"When someone tries to persuade us, we sometimes push back because we don’t want to be persuaded. We can tell from the words being used, the context and other cues that someone is trying to influence us. 'An incoming appeal comes in, someone tries to persuade us, we put up our radar to knock down the projectile' [said said Jonah Berger, an associate professor of marketing at Wharton]. 'We turn off the ad, we hang up on the salesperson, we counterargue against what someone is saying.' However, we tend to look at speakers who vary their volume as more confident, which translates into an increase in their persuasiveness, according to the study.... The core issue here is the influence — both conscious and nonconscious — that paralanguage, or how we say things, has on our perception of others.... 'There’s work that shows people seem more human when we hear their voice,' Mr. Berger said. 'We give them more sense of mind, we think of them more as real people when they use their voice. Our research also suggests it can make people more persuasive.... Sometimes we think crafting the perfect email will be the best way to persuade people... But what we find in our work is the voice can be quite impactful.'"
From "How to — Literally — Sound More Confident and Persuasive/Speak up, it’ll help" (NYT).
I like that people are instinctively resistant to persuasion, and I don't know why the professor is interested in helping the persuaders — the incoming projectiles. But it's easy enough to reverse engineer his advice. If it's true that people can get in under your radar by talking louder and by appearing in person, improve your defenses. Hey, he's talking loud, so I need to be more consciously alert and not let that sneak past my defenses. And: So he shows up in person to influence me? I don't have time to talk. Put it in writing.
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If you feel yourself at risk being persuaded, put your fingers in your ears and hum.
...and I don't know why the professor is interested in helping the persuaders
Thanksgiving is coming. Next week NYT will have the article of leftie talking points for you to take back to flyover country and work on the deplorables at the table...
If reading Scott Adams hasn't persuaded you to get Robert Cialdini's two books on persuasion, then nothing will. I haven't read anything better either for improving one's defenses or for improving one's pitch. Imagine I'm saying that really loud.
Thanksgiving is coming.
Remember when our leaders thought ruining Thanksgiving was a patriotic thing to do? Crikey...
Obama tells everyone to go home and ruin thanksgiving
...and I guess I'm Your Republican Uncle the DNC warned you about.
But according to a paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, you can come off as more persuasive by speaking slightly louder than you normally do, and by varying the overall volume of your voice (i.e., speaking both more loudly and softly).
I imagine that varying one's voice volume makes a person seem more dynamic, passionate, and even authentic. Basically, if you believe that someone really believes in whatever it is they're saying (that they're not rehearsing or acting in any way), then naturally you're probably going to trust them a bit more. And when you speak loudly and then softly, we read that as passion. We assume that passion is harder to fake.
I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it
"impactful." Can "Win-win" be far behind? Where's my old consultant-speak bingo card?
I instinctively dislike Salesman. Try to "Sell me" something and I immediately shut them out. Nobody is going to call you up on the phone and give you a good deal. No Used car dealer is going to give you a great deal.
Whenever I go and try to buy something, and truly need some advice on what to buy, I always have to tell the salesman to cut sales pitch and just give me the facts. I'm willing to buy the "High priced model" but i need the pros and cons. Sadly, I've found many of them don't know the facts. They're just some kid/big talker who knows a "Sales pitch" but that's it. For instance, they can't tell you why Model X TV is better they Model Y TV.
we put up our radar to knock down the projectile
Radar only detects the projectile, leaving out mostly what the projectile might be. Interception is a more difficult matter even after deciding whether to knock it down.
I'm not persuaded that "Humans have something of a built-in anti-persuasion radar.
Trump is an unusual salesman in that he's deliberately transparent Exaggerated salesman. He's the biggest, the best, the greatest. He takes sales "puffery" to new heights. He's so obviously "selling you" that many find it charming and ultimately persuasive.
History and contemporary experience show that most people are sheep. That's why they have so often been compared to sheep. They are eminently persuadable, particularly to the most ignorant, stupid, and self-destructive things. Just look at modern culture's rush to run off the cliff.
"If reading Scott Adams hasn't persuaded you to get Robert Cialdini's two books on persuasion, then nothing will."
I know Scott Adams talks and writes about persuasion all the time, but this post is about something I've never heard Adams talk about and this post is also about my resistance to persuasion. Adams is about teaching people to be persuasive. He's helping the persuaders — the hucksters, the salesmen, the careerists. He loves Trump because Trump is great at persuasion.
I'm on the other side, trying to preserve immunity from persuasion, fighting for the soul of the individual. Adams doesn't believe there is such a thing. He says that's just a delusion, your opinions are assigned to you, and you ought to build you own skill set so you can "win bigly."
That's not my thing at all, so please don't fault me for failing to give you that. That isn't what I'm doing. But if you don't believe me, I don't care. I'm being honest, I'm saving my soul, and I don't care about being persuasive.
How good is this research? What is the methodology and the metrics?
You'll have to pay the APA $12 to find out.
It's probably junk pop psychology.
I don't believe a word of it.
"And when you speak loudly and then softly, we read that as passion. We assume that passion is harder to fake."
It's something actors do a lot, so I think it's easy to fake. Ham actors do it the most.
It's also use in music. It was a huge cliché in grunge music — soft then loud....
This used to be called sales training. Xerox had an entire curriculum for it.
A built-in anti-persuasion radar, aka a bullshit detector.
"I like that people are instinctively resistant to persuasion, and I don't know why the professor is interested in helping the persuaders...."
Because he's a professor of Marketing. His job is teaching students how to become persuaders.
Intergenerational Perversity:
Homer's Brain: Don't you get it!? You gotta use reverse psychology!
