The art of ethical persuasion can be used privately and professionally to significantly increase your probability that others will say yes to your requests or proposals. So when it comes to motivating high school students, that they should eat more fruit, the same rules and possibilities apply. Dutch high school students were persuaded to eat more fruit despite their claims they would NOT be persuaded.
HOW DOES ETHICAL PERSUASION WORK?
In brief, ethical persuasion simply works by looking at the influence situation that you find yourself in and identifying simple to understand psychological ‘triggers’ that science has shown help guide pople to a decision. There are 7 principles, so it not actually that complex. There is a fair bit to it, and whilst reading blogs, watching free videos and even reading Dr Cialdini’s book can be very educational, people often lack the confidence to implement the theory in practice. That is what the courses we teach address and you really should consider getting educated in this important life skill.
HOW TO MOTIVATE KIDS THAT DON’T WANT TO CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOUR?
It depends on the situation (as mentioned above), what options are open to you. We advocate ethical persuasion, so you can’t make anything up. In case of the Dutch high school students situation, it was know that many other kids of a similar age did eat fruit to be healthy. By identifying this fact and bringing this up in the awareness of the person/group you’re trying to influence, its ‘power’ will start to work.
Clearly it is very difficult or unlikely to persuade 100% of a group, or to be 100% successful with everyone you communicate with. It is much more about increasing the probability and therefor the percentage of compliance. In this example, the strategy chosen was very successful and as it was just ‘words’… it was costless to implement.
35% more fruit consumption despite blunt resistance to change
Many students of the Dutch High School, had made it clear that when they were told that ‘many other high school students just like them ate fruit to be healthy’… that this information would have no effect in changing their habits. Despite this resistance, in the end, they ended up increasing their fruit consumption anyway.
The power of social proof
Social Proof is one of the Principles of Influence as discovered by Dr Cialdini. It means that people value the opinion and actions of others. There are a few optimising factors that you learn about in training, but if the ‘others’ are similar to the person… this is more potent in persuasive power.
A group of high school students would be less influenced by hearing that kindergarten students or university students ate more fruit to be healthy. The fact that the genuine information pertained to high school students, it let the high school students identify with it more and be persuaded by it more. ‘If its good for them… it must be good for me.’ sort of thinking.
Even within ‘other high school students’ there is potential to make it work even more effective, but that goes beyond this article. The same ‘more deeper’ level of Social Proof was used in experiments our colleages did in McDonald’s restaurants in South America, where Social Proof increased desert sales by more than 50% in comparison to the control group. But that is another story…