A short but concise message persuades more than a thousand words
Give your child a brilliant mind! Beware of cyber thieves! The anti-wrinkle power of 25 creams concentrated in a single product! You can prevent cancer, what women need to know! These and many others are part of the hundreds and thousands of messages that we receive daily through the media or communication, and of course without realizing the countless conversations we have during the day, at work, at school, at home, with friends, etc. That constant coming and going of information that is stored in our brain and that at some point we return because it has been interesting to our senses. However, at some point in the day we have not stopped to think and analyze
What is implicit in that message that I saw on TV today? What did my teacher want to tell me in class? With what intention did my boss have that talk with me?… Eureka! Well, it turns out that each one of those messages emitted or directed towards us carried the stamp of persuasion, consciously or unconsciously.
Persuasion? That's right, persuasion, that word that sometime or at some point in our interesting existence, has reached our ears or without realizing we have been "prey" to it; But some of you or many of you may be wondering, Am I prey to persuasion, but at what moment? And it turns out that when we talk about persuasion, ideas from advertisements or speeches come to mind through the aforementioned means communication Like the headlines or headlines that we read at the beginning of this text, however, this method, thus considered, is not only used by them, its history is long and interesting and many connoisseurs of advantages have known how to use persuasion for their benefit or even the benefit of others, in fact let's clarify that each of these lines are part of the persuasion.
Persuasion has existed since time immemorial, and Aristotle began to give a meaning or definition to this word, he said that it is the acceptance of our ideas or positions by a receiver in a framework of Absolute Reason.
But we can go even further back in history and delve a little and dare to affirm that since man expressed his ideas through murals in caves, he already intended with those messages to leave a mark and part of his history to persuade, transmitting to his clan thoughts and feelings.
Before continuing, it would be worth stopping for a moment and remembering that persuasion goes hand in hand with another concept that we have not stopped mentioning, and we clearly refer to communication, defined as the process through which an issuer sends a message to a receiver through a medium or channel so that it is decoded and a response is issued that allows feedback between the two. Both concepts are dependent on each other because without communication there would be no persuasion and vice versa.
Persuasion and Communication, inseparable friends
Persuasion is a form of communication in which everyone who risks entering into relationships with others must participate. Persuasion is necessary for the sole fact that we differ in our objectives and in the means by which we achieve.
The previous paragraph gives us one more proof that both concepts are intimately linked and therefore, the human being cannot live in isolation, without being in constant communication, and therefore, since there is social coexistence with other subjects, it leads to be exposed to other ideas different or similar to his, but with the intention of being persuaded to accept these ideas and that they form part of his cultural baggage influencing his behavior, or that he rejects them because they do not have a common purpose with their interests or with their social formation according to their scale of values. This constant exchange of thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviors leads us back to the idea that persuasion it is a method of social influence, or the process of guiding people towards the adoption of an attitude or action through rational and symbolic meanings.
For its part, communication, regardless of its original concept, can also be interpreted as one of the means to discover and demonstrate the relevance of our behavioral options, therefore communication goes beyond the simple idea of transmitting messages or ideas, it implies what consequences these ideas will leave or how they will mark the individual after receiving them.
From the moment we are born we are impregnated with meanings that are shaping our self and adopting our own identity with attitudes, values and capacities that make us different from others. But in this formation and definition of the self, communication and persuasion will be the means through which the rules of human behavior will be created or modified through negative or positive incentives that lead us to act in one way or another in certain circumstances.
Our environment, therefore, will also play an important role for the adoption of behaviors that have been persuaded by what surrounds us regardless of the fact that feedback is not given, we are simply also persuaded by symbols and situations that surround us. "We can learn associations of behaviors and imitation behaviors without establishing communication, but only through communication can we determine the relevance of those behaviors."
Therefore, it is clear to us that the interaction that takes place through communication will be part of that influence that is exerted on us to determine and define ourselves through persuasive constructs that surround us such as education, family, friends and education. information that comes to us from our environment.
Persuasion and its main theories
In our context there are at least four means by which people learn appropriate modes of behavior: association, imitation, communication and the already mentioned persuasion; all of them activities that lead us to the adoption of norms which govern and influence our behavior, which in turn is the result of learning.
It is on each of these aspects that some of the many theories related to persuasion are centered and that allowed its study, thus recognizing the eventualities of the environment as elements that operate influencing the behavior options of the subjects to be persuaded.
