People acclaim George Clooney as a fabulously attractive man.

And looking at Clooney’s surface, you obtain a surface understanding of his persuasion source: Physical Attractiveness! As a Cue a guy like Clooney can’t be beat; If The Source Is Good Looking, Do What He Says.

Yet, if you scan the Primer and the CLARCCS Cues chapter, you don’t find Physical Attractiveness as one of those primary tools. Comparison, Liking, Authority, Reciprocity, Commitment/Consistency, and Scarcity glide past good looks with nary a glance.

How can something as obvious as this not have its own persuasion chapter?

Because good looks only persuade through positive affect. If you aren’t likeable, your good looks won’t close the deal.

Certainly pretty boys and girls can get your attention, but attention is not the final TACT, only an upstream precursor and not the downstream goal you seek. You realize that in large part Clooney succeeds with his fabulous good looks because he is fabulously likeable. He plays well with others, boys and girls, being both a Man’s Man and a Woman’s Man, too, with no tension in between. Clooney’s a guy anyone would want as a friend under any circumstances with his fabulous good looks as a fabulous side effect.

Realize another persuasion lesson with Clooney: Function. You can use good looks in the Cascade at that Reception and Exposure stage. Good looks arrest attention and start the Cascade. Now realize that those good looks alone cannot sustain the rest of the Cascade, especially with the behavior change you seek, unless those good looks also carry good feelings with them. Thus, you can use the Beautiful Jerk on a billboard, but friendly and optionally attractive sales associates on the floor with the product.

Neil Young wrote it and sang it with Buffalo Springfield  (YouTube).  The opening lyric exactly expresses the act of persuasion.

Oh hello, Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason.
For the thought that I’d caught in my head is the event of the season.
Why in crowds just a trace of my face should seem so pleasin’.
I’ll cop to the change but a stranger is putting the tease on.

“A stranger is putting the tease on” nicely sings the Rule:

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

P.S.  Hey, kids.  Neil Young, the artist, is a stranger putting the tease on.  Consider that.

P.P.S. Guitar players know why the song riff sounds like a couple of Rolling Stones songs (Satisfaction, Let’s Spend the Night Together), plus other near hits. It’s in E with a movement from B to C# to D, a classic blues boogie line. You can show newbies that trick and within a couple of minutes they sound like a blues man. It’s hard to get good on guitar (just listen to me play!), but it’s easy to get okay which explains why you see so many guitars in people’s houses.

Today’s persuasion lesson comes to us from the Bard of Canada, Gordon Lightfoot, and his musical consideration of love, lust, and mistrust, and how they combine into dissonance with Sundown (YouTube video). The song, Sundown, is about the woman a man cannot resist even though he knows better.

I can see her lying back in her satin dress
In a room where you do what you don’t confess
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you been creeping ’round my back stairs

Sundown is probably not the name of the Woman – what Siren in a satin dress would creep anywhere or anytime – but most likely is another man in pursuit of the unnamed Woman who is loved by the Narrator of the song. If Sundown is another man, not the Narrator, we realize that the Woman in the satin dress has been with Sundown doing what should not be confessed to the Narrator. Sundown comes creeping ’round the back stairs of the Narrator’s place. We’ve got the classic love triangle with the Woman cheating on the Narrator with Sundown.

The Narrator now reminds us of how desirable the Woman is and more importantly of Her persuasion skills.

She’s been looking like a queen in a sailor’s dream
And she don’t always say what she really means

The Woman is irresistible. She’s also inSincere and persuasive which leads to aversive consequences for the Narrator: Other men, like Sundown, come creeping around back stairs finding the Woman in her satin dress. This leads to our persuasion lesson.

Sometimes I think it’s a sin
When I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again

That lyric is a poetic way to describe dissonance and its reduction. When things get worse and yet you feel better, you’re in the throes of dissonance. Or as Lightfoot puts it:

I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.

He loves and wants the Woman all the more even though She is cheating on the Narrator with Sundown. What seals this interpretation is the repeated refrain.

Sundown, you better take care
If I find you been creeping ’round my back stairs

If the Narrator did not love the Queen in the Satin Dress, then Sundown could visit Her through the front door. Yet the Narrator warns Sundown about creeping at the back stairs. The Narrator is wary, alert, and vigilant which means He loves the Woman. We know this from:

I can picture every move a man can make
Getting lost in her loving is his first mistake

Perhaps the Narrator realizes that Sundown loves the Woman as much as He does. But the Narrator’s love for Her drives dissonance – I want what gives me pain – and leads to the pursuit of dissonance reduction. The more the Narrator suspects He is losing (He fails to catch Sundown), He feels like He’s winning (He loves the Woman even more and redoubles his wary watch).

Dissonance proves why Peithos sat as the handmaiden to Aphrodite in Greek mythology. Sometimes the persuasion is as obvious as arguing for the bigger dowry in an arranged marriage and sometimes it is the mad love from dissonance.

