After years of studying what builds rapport between individuals, neuro-economist Paul Zak discovered that the most important factor for building trust is our humanness. Being real, vulnerable, and even fallible results in the release of the hormone oxytocin—the neuro mechanism humans unconsciously use to determine who we can trust.
However, vulnerability tends to be the opposite posture most of us adopt when attempting to persuade. Instead, we generally lead with our best arguments and our most irrefutable evidence. We assume that strength, assertiveness, and a sense of being impregnable will make us persuasive. Things like doubt and uncertainty are to be concealed because these show weakness.
The original masters of persuasion had a very different view. The ancients realized that vulnerability was the essential foundation for building affinity and trust. Roman rhetorician Quintilian knew this. For him, one of the most persuasive things any individual could do was not just to acknowledge their uncertainties and doubts but to lead with them. This idea came to be known as dubitatio from which we derive the modern English word dubious.
Numerous studies in recent years have confirmed how effective self-doubt is in the process of winning people over to us and our ideas. For instance, a social psychologist Kip Williams meta-analysis found that jurors were more likely to view an attorney and their case favorably if the attorney revealed weaknesses in their case before the opposition had the chance to do so. In doing this, the attorney signaled that they are fair-minded, balanced, and honest. Verdicts were statistically more likely to be given in favor of the party first to bring up a shortcoming in their argument.
While it’s only human to want to present ourselves in the best light, doing so is both unproductive and unpersuasive. To build trust and affinity with those we seek to influence, vulnerability, self-doubt, and self-disclosure are more likely to shift the dial.
Excerpt from an article by Michael McQueen the author of Mindstuck
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