Persuasion techniques

A long time ago it was a question of defining which were the best techniques to persuade a person and that it was persuasion itself within those ideas there were many opinions, one of which was made by a character named JORGE E. PEREIRA who told us that There were many persuasion techniques that had been developed over time, but all of them reached the same end, which was to persuade the individual instead of other opinions.

The only thing they did not say is that persuasion is not technically brainwashing but is manipulation of the human mind by another individual, without the manipulated party being aware of what caused their change of mind. What for our point of view was more scientific, but as if we wanted to give the subject, let's go into it in order to be able and understand each way of thinking of our knowledge collaborators, let's start with our journey.

Persuasion is not technically brainwashing but is the manipulation of the human mind by another individual, without the manipulated party being aware of what caused their change of mind. I only have time to introduce very basically a few of the thousands of techniques in use today, but the basis of persuasion always serves to access the right half of your brain.

The left half of your brain is analytical and rational. The right side is creative and imaginative. It's overly simplified but it explains my point. So the idea is to distract the left brain and keep it busy. Ideally, the persuader generates an altered conscious state with eyes open, causing a shift in consciousness from beta to alpha; this can be measured on an EEG machine.

1.- How do they persuade us?

The owners of some businesses in the United States were fed up with large groups of teenagers meeting every night in the parking area of their premises, mainly due to the frequent fights and the sale of drugs. To get them to leave, they decided to put speakers in the parking lots and play a Frank Sinatra record at full volume. Predictably, the teenagers fled in terror.

This little "experiment" demonstrates the power of one of the oldest and simplest behavior modification techniques: punishment or reward-based conditioning. In this case, the punishment for meeting in the parking lot was Sinatra's music, which managed to provoke a change in the teenagers' behavior.

2.- What is persuasion?

Persuasion consists of the deliberate use of communication to change, form or reinforce people's attitudes, the latter being mental representations that summarize what we think about things, people, groups, actions or ideas: if we prefer one brand to another, if we are for or against abortion, what do we think of certain political parties, etc.

Because attitudes play an important role in how we behave, a change in them should lead to a change in our behavior, which is what persuasion is ultimately intended to do. We may wish, for example, that they buy us a certain product, that someone stop smoking, that they use a seat belt or that they give us their vote in the elections. By getting the adolescents to evaluate the parking area as something unpleasant (negative attitude), it was also achieved that they behaved in accordance with that attitude.

3.-Basic elements of persuasion

Extension, of who acts as a source of information or persuasion. The LOGOS, that is, the arguments. And the PATHOS, the emotions that support the arguments. This approach has not been surpassed, although it has been expanded. Classical rhetoric analyzed the speaker very well but forgot aspects as important as the receiver of the message, the message itself, and the channel used.

Current studies on persuasion give crucial importance to the source from which persuasive action starts. The source must be credible for the message to take effect.

A message is legitimate if the person issuing the message is socially legitimized to do so, that is, they have moral or institutional authority. To know if a message is legitimate, we can ask ourselves the question: Does this person have the authority to say what he says? If the answer is yes, the message is legitimate.

A message is competent if the message is delivered in such a way that the receiver is forced to process and take it into account. The question to know if a message is competent is: Because of its format, does it force it to be processed by the receiver? For example, the advertisement that is placed on the windshield of the car is usually not very competent and we will generally throw it away without reading it. However, a letter on the letterhead of the "Ministry of Finance" will deserve the utmost attention.

A message is persuasive if the message mobilizes emotions or cognitions capable of transforming an attitude. Many times a message is persuasive but not very competent. For example, we may have seen a television ad twenty times without understanding and attending to the message (low competition) but if we do so once by chance, we are fascinated or hypnotized, and we proceed to purchase the product. This is the reason why television commercials are so crushing.

An example of the opposite: competent but not persuasive. The letter from the City Council ordering us to pay a new municipal tax may not be persuasive (we are not convinced by the reasons for the new tax), but surely we will thoroughly analyze the pros and cons of paying it. A message is appropriate if, due to its format, by whom the message is issued, the channel chosen and other characteristics, it can obtain the desired results. This concept is very global as it refers to whether or not the message has achieved its purpose in real life. The key question to know if a message is appropriate would be: Is it or was it effective in changing behaviors? As is logical, the more an appropriate message will be the more legitimate, competent and persuasive.The good communicator knows how to sacrifice himself as a sender of messages when he detects that another person or group of people may be more persuasive. Persuading should not be confused with exercising charismatic leadership!

