, Ethiopia was returning the favor to Mexico, who had provided diplomatic support in 1937 when Italy invaded under Mussolini's rule.
2. Commitment and Consistency. When people commit to something they believe to be right, they will likely honor that commitment. This is often done in the case of car sales, where the price of the car suddenly increases in price at the end of the sale, but because the person buying the car has already made the decision to buy the car, the increase has little effect.
3. Social Proof. Humans are social beings, which means that they will follow the crowd. People will do what they see other people doing. This has been documented time and time again. For example, one study had people look up into the sky. Then, as people walked by on the street, they would look up, as well, to see what the others were looking at. By the end of the experiment, there were so many people looking up into the sky that traffic was being held up. Another more tragic example of this is from Nazi Germany. Even though most of the people in Germany could understand that the persecution of the Jews was wrong, but everyone seemed to be taking part, it was easier to go along with the crowd than to be outside of it. The need for conformity is a big part of persuasion and is one of the best tools at your disposal for effective persuasion.