Whether it is an important business pitch, a light-hearted argument with friends, or a favor that you are asking of somebody, persuasion is one of the most important elements of interaction. If used properly and effectively, elements of persuasion can be an extremely powerful tool in the manipulation of other people in a social or professional setting, especially when combined with the common belief that one needs to appear powerful among many other things to truly be persuasive. However, many individuals in this day and age still have trouble convincing people or persuading others. 

For those who lack social skills or an understanding of persuasion, the internet has become a helpful tool in learning said skills. Unfortunately, one of the faults in our universal and extensive database is that not all information is credible. For example, the website of Forbes Magazine, arguably one of the most well-known business magazines in the world, hosts a self-help guide on how to effectively persuade. Although one might think that such a commonly used business website would be credible, especially concerning an aspect as crucial in the business world as persuasion, the short list of self-help tools that the guide gives is full of flaws. While the list is not completely off track there are definitely some key aspects of persuasion that the author, Kevin Kruse, has failed to mention or contradicts. Kruse’s guide does not provide the easy answers that he claims it does and is not universally applicable because of his decision to include components that only address a specific argumentative situation. The list should only include concepts that can be used in a social interaction within the confines of a business or professional setting which is why it is not appropriate to have the argumentative concepts on the list. In addition, the idea that he indirectly promotes, that power is a necessity for the effective persuasion of others, is not a universal truth. 

Kruse calls his first point of persuasion, “Give a Shortcut by Alluding to Others.” He writes, “It’s as easy as talking about how other people made the same decision when they were in the other person’s shoes. If you don’t have someone specific, you can feel free to use loose terms such as “many people,” or even make an assumptive statement such as “I’m sure they would…”” (Kruse, pg 1).  As part of a larger step called “consensus,” this element in the list has been scientifically proven to help persuade (Cialdini). The basis of consensus is this: when an audience that someone is trying to persuade sees that a large group of other people are making a certain choice regarding the same decision that the audience is facing, more often than not, the audience will choose to also perform that action. In other words, “People will look to the actions of others to determine their own” (Cialdini). Dr. Robert Cialdini explains the situation in a video on persuasion, in which he cites the example of how a hotel might put a sign in your bathroom urging you to reuse your towels (Cialdini). The common reasoning that these signs give is that it is better for the environment to reuse your towels. Seeing that reasoning motivates about 35% of guests to comply. However, when a hotel instead chooses to use the power of consensus, the results are different. A hotel that put “75% of our guests reuse their towels, please do as well,” on their signs in the bathroom had a 26% increase of towel reuse in their hotels (Cialdini). This concept is fairly straightforward and speaks to our inherent human urge to follow trends, as well as the fact that humans tend to fall victim to what Kruse calls “decision fatigue”, which helps us gravitate towards shortcuts when making a tough decision. Both consensus and decision fatigue are important aspects of persuasion, and Kruse’s article is right to note as much. 

However, Kruse also says that one of the key components of persuasion is to “Keep it Simple”. He explains this point by saying, “Whatever you want to persuade people to do, make sure it’s easy to digest, understand, and is as simple as possible. The reason? We’re lazy and confuse easily” (Kruse, pg 1). This is a valid point that speaks for itself in some ways. Research shows that “Simplicity provides meaning to your audience”(Shah). If the person you are trying to convince doesn’t understand what is being presented to them, then they are more likely to disagree or ignore your suggestion. Especially in a business situation, where the audience may be investing a lot of money and placing their trust in you, there is no way they will invest without a complete understanding of where their money is going. In such a case, being clear in your desired outcome, like gaining an investor for a specific reason, can help in moving along the conversation past the point of indecision and towards the logistical part of the discussion. However, simplifying everything and making it as easy to understand as possible can also sometimes do the opposite. Some research says to keep your true desired outcome a secret (Shah). 

