Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Social psychology and how you can be more persuasive

Ever since my last post, I've been looking around for a good source on how to be more persuasive.

And guess what! Stumbled into a treasure chest.

You can open it up for yourself at this link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/the-psychology-of-persuasion.php.

The article I found most useful was that balanced arguments tend to be the most persuasive. Actually, preempting criticism is half of what inoculation is all about (it's the refutational preemption part, remember? Only this time, you're trying to counter some of the other side's refutations, which helps to put their feelings of threat to the sideline via overwhelming reason). But that's the logical side of persuasion, and since when was pointing out the poor logic behind a belief system the only step to showing how your reasoning is more reasonable?

I can just hear the cries of the average TBM...
"You gave me a bad feeling, your thoughts must be from the devil!"
"I bear you my testimony!" (as the person has heard him/herself again, and again, and again...)
And my all-time favorite face-palmer:
"You should learn Mormonism from people who actually believe in it!"

Which, as you may read in the article about the 3 Universal Goals, is what you hear when you fail at likability, social proof, and authority (respectively. Also, these are not the three Universal Goals).

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