Other ways to increase the credibility of the source would be:

Provide incontestable statistics, data and testimonies Invite a prestigious speaker to reinforce the line of argument Properly present whoever speaks or issues the information. Above all, it is important to highlight their impartiality or lack of interest in saying what they say in favor of a certain option. The most credible source of information is one that speaks against their own interests. Therefore, the most credible person is usually the one who despite throwing stones on the roof admits that the best path to take is the one that exposes. Greater persuasion is achieved by combining channels. The same message repeated by different channels activates the receiver's attention to a greater extent, especially if they have temporal continuity.

A message will be all the more persuasive as it moves the person or group that receives it towards:

Feelings of inconsistency with their current situation, and the need to change in the direction indicated by us. Feelings of gratitude towards the sender of the messages. For example: "How lucky I am to have found out about this insider information." Feelings of "being in the tonic of what is right now", and by extension, promoting expectations of prestige. Feelings of opportunity.

The total length of the communication should be consistent with the audience it is intended for and the interest we assume will arouse the topic. A second common principle is to pique the interest of the reader or listener. And, finally, that you know how to finish on time without being boring. Sometimes it is convenient to make the expected behavior explicit: "From today we must act in such and such a way." They would be messages concluded. Other times it is better for the listener or reader to deduce what we expect of him: they would be unfinished messages, preferable to audiences very sensitive to reactance.

4.- interpersonal persuasion

If in written persuasion the arguments are the central axis of the discourse, in face-to-face persuasion this central role is occupied by the tone and emotional climate.

Persuasion in face-to-face sales is well studied. It coincides in the existence of a seller profile whose characteristics would be: extroversion, a desire to contact people's needs and a certain dose of enthusiasm. An ambition to make money and product specific knowledge are often added to this basic profile.

Persuasive resources:

IDENTIFYING PERSUASION: The desire to be similar to a person, or belonging to a group, are used to modify attitudes and behaviors of the individual. ("If you don't act like this you will be frowned upon", "Who doesn't do this, betrays the group", "Everybody does this", "Don't let us down by doing such a thing", "We will be proud if you do this") PERSUASION NORMATIVE: The implicit or explicit norms of the group or of the person promote the adjustment or change of attitude or behavior. ("The rules of good work are morally binding", "People with your type of responsibility have the obligation to.") ARGUMENTATIVE PERSUASION: The orientation towards profit, whatever it may be, promotes a change in attitude or behavior. ("I propose the following… whose benefits would be", "If we do this, our life will be more pleasant","The cost of not acting is higher than the cost of acting").

5.- modern persuasion techniques.

1) Modern persuasion techniques

Persuasive communication is characterized by the manifest intention of the source clearly oriented to produce something in the receiver, in the recipients, and modify their behavior in some sense.

There is always a message, a transmission of information, which is characterized in persuasive communication compared to other kinds of communication because it is loaded with meaning, and which also contains sociological elements, since it implies control, coercion and pressure.

The conviction of a message and its degree of intensity is created especially - although not only - by means of rhetorical, logical and argumentative resources that operate on the

recipients previews; and that they can modify them totally or partially, or reinforce them, according to the intention of the persuader.

Suggestion is a psychologically based factor. It is effective when the persuader has the ability to create the impression that the proposals included in the message (arguments, judgments, evaluations) agree with the ideas and beliefs of those who receive the persuasive messages.

Every message includes elements related to the persuasive manipulation of meanings.

Manipulating is clearly misrepresenting, modifying or changing the facts in a certain sense, following predetermined guidelines and for the purpose of controlling behavior.

All procedures are persuasive basically aimed at reducing the psychological resistance of receivers exposed to persuasive communication, at the same time to verify the correct transmission of the message and, above all, concentrate on capturing the attention of the

audience.

Symbolic violence: "The power to make, by issuing bodies, that the validity of meanings through signs is so effective that other people (other than the issuer) identify with them." The theoretical foundation starts from conceiving man as a symbolic animal that communicates through pragmatic signs.

2) Modern persuasion techniques Cognitive persuasion is related to the essential need that all people have to be able to receive information, both to control our environment and thus to be able to make correct decisions for our physical, emotional, intellectual and cultural development.

Examples of cognitive persuasion through current information include: the selection and treatment of news about the event; the choice of who and what the reports about life in society will be about; the exposed contents about famous people, etc.

