Translator: Trina Orsic Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
If I had to chose between breathing or loving you,
would I use my last breath to say that I love you.
Will you marry me?
This phrase is clearly persuasive or intends to persuade.
It aims to cause someone to do something.
I have another phrase.
It’s a very popular one
which has been translated into hundreds of languages
and almost all of us have been persuaded by it at some point.
Let’s see how sounds.
“Buy two and get one free.”
We all have been persuaded by this at one time.
We are surrounded by persuasion.
Surrounded by messages which seek to persuade us
and messages we use when we intend to persuade.
In the end, persuasion is the ability
to convince someone, by means of arguments,
rational and/or emotional,
to behave in a specific way.
In order to speak about persuasion and to try to explain it,
I use a formula.
A formula in three parts.
And the three components are “sine qua none”.
These three parts must be met to perfect the process of persuasion.
These three summands are: attention, memory and behavior.
Attention so you hear the message.
Memory so that you recall it.
Behavior so that you act in consequence.
Let’s begin with the first part of this formula.
The first two addends: attention and memory.
Here we’ll draw from concepts in psychology or neuropsychology
or from findings in neuroscience.
There is a phrase I like that neuropsychologists use, which says,
Without emotion there’s no attention and without attention there’s no memory.
Because it turns out that emotion is relevant for our brain.
It turns out that emotion is a tool
that our brain uses as a starting point
to adapt to constant changes and threats from the environment.
Emotion has the ability
to break barriers of attention and to retain,
for a long time, memories in the capricious archive of our memory.
I would like to do a little experiment.
I’m going to ask all of you to please stand
if you know exactly what you ate last Wednesday.
It wasn’t a very exciting meal.
Second question.
I will ask you, please,
to stand if you know exactly
where you spent the first day or the first two days
of confinement for the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was a moving experience.
Thank you very much.
That was impactful.
You will remember it for the rest of your life.
And when in 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now
our grandchildren say, “Grandpa, Grandpa! Grandma, Grandma!
Wow, look what’s written in the history book.
What happened in 2020?
Will you tell me?”
You will tell them, “Come here.
I know you have time, come, come.
I will tell you a beautiful and long story.”
And thanks to the intensity of these emotions
which cause our memories to be etched into our minds,
we will tell them everything about the hand sanitizers, the masks,
the empty city streets, and blah, blah, blah.
Therefore, if our emotions
elicit attention and record the memories in our mind,
a message charged with this emotion,
if we emotionalize our messages,
our interlocutor will evoke the message from the memory of the emotion.
And with this we already have a part of the formula resolved.
Attention and memory.
One little thing is missing.
That little thing is perception.
Is it the actual message remembered,
or the essence of the recorded message that which we have transmitted?
Since what’s clear is that we don’t all perceive the same stimuli in the same way.
It’s enough to think about it, and you will remember,
that meme of the dress
that was white and gold or blue and black.
It’s incredible.
I reference this in my talks.
Same stimulus, same image,
same environmental conditions, same light exposure,
but the audience is divided.
There’s a group that sees the dress as white and gold
and another that sees blue and black.
Same stimulus, different perceptions.
How do we resolve this?
Well, by asking.
By actively listening.
We listen to the alleged persuasion, to our interlocutor,
we actively listen to the verbal communication
as well as the nonverbal communication, the emotions.
We determine if we are confident
that the essence of the message received
is what we’ve transmitted.
Then we will already have attention and memory resolved.
We’re missing behavior, that’s important.
It turns out that we pursue a behavior that is voluntary.
We are talking about persuasion, we’re not talking about manipulation.
Manipulation is based in part on deception,
and this makes the effect temporary.
We want to persuade,
with a short-term goal, mid-term, and if possible long-term objective.
Therefore, we need for our interlocutor to voluntarily choose
to go toward the destination that we’re proposing.
And here enters another element, which is motivation.
Psychologists say that motivation
is this impulse that urges us to act or behave in a determined way
and continue with this behavior until its termination,
until we reach the goal.
They also say that there are two types of motivation:
intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.
The first is one in which we do something for ourselves,
for our self-esteem, to feel more complete,
for pride, because we are happier.
I have a niece who from the age of only five, wanted to be a doctor.
Now she is studying in high school,
and she knows that to enter into medicine,
you need extremely high grades.
Because without them, you can’t enter.
And she studies a lot.
She constantly studies because she is aware
that being accepted into medical school
is an important part of the model of happiness she has in her mind.
Intrinsic motivation, the good kind.
Extrinsic motivation uses the stick, the carrot and the donkey.
It’s that which gets us to behave in a specific manner
because we hope to get compensation
that is promised to us if we behave this way.
Another nephew of mine, not such a good student.
This nephew studies.
He studies because of the deal his parents offered him.
If you pass all your exams in June, you get a new bike.
This guy is crazy for mountain bikes.
Well that motivates him.
Well, that’s extrinsic motivation.
It’s true that intrinsic motivation
is more powerful, lasts longer, and works better.
But it’s hard to imagine,
that if I buy one more can of tuna, I’ll feel more fulfilled.
Buy two, get the third free.
That does work.
OK, we already have emotions which activate attention and memory,
perception which ensures that the message transmitted
is in essence the one we wanted to transmit,
and motivation that will elicit the behavior.
Now, only one detail remains
that we can frame within the context of personal skills:
let’s be fully acquainted with our interlocutor.
If we know how our interlocutor thinks and feels, what is the culture,
what our interlocutor likes and doesn’t like,
it will be much easier for us
to select that code of communication that will make a match,
that will connect us,
that will communicate to us.
Let’s send simple messages, clear messages.
Let’s not pressure our interlocutor.
No one likes to be pressured.
Let’s be honest, let’s not lie.
People notice when someone lies.
It may be in a conscious or unconscious way, but they notice,
and no one wants to do anything with a liar.
Let’s not be afraid of being told no.
If we’re told no, it’s no big deal.
But people don’t like to be around insecure people,
they prefer confident people.
And lastly, very important.
That our appearance,
our non-verbal communication, our gestures, our tone,
do not contradict our message.
In communication, the most important part of the message
is transmitted through nonverbal communication.
Not words, nonverbal communication, that should not contradicts us.
In the end persuasion is a process
in which everything is a matter of common sense.
But it is a complex process,
because all the elements that conform to the persuasive process
should be met no matter what.
And if one is missing, we won’t succeed
in the final persuasion, this end behavior we seek.
From here, if you understood this process
which as I said, I believe is all about common sense,
and you observe and observe others,
how they persuade and how they are persuaded,
tomorrow you will be better persuaders
and tomorrow you will also be much more critical when persuaded.
And if not, it’s alright.
In any case, you’ll buy two and get one free.
Thank you