Healthy Influence Blog

We need to share a vocabulary of persuasion so that we can communicate effectively in this blog.  Short of buying a book and reading it, here’s a quick primer of key persuasion concepts.  Let’s take a WAC at it.

Imagine a photograph of any persuasion moment:  Mom and Dad arguing about locking the liquor cabinet and How Long Brittney Gets Grounded, a sales associate encouraging you to add a groovy accessory to your latest purchase, you encouraging a friend to drink less and exercise more.  The scene is people using words to change the way freely choosing other people think, feel, or act.  Persuasion.

Now, every element in that picture fits into one of three persuasion categories:  WATTage, Arguments, or Cues.

WATTage is a clever acronym for Willingness and Ability to Think.  If you are high WATT you are motivated and enabled to think carefully and effortfully about the persuasion situation.  If you are low WATT, you are still thinking, but not with much motivation or effort.  With only this high-low distinction, its obvious that persuasion operates differently depending on our WATTage.  When the light of your mind burns brightly, you are actively engaged, concentrated, focused.  When the light is dim, but still lit, your mind is otherwise engaged.  Most folks most of the time cruise through life in a low WATT state because they can always dial up the dimmer switch to high WATT as needed.

Arguments contain anything of central importance to the persuasion situation.  Typically persuasion arguments are facts, evidence, reasoning, statistical analysis, etc., but sometimes a pretty face and a hot body are arguments – if you are a cosmetic surgeon running an ad to sell your services, for example.  The key is whether the information is of central importance to the persuasion situation.  Sometimes, it’s Just The Facts, Ma’mam and sometimes it’s that Pretty Face.  If it’s crucial info, it’s an argument.

Cues are persuasion variables that influence without requiring much thinking.  That pretty face on top of a hot body might be a strong argument for the cosmetic surgeon’s ad, but as a sponsor of the new Tax Legislation, probably not.  Cues are often bright and shiny things that jiggle and shake like the spinners you put on a fish reel to lure in the fish.  Gee, I really like her, sure I’ll sign that petition.  Gee, she’s really an expert on this, sure I’ll sign that petition.

The WAC combines into a simple diagram like this

(Okay, quiz time, my pretties, what does WAC mean?)

The WAC always applies in every realtime persuasion event.  Freeze the frame and classify everything into one category:  WATTage, argument, or cue.  Now, realize that in a new persuasion event, everything can change.  Instead of the receiver rocking along the Central Route with high WATT processing of Arguments, she’s now ambling along the Peripheral Route, a low WATT processor of Cues.  Persuasion is like life, fluid, changing, dyanmic, the same river you can never step into twice.

But, the WAC always applies.