Persuasion can be considered as one of the great ivory thrones of influence because with persuasion, you can convince a person to change his mind and adapt your view. Persuasion generally comes from without than from within. Understanding how persuasion works is like finding the key to the human mind. To understand what goes on […]
Influence Academy Blog
How Attitudes Change
What drives a person to change his attitude and potentially, his intention to follow through with a specific behavior? One theory called the cognitive dissonance theory argues that when a person does something that is not in line with his existing attitude toward the object in question, a negative experience results. Now this negative experience […]
Reading Kids vs. Adults
There is no doubt about it – kids are easier to read than adults. Here are some of the main reasons: 1. Kids are still very dependent on instinctual responses to situations. 2. Kids are very speedy when it comes to body language. 3. Kids show basic gestures and expressions when they try to communicate […]
Attitude Formation
When a person behaves or reacts in a negative way to an event, we say that the person has a ‘bad attitude’ or ‘negative attitude’ to that event. The concept of attitude has been in common usage for so long but few people actually know what goes into the creation of a person’s attitude. If […]
Social Categorization Defined
Social categorization, as the name implies, involves the classification of things based on similarity and difference. At its very core, this is social categorization. But I am not saying that social categorization stops here. Otherwise, everyone would simply be making decisions based on similarity and difference (and that is just plain strange). Social categorization thrives […]
The Most Powerful Self Motive
Why do we hold on to the concept of the self all the time? Why do we continually struggle with private and public standards of achievement, appearance, etc.? There are three associated motivations with the self: - Self-verification - Self-assessment - Self-enhancement Among these three associated motivations, no motivation is more powerful than self-enhancement. The […]
Women Vs. Men: The Perceptiveness Test
Are women really more perceptive than men? If I were to base my answer on an actual study, then my answer would be yes. And this also confirms the age-old adage that women would always be more sensitive and perceptive than the guys. According to a Harvard study, women are generally better in being perceptive […]
Persuasion Essentials
The persuasion process is nothing more than an exchange of information. But you have to pay attention to the type of information that you're about to divulge during that exchange. One of the most important aspects is that it's not overwhelming or too in-depth. We've all heard the expression “TMI” or too much information. Simply put, […]
How The Mind Thinks About Goals
As humans, we are able to access knowledge about ourselves by referring to the various self-schemas that we have developed over the years. But the question now is: how do these self-schemas develop in the first place? Modern studies in human behavior and thinking have been able to define specific contours and boundaries when it […]
Self Schemas Defined
The human mind thrives on organization. Memories and thoughts are not store haphazardly; there is a system and self-awareness itself uses a particular scheme to store information in a way that will make sense to a person when he is engaged in reflective thought. This scheme is called the self-schema. A self-schema can be defined […]