In fact, while articles say to keep a good balance between openness and secrecy, they usually say to stay away from presenting your true intention. If you are too candid all the reasoning that you present will be judged by the outcome, which may not end up in your favor (Shah). Although keeping it simple and laying all the facts out can sometimes be good tactics, applying this step to all situations involving persuasion is not possible, and not always a good idea. The conversations and causes for which people use persuasion tactics are often very complicated, like politics, which is a field that is built on persuasion but in which sharing facts does not necessarily get a result. For example, one study found that providing voters with more information on a specific candidate made them more knowledgeable but did not increase turnout (Cruz et al, 1). The research shows that simplicity and sharing all the facts can be key where applicable but are not useful in all cases. Kruse is not wrong to present these as an element of persuasion, but given the fact that his self-help list is

 meant to provide general guidelines rather than suggestions for specific cases, these components should not be included. The next main point that Kruse emphasizes is to “Control the Frame”: “We need to come from a place of expertise and when our idea or position is challenged, we should act with disbelief and shock that the other side isn’t accepting our position at face value. This display of massive confidence can lead others to think, ‘Wow, he’s really sure about that. Wait… Am I wrong?’” (Kruse, pg 2). Confidence is key to any social interaction going smoothly, especially if it has to do with how much you believe in the product you are selling or the opinion that you hold, but research highlights that authority plays a larger role than confidence, an important difference that Kruse does not focus on. Confidence is a simple concept and has more to do with interaction than persuasion. Rather than confidence, the presenter should show authority or credibility in his or her field. This is something that shows the reliability of the presenter when it comes to his or her subject. Professionals, for instance, often use diplomas to show authority by putting them on the walls of their offices. However, rather than boasting of your expertise, the key to authority is to show it almost as if by accident, or to have somebody else give you high praise (Cialdini). 

While many people think that you must be in a position of power over the audience to effectively persuade them, as Cialdini notes, authority is a much more effective tool. Authority and power are not the same thing at all, even if they can send a similar message. Authority shows how good someone is at their job, while power is more about flaunting your control, rather than displaying a tangible reason why your audience should trust your judgment. Studies actually show that an audience listens better to someone who is at the same social or professional level that they are. For example, in one experiment, scientists observed the audience and communicator relationship between both high power and low power roles on both ends and the results showed that high power communicators were most effective on high power audiences and low power communicators were most effective on low power audiences (Dubois et al, pg 72-73). This shows that instead of power, being credible and personable are what is most important in the art of persuasion. Again, while Kruse’s take comes close, it does not get to the core of what makes for good persuasion.

As the list goes on, the guidelines are a blend of accurate, inaccurate, too specific, and too argumentative. For example, Kruse’s next rule of thumb is something called “Praeteritio”. He writes that praeteritio sounds like, ““I’m not going to do you the indignity of bringing up when you were arrested. You’ve suffered enough from that” (Kruse, pg 2). By virtue of saying that you do not want to bring something up, you manage to include it in the conversation. As a tactic, it is a little underhanded, but it also gives you plausible deniability, which means that people won’t be able to call out exactly what you’re doing because you’re phrasing it in a “high road” manner.” This concept is a traditional rhetorical tactic, and is arguably a valid one for Kruse to include. Despite the fact that this is a traditional rhetorical concept, it should not be placed on a list published in Forbes Magazine because it is more argumentative than professionally sound. While Kruse is not completely wrong to include praeteritio in the list, he still misses a valuable tool: scarcity.

Scarcity is the concept that when something seems less accessible or more exclusive it also becomes more desirable. This is a well-known principle in economics: when a product’s supply goes down, the demand for it goes up. The rarity of a product or an idea makes it more valuable and this is key in persuasion when it comes to getting the audience interested in what you’re saying. United Airways provided a real life example of scarcity when they announced in 2003 that they would no longer be operating the twice daily London New York Concorde flight because it was uneconomical. They changed it to one flight a day, and the following day after the announcement sales went through the roof. Nothing changed about the flight itself, but because there were fewer opportunities to take the trip, more people bought the ticket (Cialdini). In a business pitch, an example of scarcity would be prefacing your presentation with a sentence that creates scarcity, like “not many people know about this” or “this is a secret in the business world.” Sentences like these interest the audience and put them on alert for something that they might not know about. Given its real-world applications and role as a classical concept in economics and business, scarcity should be included in a top 5 list of important aspects of persuasion as opposed to Praeteritio, especially in a business oriented magazine such as Forbes. Kruse makes a mistake in missing this key aspect.

