Persuasion
For this paper, I want to show different ways of persuading someone. As an example, I will use cutting the grass, and the people I will persuade could be a partner, a neighbor, or a parent, among others. For all of my examples, however, I will use my imaginary neighbor – he is my way to get the grass cut.
The first scenario is the “foot in the door trick”. Before I ask my neighbor to cut the grass, I decide to invite him over to dinner at my house on Tuesday. I cook his favorite meal, and make a delicious cake for dessert. After the dessert and coffee, I ask him to to cut the grass as a way to return the favor of this amazing meal. This way, it will be very tough for him to say no, since I just did something for him – even though he didn't ask for it.
For the second scenario, I will use the “door in the face” strategy. The first thing I decide to do is to ask him for a huge favor, such as of cutting my grass; both the garden in the front, the two big gardens in the back, but also the public grass between his house and mine, which we are supposed to take turns on. Then when he declines this overwhelming task, I simply ask him just to cut the grass between of houses and my the grass in front of my house. I hereby hope that the smaller request is met. He might feel that he gets the best out of this deal, even though it was my turn to cut the grass between the houses.
The next way to persuade my neighbor to cut my grass, can be by using social conformity. I will tell him that we have a competition at work, on who has the neighbor who can cut grass the prettiest. I will mention that cutting it will be the “right thing to do”. They will eventually rate them in stars (1 to 6) and the winner will be rewarded. I won't forget to mention that everyone is doing it, then he might feel a need to be a part of the group, even though he doesn't know the other people, who are supposedly in it. I would now hope that my...