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Concept

Channeled Attention

Channeled attention is the mechanism behind pre-suasion: whatever a person is made to focus on seems, for that moment, more important and more causal than it is. Move the focus and you have moved the judgement before any argument is made.

Cialdini's Pre-Suasion rests on a finding from the psychology of attention: focus confers importance. Things we attend to feel weightier, more likely and more responsible for outcomes than things we do not, and the effect does not require our awareness. A background image, a first question, a piece of music, a word repeated in the previous minute all channel attention, and the judgement that follows leans in the channelled direction. Kahneman describes the same from the inside: System 1 answers the easy question it was just primed with, and System 2 signs off. The finding cuts both ways. For the persuader, it means the setting and the opening are part of the message and should be chosen to frame what is true and relevant rather than left to chance. For the listener, it means that unusual openness to a proposal should prompt a look at what channelled the attention. The honest line is Cialdini's: an opening you would be comfortable explaining is pre-suasion; one you would hide is manipulation.

A real-life example

A charity in Istanbul finds that donations at its events double when the short film about one family plays immediately before the appeal rather than at the start of the evening. Nothing in the appeal changes; attention simply arrives on the family rather than on the canapés.

How to use it

  1. 1Choose what the listener is attending to in the minute before your ask: the setting, the first question, the image on the screen.
  2. 2Frame only what is true and relevant; if you could not explain the opening to the listener, do not use it.
  3. 3Before a decision, ask what channelled your attention, and whether the thing would look the same in a different room.