P.S. For guitar players out there, Sundown is surprisingly easy in structure. It’s E (2-2-4), B (2-4-2), A, and D with a solo in the pentatonic E minor just varying on the octave. Lightfoot slapped a capo up the neck depending upon, I’d guess, his voice at that moment. As Clapton once said, “It’s just patterns, man.” That and those fingers.

Flying to NOLA for NCA with United offers unexpected persuasion pleasures. In Hemispheres Magazine observe.

Imagine you behind the wheel of the 2012 Porsche Panamera Turbo Sedan!

The seamless seven-speed PDK transmission lets you go from manual to automatic in a split second, while the walnut dashboard and creamy leather make you feel like Gatsby motoring his way out to East Egg (hastily).

Gatsby, glittering wealth, estates on East Egg, swimming pools, rich friends, big parties . . . nice metaphor with a Porsche Turbo Sedan, but . . .

When Gatsby hastily motored out to East Egg, Daisy drove, not Jay.

Worse still, on the hasty drive, Daisy struck and killed Myrtle Wilson, who dallied adulterously with Daisy’s husband, Tom.

Worser still, Gatsby lied to protect Daisy and asserted that he was behind the wheel.

Worser more, Tom told the distraught but clueless husband George Wilson, that Gatsby killed the beloved Myrtle.

Worstest of all, George then murdered Gatsby in his magnificent swimming pool.

But, other than that, how was your test drive?

P.S. NOLA is different still after Katrina. Fewer people, not as crazy fun, and showing the signs of Disney-fication with more money moving in and around the French Quarter. Echoes, but distant and faint, from that wonderful past. If you’re a foodie, you’ve got to visit Stella’s.

And the related Stanley’s was nice, too, especially the Breaux Bridge Eggs Benedict. Muriel’s still serves as fine and sedate a lunch as you could expect and charms with its upstairs rooms.

Galatoires impresses with Big Easy elegance.

And Emeril’s?  Well . . .

Change the way Other Guys attribute and change the way they feel and act. We noted this most recently with the Talented Mr. Ripley and today we make the Play explicit.

Attributions are explanations, how the Other Guy understands the world and most importantly assigns causality for events. Looking only at Internal (I did it) and External (The devil made me do it) Attributions, the persuasion impact is obvious. Each type motivates wildly different perceptions and actions from the Other Guy. For example, if you want people to wait for your command, put them in an External state; by contrast if you want self motivated people, tickle an Internal state.

In the Primer we’ve looked at a variety of ways you can persuade Attributions with the Attribution Jam as the simplest. Pick the proper Box, then when the Other Guys are in that Box, you ask aloud, Why?, then immediately provide your desired Casual Explanation, and the Other Guys will tend to accept it, then behave accordingly. Thus, a teacher might wait until a class is quietly working on assignments, then ask, Why? to which the teacher says, You Must Be Hard Working! providing an Internal Attribution that many kids will easily accept thus making themselves responsible for doing work.

From watching movies we can now add the Ripley Attribution Play.

First, you must listen to how Other Guys offer explanations. It’s not a matter of what they like or dislike, believe or disbelieve, but a matter of why they like or believe. Listen for the Attributions the Other Guys make about the people, events, and outcomes in life. For example, you might observe your Other Guy likes Another Other Guy because that AOG is creative and imaginative. Hold that attribution.

Second, wait for the Box when you want the Other Guy to mistrust that Another Other Guy. When something suspicious about that Another Other Guy occurs, you ask aloud, Why? Then you immediately requote the Other Guy and that creative and imaginative attribution. For example, your Other Guy might say, “Dickie told me he was alone last night but I saw him out with a group of new people at the movies.” To which you reply, “Well, I hadn’t realized it until you noticed it several days ago when you said that Dickie is very creative and imaginative and can easily make things up. I guess you’re right – lying comes easily to him.”

The genius of the Ripley Attribution Play is that you use the Other Guy’s own words to manipulate the explanations you prefer. You employ the single most credible persuasion source in everyone’s experience: Themselves. Hey, you said it, so it must be true. Of course, the persuasion trick here is to shift meanings ever so slightly so that creativity is lying.

I’d encourage you to watch the Talented Mr. Ripley again with an eye to this persuasion play. It is the dominate tactic Ripley employs with everyone in all situations. He is a keen observer of Other Guys so he lasers in on how they think, most particularly, how they attribute. He then uses their attributions from the past to shape the perceptions and explanations about the present and the future. Thus, Ripley is able to hide in plain sight, committing terrible crimes, attracting suspicion, but then quickly redirecting that suspicion to another person with his Attribution plays.

Realize the Rule!

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Ripley surveils Other Guys as a master psychologist always aiming at unraveling Them. Ripley understands everyone better than they know themselves. He then seizes upon that Other Guy knowledge and applies it, judo-like, to throw Them wherever Ripley aims.

Art Copies Persuasion and Persuasion Copies Art!