Coercive persuasion is the use of subtle emotional tactics and often blatant physical tactics such as incarceration, threats, beatings, torture, etc. to manipulate a person into making a statement, signing a contract for goods or services, or enlisting in an organization.
As a sales tactic, it mainly involves being confident and unapologetic, in addition to such ploys as saying "you couldn't afford that" to stimulate the customer's vanity or pride ("Yes I can", you hope he says to himself) or "this deal is too sophisticated for you" (maybe he'll tell himself, "I'm not dumb, I'll show him"). [1]
In situations where the target cannot walk away (or make you go away), you have a much bigger advantage. For example, the North Vietnamese were able to get American POWs to make statements in front of foreign film crews "confessing" to war crimes. Jeremiah Denton famously blinked out the word torture in Morse code to alert the world to way he was coerced.
Anti-cult activists claim that religious "cults" rely on coercive persuasion to gain and retain recruits, although this is controversial.
See also
References
- Ofshe, Richard J. and Leo, Richard A. (1997). The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. Studies in Law, Politics & Society, Volume 16, pp. 189-251
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