The Psychology of Persuasion

Persuasive design is a popular topic in user experience these days. In fact, our posts on how your coffee mug (amongst other things) is controlling your feelings was one of our most talked about posts of the year.  For those that would like to take a deep dive into the psychology behind it, Psyblog have an 18 part blog series that’s worth checking out.

As you might expect, some are more easily relatable to UX than others (though it’s handy to know that you can help your cause in convincing someone by getting them wired on caffeine and talking into their right ear). Some of the more transferable tips include:

• If you’re trying to convince someone to do something, presenting a balanced argument will help. Repetition does too … so long as it’s in the background and reasonably believable.
• Men generally respond better to email messages than face-to-face; women are the opposite (thanks to gender conditioning).
• Or if you want the tl;dr version, there’s a list for you: 20 Simple Steps to a Persuasive Message.

Full series here. For those that want a more direct link to design, take a look at last year’s UX Mag piece on persuasive design, or some of our posts on persuasion profiles,  images, or  returning.

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Arrow image NC-BY-CC from Three Legged Cat