Most persuasion techniques out there work because they play on a natural human desire or tendency that happens so easily, you don’t notice it unless you know what the other person is doing. Our natural desire to be consistent is no different.
Humans have always felt a strong desire to behave in a way that matches their beliefs. Of course, if we didn’t have this natural desire, you wouldn’t really be able to trust anyone because they wouldn’t feel the need to walk their talk. When our actions don’t match our beliefs, we experience what’s called cognitive dissonance. This is the feeling of discomfort you feel when you realize that you hold conflicting beliefs or ideas about something. When you notice this, you have a natural urge to fix the inconsistency. That’s where it gets interesting.
You can do several different things to correct this inconsistency that you’ve discovered. You can change your belief so that it matches your behavior, devalue the belief so that it’s really not important to you anymore, or change your behavior to match your belief. Now most of the time we do this without realizing it since it’s such an automatic response. That’s why pointing out an inconsistency in ones beliefs or behavior can be such a powerful persuasion technique.
Of course when you decide to use cognitive dissonance for this purpose, you should never try to deceive them by presenting a false area of conflict. Only use this method if there really is an incongruence in their beliefs and behavior. Secondly, when you reveal that inconsistency to them, be sure to ease the conversation in that direction by asking some open ended questions that will lead to you revealing the inconsistency, rather than telling them that their behavior/beliefs are incongruent right off the bat. By doing this, you’ll have a better chance of them receiving what you have to say with an open mind. If you just come right out and accuse them of being incongruent, there’s a much greater chance they will put up a defensive attitude, and deny any evidence you might have that conflicts with their beliefs.
When you present your point in the right way and get them to listen to you with an open mind, you’ll have a good chance of getting them to change whatever it is you want them to change. If it’s a certain belief you’re trying to change, present your evidence in a way that conveys an incongruent belief rather than an incongruent action. Whatever they perceive to be incongruent will most likely be changed. Of course if you were trying to change a behavior, you would attribute the inconsistency to the behavior instead of a value/belief.
Keep an eye out for tomorrows post where I’ll show you some real life examples of using cognitive dissonance to change another persons belief, attitude, value, or behavior in a certain area.