How To Use 10 Psychological Theories To Persuade People

This theory involves a persuasive person deliberately breaking one of the four conversational maxims. These are the four:

• Quantity: Information is complete and full.
• Quality: Information is truthful and accurate.
• Relation: Information is relevant to the conversation.
• Manner: Information is expressed in an easy-to-understand way and non-verbal actions support the tone of the statement.

You can be influenced by stimuli that affect how you perceive short-term thoughts and actions. Here’s a really smart example from Changing Minds:

A stage magician says ‘try’ and ‘cycle’ in separate sentences in priming a person to think later of the word ‘tricycle’.

A common social norm, reciprocity involves our obligation to return favors done by others.

You want what is in short supply. This desire increases as you anticipate the regret you might have if you miss out by not acting fast enough.

Persuasive messages tend to decrease in persuasiveness over time, except for messages from low-credibility sources.

Messages that start out with low persuasion gain persuasion as our minds slowly disassociate the source from the material (i.e., a presumably sleazy car salesman and his advice on what car is best).

We are influenced strongly by others based on how we perceive our relationship with the influencer.

For example, social proof on web copy is persuasive if the testimonials and recommendations are from authoritative sources, big brands, or peers.

This approach, based on multiple years of research by Yale University, found a number of factors in persuasive speech, including being a credible, attractive speaker; when it’s important to first or go last; and the ideal demographics to target.

Certain words carry more power than others. This theory breaks persuasive words into three categories:

• God terms: those words that carry blessings or demand obedience/sacrifice. e.g, progress, value
• Devil terms: those terms that are despised and evoke disgust. e.g., fascist, pedophile
• Charismatic terms: those terms that are intangible, less observable than either God or Devil terms. e.g., freedom, contribution.