We should think of our persuasive message the way the audience does—as a behavior of the sender that allows the audience to draw inferences. As Fritz Heider, one of the founders of social psychology observed in 1958, “Behavior engulfs the field.”3 What we say is less important than the behavior of our message—that is, how we say it.
Even if we have a logical proposition to communicate, how we attempt to get that point across may say more about who we are than we wish.
Albert Mehrabian found that the literal words we use in a message carry only a small portion of the meaning the message communicates. Professor Mehrabian of UCLA explored what makes communications successful in getting across likes and dislikes.4,5 He found that the words accounted for 7 percent of a message’s ability to communicate likes and dislikes, intonation accounted for 38 percent, and facial expressions and body language accounted for 55 percent. The lizard is much more attuned than the conscious mind to the subtleties of the message.
Take advantage of the fact that action implies essence regardless of motivation. Have your candidate publicly act and speak like he or she is the sort of person that voters want and that’s how voters will perceive him or her. Voters won’t suspect your candidate’s motivation. Have your brand act sexy in its advertising and in its packaging, and people will think it’s sexy even if it used to be drab. Act as if you are a fashion expert when you are selling shoes and your customers will see you as a fashion expert even if, in reality, you don’t care about fashion. You can use action to generate inferences and people are unlikely to suspect what’s behind the curtain.
If we explicitly claim that the action we recommend is fun or exciting, or will make you feel masculine or sexy, we are in danger of communicating the opposite. We cannot successfully claim an action is fun. Our message has to be fun. We have to demonstrate the association. We have to demonstrate the desired quality of the action we recommend in a compelling, memorable way.
The audience assumes the timing of the message, the place of the message, the tone of the message, the style of the message, the seriousness of the message, the fun of the message are a reflection of the action we suggest, of the people who act that way, and of the sender. Everything about the message implies what the receiver can expect if they follow our advice.
Daniel Berlyne, professor of psychology, University of Toronto, conducted research in experimental aesthetics.6 He studied how the pleasure of a stimulus varied with its complexity. He found that the pleasure we derive from a stimulus is at its highest when the complexity of the stimulus is at a moderate level. Some complexity enhances pleasure, but if a stimulus is too complex or too simple it gives us less pleasure.
Public Image Enhancement We societal animals are designed to seek social approval in the form of affection or esteem. We want to feel that others like us or that others think we are fun, smart, sexy, competent, good-looking, fashionable, and on and on. When we buy fresh produce, we assume that people see us as one of those people who buy fresh produce. We believe the actions we take influence how others see us. The “spotlight effect”4 is a label scientists have given to our exaggerated notion of how much our actions influence others’ perception of us. We tend to think that everybody is noticing us when, in fact, most are ignoring us. Our action can make us feel that others see us as we would like to be seen or our action can make us uncomfortable, fearing that others see us as we would not like to be seen. As persuaders, we can associate buying a bag of oranges in the grocery store with the feeling that others will see us as a good parent. With effort, we can help people feel proud to put a bag of oranges on the checkout counter and embarrassed to put a bag Cheetos on the checkout counter.
Image enhancement is a reward that has broad implications because actor image is rich in associations. The lizard, our automatic, nonconscious mind, works through association—any concept calls to mind other concepts which in turn call to mind still other concepts. Some concepts have broader implications. They result in wider association and cause greater inference.
As social animals, we naturally think in terms of people, stereotypes, and exemplars. They are critical to our ability to make sense of the world. We have a special skill at anticipating how other people will act based on what we know about them. We even personify inanimate objects like cars and computers in order to help us anticipate or explain their behavior.
When we focus on a feeling rather than an attribute, we: • Gain the power of promising an end rather than a means. • Gain precision because, without guidance, an attribute can lead to many different feelings. • Turn a delayed, uncertain, and rational benefit into an immediate, certain, and emotional reward. Tap into an additional class of rewards that doesn’t depend on the physical experience of the action we recommend—actor image rewards. When we promise the feeling of participating in an attractive actor image, we: • Offer our target the opportunity to appear to others as the person they would like to be—public image enhancement. • Offer our target the opportunity to appear to themselves as the person they would like to be—self-image enhancement. • Imply a variety of positive qualities of the action naturally associated with that actor image. Actor image is a concept that is rich with meaning.