I’m somebody who generally goes about social interaction in a very natural way; I don’t think too much about my word choice or persuasive techniques. Because of this, I am always fascinated by people who are different from me in this way, people who regularly calculate their interaction and use every conversation to their advantage. I have a good friend who does just this. They work in commission only sales and they’re damn good at it. I recently asked them to write down some of the techniques or phrases they use most commonly, and I have to say I was surprised by how many of them I could apply theoretical content to.Giving them the factsObviously whenever you buy anything, you want the facts. You want to know what your options are and what the benefits of each are. All salespeople will do this. But, without being aware of the theory behind its effectiveness, most salespeople will tell you what the most popular option is. This might be the actual best seller, or it might be the item they’re currently trying to increase the sales of. When we look at this theoretically, we can refer to Azjen’s (1985) Theory of Planned Behaviour. Being told the ‘most popular’ choice can influence behaviour through subjective norms, we come to believe that owning that specific product is seen favourable by other people. Another way to look at it is social proof. We evaluate the information to believe that other people have looked at the options and made the decision that it is the best product. Building rapport and gaining information “Never underestimate the power of making someone like you, but keep it focused. Use it to gather knowledge about the person so you can make the sale personal”.Through building rapport with a customer, salespeople are able to have open conversations with you about your needs as a customer. Gathering this information is much easier if they have a natural conversation with you rather than interrogating you about whether you need the highest processing speed on your new laptop or the additional engine power in your car. The majority of the time, you won’t know the answers to these questions anyway, and by learning about you as a customer the salesperson can assess your needs, sell you the product best suited to you, and therefore present the most convincing pitch possible. A salesperson (or a good one at least) will constantly bring back the topic of conversation to how your personality and lifestyle relate to your choice of product. “Oh you enjoy… You will definitely benefit from this upgrade”. Even better, they might ask you questions based on your lifestyle so that you as the customer are convincing yourself that you need the product. “Oh you enjoy… Does that mean you’ll need a product with this feature or that function?”. We can look at the success of the above conversations with regard to the foot-in-the-door technique. This technique refers to the increased likelihood of a person making a large commitment if they have first made smaller commitments to the same thing. This effectiveness of this simple method has been supported by many difference pieces of research an example of which is Freedman and Fraser (1966). In this research, individuals were asked to sign a petition for safe driving. A couple of weeks later the same people were asked to place a large and unattractive sign in their front garden that read “Drive Carefully”. Compliance with the request to put the large sign up increase from 17% (not asked to sign a petition) to 55% (foot-in-the-door condition). In terms of being sold an item, asking you questions such as “do you tend to take a lot of pictures on your phone” may serve as a good way to gain incremental commitment from a customer and, eventually lead them to buy a more expensive phone with a better camera. Figure one: Graph to show results of Freedman and Fraser (1966)“The Assumptive Close” This technique refers to any action which assumes the customer has already decided to buy the product. A good example of this might be saying “We can deliver the goods to you by Friday at the earliest, would you prefer it in the morning or afternoon?”. As people, we don’t particularly like to correct others. Asking something like this makes it very difficult for the customer to then respond with something like “actually I don’t want it at all”. Asking questions like this can act as a form of presumed commitment. It works much in the same way as the foot-in-the-door technique. In this context, the response to the question acts as the smaller commitment leader to the bigger commitment (purchasing the item). Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) showed that individuals are more likely to make internal attributions when they experience cognitive dissonance in regard to the task. Individuals participated in a long and boring task and then had to tell another participant waiting to do the task that they had found it enjoyable. Participants were either paid £1 or £20. Individuals rated it as more enjoyable if they were paid less money. It is proposed that individuals who were paid £1 attribute the act of telling other people they enjoyed the task as internal because they can’t use the payment as justification and so they experience cognitive dissonance and change their attitude towards the task. In comparison, those who were paid £20 experience no dissonance and so their attitude towards the task remains stable – they found it boring.Figure two: Graph to show results of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)This may be applicable to assumptive closes in that you as the customer, may justify your answering of the small commitment questions by attributing it internally – “I actually want the product”. This would therefore lead to increased likelihood of purchasing. Perhaps I’m particularly naïve, but I’d never quite realised how carefully structured my conversations in a salesperson/customer interaction had been before, but then again, maybe that explains my impulsive spending. I like to think that with the knowledge I now have, I’ll be much more equipped to challenge my urges to buy and maybe even save some money. I hope this helps you all as much as it will (hopefully) help me.Vicky HillReferencesAzjen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In Action Control (pp.11-39). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203.Freedman, J.L., & Fraser, S.C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 195-202.
Why Ed Miliband Is More Like Adolf Hitler Than You Think
I implore you to watch this video. This is a man who very, very nearly ended up running this country. I’ll avoid discussing what that has to say about the current state of British politics in this blog post, but I will attempt to unpick what Ed Miliband is trying to do in this interview in order to persuade viewers to change their cognition on public sector strikes.On the 30th of June, 2011, hundreds of thousands of teachers and civil servants went on strike for the day, disrupting an estimated 40% of state schools across England and Wales. In response to the disruption, Labour leader Ed Miliband was asked to give his thoughts on what he thought about the strikes, and after watching the short video, I’m sure you will not find it difficult to pick out which persuasive technique Miliband has opted for. Adolf Hitler once said ‘the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly: it must confine itself to a few points, and repeat them over and over.’ In a two minute and thirty second video, Miliband utters ‘these strikes are wrong’ a staggering five times. That’s one every thirty seconds. In fact, almost every point he makes is repeated, five times. He confines himself to, as Hitler said, a few points, and repeats them over and over again. The juxtaposition of his line of argument and his use of language throughout it is one I find particularly amusing, as he continually advocates the need to ‘put aside the rhetoric’, whilst himself performing the very dictionary definition of rhetoric language: ‘language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content’. To see whether his style of persuasion worked from a memorable and simplistic standpoint, watch the video just once, and at the end, see if you are able to recount each of his points from memory. There are 5 in total. You may begin.
