How Mood Affects Persuasion

• Fear is a powerful motivator of human behaviour.
• Learn how to use fear successfully in persuasion.
• Consider the persons mood before you persuade!

Vivid language, metaphors, analogies and stories are all effective persuasion tools because they tap into our emotions. The emotions they create, then inspire action.

If you have used these tools correctly, this action will occur as the person doing what you wanted them to do or believing what you wanted them to believe. When this occurs, your persuasion attempt has been a success.

Because emotions are so important in persuasion, in this article we are going to be taking a closer look at emotions, and how they relate directly to the success or failure of a persuasion attempt.

Fear

Of all our emotions, fear is perhaps the most powerful of all human motivators.

Fear can restrict action, such as by preventing you from doing or experiencing something.

Or fear can promote action, such as by motivating you to buy something like an alarm system or insurance.

When it comes to persuasion, fear can therefore be used to get someone do something, or prevent someone from doing something. A good example of this can be seen with governments who use the fear to justify war, or fear to justify passing certain laws.

Acting Like Animals

One of the main reasons why fear is such a powerful motivator is because when we feel threatened or in danger, our ancient “reptilian brain” takes over. This can cause us to react irrationally, and without really thinking about the situation. In extreme cases, fear can cause people to act like animals.

When we are not in fear, we use a different and newer part of our brain to weigh up the pros and cons of a situation, causing us to react logically rather than irrationally.

For more information about this, read the following article : Welcome To Your 3 Brains

As you can see, fear can therefore be an extremely powerful persuasion tool, because it causes a person to react in a way that makes persuasion easiest for you. This is called mindlessly responding to persuasion.

Using Fear Successfully For Persuasion 

In order for fear to be successfully used in persuasion, it must meet four conditions:

1. Your statement must really scare the person. The threat must seem real, and have direct consequences to them.
2. You must offer a specific recommendation on how to overcome this threat.
3. The person must believe your recommendation will work and be effective.
4. The person must believe that they can easily carry out the recommendation.

If you can successfully meet these four conditions, you will be able to use fear to persuade people into taking certain action.

This process is sometimes referred to as a problem, reaction, solution response or PRS. You create a problem, get a reaction then offer a solution.

Lets take a look at a real example of this:

Purpose of persuasion : To get the British public to support a war in Iraq.

Condition 1 -

Scare The People

In England we were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that could reach England in around 90 minutes if Saddam Hussein fired them at us.

Condition 2 -

Offer A Recommendation To Overcome The Threat

The UK Labour Government under Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the British people that in order to eliminate this threat we needed to remove Saddam Hussein. Unless Saddam left Iraq, this would be done with military force.

Condition 3 -

The People Must Believe The Recommendation Will Work

By removing Saddam, and finding the weapons of mass destruction, there would no longer be any threat to Britain.

Condition 4 -

The People Can Easily Carry Out The Recommended Action

It didn’t take much action on behalf of the public. All they had to do was support the war.

Fear Of Loss

Another type of fear is the fear of loss. It has been found that in general, people are more motivated by the prospect of loosing something they already have, than at the prospect of gaining something they don’t have.

In other words, if you think you are going to loose something, you will be more motivated into taking some kind of action, than you would be if you thought you might gain something.

So if you wanted to use fear in persuasion, stressing the potential losses or negative consequences of not taking a certain action are good ways to motivate people. If you have a look at various advertisements, you can see this technique used a lot.

Power of mood

One thing that is commonly overlooked when attempting persuasion is a persons mood. In a good mood people are far more likely to listen and agree with what you are saying, than if they were in a bad mood.

Good moods tend to lower a person’s defenses, whereas bad moods raise defenses making persuasion more difficult.

When attempting persuasion, you should therefore always assess a persons mood before trying to influence them in one direction or another.

If a person is in a good mood, go ahead with your persuasion attempt, or approach them at times they are likely to be feeling happy.

However, should a person be in a bad mood, do not attempt persuasion unless it is your only opportunity to do so. Instead pick another day, or try to change the mood of that person. Some effective ways to change a persons mood are through the use of music and humour.

Humour And Persuasion

Humour is an extremely powerful tool to possess in your persuasion toolkit. When you make someone laugh you cause that person to release endorphins in the body, which physically makes them feel good.

If you can do this often enough, soon they will learn to associate you with a good feeling, thereby making you a more likable person in their eyes.

In terms of persuasion, humor is useful because it can quickly gain you attention, rapidly create rapport and make you and your message more memorable. In addition, it can also relieve tension, decrease a persons stress levels and motivate people.

All these factors add up to make you be perceived as a more likable and nicer person. Once someone likes you, their defenses are lowered, which means less resistance to any persuasion attempts. You should therefore make it an absolute top priority to become a person people like to be around.

You can use the techniques I have been discussing so far in these articles on persuasion, however it is often said that your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.

So if you don’t truly like yourself, and have low self esteem, very rarely will you become a likable person.

If this is the case for you, I suggest reading the articles I have written about understanding and improving your level of self esteem.

How To Use Humour

When using humour to persuade, make sure it is relevant to the conversation or topic. Use humour to introduce, summarise or highlight certain key points to give them added impact in the listeners mind.

Your humour should make a point or state a fact in a humorous way, as this will increase the likelihood of its acceptance by the listener.

However be careful when using humour, as people tend to resist humour if it is overused, irrelevant or think that you are purposely trying to be funny.

Remember, you trying to change a persons mood, not trying to impress them. If you can do this with a few humorous remarks, stop and end there. Don’t overdo it.

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