Using Contrasts In Persuasion

• Contrasts can make things appear better than they are.
• Contrasts can make women more or less attractive!
• Contrasts can cause you to spend lots of money!

In these final articles on persuasion, we shall be taking a closer look at some other important persuasion techniques.

These techniques in addition to the information already discussed, will help you become a better communicator and persuader. So let’s start by looking at the first technique.

Contrast

The contrast technique can be used whenever you want to make something appear better or worse than it actually is.

It simply involves comparing one thing (e.g. a bad house) against another thing (e.g. a nice house). The greater the difference between these two things (contrast) the more powerful your intended affect will be.

The contrast technique is effective because it takes advantage of the way our brain processes information. This involves a natural tendency of the brain to compare new information, with previously stored information.

The original information is used as a benchmark, which the new information is then compared and contrasted to.

Attractiveness After Contrast

To demonstrate the contrast principle, researchers ran an experiment with young males to rate the attractiveness of potential blind dates, after watching a TV programme which starred beautiful attractive ladies.

The experiment found that for the men who had viewed the TV programme, they consistently rated the blind dates as being far less attractive than the men who did not watch the TV programme.

In other words, seeing beautiful women on TV caused men to see real women as less attractive and less desirable.

The contrast principle is often used by women when going out together looking for men (either intentionally or unintentionally).

Very rarely do you see lots of attractive women in the same group. Usually it is much more common for a reasonably attractive girl, to go out with several less attractive friends. By contrast, this makes her appear much more attractive and desirable to other men.

Contrasting And Advertising

The contrast principle is frequently used in selling and advertising. For example, when real estate agents try to sell somebody a house, often they will show you the worst house first before showing you the house they really want to sell you. By contrast the house will appear more attractive than it actually is.

In selling the contrast principle can also be applied to money, with the intention of getting you spend more. A good salesman knows that by selling you a large expensive item first, such as a computer, car or expensive suit, getting you to buy smaller less expensive accessory items becomes a lot easier.

Often these smaller items are vastly overpriced (and where the salesman really makes their money) however by contrast to the expensive item, the extra money does not seem very much.

The contrast principle can therefore be used to shape both your own and other people’s opinions, in all sorts of different ways.

Use it to your advantage wisely, and you will have an extremely powerful technique to add to your persuasion toolkit.