BENEFIT-PROMISING BEHAVIORS
People, in their role
as persuaders, are benefit-promisers. Everyone
intensifies and downplays some things as they try to persuade. People
usually intensify their own good and downplay their own bad.
Furthermore, in aggression,
people also intensify the
others' bad and downplay the others' good. This
quadrant chart, sub-dividing the broadest generalization ("People
are benefit-promisers.") into four smaller parts, helps to clarify
by focusing more specifically on the various benefit-promising behaviors
of persuaders. Click on each of these 4 graphics
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We are all, always, involved in an intricate and dynamic life of both benefit-promising and benefit-seeking, of being both persuaders and persuadees. Everyone does this. Test this claim by your own observation. Certainly you can apply the ideas here to your own experience. As individuals, we seek to intensify our own "good" ("to put our best foot forward," "to watch our Ps and Qs," "to put on our Sunday best") and to downplay our own "bad" (our weaknesses and errors). We hide our past mistakes unless we are required (for example, by a legal deposition, under oath) to disclose them.
The purpose of this website, however, is not to focus on the everyday give-and-take in most personal relations. Until recently, there was a relative equality in our everyday persuasion transactions. Skilled persuaders were rare (and their skills died with them) and their scope limited.
But, today, there's a growing inequality, an accelerating imbalance, world wide, between the few and the many: between the few "professional persuaders" (including advertisers and politicians, those elites with training, technology, money, and mass media access) and the many persuadees: the millions of "average" consumers and citizens.
Classroom teaching aid from Persuasion Analysis | © 2008 by Hugh Rank | More at http://faculty.govst.edu/pa