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10 July 2008, 21:02
Eight ways to get exactly what you want part 6, 7;
6 Style over substance
IT WAS midnight when the knock came at the door. It was "Paul", a "neighbour", who'd "just moved in". He spoke non-stop, without pause or hesitation, detailing a problem with a truck that had run out of gas and his need for $20, which he would, of course, return first thing in the morning. Later, Kurt often looked back and wondered just how it was he got taken in so easily.
"Paul" was a master of his craft: Kurt later learned that four other people on the street had also been taken in by the con.
Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised when things like this happen. Persuasion, it turns out, may have as much to do with how you say something as what you're saying. And the less time you're allowed to think about the content, the more the style of delivery matters. At least, those are the findings of two marketing professors who decided to tease style and substance apart.
John Sparks at the University of Dayton in Ohio and Charles Areni at the University of Sydney, Australia, knew from earlier work on courtroom transcripts that people equated certain kinds of speech with lack of credibility. In particular, hesitant phrases such as "I mean", "you know" and "isn't it?" reduced a speaker's power. But no one had looked at the exact relationship between style and content.
The researchers asked 118 undergraduates to read a transcript of a testimonial about a scanner. In one version, the speaker used hesitations like "I mean" and "ummm"; in the other, he used none. They also gave half the students enough time to read it thoroughly, while the others got just 20 seconds, to see how limiting a person's understanding of the substance would alter the persuasiveness of the style.
The researchers found that in both versions style was important. When hesitant language was used, people were less easily convinced that this was a scanner worth buying - even when it was a better scanner at a lower price. Style was especially important, the researchers found, when time was limited (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol 38, p 37). "If you can't pay attention to what the speaker is saying," Sparks says, "you pay attention to how they say it."
So take a lesson from Paul, the conman. If you want to be persuasive, don't stumble, pause or use language that shows hesitation. And for goodness sake, don't give your listeners time to think about what you're really saying.
7 Get them angry
ANGERING people may seem like an odd way to go about persuading them, but according to Monique Mitchell Turner, a communications professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, it is seriously underrated as a tool of persuasion.
Much study has gone into how emotions aid persuasion. The best known and most studied is fear. It serves well in campaigns that try to steer you clear of certain activities, like smoking or unprotected sex.
But fear doesn't always work, says Turner, and over time, people become more resistant to scare tactics. The same applies to guilt. It can be effective (think of maternal guilt), but not once people clue into the fact they're being manipulated. Worse, it has to be carefully calibrated: too much and people resist. "We don't want people telling us we're bad people," says Turner.
Anger is different. For one thing, it's focused on someone else's misdeeds, not your own. Also, it's a very utilitarian emotion, she says, usually in response to a perceived injustice. "Anger makes people feel empowered," Turner says.
There has been a long debate, she says, about whether anger can be constructively harnessed. In studying groups that employ anger as a tactic - most notably animal rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as well as environment organisations and even political campaigns - she has found that, given the right conditions, it can.
First, people have to be convinced that the issue is relevant to them, that it affects them or their children or their community. At that point, says Turner, you need to hammer home what's wrong with the world as it is. Once you have got people roiled up, you can offer them a way to remedy the situation (Public Relations Review, vol 33, p 114).
"When those feelings of anger are accompanied by the feeling that there is a solution to this problem, then the message is more likely to be persuasive," she says.
To you from From New Scientist Print Edition.
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
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