Influencing others

People often want other people to do things for them.

For example, what does every YouTuber want people to do?

MrBeast

What does every YouTuber want people to do?

What does this advertiser want people to do?

CENTER FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, SHENYANG phone addiction ad

What does this advertiser want people to do?

What does this teacher want people to do?

Young teacher helping senior woman to develop illustration

What does this teacher want people to do?

This isn't new!

People have been wanting other people to do things for as long as there have been people.

Here's a snippet from a letter from Ancient Egypt, nearly 2,000 years ago, from a sister to her brother, about her son:

Apia to Zoilos her brother, greetings. Before everything I pray that you are well. At my request, brother, do not let Sarapion be idle and roam aimlessly, but put him to work.

Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt

What does Apia want Zoilos to do?

This isn't even limited to humans.

What does this dog want the other dogs or humans to do?

Play bow wikipedia 600px

What does this dog want other dogs or humans to do?

This move is called a play bow. It's a common way for many dogs to invite others to play wrestling or chasing games.

What does the baby elephant in this video want other people to do?

One way to get people to do things for us is by command. This can work, but only if you have a lot of power.

A more common way is through persuasion.

(Notice that none of the examples above are about commands.)

Persuasion recognises that we have limited power, so most of the time we have to find alternative ways to influence others.

Persuasion is about making choices, and to make the best choices we have to understand the context.

So, in this lesson, we're going to learn to evaluate the situation leading up to the process of persuasion, which we will call the persuasive context.

A note before we go further: a lot of persuasion is extractive.

Meaning, we use persuasion to get things from other people: give me your vote, give me your money, do this thing for me.

Extractive persuasion can be bad if it's selfish or if it only benefits the persuader.

Extractive persuasion is not bad if it's part of a free, fair & honest exchange. "Give me $50 and I'll give you my scooter," might be a great exchange for both parties, assuming the scooter works.

But not all persuasion is necessarily extractive, either.

We can also persuade people to do things that will benefit them: try this, check that out, you'll love it.

We might call that supportive persuasion.

The difference all comes down to intent, which is often a matter of interpretation.

Throughout this lesson, we'll show many different examples of persuasion. However, the difference between supportive and extractive persuasion is not our main focus, so we wanted to point it out now and encourage you to think about it as we go through this lesson.

Persuasive context

Influencing others