The Power of Persuasion
Persuasion refers to the action or process of influencing an individual or group of people to believe or do something. It’s fundamental and equally powerful tools that affect every aspect of human life. Persuasion revolves around politics, economics, international relations, and mass communication to influence others’ thoughts and behaviors (Schenker, 2019, n.p). The article’s purpose is to focus on the Cialdini’s, (2014), six principles of persuasion principles and identify the one which is easily applicable and one that is hard to influence others.
Firstly, on a close study on Cialdini principles of persuasions, the most straightforward policy applicable in my context is the liking principle (Cialdini R., 2014, n.p). The theory of liking as a persuasion tool utilizes factors such as physical attractiveness, similarity, compliments, contacts, and corporation and conditioning and associations. I’m involved in the counseling field as a psychologist. The institution where I’m based employs all these aspects of liking principle to form the basis of persuading our clients to trust in our services and later overcome issues at hand (Gardikiotis et al., 2015, n.p). Firstly, the environment clean, serene, exotic, and offers services that can be adjusted as per the client’s wishes. Clients can choose from a variety of beverages and snacks before or after any sessions. The first step when a client visit is to offer sincere and genuine compliments for his/her initiative to seek guidance and counseling services (Cialdini R., 2014, n.p). The organization as well provides sessions to facilitate the sequential attainment of a mutual goal, healing, and solutions to issues at hand. All these associations in the facilities condition the clients to believe that all services are excellent, thus submitting to like us by default.
The principle that is hard to apply is the theory of scarcity. The whole purpose of the psychological facilities is to offer guidance to mental wellbeing. This, therefore, requires that counseling and guidance services be available upon demands by the client. Further, the service involves individual and personal initiative to seek such services, therefore impossible to activate this theory. To clearly understand this, businesses that are involved in the provision of goods and services influence buyers based on prices and quality of service or good as the basis of influencing on uniqueness (Swart et al., 2016, pp.72-80).
On the contrary, in psychology, even if the prices of services are made free or limited in supply, they cannot influence demand. This is because psychological services are sought only when one has an issue to solve. For instance, the company rolled out a notice written: “We are relocating in three months, see our psychologist now at a 20% offer on fees.” The post didn’t in any way affect the demand for our services. It remained constant.
References
Tewari, S., and Gupta, A., 2018. Pre-suasion: a revolutionary way to influence and persuade.
Swart, P.D., Vlok, P.J., and Jooste, J.L., 2016. Broadening the influence of asset managers through the six principles of persuasion. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 27(2), pp.72-80.
Cialdini, R., 2014. The 6 Principles Of Persuasion By Dr. Robert Cialdini [Official Site]. [online] INFLUENCE AT WORK. Available at: <https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/>.
Schenker, M., 2019. How To Use Cialdini’s 6 Principles Of Persuasion To Boost Conversions. [online] CXL. Available at: <https://cxl.com/blog/cialdinis-principles-persuasion/>.
Gardikiotis, Antonis & Crano, William. (2015). Persuasion Theories. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.24080-4.