How to Coach Yourself and Others How to Influence, Persuade and Motivate | Page 342

Distraction has been proven to increase your ability to persuade. On the
flip side, if the distraction is disagreeable, your persuasive ability will
diminish. This means, depending on the situation, you can persuade better
with a distraction than with total concentration. Social psychologists Leon
Festinger and Nathan Maccoby proved this theory with their landmark
study on what are the best distracters. They discovered that food and sex
appeal worked the best.[23]
In another experiment, the two men attempted to persuade college
students that fraternities are bad.[24] Their presentation was not well
received by the students, so they did the experiment a second time. This
time they used a funny silent movie during the presentation. The results
were clear. More of the students who were distracted with the silent
movie changed their opinions about fraternities. In this study, distracting
the conscious mind increased the persuasiveness of the message.
[23]L. A. Festinger and N. Maccoby, "On Resistance to Persuasive
Communication," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 68 (1964):
359–366.
[24]Ibid.

Generating Competition
Most humans are very competitive. When you package something as a
competition, most people will want to be involved. Certainly some
personality types shy away from competition, but most people are
naturally competitive. Persuaders must be able to see how the use of
competition works within the group they are dealing with. As you
introduce competition into your presentation, you can create rivalry
between different entities. Maybe you are using a competition where each
indiv