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This Is Why Learning Persuasion Can Get You More Money and Love

10.14.2009 · Posted in Home and Garden Articles

There has been much debate among scientists regarding the reason for humankind’s big brain. Or at least big compared to our body size and compared to all the other mammals.nnHow did this happen? Why are we the Earth’s chosen animals? Why didn’t the anteater grow a big brain? Some say it is because we use tools, or had to move around a lot in our past, or live through different weather conditions, like ice ages. Some say the driving force behind our huge brains was the development of language.nnSo why then, did we develop language? Many animals migrate thousands of miles every year, and don’t require any complicated speech.nnWhen you think about language as a tool, it might be easier to understand. What do we use this tool for? Chopping down trees? Language may be the most versatile tool ever.nnMost will say we use language to convey information, details, data. A pure stream of information. But is that really the case? Do we merely to exchange data with each other like so many computers?nnA growing number of evolutionary psychologists are starting to agree that the real purpose behind language is persuasion. To influence. To manipulate each other into our way of thinking.nnIf you remember crying when you were younger, wasn’t that the most basic tool of manipulation? To try and get a parent or adult to come over and pick you up and take care of you?nnWhen you look at language from this perspective, it starts to make sense that persuasion is at the heart of all our communication. Our boss, our partners, our kids. Unless we are sports reporter giving the details of that days match, we are attempting, at some level, to persuade others.nnSo it makes sense, then, that if you are going to automatically use language to persuade others, you may as well get pretty good at it. When two people get together to talk, it may as well be you that has the upper hand.nnOne easy way to persuade others is to elicit and leverage the criteria of others. This means find out what is important to them, and show them covertly that they can achieve that by doing what you want.nnOf course, it goes without saying that this is best done from a win-win mind set. If you set out to take advantage of people, you probably won’t come out very well in the end. But when you make sure everybody gets their needs met, you can quickly become pretty persuasive.

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