UA Psychologist Publishes Research that Enhances the Art of Persuasion

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Persuasion has a new set of tools, according to University of Arkansas psychology professor Eric S. Knowles. Knowles and his colleague, Jay A. Linn, have recently published a book titled "Resistance and Persuasion" that introduces ways to acknowledge and overcome resistance to persuasive arguments or appeals.

Most social influence, marketing and advertising are focused on promoting a product or idea by explaining its benefits, its logic and its usefulness, according to Knowles. He calls these "Alpha Strategies_TM" for persuasion, strategies that promote the advantages of the product.

But influence can take another form, one that is greatly under studied and under used, according to Knowles. This second tactic involves identifying the sources of resistance to persuasion and removing or reducing them. Knowles calls these "Omega Strategies_TM" because Omega is the Greek symbol for resistance.

Knowles and Linn explain these strategies in their book and provide the experimental evidence behind them.

"One of the most effective strategies is not to create resistance in the first place," said Knowles. One way to sidestep resistance is to minimize the request. For instance, Knowles’ colleague in the psychology department, David Schroeder, conducted a study showing that the proportion of people contributing to the American Cancer Society increased by 21 percent when a door-to-door solicitor added the phrase, "even a penny will help" to a request for donations. Interestingly, the average donation was nearly the same with or without the added phrase. Knowles believes that this simple phrase worked by reducing the donor’s resistance, by saying, in effect, "This is not a big deal."

The research reveals other subtle ways of minimizing resistance. One strategy that can be effective is to push the resistance into the future, away from the decision, because future events are evaluated differently than immediate events. Research has shown that future events are evaluated more generally, by the overall purposes and goals of a decision, whereas evaluation of immediate events is much more colored by the details, hassles and problems of implementation.

Thus, asking someone to make a future commitment often generates less resistance than asking them to make a present commitment. An example of this strategy would be deferred payment plans, which allow a customer to take a product immediately but not pay for the product for several months.

Knowles’ Omega Strategies_TM also can be used to reduce resistance. Guarantees of various sorts are the most direct way to deal with resistance, Knowles said, because they give customers assurance that foreseeable drawbacks to buying a product will not be costly or problematic. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, most famously employed this tactic when he implemented the policy of "Satisfaction guaranteed," which became the basis for Wal-Mart’s liberal return policy.

In addition to reducing or avoiding resistance, Knowles’ recent research has looked at ways to disrupt the resistance system, to make it less applicable to a decision. He has found, for instance, that unusual phrases, such as calling toothpaste by the novel name, "mouthpaste," or stating a price in a unconventional way, such as "these note cards are 300 pennies" increases attention to the phrases that follow. He thinks that a buyer’s wariness is momentarily disrupted so that the buyer can be more receptive to the message that follows.

Simply acknowledging resistance also seems to disrupt its operation. Knowles finds that adding an acknowledging phrase, such as, "I know you might not want to do this, but..." paradoxically makes people more willing to comply with the following request. Adding, "I know you probably don’t agree" before a statement makes a statement more believable, he said.

The Knowles and Linn book "Resistance and Persuasion" covers the distinction between the Alpha and Omega strategies of persuasion, analyzes the role of resistance in persuasion and presents a number of new and novel strategies for overcoming resistance to change. The book presents original ideas and research assembled from a distinguished, international set of authors. It describes the latest theory and research on addressing resistance as a way to increase persuasion.

Knowles is a professor in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The book is available through the publisher, Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, at www.erlbaum.com and at the University of Arkansas bookstore. To read more about Knowles’ research visit his Web site at www.uark.edu/~omega.