How Physical Attractiveness And Similarity Influence Persuasion
- Good looks can increase how persuasive you are perceived to be.
- Being similar to another person can make you more persuasive and likable.
- Good looks and similarity are a powerful combination for persuasion.
Out of all the various personality characteristics, being likable is in my opinion by far the most important. Likable people are not only more persuasive, but are also far more likely to be forgiven and helped when things go wrong.
This can prove to be a tremendous advantage in life because if someone doesn’t like you, you can say and do all the right things and it won’t make a difference.
The simple fact is, if people like you, your life will be far easier and much more satisfying than if people don’t like you.
In this article we are going to be taking a look at some of the factors that make a person likable, and how you can increase your likability with the aim of becoming a more persuasive and socially successfully individual.
Physical Attractiveness
You may or may not be pleased to discover this, but being physically attractive can make you a more persuasive and likable person.
Although the exact reason for this is unknown, it is believed that our appearance communicates to others our overall health and the types of genes we have.
The more attractive you are, the better your genes are likely to be, which means the better your chances are of producing successful and healthy offspring.
Attractive people also tend to have wider eyes or “baby faces”. It has been shown that people with baby faces are seen to be more trustworthy and nicer people, than those with more rugged or larger faces.
Attractiveness In Advertising
The fact that physical attractiveness can make you a more persuasive person is a widely known in the advertising industry.
Research has shown that when attractive women are used to promote certain products, such as cars, viewers are likely to rate that car as having a better design and being more expensive than if no woman was present.
What this means is that by using attractive people to advertise a product, advertisers are able to create a bias towards their product, without the viewer even being aware a bias exists.
In other words, attractive people can make you like something more, without you even realizing why.
As a result, virtually all advertisements (especially those targeted towards younger generations) make an effort to use attractive female and male models.
Trust And Honesty
Another benefit of physical attractiveness is how people perceive your character. Physically attractive people are more likely to be labeled as talented, kind, honest and intelligent. All crucial factors needed for successful persuasion.
The fact that attractiveness can have such a powerful impact on how others perceive your character, is well known by politicians.
Attractive politicians are likely to receive more votes, and stand a greater chance of being elected, than unattractive politicians.
This is why public figures make every effort to ensure they are always appropriately dressed and appear healthy in public. Very rarely will you see a sick politician for example.
Attractiveness And Justice
Another example of how important attractiveness can be comes from research done with criminals at court cases.
Researchers found that the more attractive the defendant was, the more likely they were to be found not guilty or receive a lesser sentence.
Attractiveness And Careers
When it comes to business and careers, good looking men and women tend to have a head start over their less attractive colleagues.
The better looking you are, the greater the chances that people will look favorably upon you and your work, and the greater the chances that you will be promoted.
Attractiveness Isn’t Everything
There is no doubt that physical attractiveness can give someone an unfair advantage, and because it can be so important in your life and career, you should make every effort to increase your attractiveness to the best of your ability.
Things that everyone can improve on include: hair, smile, clothes, voice, body size and body language.
It is important to note that not being physically attractive does not mean you will be unable to persuade someone, neither does it mean you can rely solely on your looks to persuade.
Limitations Of Attractiveness
Attractiveness has less of an impact when people are motivated to think hard about the quality of your message. Therefore attractiveness tends to be more useful for mindless persuasion, rather than when we are required to think about something.
Also attractiveness is of little advantage in situations where it seems inappropriate.
For example, we don’t expect doctors to be sensationally attractive, so the looks of a doctor are unlikely to affect how persuasive we perceive them to be.Â
Whilst physical attractiveness certainly is an important factor in becoming a likable person, the things you have in common with a person can be equally important.
This is because whilst being attractive can help you make a good first impression, if you don’t have anything in common, your chances of a successful longer term relationship decrease dramatically.
So in other words, to maintain likability you also need to have some degree of similarity with a person.
Similarity And Persuasion
People tend to like people who are like themselves. This means the more interests you have in common with a person, the more similar they will feel to you, and the more they will like you.
Perhaps the best example of using similarity to create likability comes from salespeople.
To create a sense of rapport with their client, salespeople are taught to search for similarities.
This can include where they were born, where they grew up, their favorite sports team, or anything else that they can use to make the client feel they have something in common with them.
By creating similarities, the salesperson is able to tell the client they are just like them, this helps to deepen trust, develop rapport, and most importantly, make the sale!
Here are some key points to consider when trying to create a sense of similarity with someone:
Similar Attitude
Have a similar attitude to the person you are trying to persuade or influence. If they think that you think just like them, they are more likely to listen and agree with you.
Similar Background
Have a similar background, history or life experience as another person. If you had a very easy luxurious life, but the person you are trying to influence had a hard life, they are unlikely to relate well to you and may even resent you.
Similar Appearance
If you look similar to another person, such as by the clothes you wear, you will be seen as being more like them and belonging to their social group. Dress radically different, and you may be seen as an outsider.
Similar Morals
If you have similar morals to a person you are likely to get on well together. Share different morals, and your words will conflict making persuasion more difficult.
The most important areas to remember are your attitude and morals. This is because when somebody thinks like we do, we put up less mental resistance to the message because we already agree with it, and believe it to be true.
However when someone thinks different to us we analyze what they say more closely, and are therefore more likely to disagree with it and reject the message.
A word of warning when using similarity in persuasion. Do not try to be exactly similar to another person, otherwise you may be perceived as being false and deliberately trying to mislead them.
If they suspect this of you, your trust and rapport will be lost. So whilst you can be similar to another person, it is a good idea to disagree on minor issues to make conversations interesting and give you something to talk about.
del.icio.us Digg Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati
Email This