Kruse’s last point of persuasion is to “Embrace the Status Quo”. He writes: 

“If you wanted to plant the idea of vacationing at the beach, you might say to your partner, “I’m glad we’re going to do a staycation this summer. I mean, it would have been nice to unplug and relax at the beach for a week, but I’m looking forward to getting the garage cleaned up finally.”

 In a nutshell, you are talking around the idea, staying positive, and mentioning the benefits – most importantly, you are embracing the downsides, which ensure that there is zero pressure or expectation on the other person. You’re saying that you’re happy with the status quo, but just thinking out loud.” 

While this may work for planning a vacation with a significant other, overall, embracing the status quo may not be the a go-to way to persuade someone in a business related situation.  Research shows that people disproportionately stick with the status quo when they make decisions, a phenomenon known as the “status quo bias” (Samuelson and Zeckhauser,pg 8). It is unclear what effect persuasion may have on such a clearly demonstrated preference, and Kruse’s insistence that embracing the status quo will encourage people to move away from the status quo rather than keeping it is not merited as previously stated by the concept of Consensus. 

Instead of this step, which is unclear in terms of how it accomplishes its goals, I think Kruse should have mentioned “Liking”. “Liking” is a basic principle of social interaction, but also very important in the act of persuasion. If you don’t like the person interacting with you, the chances of you caring about what they’re saying are slim to none. According to Cialdini, “liking” is broken into 3 main components, the first of which is similarity. Studies show that we as humans perform better working in groups if we have established a similarity between us and our partners (Cialdini). Finding or creating similarities and giving compliments are the other two components that are important to follow before starting business or persuasive conversations because they lighten the atmosphere and make it considerably easier to interact with the other person. The last component of liking is cooperation, which means that someone is more likely to listen to you if you offer them help of your own in the task that you want them to do. This concept is similar to that of leading by example. As noted earlier, people are better persuaded by others who are perceived to be at their same level of social hierarchy—people who are helping them or participating in the task together, rather than sticking to their higher status and refusing to collaborate. Cooperating destroys any boundaries between you and the audience you are trying to persuade making you, as the speaker, more trustworthy and personable.

Overall, the fact that a business oriented magazine as renowned as Forbes has chosen to publish a list with so many argumentative weaknesses is concerning, especially since that list is supposed to be focused on persuasion. Although Kruse seems to have a general grasp on certain concepts that are important when it comes to persuasion, such as “Alluding to Others”, “Keeping It Simple”, and overall Confidence, he misses out on some key aspects of persuasion, specifically “Scarcity” and “Liking,” and confuses power for authority. The main flaw in his list is that, instead of actually making a cohesive argument of his own, Kruse refers to another author’s work, Patrick King’s “Persuasion Tactics,” almost exclusively. The book he references obviously has a much more in-depth perspective on the topic of persuasion, and it is a distinct possibility that Kruse picked five aspects of persuasion from the book at seemingly random points and comprised them into something that resembles a Top 5 List. 

For someone who needs help in learning the basic components of persuasion, this list would be a really hard piece of work to decipher after a certain point. The first couple of points that he makes are thoughtful and follow the general scientific knowledge of persuasion, but some of the other steps in his guide are too specific or not universally effective enough for a Top 5 guide. The list is a weak representation of the key concepts needed to understand how to effectively persuade. As a single representation of the larger category involving self-help lists focused on persuasion, this list lacks the corroboration by scientific research and studies that underlines the key concepts that Kruse ignores. An individual would be lost if he looked to a self-help list for answers simply judging from this specific representation. Given the fact that many people still struggle with the art of persuasion, it follows that doing additional research is a necessary step if you are hoping to learn the best ways to persuade someone. Even a magazine as renowned as Forbes has included this faulty piece, which blends relevant information with steps that are unhelpful and too specific. Nothing but concrete research and information from a reliable and perhaps even scientific source should be suitable for extensive information on this topic.