Homer: Well, that sounds too complicated.
Homer's Brain: Okay, don't use reverse psychology.
Homer: All right, I will!
"Because he's a professor of Marketing."
Good point.
Persuasion requires sincerity. Once you can fake that, you'll always be closing
Well, a professor of marketing would say something like that. I'm not buying it......Matt Lauer always seemed sincere and reasonable.
Advertisers probably paid a premium for him to cast spiels on their products. I don't think he ever raised or lowered his voice. He was always on the level. That's what made him so persuasive.
A soft answer turns away wealth.
Is that why the ads are louder than the shows on TV?
People seek to find The Authority in the room, whether to submit to it , or to lay low , or to confront it. And persuaders know that people think the loudest voice in the room is the authority.
Of course submitting to loud voice as authority is the easy way. Laying low may be the wisest reaction, because confronting it requires using a louder voice bluntly offering a fight. That makes the confronter into a rude and suspect person... and totally unpresidential.
Which is why early on, when Trump's popularity in communicating was offensive to the Professor, my suggestion was we use him as our fighter and dump for being rude when the war was won. People use Trial Lawyers that way all the time.
AA (11:03am):
"It was a huge cliché in grunge music — soft then loud."
The Austin Lounge Lizards mention that first in their classic parody "Grunge Song". Here are the lyrics:
"This is the part of the song that's really quiet
We play very soft, it sounds like a ballad.
And this is the part where we play real hard
It's much louder than at the beginning.
And we go back to the quiet part again.
If the whole song was this way, it would be boring,
So we go back to playing loud,
It's like the first time, but slightly louder.
This is where the obligatory solo goes,
Needlessly repetitive and self-indulgent.
Yeah, we go back to playing loud.
It's like the first time, but even louder.
This is usually the place where it would be quiet again,
But we don't want it to be too pre - dictable,
Predictable, predictable."
And here is the song performed, so you can judge the mindless repetitivity of the solo for yourselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEZSr_ZF41U
I defend myself against Scott Adams persuasion by never simultaneously sipping with him.
One technique of persuasion Adams discusses is the request for a small favor. You may come off as rude by rejecting the ask, but it’s a good way to maintain your defenses.
It's something actors do a lot, so I think it's easy to fake. Ham actors do it the most.
Well, maybe assuming that we all assume that passion is hard to fake was wrong on my part. It might be easy for some people to fake passion, but people will often still react to it as genuine in the moment. The problem isn't that we emotionally respond to something fake as genuine in the moment. The problem is that, after the moment has passed, we often don't recognize our own responses and then analyze them after the fact and realize that we might be being manipulated. We don't question ourselves enough.
Cialdini starts his book by recounting how he found himself particularly susceptible to sales pitches, and this was his underlying motive for studying persuasion. While not as extreme as Scott Adams, Cialdini, an academic but also a marketing practitioner, suggests that the only sure defense is to avoid hearing the pitch. My tongue in cheek language up above is based on the fact that Adams transparently and persistently applies his persuasion techniques on his readers. The Cialdini books are a fascinating mix of psychology, marketing, data and anecdote but more anecdote, and have been incredibly helpful to me in understanding what works on me and others.
Thanks, daskol. I have a Cialdini book but have only glanced at it.
@ Dr Weevil
LOL. Thanks.
For me, the most important takeaway in learning about persuasion was not how to practice it, but how to recognize it. Early on, Adams suggested that Trump was a natural, which I think it probably true in that I doubt Trump has self-consciously studied persuasion technique. He obviously improvises, sees what works and what doesn't, and doubles down on what's worked, avoiding stuff that fell flat. Adams was most useful for me in his analysis of why Trump was succeeding, but I still look askance at the self-conscious cultivation of persuasion or manipulation skills. But then, that's what I'm supposed to do, as someone who values sincerity.
One technique of persuasion Adams discusses is the request for a small favor. You may come off as rude by rejecting the ask, but it’s a good way to maintain your defenses.
This seemed counter-intuitive to me, but I swear by this technique. Asking a person who is suspicious or wary or even just a stranger to you for a small favor is incredibly disarming, and for some reason makes them more open and obliging to you. I admit to using this technique on new colleagues as a way to build positive rapport.
Kylos (and daskol): The technique of getting people on your side by asking them to do a favor for you was mentioned in his "Autobiography" by Ben Franklin.
Conversely, doing unsolicited favors for others is a good way to make them resent you. Guilty whites have yet to learn this truth as it applies to welfare and affirmative action recipients (are you reading this, Michelle Obama?).
The best persuaders are psychopaths, which is why they are so effective. Their talent is figuring out how to push your buttons, and then pushing them in just the right way to get you to do what they want. Most targets never realize what is going on until it is much too late, if they realize it at all.
Once one becomes aware of the reality and threat of psychopaths, one is much more cautious when interacting with humans one doesn't know very well.
"How to Sound More Confident and Persuasive/Speak up, it'll help.
FIFY NYT
You can sound more confident and persuasive when you don't use the idiotic word literally for no reason at all.
Yes, like Althouse complaining about the word garner, I'm back once again to plead with my fellow English speakers to stop using the word literally all the time.
My God, it's just so annoying.
In common language: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. People become skeptical and wise with a degree of perception and measure of experience.
Take an occasional sideways glance at what's being taught to salesfolks. Even reading self-help articles or listicles will make you aware of the games they're encouraged to play. Once these moves have been pointed out, listening to a sales pitch can be like observing wildlife or the behavioral stages of early childhood.
"...and I don't know why the professor is interested in helping the persuaders...."
Research to help marketers is well funded. Research to help resist marketers less so.
It's the same research!
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