The Power of Persuasion
Luis Rodriguez
Central Community College Social Psychology
April 24th, 2014
H. von Strünck

Abstract
Persuasion takes place all around us. This tool can be used for many things from convincing your little brother to give you the remote to having a person join an evil group. The focus of this paper is trying to explain how persuasion works, the steps and qualities that are necessary for it to take place and actually affect individuals.

The Power of Persuasion
Persuasion is a very real thing and it happens all around us. Persuasion is the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes or behaviors. They are two major paths when it comes to persuasion there is the central route and peripheral route. The central route is a more durable and more likely to influence behavior in people, when peripheral route is more of a superficial change in someone’s attitude for a short amount of time.
The central route is the type of persuasion that would influence a person the most and is the long term thing. The audience that usually take part in the central route are analytical and motivated people. This people usually put in a high effort, and agree with the person doing the persuasion. On the other hand peripheral route is the type of persuasion that is short lived. The audience for this route of persuasion are not analytic or not entirely involved people. The peripheral route is more based on cues triggering the liking and the acceptance to the speaker, but often temporarily and short lived. I once thought persuasion was all about the audience for persuasion to take place, but I was wrong. The communicator/persuader is a big part of the art of persuasion. Any person can’t just start persuading people like is nothing. This specific person that is doing the persuasion needs to have some principles that are going to be used to influence others. According to a report made by the American College of Physician Executives said that there is six principles that can be used to influence people. The principles they talk about are liking, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority, and scarcity. I believed all of them a very important principles. Liking/attractiveness is when people respond more affirmatively to those they like. The way is applied would be by winning friends and creating bonds with people with the same interests. Next is reciprocity which means making people feel they are obligated to repay something back on what they have received. “Do a favor to get a favor” (Davidson) I believe this is one of the most powerful weapons of influence. The way to apply it would be by being generous with the people you’re trying to influence for example giving them your time and attention. When working with people social proof is very important. Social proof is the tendency to see action done by a lot of people seems like the right thing to do. One way to apply this principal is by using peer power and lead the way. Next is consistency; people want and try to appear to be consistent within their words, which is great when it comes to get someone’s approval while persuading that person. When talking to someone in specific or a group being clear and direct is a good way to express your consistency in the subject. People are more likely to respond to an authority figure, therefore authority is one of the main principals you need. It show that people defer to credible experts/ authority. What is needed to be done to establish your authority is by establishing your experience; identify problems you have managed and solved and people you have served. Now last but not least comes scarcity, which I believe is the factor that pushes over a person to change their mind by showing them hoe scarce is this product, situation, opportunity, etc. It’s know that people prize what’s scarce. The best way to imply this is by showing and highlighting