Privileged Moment

Influence described the six levers pulled during a request; Pre-Suasion is about the step before, when what the audience is attending to shapes the answer. Cialdini's claim is that whatever we focus on seems, for that moment, more important than it is, so a communicator who moves attention before making the case gains an advantage before the argument starts. Some of the evidence is striking: people asked first whether they considered themselves helpful were far more willing to help with a survey a moment later. Other examples, such as shoppers on a furniture site steered towards soft sofas by a background of clouds, come from priming research that has often proved hard to replicate, so they are better read as illustrations than as measured effects. The most portable tool is the first question: before the ask, ask something whose honest answer puts the listener where the ask makes sense. A useful rule for keeping it honest is that the opening question should be one you would be comfortable admitting you chose on purpose. The defence is to look, when you feel unusually open to something, at what you were shown or asked in the previous minute, and to decide later and elsewhere if the frame was borrowed.