The process of selecting the news to transmit already implies a manipulative intention. Only those useful for manipulative purposes or, to be more exact, for influencing purposes are included within the message as objects and reference data, some of which may be positive: for example, educational or creation of emotions.

There is a growing persuasive instrumentalization of data from sociological research, especially from surveys and opinion polls based on representative samples with a statistical base.

When a journalistic information offers current news, it usually - if it has data - is accompanied by the results of recent polls or surveys, which very often are

They are used to demonstrate certain comments and even to justify subjective judgments and evaluations.

This type of news is persuasive because it integrates relevant assessments into the current information. In addition, as it is based on scientifically based techniques (statistics, mathematics) it has great power of conviction.

3) Modern persuasion techniques

Propaganda, from a psycho-sociological perspective, is conceived as: "The deliberate attempt made by specialized agents to provoke overturns in opinion and sentiment" (SE Ash, 1964).

Technically, all propaganda is a handling and manipulation of opinions, and above all, of collective feelings, based on the suggestive and unthinking nature of many of our personal attitudes and beliefs about different aspects of social life.

From an ethical perspective, there are important differences between propaganda for information or training purposes, but with contents that are characterized by their meanings and symbols of tolerance and liberality, and propaganda for manipulative purposes of consciences and behaviors.

Education as a social institution by its very nature favors an update of the teaching contents that, by recognizing the existence, relevance and influence of propaganda and by revealing its procedures and objectives, largely manages to neutralize some of its techniques and moderate their efects.

Psychological warfare is an extreme form of ideological persuasion that exploits all possible forms of symbolic violence, contained both in propaganda messages and in persuasion by cognitive information.

4) Modern persuasion techniques

Commercial persuasion or advertising can be considered from a technical point of view as: "A set of persuasion techniques with which a product or service is made known and advertised, to be consumed or used."

The set of advertisements about products or services that cover diverse needs, is a persuasive message system with political intentions and is also a way of doing popular culture or mass culture.

Within mass culture one can speak of the subculture of advertisements. The commercial advertisement technique is based on creating a series of identifying signals of the product, such as size, performance, color, taste and price, which can be used by the recipients of the message to recognize them, place them and value them positively.

The enormous flow of persuasive commercial messages in our society models a consumer culture whose symbolic elements are taken almost exclusively from advertising, which extends to other fields of communication and which even models private tastes.

Positive aspects are also recognized in commercial advertising: It breaks the previous uniformity in consumption patterns and enhances the diversity of fashions and tastes.

The contribution of the aesthetics of advertisements to mass art, as a compromise between the technical possibilities of the new languages of radio and television; the development of a visual, suggestive and connotative art.

Among the new research techniques that deny the importance of common sense for buying and that analyze the emotional states of consumers in order to capture these deep aspects, highlighting: emotional analysis and projection tests.

5) Modern persuasion techniques

The general rules and procedures are based on the principles of behavioral psychology and social psychology, especially in their operational application to the masses or the psychology of the masses.

Among the general rules and procedures are the following: The exploitation of feelings. Issuers use procedures such as:

omissions of a certain type of information, statement of half-truths, etc.

The simplification is technically achieved by dividing the problem and its contents.

The exaggeration and distortion of information. Relevant and significant information is usually never offered raw, or objectified, but loaded with political, ideological or commercial content.

The repetition of themes and ideas in an orchestrated form. All effective persuasion uses to some degree the repetition of value judgments, ideas of the issuer about current events, or about totalizing aspects.

The exploitation of psychic contagion. Advertising uses this rule when it causes someone well known to the public to present the product in an advertisement.

Support in pre-existing attitudes. All persuasion techniques are based on the manipulation of conscious and unconscious feelings and attitudes, as well as pre-existing knowledge in the groups.

The recourse to any technical, professional or moral authority. This competent authority can be a well-known or famous person specialized in the topics or fields that are discussed.

The individualization or personalization of the adversary. This rule makes it possible to concentrate the attacks of persuasive argumentation on the most individualized representative of the adversary, often the bearer of the relevant political or ideological content by himself.

6) Modern persuasion techniques

The use of stereotypes. Persuaders profusely employ stereotypes such as: the modern youth, the traditional youth, the housewife, etc. with the purpose of manipulating the valuations, judgments and damages associated with them.

The substitution of common nouns and adjectives. With this procedure, the true meaning of some of the manipulated terms is concealed, and even - by repetition - they end up being semantically annulled.

