Kyle Budde
COM 101-002
Paper #1: Three Persuasion principles

Netflix wins again One of the many avenues of persuasion comes from reciprocation when someone does or gives you something and then you feel a need to return the favor. I fell victim to this when I was a freshman in college. While in high school, my parents utilized a standard cable package with no need of buying any premium cable channels. This was the norm to me. However, as I was exposed to dorm life, I quickly realized that some of the shows on Netflix were actually very intriguing. My dorm roommate made an account and I found myself surfing through Netflix rather than flipping through channels. Everything was customized to him: because he watched Iron Man, the website suggested he watch Black Knight. There was no thinking involved, which impressed me. One night while doing homework I saw an ad for “Free Netflix for a month” I clicked on the bright red, flashing ad and signed up instantly to stream shows from my own Netflix account for free. However, in the last paragraph of the subscription sign up page, there was a paragraph describing how the company would start to charge me for the service after the first month. I told myself as I inputted my credit card information that I will not be paying for this and I will cancel within the month. As the free month rolled around, I only watched two movies, and I realized that it was time to cancel, as paying for a subscription would not be feasible since I hardly used the website. However, when it came time to cancel I could not let it go. I knew I did not need the movies. I had lived my entire life without them just fine. To make matters worse, I knew that I only watched two movies when it was free. But I just could give up the luxury and the allurement of the service.
Just by having the power to watch movies I had become attached to Netflix. This is a power of persuasion called reciprocity. When Netflix gave me the free month, they were confident that I was going to have a hard time giving up their service and persuaded me into paying for the movies. To this day I still pay for my Netflix account, even though some months will go by without me watching a single movie.

I will worry about that later Another power of persuasion is the act first, care later principle. This principle says that normally your attitude dictates action, but your attitude can follow action as well. I was now a sophomore in college and moving into an off campus house. I was shopping around for a television, and I did not really set a budget for myself. I allowed myself to look at many styles and prices of televisions, and ultimately tried to justify my reasoning in buying a better, yet more expensive, TV.
My shopping process was well over two months long, as I wanted to be sure I found the perfect television for my new house and new lifestyle. I had this plan of how I would compare prices, styles, and set up of all of these televisions, until one day I went into the store, found a TV I liked, and walked out with it that same day. As I was driving home I was uneasy with myself about my purchase, not sure if I made the right decision because I found it strange how confident I was when purchasing the television. It was so unlike the prior months of shopping. I even contemplated not taking it out of the box so I could return it. When I arrived home, I had my roommate help me take it out of its box and set it up. Instantly I fell in love with the large flat screen, great color image, and powerful sound system. After only one night with this new purchase I thought “how did I live without this wonderful machine?” and I was relieved knowing I made the correct decision.
In this scenario, my action was buying the TV, and my attitude of joy and relief followed soon after by telling myself I had made the correct decision without a doubt. My attitude proceeded my action in this example and most likely would have no matter which television I chose on that day.

Who are you anyway? Persuasion cannot only occur with someone trying to sell you a product or an idea, but also can appear by the person you are and the way you dress. One principle of persuasion is the power of authority. Authority can be earned by age, knowledge, a badge, among other ways. One way is by wearing a uniform. I am an athlete at the University of Kentucky that recently has been sidelined by injury. Due to this, I have been spending the majority of my practice time in the training room receiving treatments to heal my injury. For my first few appointments in the training room after my injury, I did not know much about the athletic training program or how it operated. From first impression, every worker was wearing the same shirt with their name on it regardless if they are a certified athletic trainer, a graduate assistant, or an undergraduate assistant merely helping out to gain knowledge and experience. Quickly I realized that I would get to know these people over time and found out that many of the undergraduate assistants are currently freshman at the university. Everything is still new to them. They are trying to get acclimated to college life, having this job, getting a solid foundation for their grade point average, while I am a fourth year senior who is ready to graduate.
I immediately recognized that I would treat the freshman assistants with the same respect that I would the head athletic trainer, even though I was technically in authority from age. I believe it has to do with their uniform and expected knowledge. Even if they have not been taught about my specific injury in an anatomy class, I still feel like their role in the training office makes them capable of answering my questions. This puts them in authority over me. I catch myself asking questions related to my injury and even surgery to an undergraduate assistant who has not even completed their first semester of core undergraduate classes, yet I trust their answers mostly because of the uniform they are wearing and the authority they have over me. This is the principle of authority that I see every day in my life at UK. Persuasion is used in everyday life. Whether you see it by someone trying to sell you a product to a simple authority persuasion, it is part of how we function as a society. Persuasion can create competition and even illusion. Persuasion is a tool that was used in the past and will be used on into the future