I’ve picked up some persuasion tricks over the years from my debate career, law school, and on the job at law firms.

I figured twitter is a great place to share them. They’re simple enough but spookily effective.

Short intro thread

I got interested in learning how to influence others after I once hypnotized my brother to forget how many fingers he had.

He kept counting 11 fingers (I had hypnotized him to forget the number 6) and began to panic. My parents were amazed.

While I was initially skeptical, this really convinced me. When I brought my brother out of trance, he couldn’t remember any of it, but luckily I had my mother record it on her flip phone.

This taught me an important lesson—the human brain is much more mechnical than you think.

Evolution has wired humans with certain linguistic triggers which override reasoning and convince someone to comply.

This is where persuasion becomes powerful.

There are many of these brain loopholes, but I’ll start with the simplest one:

When trying to convince someone to do you a favor (I.e. cut in line) just give them a short reason why using the word “because”.

To study this effect, Harvard researchers studied how people reacted to a stranger cutting in line at a copier.

The person cutting in line asked in three different ways. (See image)

Version 1: 60% compliance

Version 2: 94% compliance

Version 3: 93% compliance

Notice that the third reason is blatantly redundant, yet almost everyone still complied.

Here the word “because” is sufficient to make people think they’ve been given a reason. And apparently people like reasons!

So persuasion tip #1 is: “Just say because.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this. If this thread gets traction, I’ll write more on this topic in the future.

I consider persuasion one of the most important life skills with minor investment and major rewards.