Subliminal Persuasion - Trust and Authority

Humans are, in general, eager to trust experts and voluntarily respect authority. To create a subliminally persuasive tactic, you need to create trust in your target market.

As an example, picture yourself sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Across from you, you are watching a young mother and her energetic three-year-old son.

Now, despite Mom’s best effort, the young lad keeps trying to open the door leading to the outside corridor. Finally, the young mom tells her son, “You better not go out there or the policeman in the hallway will arrest you.” This tale helps to keep the boy away from the door.

If the boy had worked up the nerve to open the door, he would have discovered two things:

1. There was no policeman in the hallway
2. His mother sometimes lies to him

From relatively benign childhood experiences comes a familiarity, a comfort zone with trusting those in power: parents, teachers, police officers, members of the clergy, bosses, doctors, etc.

Of course, this reality may be subject to exploitation but it often is based in common sense.

There are definitely occasions when deferring to a medical professional can be the prudent choice. For example, when your doctor presents the evidence to prove that cigarette smoking is detrimental to your health, you form a new belief—and in this case, one that can enhance your survival.

For your small business sales and marketing to be effective, you need to change your market’s belief and you start with a persuasive argument from a position of authority, as an expert.

As an expert, you not only identify with current modifiable beliefs but you present with great authority the solution to the problem in the easiest possible way for people to understand it.

When ideas are presented from a position of authority whether vested or created, beliefs form more quickly.

Make your argument congruent with the current belief set and you have a message that will be well received.

Beliefs and values have much in common and if you are to create beliefs that will endure they need to support and evolve the values of the individual or group.