Do you think that power boost persuasiveness? Well, effective persuasion sometimes comes from less powerful people. For example, when you are about to promote health care messages, children who are relatively powerless can be much more effective than adults to deliver a message with impact. The website of business school INSEAD urges us to pick our tone carefully when we want to persuade others.
Are the powerful or powerless more persuasive?
Both can be persuasive. It depends on who they’re talking to. We must also take into account how the audience senses power. When the audience feels powerful, it cares more about competence. When people lack power, they focus more on warmth.
There was a series of experiments with participants randomly assigned to roles of communicator or audience member. The communicators had to deliver either a written or oral message. The communicators’ sense of power varied because they were asked to recall a time when they either had or lacked power. Some of them were also assigned the roles of directors or employees.
Communicators who felt powerful were more convincing with high-power audiences and those feeling powerless were more persuasive to low-power audiences.
Power chooses competency, lack of power, warmth
Power shapes the psychological orientation of both communicator and audience. Those with power emphasize skills and competence and high-power audiences are persuaded by these qualities. Low-power communicators prefer connecting to others with warmth which works better with low-power audiences.
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