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Persuasion, novel by Jane Austen, illustrated by C. E. Brock. For Sir Walter Elliot, baronet, the hints of Mr Shepherd, his agent, were quite unwelcome…

Persuasion is an umbrella term of influence. Persuasion can attempt to influence a person’s beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors.^[1]

In business, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person’s (or a group’s) attitude or behaviour toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written, spoken words or visual tools to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination thereof.^[2] Persuasion is also an often used tool in the pursuit of personal gain, such as election campaigning, giving a sales pitch,^[3] or in trial advocacy. Persuasion can also be interpreted as using one’s personal or positional resources to change people’s behaviors or attitudes.

Systematic persuasion is the process through which attitudes or beliefs are leveraged by appeals to logic and reason. Heuristic persuasion on the other hand is the process through which attitudes or beliefs are leveraged by appeals to habit or emotion.^[4]

Brief history

Persuasion began with the Greeks, who emphasized rhetoric and elocution as the highest standard for a successful politician. All trials were held in front of the Assembly, and both the prosecution and the defense rested, as they often do today, on the persuasiveness of the speaker.^[5] Rhetoric was the ability to find the available means of persuasion in any instance. The Greek philosopher Aristotle listed four reasons why one should learn the art of persuasion:

1. truth and justice are perfect; thus if a case loses, it is the fault of the speaker
2. it is an excellent tool for teaching
3. a good rhetorician needs to know how to argue both sides to understand the whole problem and all the options, and
4. there is no better way to defend one’s self.

Aristotle’s rhetorical proofs:

1. ethos (credibility)
2. logos (reason)
3. pathos (emotion)^[6]

Theories

Attribution theory

Main article: Attribution (psychology)

Humans attempt to explain the actions of others through either dispositional attribution or situational attribution.

Dispositional attribution, also referred to as internal attribution, attempts to point to a person’s traits, abilities, motives, or dispositions as a cause or explanation for their actions. A citizen criticizing a president by saying the nation is lacking economic progress and health because the president is either lazy or lacking in economic intuition is utilizing a dispositional attribution.

Situational attribution, also referred to as external attribution, attempts to point to the context around the person and factors of his surroundings, particularly things that are completely out of his control. A citizen claiming that a lack of economic progress is not a fault of the president but rather the fact that he inherited a poor economy from the previous president is situational attribution.

A fundamental attribution error occurs when people wrongly attribute either a shortcoming or accomplishment to internal factors, and disregarding any external factors. In general, people tend to make dispositional attributions more often than situational attributions when trying to explain or understand a person’s behavior. This happens when we are much more focused on the individual because we do not know much about their situation or context. When trying to persuade others to like us or another person, we tend to explain positive behaviors and accomplishments with dispositional attribution, but our own negative behaviors and shortcomings with situational attributions.^[7]

Behaviour change theories

The theory of planned behaviour is the foremost theory of behaviour change. It has support from^[8] meta-analyses which reveals it can predict around 30% of behaviour. Theories, by nature however, prioritise internal validity, over external validity. They are coherent and therefore make for an easily reappropriated story. On the other hand, they will correspond more poorly with the evidence, and mechanics of reality, than a straightforward itemisation of the behaviour change interventions (techniques) by their individual efficacy. These behaviour change interventions have been^[9] categorised by behaviour scientists. A mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive (MECE) translation of this taxonomy, in decreasing order of effectiveness are:

1. positive and negative consequences
2. offering/removing incentives,
3. offering/removing threats/punishments,
4. distraction,
5. changing exposure to cues (triggers) for the behaviour,
6. prompts/cues,
7. goal-setting,
8. (increasing the salience of) emotional/health/social/environmental/regret consequences,
9. self-monitoring of the behaviour and outcomes of behaviour,
10. mental rehearsal of successful performance (planning?),
11. self-talk,
12. focus on past success,
13. comparison of outcomes via persuasive argument,
14. pros/cons and comparative imaging of future outcomes,
15. identification of self as role model,
16. self-affirmation,
17. reframing,
18. cognitive dissonance,
19. reattribution,
20. (increasing salience of) antecedents

A typical instantiations of these techniques in therapy is^{[10][circular reference]}exposure / response prevention for OCD.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion