Pre-Suasion

Pre-Suasion takes you through the latest social psychology research to explain how marketers, persuaders and our environment primes us to say certain things and take specific actions, as well as how you can harness the same ideas to master the art of persuasion.

Last semester I took a statistics class, for which I had to create a survey about energy drinks. One of the first things we learned was that we must not ask leading questions. Leading questions are questions which steer the respondent to answer in a certain way.

For example, if I ask you: “Given the recent terrorist attacks in London, how dangerous do you perceive the threat of terrorism to be?” then that question is loaded with pre-suasion, namely negative emotions. By reminding you of those attacks I draw your attention to the recency of the topic, and thus you’ll naturally evaluate it the danger as a lot realer.

But pre-suasive questions can be even simpler: “Are you unhappy?” gets you to start fishing for unhappiness in your life, whereas “Are you happy?” makes you look for the positives. In a 1993 study among students, those with the first question were 375% (!) more likely to report actually being unhappy.

What kind of answer you get highly depends on how you ask the question.

Have you been thinking about terrorism for the last minute or so? That’s because I planted something very attention-grabbing in your head. And the longer you think about it, the more relevant it’ll become in your mind.

What’s more, if we’re not giving our attention to something that grabs it already, we’ll just settle for whatever’s available right now. If I ask you whether you like cappuccino in a Starbucks, you’re a lot more likely to say yes – even if you don’t – just because you feel it’s the right response in this environment.

In the same vein, you will think 9/11 is historically less important two weeks before and after the anniversary date than the week of. When the news have been recycling it for days, the event is still fresh in your mind, it’s emotional and available.

So the next time someone tries to sell you an alarm system by citing all kinds of scary crime statistics, remember: they’re making things seem more relevant to you than they might actually be.

I think you should watch Entourage. It’s a hilariously funny TV show, has great guest stars, awesome actors, and a superb soundtrack, especially for people who like hip-hop. Does this make you want to watch the show? If so, what do you think sold you on it? The fun? The actors? The soundtrack? Chances are, it’s none of those…