Jeanne Herman states that "to understand the effect (or the absence of effect) of persuasive communication on the system of opinions and attitudes of a person it is necessary to delineate a complex model of cognitive processes". With this precept we can then begin to delineate that one of the processes for persuasion is the teaching-learning process, and that transcendental theory of learning and Pavlov's classical conditioning, as well as a stimulus, a response, comes to our memory. that communication a message sent to a receiver a response and persuasion to a message, a change in behavior or thought.Without a doubt, we can assure that learning theory is one of the most influential throughout history and that it continues to be retaken to verify the association and operational conditioning factor, using reinforcement.
In the same way, Watson and Johnson (1972) explain that a word, "danger" for example, usually elicits a negative response, when associated with another word such as "harmful", which can lead to the same negative response to harmful. This transferring the tendencies of the response to one word to another is called "high-level conditioning."
With this approach we return to echo the aspect of how a simple word can persuade us in a negative aspect and its association according to the meaning that we have given it and that in turn is defined by our environment and yet we have also associated it with one of our experiences or close experiences to assign to that word a common denominator of good or bad, positive or negative, thus having in the process of persuasion usually involves the fact of influencing a person to respond to an object or word in the same positive or negative way that it responds to another object or word.
One of the most common persuasive theories is to associate the object of change with some other positive or negative stimulus. A highly credible font associated with a message increases the likelihood of acceptance of that message. Humans can therefore change their own associations through a higher level of reflection than Pavlov's dog ever devoted to the experiment.
With the above and without paying attention to the events and activities that surround us daily, we put into practice one of these important persuasion techniques that strongly influence us through the association of situations or words that are immersed in the modeling our behavior. Hovland in his work Communication and Persuasion (1953) affirms that the change of attitude depends on the “trial” or the “practice” of mental and verbal responses. Incentives and motivation are needed to encourage acceptance of new answers over old ones.
Every individual when trying to be persuaded in their attitudes will have to make a balance first of all of what this change in attitude, benefits, satisfaction or consequences will throw at them that move their behavior patterns that they in a certain way dislike and therefore Resist change and avoid being persuaded of that change that does not give you benefits, even if in reality that behavior is negative in the eyes of others. Katz (1960) makes reference precisely arguing that we develop favorable attitudes towards those things in our environment that give us satisfaction, and unfavorable attitudes towards the aspects of our world that generate displeasure (instrumental, adaptation or utilitarian function of attitudes), to this theory he defines it as functional.With each of these theories taken up here, we can presuppose the importance of recognizing simple, everyday but significant acts for thetransformation of paradigms established in the individual by their context and their interpersonal relationships that they develop throughout their lives in their daily coexistence.
Persuasion as a regenerative strategy in organizations
On the way to this point we have seen how persuasion is an ideal means for changing attitudes, behaviors, talking about persuasion in a way leads us to think of an unwanted submission and above all imposed and rooted in our involuntarily unconscious by turning us into guinea pigs with whom they experiment through information provided by large commercial emporiums or individuals who want to make us slaves of their demagogic discourses. However, today we live in a fast-paced world that is growing by leaps and bounds demanding and requesting individuals capable of facing the challenges that arise every day, especially in the workplace.
We must therefore not demonize the concept of persuasion but make it a useful and positive tool to achieve changes in the behavior of individuals towards professional growth.
Currently, organizations are constantly changing through the innovation of strategies that lead them to have real work teams. However, as we have seen, the individual is complex and his system of beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors is even more complex.In short, his mental maps become like labyrinths with no way out. Sometimes it is difficult to try to unravel that world and what leads him at a certain moment to act in a certain way that leads him to delay rather than advance.
Individuals cannot isolate themselves from their society, therefore they cannot isolate themselves from the organization to which they belong, their daily coexistence is part of their personal development and that coexistence and interaction are an organic part of it. Being through the spirit seeks to develop from a philosophy that allows it to develop freely and build its society and its environment, in this case its work is also part of its social fabric that makes it play an important role within its organization. The subject will help build society and society in turn builds subjects.
Individuals are part of that great society can also be classified into intermediate units to which groups are defined, which are also complex in their definition since they directly depend on the behavior of the subjects in a specific activity that makes them belong to the group. Therefore, individual interactions form groups and groups from the point of view of the division of labor make up society, not strictly in this order, but in the sense of a hierarchy of the elements that make up the unit: society.
Those societies that are formed within organizations lead us to think of both formal and informal groups, the former in this case that have received an official appointment and the latter that are unavoidable since they have common interests and similarities; Let's not panic, we haven't forgotten our center of study: persuasion. When talking about these groups, especially the informal ones, they become more easily persuaded precisely because of what has just been mentioned, the similarities in the interests that they present and we cannot deny that in these informal groups leaders emerge who have great influence on others and a power of persuasion to the degree of establishing rewards and penalties.
