How to persuade

Okay so in social psychology we learnt a couple of tactics people and companies use to convince people to do and buy things. These all work so be careful when and where you use them:

• Door in the face (these are the real names) - when someone makes a large unreasonable request which they know they’re not going to get, then they ask for something less extreme, and you’ll most likely say yes. “Mum can i get a lip piercing? NO. Okay can I get my ears pierced then? Ok sure”
• Principle of Reciprocity - you do something nice for someone, they feel more inclined/pressured to return the favour. Clean dad’s car, then ask for money, he’ll more likely say yes than if you’d just asked without doing anything nice first.
• Principle of Scarcity - when something is in shortage or if its gunna run out soon, we always feel like we need to buy it. We see this A LOT in shops, saying “closing down sale”, or “for a limited time only”.
• Lowball - This is when hidden costs are revealed after the initial agreement. So say you went to buy a car and you said okay i’ll take that Holden! And then the sales guy says, okay well here’s a list of 10 other things you have to pay for, you’ll give in and pay for them all because you feel like you’ve committed yourself and you can’t turn back.
• Principle of Flattery - When someone flatters us we begin to like them so then we do what they say. Legit, even if we know they’re only doing it to get us to say yes to them, we still like it. Even if we know specifically that they’re lying, like someone says to you “wow you look dashing with your black hair”, and you have blonde hair, you’ll still like it.

My lecturer said to us at the beginning of the class, I’m not teaching you these so you can go and use them for all the wrong reasons, but so you realise when they are being used against you :)

Toodles