PERSUASION OR MANIPULATION BY Daniel Rodtiguez

RULES OF PERSUASION

To start talking about this topic, I would like to say first what the rules of persuasion are,
roughly speaking, and then I will tell you what I have chosen and why.  Persuasion is
the ability that we humans have to convince other people to do something
they were not planning to do.

I have chosen the principle or rule of authority because
it seems to me that it is the one that is most frequently observed.
This is based on giving credibility to those we consider experts.
But it is important to point out that these experts do not have to be,
they just have to look like them in the eyes of the observer,
either because of their qualifications, or because of their clothes,
or because of accessories that give them authority,
or because of the social fame that precedes them.
In this way we have created a society, unintentionally,
in which we devalue the opinions of most people simply
because another person speaks more convincingly than the previous one.
We have thus plunged into an era in which there are thousands of disparate
opinions but none is respected if it does not confer or appear to confer the
necessary authority. A prime example is age, teens often make judgments
bordering on stupidity, if not most, but sometimes their words are more
accurate than many adults'. Still, the latter are taken as more valuable
because of their age, and this is something that even teenagers themselves
have unconsciously "accepted".

In conclusion, I will give another clear example. The Camel cigarette ad
(here is the link) claiming that the doctors smoked Camels made viewers
think that if the doctors did it, it would be bad.