Types of Emotions: Emotional Mastery
Over the centuries, philosophers have tried to categorize the very many complex emotions of humanity—no easy task. Aristotle came up with fourteen emotions:
Anger
Patience
Friendship
Enmity
Fear
Confidence
Shame
Shamelessness
Emulation
Contempt
Kindness
Pity
Indignation
Envy
Other philosophers argued that emotions are largely influenced by one’s time period and culture. We will focus on a few major, elemental emotions, both positive and negative. In the persuasive process, you want to control negative emotions while constructing positive emotions. You don’t want your message to end with negative feelings.
Worry
When your prospect is worried or preoccupied with something occurring now or that is about to happen in the future, your ability to persuade declines. Worry is feeling anxious, uneasy, or concerned about something that may or will happen, or has already happened. I have heard worry referred to as ‘‘negative goal setting.’’ Anxiety creates tension—a fear that occupies our thoughts, which if encouraged will grow and continue to dominate our thoughts.
You can combat worry in your prospects by modifying their anxiety into thoughts of reality. Bring them back to reality by having them realize we can’t change many things in life. Stress that most of the things we worry about are those very things we can’t change and which won’t likely ever happen in the first place. Help your prospects replace their negative mental images with positive ones.
Fear
Fear is anxiety or tension caused by danger, apprehension, harm, pain, or destruction. The possibility of harm can be real or imagined. Fear motivates and moves us away from unpleasant circumstances or potential destruction. Fear persuades us to do many things we might not otherwise do. Out of fear we buy life insurance, air bags, home alarms, and guns.
Fear does not work in every circumstance, however; if we were solely motivated by fear, we would never speed or start smoking. The proper dose of fear is essential in persuasion. If the dose is too small, it will not stimulate action. If the fear is too large, it will trigger resistance and acceptance will decrease.[9] For fear to stick and create action and persuasion, it must include the following steps:
The image of fear must be unpleasant, such as threat of pain, destruction, or grief.
It must be imminent. Your prospects must feel not only that the fearful event is likely to happen, but also that they could be victimized by its occurrence. They must feel vulnerable.
You must provide a solution to the fear. Give your prospects a recommended action to suspend or eliminate the fear.
Your prospects must believe they are capable of doing what is asked of them and that doing so will work for them.
Taken From : Maximum Influence : The 12 Universal Laws of power Persuasion
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
