PERSUASION IS INEVITABLE

“But what if I don’t want to persuade?” “What if I think that the whole question about persuasion is unethical, and I want to opt out. What then?”

The answer to this is an answer the questioner probably does not want to hear: You do not have a choice. To the extent that you are alive, that you talk, that you are around other people, that you communicate—you persuade. You are inevitably influencing people. It is built into the very fabric of social life. So just as you cannot not communication, so you cannot not persuade. Your very presence, your smiling or frowning, will create an influence and will persuade people about something— you like them, or you don’t, you are happy or sad or upset or something. If you fold your arms and stay in the back— you are sending out a message and thereby influencing people to think and feel something about you. In this, you cannot escape persuasion!