How to Persuade People by Giving Better Reasons

Key points

Rational persuasion involves providing a series of reasons why others at work should comply with our requests.

We tend to behave as if the more reasons we list, the more persuasive we are being.

Providing additional content can divert people’s attention away from the information that might be persuasive.

You may have heard of an influencing technique called "rational persuasion ." In fact, you have probably used it yourself. This technique involves giving a series of reasons to persuade another person to do something. In field studies of influencing techniques used in the workplace, rational persuasion is often identified as one of those most commonly employed [1,2,3].

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