Glossary · Across all seven principles
Pre-Suasion
Want to know how Pre-Suasion works? Whether you want to use it in your own requests, or spot it when someone uses it on you, you're in the right place.
You'll find the definition, the published study behind it, and ideas for how to use it ethically.
Also called pre-suasive moments, privileged moments.
The definition
What is Pre-Suasion?
It is not one of the seven principles of influence. It comes from the same research, and it works across all seven.
What a communicator does just before delivering a message shapes how it will be received.
People take the Influence Assessment to learn which principles they lean on, and where they lose people.
Here is how it works:
Pre-suasion is the practice of arranging for people to be receptive to a message before they encounter it. Dr. Cialdini's book of the same name argues that the most effective persuaders spend much of their effort on this moment beforehand, directing attention to the ideas that will make the message itself land. He calls such windows privileged moments for change.
The study behind it
Channelling attention
Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, 2016
Pre-Suasion draws on studies from advertising, health communication and negotiation showing that what is brought to mind first, a concept, an image or a question, changes the response to what follows. Whatever holds our attention at the moment of decision tends to seem more important than it otherwise would.
Where you'll see it
How to recognize Pre-Suasion.
Spotting it, in your own requests and in other people's, starts with knowing where it tends to show up.
You'll see it in: Opening a meeting with the shared goal before the proposal, asking a question that brings the relevant value to mind before the ask, choosing the image on a page before writing the headline.
How to use it
How to use Pre-Suasion ethically.
Here is how to use it ethically:
Use it to direct attention toward something that is genuinely in the other person's interest. Focusing attention on a truth is persuasion; focusing it to hide one is manipulation.
Discover more
Find out which principles you lean on.
Which principles do you lean on?
Take the free Influence Assessment to see which of the seven you lean on and where you lose people. Your result is free; the full report is $49.
Related terms
- Foot-in-the-Door TechniqueAgreeing to a small request makes people more likely to agree to a larger, related one later.Read the definition
- Door-in-the-Face TechniqueA large request that is refused, followed by a smaller one, makes the smaller one more likely to be accepted.Read the definition
- Low-Ball TechniqueOnce people commit to a decision, they tend to stick with it even after its cost rises.Read the definition