The Lost Art of Persuasion

Virtually all of my clients over the years have shown a strong desire to persuade others that they're right, moral, and worthy of admiration, or at least acceptance.

Their usual explanations of why persuasion is important are:

• Achieving goals and implementing ideas
• Building relationships and social support
• Influencing decisions and actions
• Resolving conflict and driving change.

How often does any of that happen in our polarized world?

A Seeming Paradox

Public discourse these days is marked by great confidence about simple solutions to complex problems. Yet no one seems able to persuade anyone who doesn’t already agree with them. That’s because confidence with implied certainty is more likely to inspire contradicting responses, if not backlash. Confidence can easily come off as patronizing or condescending. It's usually nested in oversimplification and confirmation bias.

Feelings of certainty are the enemy of learning because everything we know highlights what we don’t know. Knowing is an absence of doubt. Self-deception is the suppression of doubt. Self-deception is unlikely to persuade anyone.

Persuasion occurs only with positive regard. You’ll never convince people that you’re right by making them defensive through accusations, criticism, negative characterizations, labelling, name-calling, or other forms of disrespect. Those behaviors are more autobiographical than revealing descriptions of others; that is, they’re laden with projections and biases.

The Feedback Loop of Frustrated Entitlement

Underlying the death of persuasion is a dangerous feedback loop of entitlement and frustration. We seem to feel entitled to control what others think and what they say, which is something we can never achieve. The frustration of entitlements seems unjust, stimulating resentment and anger, which, in turn, renders persuasion less likely to occur, which produces more resentment and anger, which makes persuasion even more elusive.

Anger and resentment prepare us to attack and retaliate; that is, devalue, warn, threaten, intimidate, or harm, overtly or in our heads, any of which may coerce but not persuade.

The strength of the feedback loop is, in part, a result of normal brain processing. Mental focus exaggerates importance. What we focus on becomes more important than what we don’t focus on. People are so focused on their own perspectives that they cannot see, much less tolerate, other people’s. In that sense, we’ve all become narcissistic.

How to Become Narcissistic

It can happen if we read too much on the Internet. A plethora of articles, posts, and blogs inadvertently contribute to monocular vision and impair our ability to see other perspectives alongside our own. Signs that this is happening to us include using catch words like “gaslighting" or “narcissist,” or limiting our understanding of personal and social problems to what can fit on a bumper sticker or sign held up in a political rally or protest. We’re then likely to confuse opinions with scientific findings and accept only the facts that support our prejudices. A less malevolent example of this unfortunate tendency is accepting citations and references as truth, without looking up the cited studies and noting their limitations.

Persuasion and Loss

Some people who suffer loss become more compassionate; some choose resentment and revenge. It’s always a choice. Loss reduces the need to persuade but inflates the perceived need for validation and control.

The Way Out of the Loop

Carl Jung showed us a way out more than a century ago. If offended by close-minded people, be more open-minded. If impatient with judgmental people, be less judgmental. If you get testy around stubborn people, be more cooperative. If you can’t stand to be interrupted, be a better listener. If you can’t take rigid people, be more flexible. If agitated by disrespectful people, be more respectful. If offended by close-minded people, be more open-minded. If impatient with judgmental people, be more curious and less judgmental. If intolerant of mean people, be kinder. If you abhor abusive people, be compassionate to loved ones.