But what happens when these groups begin to generate problems within the organization and their degree of persuasion towards more individuals increases, this can cause power groups that go outside the lines of progress of the organization and the mission and vision, as well as the values are rethought and diverted to another path. Therefore, the organization must strive to have well-structured persuasion techniques that allow members to feel affiliated and create a sense of belonging to the organization.
Miller and Burgoon (1979) state that persuaders can create expectations in the mind of the subject to persuade that will lead him to prepare rebuttals, if rebuttals become useless due to planned transgression of expectations, the subject's defenses will fall and the persuader it will become vulnerable. With this approach we can verify and reaffirm the importance of highly defined and strengthened persuasion strategies for precisely as just mentioned, not to make the persuasive agent vulnerable.
The organization must be clear that the individuals that form it have basic needs, as Maslow raised it in his concept of Hierarchies of needs, (physiological, security, social, recognition and self-improvement) and when the organization forgets these principles they can begin to generate disagreements and situations of frustration in the individual. For this reason, in his persuasion work towards its members, he must create a sense of affiliation so that they feel protected and generate that sense of belonging to the organization, which motivates them to continue in it giving their best.
Organizations establish relationships with their employees that are characterized by having several levels of integration of objectives. There is a high integration of objectives when an organization creates the conditions that allow its members to meet both personal and organizational objectives. From which it follows that the autonomy of the self will be valued to the extent that the organization values the integration of objectives. Furthermore, to the extent that self-autonomy is encouraged, persuasion is likely to be reciprocal. Individuals will influence the organization and vice versa.
The organization should not forget either that another of the concepts to work on is cohesion. How to generate or persuade the group to feel cohesive, creating the desire for union, the desire for permanence, acceptance and a high degree of attraction towards their workplace, offering a series of prizes and motivating them in addition to generating a sense of identity, we already mentioned it before in terms of incentives and motivation can be an important element for persuasion as there is a positive stimulus there will be a positive response. For this, it will be essential that there is frequent interaction, positive attitudes, values established by the members themselves and the organization, common goals that are inclusive, by counting and integrating all these elements the group or work team will be more easily persuaded and will generate a high morale and this in turn will lead to synergy, that sum of everything as energy, creativity and productivity.
It is Barrett (1977) who proposes the existence of three models of interaction between the organization and its employees, he calls the first one Exchange, this is an extrinsic reward model that is characterized by a minimal integration of objectives. Organizations that operate on this model provide employees with incentives to increase productivity; the type of persuasion that is generated in these environments is acquiescence. With this first approach we must bear in mind that its very name says there is an exchange and persuasion must go beyond just being based on the material aspect and its commercial sense. The idea of belonging and identity with their organization must remain in the subject's mind.
The second model that arises is of socialization; Organizations that follow this model operate from the premise that people can be persuaded to value activities that help the organization achieve its objectives. This model implies leadership. The third model is called accommodation; It gives employees some participation in the configuration of the organization's norms and objectives, and it is at this point that it should be emphasized, since it is precisely the participation that will allow integration to achieve the institutional objectives and goals. The degree of persuasion in this model must be high, making the worker see that part of the empowerment of the company is granted, it is valued, it is given trust,which is an important persuasive agent to begin to create autonomy in the team member, as long as clearly defining the borders, in this case creating the rules of the game.
Persuasion is not an easy task, a high degree of security is clearly needed and the objectives to be achieved are based on solid foundations, however we can say that persuasion is a method that when used well can generate great benefits. The company must not only be the persuader, it must in turn generate persuaders who work for the benefit of each of those who make up the organization for when a weak point is detected, work on it through precisely persuasion, changing negative behaviors to positive behaviors that promote the transformation of secure individuals capable of making decisions and influencing in a joint and autonomous way for the safety and total success of themselves and the organization.
We can then conclude by arguing that we are all the daily art of living, human tools of persuasion, issuing from a comment, an advice, a proposal, a speech, a writing, but it also depends on security and solid arguments that allow change. and transformation on a personal level as a group, and we must begin to persuade ourselves as the agents of change, assuming the commitment, willing to give more and pay attention to the small details as mentioned at the beginning of these lines, let's use our senses as true and valuable tools that allow us to rediscover the indescribable capacity that human beings have to be a positive and purposeful persuader.
Bibliography
REARDON, K Kathleen. Persuasion in communication. Theory and Context. Edit. Paidos. Mexico 1991. Pags. 2, 27, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 159, 189.
Electronic sources of consultation:
www.gestiopolis.com/tecnicas-de-persuasion/
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasi%C3%B3n
