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Well, look, did you read the article? I did. I read to the end. I thought, okay, I'll start using this. But before I did I did one last thing. I asked myse

Well, look, did you read the article? I did. I read to the end. I thought, okay, I'll start using this. But before I did I did one last thing. I asked myself, "Wait a minute - if this technique is so good, did the author use it?" I scrolled to the top of the page. This is the throwaway text that I thought I had completely ignored and was totally irrelevant: >Today and every day we are the targets of salespeople, marketers, advertisers, fundraisers and (heaven knows) politicians trying to persuade us to buy something, do something or think a certain way. And they’re good at it. When I was reading it I thought it was just throwaway stuff, like obviously you're telling me what I know! But looking back - don't you think it pre-suaded me that certain people are really, really good at being persuasive? Which then "pre-suaded" me to agree with whatever the article would state about this, without knowing it? I wonder if you did an A/B study on this article with the above lead sentence, versus an article that cuts out all of the first couple of sentences and just starts with "Research done in the last fifteen years shows that optimal persuasion is achieved through optimal pre-suasion: the practice of arranging for people to agree with a message before they know what’s in it...." Do you think as many people would agree with the article under those conditions? I don't! I think the pre-suasion technique of mentioning just how great experts are at persuasion, might have had a lot to do with why I - and likely others in this thread - agree with the article. This stuff works.

tpeo 10y ago
I did read the article. But I didn't consider the first bit as a throwaway, and this might be the key issue here. If there's a situation where priming might work, it's when the person being primed has either no particular opinion on that issue or when they're in agreement with it. I personally have strong priors against the effectiveness of advertisement and propaganda. I don't think the effects of these things are robust to different behavioural patterns and to increases in public awareness. So I didn't think of the first paragraph as a 'throwaway' bit.
- logicallee 10y ago
  you strike me as someone who's reasonable and willing to change their mind if they see a new angle. So you seemed to be saying that the author wrote a whole article on how one can be much more persuasive by getting someone to agree to some general statement without actually expressing something particular about it -- without the author actually then doing so. :) I mean, it would be like reading an article about how "short titles are better" so you agree with all of the points, then as a final check you scroll up to the top of the page and see that the article is titled "How shorter titles increase clickthrough rates, sharing rates, impact score, reading of the full article, and are basically better in every way -- according to research by Facebook." A long article about how short titles are better, but where the article itself doesn't have one. That would be an example of an article not practicing what it preaches. How about our article? Do you think it does or doesn't "practice what it preaches"? Does it try to "pre-suade" some measure of agreement? Does it start by talking about general statements, before it gets into its thesis? What do you think?
  - firethief 10y ago
    > you strike me as someone who's reasonable and willing to change their mind if they see a new angle. Nice try, Sadat!
    - logicallee 10y ago
      shhhh. :-D Yes, I applied the tool the article was about to see if it would work. (It's probably the first time I've ever used that formula in my life.) You'll notice the poster let it be (if they noticed my reply). I'd like to see it in action though, so it would be better if they chose to reply so I could get that data point haha. I'll probably forget to start using it soon.
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >If there's a situation where priming might work, it's when the person being primed has either no particular opinion on that issue or when they're in agreement with it. That's generally true. However, that's often the case in salary and pricing negotiations. Unless you have done your research first, you will be influenced by priming. I bought a house. I'm not good at handy work. I need to hire a handyman to repair a few things. Do you know how difficult it is to get a good estimate on how much repairs should cost? There's a skill building workshop I want to attend. With these kinds of workshops, you usually attend only once, so you don't have prior experience with costs. What should I pay?

tpeo 10y ago

I did read the article. But I didn't consider the first bit as a throwaway, and this might be the key issue here. If there's a situation where priming might work, it's when the person being primed has either no particular opinion on that issue or when they're in agreement with it. I personally have strong priors against the effectiveness of advertisement and propaganda. I don't think the effects of these things are robust to different behavioural patterns and to increases in public awareness. So I didn't think of the first paragraph as a 'throwaway' bit.

logicallee 10y ago
you strike me as someone who's reasonable and willing to change their mind if they see a new angle. So you seemed to be saying that the author wrote a whole article on how one can be much more persuasive by getting someone to agree to some general statement without actually expressing something particular about it -- without the author actually then doing so. :) I mean, it would be like reading an article about how "short titles are better" so you agree with all of the points, then as a final check you scroll up to the top of the page and see that the article is titled "How shorter titles increase clickthrough rates, sharing rates, impact score, reading of the full article, and are basically better in every way -- according to research by Facebook." A long article about how short titles are better, but where the article itself doesn't have one. That would be an example of an article not practicing what it preaches. How about our article? Do you think it does or doesn't "practice what it preaches"? Does it try to "pre-suade" some measure of agreement? Does it start by talking about general statements, before it gets into its thesis? What do you think?
- firethief 10y ago
  > you strike me as someone who's reasonable and willing to change their mind if they see a new angle. Nice try, Sadat!
  - logicallee 10y ago
    shhhh. :-D Yes, I applied the tool the article was about to see if it would work. (It's probably the first time I've ever used that formula in my life.) You'll notice the poster let it be (if they noticed my reply). I'd like to see it in action though, so it would be better if they chose to reply so I could get that data point haha. I'll probably forget to start using it soon.
BeetleB 10y ago
>If there's a situation where priming might work, it's when the person being primed has either no particular opinion on that issue or when they're in agreement with it. That's generally true. However, that's often the case in salary and pricing negotiations. Unless you have done your research first, you will be influenced by priming. I bought a house. I'm not good at handy work. I need to hire a handyman to repair a few things. Do you know how difficult it is to get a good estimate on how much repairs should cost? There's a skill building workshop I want to attend. With these kinds of workshops, you usually attend only once, so you don't have prior experience with costs. What should I pay?