How to Get More Instagram Likes – For Dummies
If you don’t have an Instagram account. Close this now. Read a different blog on here.Right, now that I’m speaking to the cool kids.I feel inclined to say that “this (getting more likes than usual) was just an accident, I don’t actually care about Instagram (or facebook) likes, when I got more likes than usual it just… ya know…happened….BUT……I would be lying. I care, you care, we all care. Even those that post pictures once every three months, they care. When they come back they want their likes to be above a certain number.Partial evidence of this is that I think we (avid Instagram users) can all relate to that when Instagram got rid of that feature that changes it from “Shaniqua, Raj and Betty liked your photo” into “3 likes”, we all let out a massive sigh of relief.Why you ask? Because we would no longer stress about getting the vital 10 likes, and desperately hoping for one more person to like the photo so that “Shaniqua, Raj, Betty, Andy, Pistorius, Wilma, Bushdid911, Olatunde, Delroy, liked your photo” would change to the sophisticated “10 likes”. Now we no longer have that worry as the former comes up as “9 people liked this”.However, one thing I didn’t answer is why? Why did people let out a massive sigh of relief…?Because they care! They want to look popular, they want their ego stroked on Instagram, and apparently, this can only be done by getting a sufficient number of likes.I say they, but really… sadly, I should say “we.I’ll throw in some context: the other day I decided to make my studies more worthwhile (I am paying £9K!), so I deactivated twitter because quite frankly I was spending more time on that, then I was writing up my Abnormal Psychology revision notes. However, a leopard never changes its spots and in my case, my spots before twitter was procrastination, so guess what? After deactivating twitter, the procrastination stayed. So, what does one who wants to spend more time on their studies do? They follow EVERYONE (bar the snakes) from high school, sixth form and uni on Instagram, even though they haven’t posted a picture in over a year. No? that’s not what one would do?o…well…….Here’s why, due to following all these people (and here’s another secret, people love being followed, why? Because it means they have a clearer and higher amount of likes they can expect to receive on future photos) I decided I should post a newer picture and revamp my profile. So, I did, I still had revision notes to make but instead I thought of what the coolest picture and caption of me could be, without ya know, sounding toooooooooooooo cringe. So, then what did I do next you ask? Leave Insta and go back to my responsibilities? No. After I established quite a few followers, 40% increase, I decided why just have these followers (who I originally only followed to stalk, we all do it, stop judging me!) when I could also have my ego stroked a little?So, I posted a photo that I really like. Although, I wasn’t sure about the success because it was one I had previously posted on facebook a few months prior, but low and behold, on that picture I got more likes than ever (woohoo!)Some may say it was all numbers, I had more followers so that would obviously mean more likes.However, as a psychologist I know it is much…much deeper than that. Purely because, many people have hundreds of followers but don’t have people who engage with them (like/comment on their pictures), so what made my followers engage with mine?As mentioned earlier, people LIKE to be followed on social media, it provides a sense of security and makes them feel special (I could have followed anyone, but I chose them). Due to these overwhelmingly positive emotions they were feeling, Cialdini would suggest they were acting in line with the reciprocity rule which is seen in all humans, as according to Richard Leakey, who considers the rule of reciprocity as a defining factor of what it means to be human, “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honoured network of obligation” (2009, p. 19). Because I followed all these new people and made them feel good about themselves they felt obliged to give something back, and what best to give on Instagram (other than money sent to your PayPal), is a big juicy LIKE.Moreover, the rule of reciprocity was not the only method being used here, social poof was also present.Due to Instagram’s lovely social proof features (I’m not getting into that, that’s another blog post, for another day which I, won’t be writing) the fact I was making a comeback was very known, by many people.I This feature not only showed other people that their friends followed me, but it also showed them that their friends liked my picture. Regularly coming up on peoples list and people seeing other people’s behaviour towards me, according to Kelman (1958), would have made them more likely to like my picture too. Kelman argued that if the thoughts and behaviours we are seeing are divergent from our own (everyone else liked the photo), we are motivated to act as the majority does, with the assumption that the majority must be correct. People want to be correct, and that suggests why many more than usual liked my picture, they saw liking it as correct behaviour and not engaging as incorrect.“So, that’s nice and all for YOU but how do I get more likes?” I hear you wail from behind the Koan.You don’t. The title was just to lure you in and it worked because now you’re at the end of the blog, yaaayyyyy JKidding…Kind of.According to the reciprocity rule and social proof, you can get more Instagram likes by: 1) revamping your profile [especially after a hiatus]2) following lots of new people from similar circles so the activity comes up on the following page of members from said circles i.e. all from your most recent part time job3) when you decide to follow someone new, like lots of their photos as they will feel obliged to like and follow back, which could be the start of a beautiful new Instagram friendship.4) when someone likes your picture out of the blue, like one of theirs back, and you will start a liking sequence which you both benefit fromOR in an alternative universe…5) delete Instagram, make the revision notes you’ve been putting off, and get to a mind frame in which you don’t even care about likes or need your ego stroked.haha yh rightyou can follow me at @Deanneser
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