6.2 What Is Persuasion?

Persuasion implies getting someone to do something you want them to do. There is a problem with this definition, though, starting with the two alternatives suggested above: physical prevention and punishment. There are methods for forcing someone to behave in a certain way, but they don’t qualify as persuasion because they don’t have the element of “buy in.” Your boss can force you to follow cumbersome work procedures by threatening to fire you, and most employees have had the experience of doing something they didn’t think was fair or wise — that’s just what you have to accept if you want to keep the job. The problem with forcing people to do things, though, is that the minute you remove the threat, people stop doing them. If the employee thinks the work procedures are pointless, they will only do them if someone is watching (or worse, they will film themselves violating procedures and post it online). Buy-in suggests that the employees believe in those procedures, and will do them whether anyone is watching or not.

This is why communication scholar Herb Simons says “All persuasion is self-persuasion.”^[1] There’s a tendency to think of persuasion as being about the message: when Person A talks to Person B, it’s the words that persuade, so the actual persuasion occurs in the air between the two. Simons stresses, however, that what ultimately matters is not what Person A says to Person B, but what Person B says to him/herself. If they hear a message and think “That makes sense; I agree with it,” persuasion has occurred; if they think “No, I’m not buying that,” no persuasion has taken place, even though Person A may have said and done all the right things. A driver who is stopped by the police may be baffled as to why their weak persuasive attempt actually worked, or why a strong one failed, and the answer lies in the one factor they can’t see or control: what was going on in the officer’s head?

The working definition we will use for this chapter is: “Persuasion is communication intended to change other people’s attitudes and/or behavior.”

Does this definition work perfectly? You may already be thinking “Can’t any communication (verbal or nonverbal) potentially change other people’s attitudes or behavior?” If you walk through a student lounge and see someone asleep on a couch, you might think “Yeah, I need some sleep; I’ll go take a nap.” Has the sleeping person persuaded you? If persuasion is something you can do while you’re asleep, what doesn’t count as persuasion? Our definition, however, includes the word “intended,” so it doesn’t include unintentional persuasion. On the other hand, it does include failed attempts, since they have that intention component even though the result may not be what the persuader had in mind. Remember that persuasion attempts backfire all the time, so any effort to persuade is a gamble.

Some people might want to include “effectiveness” in the definition, saying that if an attempt doesn’t succeed, we shouldn’t call it “persuasion.” If a customer doesn’t buy a car, should we say that the salesperson persuaded them? In the past tense, “persuaded” (and its synonym “convinced”) implies that it worked: “I was persuaded to buy the car.” But not all persuasion is about selling. Sometimes, as with a PR campaign, it’s about changing attitudes, and there’s nothing immediate or visible that lets you know if you’ve succeeded. Persuasion is often a gradual process, and it’s hard to know when to give up and declare it a failure. (I’ve been known to walk out of a store empty-handed, which might make the salesperson think they failed, but I just want time to think, and two weeks later I come back and make the purchase).

It’s also hard to judge persuasion in terms of success because persuasion usually occurs in competitive environments. Success is not always about how well the persuader performs; it also depends on what the competition does. An impressive job candidate may not get the job because there was an even more impressive candidate in the job pool, a lawyer might win a case because the opposing lawyer is incompetent, and many politicians get elected not because they won over the hearts and minds of voters but because people hated the opposing candidates and there was no “none of the above” option on the ballot.

One more issue with effectiveness is that it’s not always determined by the persuader’s skill: there are always factors at play beyond the persuader’s control that affect the outcome. (Aristotle called these “inartistic proofs,” to distinguish them from “artistic proofs” that depend on the artistry of the speaker). People who say “If you’re in legal trouble, hire the best lawyer there is and you’ll win” are assuming that the lawyer’s skill outweighs factors like the physical evidence. Some people have natural advantages like an attractive face or strong voice, famous parents, or being in the right place at the right time by sheer dumb luck. The best salesperson in the world might have bad sales figures if the product they’re selling is flawed or their store is in a bad location.

With all of this in mind, let’s explore three persuasion models in depth: the Elephant-Rider-Path model, the Yale 5-Step Model, and Dual Processing Models.