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and legitimate. The author gives an experiment by City University of New York social psychologists Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman and Lawrence Berkowitz. The fourth concept is liking. According to the author, liking means people rather make business or relation with those they like and feel comfortable with. Cialdini shows the Tupperware Corporation as one company, which uses liking as one way to persuade and attract consumers. He also shows some studies that investigate physical attractiveness as a part of persuasion, such as some studies conducted by Peter H. Reingen and Jerome B. Kernan, Michael G. Efran and E.W.J. Patterson, R. Kelly Aune and Michael D. Basil. Moreover, he explains that authority plays an important role in receiving a good response from others. For example, the author compares the effect of illegal action that could be different if the authority of the person is higher. It can lead us to make wrong decisions if authority is used inappropriately. The last tendency that influences human response is scarcity, which has an effect on human opinion. The author demonstrates that people are disposed to choose rare commodities and opportunities. He gives an example that has done by Amram Knishinsky in selling his beef in US. In last part of his article, the author concludes that professionals such as marketers, advertisers, salespeople, fund-raisers and other people whose profit depends on their skill to persuade others to buy or to use their products have applied these concepts. If they cannot apply these tendencies or abilities, they will not survive in their businesses. Finally, the author suggests to the readers that they do not have to be upset if they will be manipulated by those people, because they can make a choice freely by recognizing, understanding persuasion methods, analyzing, selecting needs and contributions.
This article is supported by another article Influence across Culture written by the same author. It says that the influence of human behavior has the same pattern in all human societies, however the social influence process runs differences between cultures. Robert B. Cialdini, who is a Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, wrote this article. He is president of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. By this background, we know that he has sufficient knowledge in this area. It is easy for him to write this article and to attract the readers to read his article. We can see it from the beginning and the end of the article. In introduction, he engages the readers by using a letter, which makes the readers feel closer to the topic, so the reader will get curious to read his article. He also ends his article by applying his idea into one part of persuasive sentences, which contains of six basic concepts that he explained before. According to his language, it clearly shows his tone, positive, promising and playful. He tries to convince the readers by playing with the mind of the readers. He persuades the readers by using persuasive language that he seems to know much about, he knows what the readers think, he deeply knows what the readers will say after they read this article. For instance, the sentences in his letter after he asked some questions to the readers, he confidently continues his sentence by Yes? Then clearly this article is just right for you Absolutely, it is easy for him to do this because he is an expert. This article is published in Scientific American, so it is aimed for general people who are interested in science and its development. At first sight, by reading the title, the readers will expect that the topic is about science or something related to science such as technical science or medical science. Nevertheless, it only discusses about daily situations and actions that happen in our society. It is a part of psychology and human
behavior. The author argues strongly that the science of persuasion is really important in human life and tries to convince the readers how important his idea. Furthermore, he named the factors that influence human behavior by using common words such as social validation, liking and scarcity in order to make the readers understand this article easily. The author uses a wide range of evidence in encouraging the readers about his argument. He provides some studies and examples from credible and reliable research and universities, such as Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman and Lawrence Berkowitz from City University of New York, study in Columbia University, Arizona University and University of Toronto, which are the renowned universities. This evidence will make his argument becomes stronger and trustworthy. He views some nice pictures to explain more about the tendencies and supports his argument that the concepts are common in our society. For instance, he gives the picture of Tupperware Corporation party, which uses liking concept as one way to sell their product and Mc Donald Corporation, which applies scarcity as one method to get big profits. Compared to Sutphens article, Persuasion and Brainwashing Techniques being used on the public today (n.d), there are similar opinions in persuasion technique. Sutphen agrees that persuasion technique will be a good way to attract others and he used it in his article. However, Sutphen warns that this method can bring people to manipulation of human decisions. Someone who knows this technique may use it against the laws and cannot be detected. This condition often cannot be stopped because the user knows how to avoid problems and to manipulate rules. Sutphen gives negative views of persuasion while Cialdini proposes it as a positive idea. Similarly Rank (2003) judges persuasion techniques as a manipulation method to reach the purposes. Rank uses
Political Rhetoric as an example of persuasion disorder. Both Rank and Sutphen point out the persuasion concept in a negative view. Nevertheless, Rank has a similar idea with Cialdini that people should know and understand persuasion techniques so they can analyze and anticipate this technique rather than ignore it and be apathetic. In conclusion, the author tries to convince the readers that the knowledge of persuasion is important in order to persuade someone to do something we ask. Indeed, it is also important for the consumers in case of they have to make decisions to buy or donate some goods or funds. There are six tendencies of human behavior that can influence peoples response to each other. This article was written well to show the role of those basic tendencies in persuading someone. In my opinion, we should read and study more about this topic because by knowing and understanding the weaknesses and the strengths of persuasion technique, we can grasp other people in our hand and be more careful from the other hands that will grasp us.
References: Cialdini, R. B. 2001, The Science of Persuasion, Scientific American, p. 62-67 Rank, H 2003, Political Retoric, Hugh Ranks Teaching Aids, viewed 26 May 2003, <http://www.govst.edu/users/ghrank/Introduction/author.htm> Sutphen, D (n.d), Persuasion and Brainwashing Techniques Being Used on The Public Today, viewed 26 May 2003, <http://www.dcd.net/NBP/persuasn.htm>