Nobel winner presents 3 keys of persuasion
Daniel Kahneman, the Princeton University psychology professor credited with laying the foundation of behavioral science, died last month at the age of 90. Kahneman and his famed partner, Amos Tversky, uncovered a long list of cognitive biases that affect our thinking and decisionmaking.
In 2011, about a decade after Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his work, he published “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” I revisit it at least once a year because it’s the best book on persuasion even though it doesn’t have “persuasion” or “communication” in the title.
With Kahneman’s insights, you’ll understand the human mind and the tactics to persuade those minds to pay attention to your ideas.
Before you learn Kahneman’s persuasive tactics, you need to know why they work. Kahneman and Tversky proposed that our brains have two modes of thinking: fast and slow. System 1 (fast) is what comes up quickly and automatically in our minds. System 2 is deliberate and requires mental effort, such as making complex computations.
While both systems are necessary, people spend most of their mental time in System 1 because it’s easy and automatic. System 2 takes work. Your goal as a communicator should be to achieve “cognitive ease” and avoid “cognitive strain” for the most part, although appealing to System 2 is important when you need to show the work behind your argument.
But in most cases, according to Kahneman, the key to persuasion is to reduce cognitive load: “The recipients of your message want to avoid anything that reminds them of effort.”
Based on the theory of cognitive ease, Kahneman offers several tips on creating persuasive messages.
Maximize legibility
The first rule of persuasion is to make it easy for your audience to see and read information. “So, first maximize legibility,” Kahneman writes.
If you’re delivering a PowerPoint, avoid 12-point type, which is illegible to just about everyone sitting further than a few feet away. Since your audience will appreciate larger type they can read easily, adjust the size to accommodate the size of the room or display.
Yes, this means you’ll have to have less text on each slide, but don’t despair, it’s a good thing. Too much text requires too much effort.
Kahneman offers another tip to maximize legibility in an email or memo:
Make essential points legible by highlighting them in bold.
“Anything you do to reduce cognitive strain on your audience will help,” Kahneman says.
Simplify language
“If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do,” Kahneman writes.
Jargon and pretentious language don’t make you sound smarter. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
Studies show that people who use long, complex words have lower credibility than those who speak simply.
For example, which sentence sounds better to describe the theme of this article:
a) Lighten the mental load for your listener.
b) Facilitate the cognitive offloading of mental schema for the purpose of reducing the processing burden experienced by the interlocutor.
Both sentences have the same meaning, but you likely prefer the first sentence because it omits needless, complex words. There’s persuasive power in simplicity.
Tell stories
“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story,” Kahneman told author
In most cases, according to Kahneman, the key to persuasion is to reduce cognitive load: “The recipients of your message want to avoid anything that reminds them of effort.”
Michael Lewis for “The Undoing Project,” a book about Kahneman’s remarkable friendship and collaboration with Tversky.
Kahneman took his own advice and became an advocate for using stories to explain scientific research. He even chose to describe the two mental modes of thinking as “characters” in a story to make the complex topic of brain science easier for non-experts to understand.
For example, System 1 is “the author of many of the choices you make.” System 2 “believes itself to be where the action is, but System 1 is the hero of the book.”
Successful charities use several tactics from Kahneman’s research, such as anchoring, or establishing a base figure that elicits larger donation amounts. They also lean on the power of storytelling to fundraise. Appeals that highlight real people and their stories elicit more support than campaigns that focus on statistics alone. Humans are a storytelling species, Kahneman says, and so we feel more connected to one person’s story than to “thousands” of people.
Since Kahneman says our minds are hungry for stories, a persuasive communicator will feed those hungry minds what they crave: compelling stories, vivid examples and simple words.