The selection of data. From a set of complex data available by the sender, referring to a certain framework and reality, the persuader selects those that he considers most appropriate to offer to the receiver due to their usefulness for the purposes of the message.

The deliberate use of lies. The propaganda uses this resource in a direct and obvious way.

The repetition of keywords and phrases. It is thus achieved that the ideas-tip and basic arguments elaborated penetrate like a refrain in the minds of the recipients.

The emphasis on resounding claims. In persuasion, negative arguments are almost never used and used to contrast them with positive ones. It is because they could create a certain level of disorientation among less credulous recipients towards arguments.

The appeal to the threat of someone outside. In propaganda it is considered very useful to directly direct argumentative attacks against someone, who may be a real enemy or a potential enemy, who is supposed to be contrary to the aspirations and wishes of the population to whom the message is directed.

7) Modern persuasion techniques

Commercial persuasion tends to use all available techniques for its purposes, although it does so to a greater degree with respect to those more linked to both cognitive and ideological persuasion. It maintains specific procedures due to the peculiarities of its persuasive purposes.

When it comes to offering items that can be harmful to health, such as alcohol and tobacco, or services that carry some kind of risk, you must always emphasize and emphasize the most positive aspects. The way you present your message is another important and unique aspect of business persuasion. The exposure of the ad is carried out by the procedure of the "spot" or wedge that jumps to the channel at the planned intervals. Subliminal advertising is a technique used almost exclusively in commercial persuasion. It is about presenting another subliminal message simultaneously with a conventional message, (in the form of an image, a written phrase or a spoken phrase) for a brief fraction of a second or with a reduced intensity, so that it cannot be mentally distinguished from the background message..

8) Modern persuasion techniques

There is a quantitative and qualitative leap at the same time between the persuasion of the past - until the First World War - and contemporary persuasion:

- In the past, the territorial scope of persuasion could be a parish, a group of neighbors, even a small city, in which the persuasive influence rested almost exclusively on the ecclesiastical authorities.

- At present, the sociological field of persuasion is undoubtedly the broad group, generally of reference: class or stratum; or the audience to the media structured by types of audience and generally delimited by a territory.

- In traditional persuasion, the techniques were basically linguistic with little relevance to those based on deep psychological factors, such as motivations.

- In contemporary persuasion, there is a predominant rhetoric but associated with the language of the media. It is what the French school calls the "rhetoric of the image" (R. Barthes, C. Metz, G. Durand).

The power of the image transmitted by electronic media is based on the fact that through it emotions can be expressed that are difficult to access to expression.

Verbal. The processes of manipulation and persuasion have been, and continue to be, basically linguistic although they are never completely linguistic, due to their complementary value as producers of effects that have other aspects such as the presentation scenarios of the messages and the

Technical characteristics of the means through which persuasive messages are transmitted.

9) Modern persuasion techniques

Counter-persuasive approaches. There are different approaches to how a good resistance to persuasion can be built:

The strategy of the supporting message. It is based on inducing recipient individuals or groups to resist persuasion by isolating them from contact with the messages or by encouraging them not to recognize the validity of the persuasive arguments.

Education is the most widespread and economical traditional way of obtaining resources against excessive persuasive manipulation.

The counter propaganda. Through this technique, the fight against propaganda techniques and arguments is defined and planned, although using the same principles and methodology. Among the main techniques are:

Recognize the essential and weakest points of the adversary propaganda in order to better combat them Systematically dismantle through the facts the contradictory nature of the propaganda Avoid the frontal attack on the adversary propaganda Personalize the attack Ridicule the adversary Reject symbols propaganda.

10) Modern persuasion techniques

According to the results obtained by the main investigations of the pioneers in the psychological and sociological study of persuasion (H. Lasswell, B. Berelson, P. Lazarsfeld, CI Hovland and E. Katz, 1930-1960), the factors that directly influence on the greater or lesser success of the

persuasion, and also on the greater or lesser resistance to their psychological pressure have to do with:

The stimulus variables from the source or the issuer The greater or lesser capacity of the issuer to be able to set in motion the basic mediating processes: attention, understanding and acceptance of both the formal message and the content Reception situation factors (how, where, when) of the persuasive message. Variables of psychological predisposition of the receiver that were important as key elements with respect to achieving greater acceptance and credibility of the message and the persuasive source.

