Persuasion Scripts Blog

I’ve created an idea called, “persuasion scripts,” that converts persuasion theory and research into practical action plans. A well written and properly implemented persuasion script should produce desired changes in the way other people think, feel, and behave.

“Persuasion scripts” as a term, however, is not unique with me. A web search conducted before PersuasionScripts.com launched found several existing web pages (although fewer than 20 which is surprising to me) that employ the label. In my reading of them, my sense of “persuasion scripts” swerves away from these other uses in a way that makes my idea different, independent, unique, (peculiar?). Of course, your opinion matters more than mine here and you might want to review those older pages for yourself.

Here is another example of how you can find the same label, “persuasion scripts,” but find a different product. Once again we’re in the realm of politics where organizations are using their “persuasion scripts” to affect elections. One is from a consulting group, the Campaign Concierge, and the other from an advocacy association, the International Association of Fire Fighters. (Full disclosure alert: I collaborated with the IAFF during my tenure as a scientific administrator at NIOSH on a fire fighter safety project from a Congressionally mandated initiative. As part of the project research for the communication element in the initiative, I recall that we paid the IAFF for assistance with focus groups and surveys through regular Federal contract procedures. I have no idea who runs Campaign Concierge.)

The “persuasion scripts” that both groups provide are remarkably similar. They are telephone based scripts that only have the caller ask the respondent questions about whether the respondent is going to vote for or against a candidate or issue. It is essentially a polling script. Both scripts look fine to me and would be effective in field use for collecting poll (for me or agin me) information.

My quibble is with the label. Where’s the “persuasion” in voter position? How are you trying to change, influence, sway, motivate, manipulate, swerve, bend, alter, whatever your synonym for perusasion, anybody with a polling script?

Okay, so these are not really “persuasion” scripts. There are polling scripts and we call them “persuasion scripts” because somebody typed that label on the first Word doc file. What’s the big deal?

You mislead yourself when you mislabel. If you call a “polling script” a “persuasion script” then sometime later when somebody asks, “Hey, are we doing anything to influence or persuade voters?” then you’ve got an answer. “Yeah, sure. We’ve got persuasion scripts, so we’re okay on that one.”

Except you’re not okay on that one. You are polling and you are not persuading. And you’ve lost not only the opportunity to change the world, but you’ve also fooled yourself into thinking you’ve already got that covered when you don’t.

Please realize that I am not criticizing the content of these scripts and saying that they are bad or stupid. The Campaign Concierge looks like a useful website and the folks at IAFF are a fine bunch of people dealing with a dangerous occupation.  My concern here is that there’s more to the word “persuasion” than these scripts use and if you open the word to its wider meaning, there is a large world of potential good for you.