Weapons of Mass Persuasion

Everyone from the president to your neighbor deploys strategies to bring people over to his or her way of thinking, but many backfire. In The Influential Mind, cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot introduces some less intuitive tactics for changing beliefs and behaviors.

1. Tie arguments to a common goal.
Trying to drive home a point? It seems only logical to fire off a barrage of evidence, but people are stubbornly resistant to facts they do not like. "Data alone are not enough," Sharot says. "They have to be related to people's prior beliefs and motivations." One study found that when physicians referred to heaps of research refuting the alleged link between vaccines and autism, wary parents remained unconvinced. But when they instead focused on the power of vaccines to keep children healthy—a goal that doctors and parents share—parents were three times as likely to change their minds.

2. Offer rewards, not threats.
We often go negative to incite others to act, threatening to take something away or raising the specter of future problems if they don't take action. Rewards have the potential to be more effective. Sharot's team found that study participants favored rewards on an intuitive level, pressing a button more quickly to gain a dollar than they did to avoid losing one. Research also suggests that incentives can motivate employees more effectively than threats or warnings. "Our brain is set up so that we're much more reactive to rewards we can get now, and that has a huge effect on behavior," Sharot says.

3. Give them a choice.
"A sense of agency and control is super important" for motivating people to act, according to Sharot. In one study, the number of people who agreed to pay a "lab tax" rose significantly if they had the opportunity to suggest how that money would be spent. Similarly, a vegetable-averse child might be asked to create his own salad, and employees struggling to meet guidelines could be invited to contribute to the rule-making process.