How To Persuade Someone To Change Her Attitude

How To Persuade Someone To Change Her Attitude

Attitudes often seem very rigid and very unchangeable. It is common belief that only when a critical life event happens, attitudes change. This is true for the biggest part. Something shocking can indeed change an attitude. However, it can change in any direction. Assume you could cause a critical event to change someones attitude. You would probably succeed, but that attitude may very well change to become even more negative than it was before.

If an attitude is intended to change, it must have a direction, a purpose that is not self-serving and most importantly the change must be desired for by the owner of that attitude. So if you want to change someones attitude, it must be towards a desireable outcome; desireable to her, not you. Therefore, precision is required.

You must define a particular topic or issue and then present your arguments. Be fair and present the cons and the pros of that attitude. Then present your wish in a short and clear way. For example: "I want you to check in with me when you are out at night at least once." Now here comes the part where you must use your persuasion magic. The other person needs to be convinced of the fact that it is useful if she checks in with you. In order to be convincing, you must evoke thoughts in the other person that he agrees with.

If you try to tell your teenager to do this to not get kidnapped or worse at night, it will not be persuaded, simply because a teenager cannot intake the parental perspective yet. Try thinking from the teenagers perspective. For instance, she may have a boyfriend. If he didnt call at night she would be worried or thinking that he ran off with someone else.

Ask her: How would you feel if Jonathan went out at night with his friends and didnt tell you about it?

And then get to your point: You see, this is why I would like you to check in with me, I worry like you would with Jonathan.

Not only have you then evoked agreement, but you have also promoted understanding both ways. Just remember, that you are not to put up pressure or use this to manipulate someone. Caution is required here. Your goal is only to generate an interaction between your thoughts and her thoughts, mainly by only asking questions to get to your point. If you try to persuade with the intent of manipulation, you will most likely destroy the trust that someone has in you.

So make sure, that you always have good intentions in mind, that you are selfless when persuading for a good purpose, and that you can only forward one thought at a time. We are after all not articial intelligences that can multi-process several messages equally at the same time.

Posted in: Psychology