Persuasion Through Creating Confusion

Kevin Hogan writes in The 53 Principles of Persuasion: Confusion causes people significant discomfort, and a confused person is willing to do almost anything to escape that painful feeling.

🔹 In fact, when people become confused, they abandon logic and reasoning. Just like someone who is drowning, they grab onto anything they can find in hopes of being saved.

🔹 For this reason, if we can rescue someone from a state of confusion, we gain tremendous influence over them and can easily impose our viewpoint.

🔹 I would even go a step further and say: to persuade others, first confuse them—then be the one who pulls them out of that confusion.

🔹 The most common method for creating confusion is the “information overload” technique. In this approach, you continue giving the other person so much information that they lose the ability to analyze it.

🔹 This method is especially effective when the person is genuinely interested in the information and welcomes receiving more of it.

🔹 For example, imagine a salesperson who, while explaining the benefits of a product, hands the customer a brochure. A moment later—while the customer is flipping through the brochure—the salesperson shows several photos of satisfied customers who purchased the product. Then, they play a short video demonstrating how the product works.

🔹 Given the limits of human mental capacity, this approach creates cognitive turbulence and confusion, preventing the customer from thinking logically. As a result, they become more susceptible to your reasoning and are likely to accept almost anything you say.

This post is also available in: Persian