Quora Answer: How Do You Make Someone Realise a Truth without Telling Them?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How do you make someone realise a truth without telling them?”

What you really want to know, is how to lead people to certain conclusions without being overt about it.  This is essentially the art of selling, whether it is a product, or an idea.  The basic premise is that people have egos, and they resist being told something, even if it is verified, if such information goes against a preconceived notion, or ingrained value.  As such, it is necessary to lead them to such a conclusion.

The first step is to build rapport with the audience, and establish a connection.  This can be as simple as supporting the same sports team, or claiming some common origin, or as complex as establishing credibility.  It is important that you are not seen as the “other”, but as part of the same team.  This, alone, makes anything you say more subscribable.

The second step is to appeal to their emotions, and self-interest.  People are, by nature, shallow, emotive, and selfish.  We all struggle to be better than that, but most of us fail.  Appealing to logic is less effective, since people are not, as much as they imagine otherwise, logical.  If people were logical, advertisements would not be effective, since they are appeals to emotions, not logic.

Finally, once you have established that rapport, that connection; steer the conversation subtly, by asking leading questions, and shaping their opinion by emphasising some points and positions over others.  People are very susceptible to such simple manipulation.  It is important to subtly hammer home that point through reiteration, rephrasing, and emphasis.

The key thing when it comes to preferring one position, or one “truth” over another is to continue speaking about the preferred position whereas diminishing mention of the alternatives.  The human brain does not recognise the “not” when it comes to recalling conversations, and even mentioning the alternative position in a negative light causes the mind to fixate on it.  Rather, only once the positive reinforcement is established, that it is effective to negatively highlight to opposing idea.  The following are examples of “truths” people accept without realising that it was not always so:

For example, in the latter part of the 19^th , and the early part of the 20^th century, it was believed that pink was a strong colour, and hence masculine.  Girls wore blue, which was thought to be more soothing.  In the 1950s, several advertising agencies pushed the idea that pink was an exclusively feminine colour, and the idea gained traction.

Another example is the American habit of eating cereals, which are tasteless, and even with all the flavours, hardly fit for consumption.  John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes in 1858 to be tasteless since he believed that bland food would not excite the sense and lead to masturbation.  One man’s obsession with other people playing with their genitals lead to tasteless breakfast food.

Bacon is another example of how advertising made preserved meat became breakfast food.  In the 1920s, and before, Americans tended to eat more vegetables for breakfast.  This changed when the Beech-Nut Packing Company, who were producers of all manner of pork products, approached Edward Bernays, and asked him to help them improve consumer demand for bacon.  Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.  He subscribed to Freud’s psychoanalytical theories on propaganda.  Bernay’s got thousands of doctors to write articles, and advocate, for a heavier breakfast, namely “bacon and eggs”, and that is why Americans eat that now.

Finally, we have this notion that a diamond is necessary for an engagement ring.  Diamonds are carbon, one of the most common elements on Earth.  They are expensive because the De Beers cartel is a monopoly, and creates that scarcity artificially.  Diamonds are far more common than any other precious stone.  In 1948, de Beers began the “Diamonds are Forever” campaign, and “helpfully” suggested that a proper ring should cost three months’ salary. 

There are thousands of examples of this, particularly from the last century.  Much of what modern society believes to be a norm was manufactured, from the concept of teenagers being a distinct phase of our lives, to the way we dress, to the food we eat, to even how we think of certain issues.  Each and every one of them is a case study of leading people to a position that they then adopt, and defend fiercely.  People are gullible.