Written by Atlas
Imposing your will on people is not always a matter of coercive power. Your best shot is to make your subjects commit to a decision they believe to be their own.
Persuasion is about getting it done. We are constantly confronted with the desire, if not the need, to convince and to persuade. If politics is made only of persuasion, everyone is confronted, from time to time, with the need to persuade.
Raising a child, applying for a job, or finding accommodation requires this ability.
However, winning membership is not self-evident. It is a complex exercise that requires skill and tact since persuasion is not always what you think.
As you already know, people stick to the decisions they think they made themselves.
The escalation of commitment is a principle of auto manipulation inducing a phenomenon of rationalizing decisions, under the condition that it was willingly taken. Or so they think…
Once your subject makes a decision, he will never question it, even if the result does not yield a satisfying result. Better: You don’t need to legitimize or to rationalize the situation. Only to preserve the initial decision.
This technique is widely used (and abused).
Imagine the following situations:
Let’s say some company made you an offer to participate in a free game where the prize is to win a sumptuous journey. Just before the final round of potential winners, you are asked to buy a good or a service… More than 80% of participants would give in.
You might think that you are immune to such techniques, but in reality, chances are you would give in too. Later, you’re told that the journey has been canceled, but you won a magnificent home decoration.
All you can do by then is to convince yourself that despite everything, it’s a nice gift anyway. You just got harpooned.
In terms of social influence, escalation of commitment is one of the most powerful tools.
It is because it plays on the assumed resignation, and the coherence between the initial choice, and decisional intelligence.
No one wants to believe himself to be a victim of manipulation, your subject will most often rationalize what happened. He will comfort himself with the idea that what he obtained, even if it’s far from the original promise, is still a benefit.
It’s a process that works on the narcissistic part inside of every human being. The escalation of commitment is also possible due to the impossibility of making a decision against the initial choice.
From there, the situation becomes stressful and complex, even if the subject is perfectly aware of what is happening. The human brain is a lazy motherfucker, it will always seek the easiest path. The human coward self will always win its wars against objectivity.