Studies reveal that both ideological and commercial persuasion tend to contain mechanisms of influence that are much less effective than what is assumed from broadcasting and creative agencies as well as from the media, except perhaps in certain moments and situations of economic or political tension.. In modern times the knowledge of many persuasive effects of social communication is carried out primarily through the application of the techniques of content analysis of the message or speech. Recently, a greater understanding of the effects of persuasion has been linked to a developmental variant of content analysis: text analysis (SJ Schmidt, TA Van Dijk).

6.- Jorge E. Pereira's point of view

It is common to use, in marketing classes, as a didactic exercise, the question: Is it possible to persuade through personal messages, radio, press, etc.? It's a well-worn question that doesn't have just one answer. You can have as many answers as there are people. The behavior does not depend exclusively on one element. It depends on the circumstances in which the actors of the interaction are found and those of the people who interact at a given time in a specific environment. Many are the persuasion techniques that have been developed over time. They were perfected by friends of wisdom to be used by rulers, military men, clergymen and conspicuous who needed to persuade their audiences.

Personal selling is a form of persuasion. This is a key to open a door. The sale has been correctly called persuasive communication. An attempt was made to introduce the word "communication" (communication / persuasion), to name personal selling, unfortunately without success. Marketing itself is no more than a complex system of communication with the market, whose purpose is to persuade certain groups of the advantages of a product or service. The most exaggerated technique of persuasion involves torture. It was long accepted as "evidence" in court, until not long ago. In this way the enemies were persuaded to accept that they were wrong and guilty. Millions of women were burned to death after the Inquisition made them accept that they practiced witchcraft,when they only applied ancient healing techniques. Many women continue to die or be seriously harmed because they differ from the opinions of those who live with them, who try to persuade them of something at any cost. It seems that torture has recently become fashionable again, to persuade those who disagree with it of the advantages of Western democracy.

conclusion

In conclusion, we have that there are different persuasion techniques, but from my point of view, the one that most focuses on techniques is the initial definition in which it tells us that persuasion technically does not wash the brain but is the manipulation of the human mind by another individual, without the manipulated party being aware of what caused their change of opinion. I only have time to introduce very basically a few of the thousands of techniques in use today, but the basis of persuasion always serves to access the right half of your brain. The left half of your brain is analytical and rational. The right side is creative and imaginative. It's overly simplified but it explains my point. So the idea is to distract the left brain and keep it busy. Ideally,the persuader generates an altered conscious state with eyes open, causing a shift in consciousness from beta to alpha; this can be measured on an EEG machine.

In addition, that of JORGE E. PEREIRA tells us that many are the persuasion techniques that have been developed over time. They were perfected by friends of wisdom to be used by rulers, military men, clergymen and conspicuous who needed to persuade their audiences. At that point we come to say that persuasions can be with different techniques but in the end they are for the same purpose this same author mentions that in past times persuasion was considered torture since women who were called witches were persuaded and the The same fear confessed witches and that they seized spells of which it was not true if not more than a concoction.

According to the court of the United Mexican States, persuasion is nothing more than Persuasive communication is characterized by the manifest intention of the source clearly oriented to produce something in the receiver, in the recipients, and modify their behavior in some sense. There is always a message, a transmission of information, which is characterized in persuasive communication with respect to other kinds of communication because it is loaded with meaning, and which also contains sociological elements, since it implies control, coercion and pressure.

Cognitive persuasion is related to the essential need that all people have to be able to receive information, both to control our environment and thus be able to make correct decisions, for our physical, emotional, intellectual and cultural development, as examples of cognitive persuasion by the Current information can be cited: the selection and treatment of the news about the event; the choice of who and what the reports about life in society will be about; the contents exhibited about the Famous characters, etc.

The theory of inoculation (1964, Mc Guire). In a persuasive communication situation, the most appropriate method to combat it and to be able to neutralize it would be to expose the individual, group or collective to weakened forms of it, so as to stimulate psychological defenses against the planned arguments. The strategy of the supporting message. It is based on inducing recipient individuals or groups to resist persuasion by isolating them from contact with the messages or by encouraging them not to recognize the validity of the persuasive arguments. Education is the most widespread and economical traditional way of obtaining resources against excessive persuasive manipulation.Clarifying that if at no time did I correct the point of view of these authors, it is because I agree with what they mention in their excerpts, but if for me the persuasion technique is a threat to them, it is a warning that now you have the right opinion. same point of view as us.