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December 09, 2004
How do you encourage self-persuasion?
Eliot Aronson describes an excellent account of self-persuasion in his book, Age of Propaganda. During WWII, a curious agency called the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Committee on Food Habits realized it had a problem: People were throwing away most meat and eating only the desirable parts. Because there were shortages of certain high-protein foods, they enlisted social psychologist Kurt Lewin to persuade greater consumption of the undesirable parts (kidneys, intestines, etc). He gathered a group of housewives together and gave them a credible lecture on the benefits of eating kidneys, intestines, etc. Then he split the housewives into 2 groups: Group 1 simply received the lecture and went home. Of these women, only 3% served intestines. Group 2 was asked "Do you think housewives like yourselves could be persuaded to participate in the intestinal meat program?" As they discussed this, slowly but surely they came up with reasons and ideas to encourage eating intestinal meat--all the while, it turned out, persuading themselves. How do we know? Compared to the 3% of women serving intestinal meat in Condition 1, 32% of these women saw the benefits and served intestinal meat to their families. Self-persuasion is a subtle, technique that allows individuals to create cognitive arguments to support a position they hold. It's difficult to do--but it's one of the most effective strategies out there. What about contemporary examples?
Amazon's New Persuasion Technique: Sharing Your Customer Images After you upload pictures of you using your product, guess what happens?
-You become more committed to the product
-If you had any doubts about the product, this helps to erase them (we seek out confirming information after making a decision)
-You probably show your friends! Very clever.
Posted by at December 9, 2004 09:10 AM
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