Commitment: Difference between revisions

{{a|devil|<youtube>G0ZZJXw4MTA</youtube><br>Sir Humphrey demonstrates the power of commitment to Bernard, yesterday<br>}}

Documented in {{author|Robert Cialdini}}’s seminal book on [[persuasion]] techniques, {{br|Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion}}, one of the six is commitment. Lead your counterpart up the garden path with a series of leading questions, at the end of which, like poor old Bernard, he has no choice but to give you the answer you want — unless he wants to flat-out contradict himself, or mount a sophisticated, complicated and quite confrontational reverse-ferret.

Is this a legitimate technique? Depends. On one hand, it is easy and tempting to use it for nefarious ends. Will you ever believe an opinion poll you read again? On the other, if you want to achieve an outcome — and let’s face it, friends, all but the most passive aggressive of us generally ''do'' — and you have the choice between doing this the easy way or the hard way, wouldn’t you take the easy way?

It may be ''logical'' to present matters in a dry, dispassionate and infinitely particularised way, but it isn’t, as Rory Sutherland would say, ''psycho''-logical.