Persuasion and Influence

  My cousin tried to persuade my aunt and uncle to let her get a dog, which they were reluctant to do. Her argument basically entailed the following: “I’d walk it… feed it…clean up after it”.

  This was quite clearly an example of defusing objections (Pardini & Katzev, 1986). It was quite obvious that she listed all the things that she would do for this hypothetical dog because she thought her parents may have been sceptical about these things happening in reality and could have used their perception of her not doing any one of these things as reasons for not getting the ‘aspired for’ dog (see Pardini & Katzev, 1986).

  According to Pardini & Katzev (1986) their participants (who had, had energy saving leaflets sent to them) seemed more persuaded (to respond) when the number of potential objections addressed in the leaflets was higher (Pardini & Katzev, 1986). Just one additional objection being addressed had a positive influence on the performance of subsequent behaviours (Pardini & Katzev, 1986), perhaps, relating to the Message - Length = Message-Strength perception (Pratkanis, 2007).

References

Pardini, A.U., & Katzev, R.D. (1986). Applying full-cycle social psychology to consumer
  marketing - the defusing objections technique. Journal of Economic Psychology, 7, 87 – 94.

Pratkanis, A.R. (2007). Social Influence Analysis: An Index of Tactics. In A.R. Pratkanis (Ed.),
  The Science of Social Influence: Advances and Future Progress. (pp. 17 – 83). New York:
  Psychology Press.