Laws of Persuasion

The acronym SCRAPE CFC can help us remember Kevin Hogan’s nine Laws of Persuasion. (CFC or chlorofluorocarbon widely used in refrigerators and aerosols, is now phased out because it deletes the ozone.) Remembering to use these Laws in our communications makes us more persuasive.

S – Law of Scarcity. People find things that are limited in supply more desirable.

C – Law of Contrast. People tend to accept the little extras throw in after the main deal as the add-ons look digestible compared to the main course.

R – Law of Reciprocity. People tend to agree to a request, if they have received a benefit from you before.

A – Law of Association. People tend to think better of people or things associated with people or things they like, respect, or trust.

P – Law of Power. People tend to agree with people with perceived power or authority.

E – Law of Expectancy. People tend to do what the person they like, respect, or trust expects them to do.


C – Law of Consistency. Once people committed themselves verbally or in writing, they tend to stick to it.

F – Law of Friendship. People usually oblige the requests of their friends.

C – Law of Conformity. People are more inclined to things which they see many other people have or do.

Know Who You Are Trying to Persuade

To be able to persuade a person, we need to know what would move the person. The acronym BP FIRE can help us remember the aspects that we need to actively peel our ears to – those elements that may provide us the necessary clues to the client’s hot buttons.

B – Behavior. What is the client doing or not doing?

P – Perspectives. What are the client’s beliefs, attitude and outlook?

F – Feelings. What emotion is the client feeling?

I – Intention. What is the client intending to do?

R – Resources. What internal and external resources do the client have or lack?

E – Experience. What is the client experiencing? What is happening to the client?

To Be Persuasive, We Must First Know What We Want

When it comes to persuasion, there are two kinds of people.

The first kind reacts to what happens to them. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality types, they are known as the Perceivers. Perceivers are sometimes described as thermometers. As you know, thermometers merely react to the temperature around them. The mercury goes up when the heat is up, down when it cools down outside. They have no influence on their environment. Perceivers or thermometers go with the flow, and can appear reactive and disorganised.

The second kind, make things happen instead of let things happen to them. In the MBTI personality types, they are the Judgers. They decide what they want happen, and then take action to make it happen the way they want it. Judgers are sometimes described as thermostats. Thermostats set and change the temperature around them. Thermostats or judgers prefer structure and order in their lives, and can appear proactive and methodical.

Since to persuade is to get people to follow our way of thinking, one has to be a judger or a thermostat to start with. It is a pre-requisite.

Being a thermometer or perceiver will not help one to be persuasive at all. How can we get people to follow us, if we have not even decided where we want to go?

To be persuasive we have to make a choice regarding what we want, and decide to take action.

As Stephen Covey said, between what happened to us and how we respond is a space where we can choose our response. We can either let the situation dictate our reaction, like thermometers, or we can make a conscious choice as to what we want and what we want to do to get it, like thermostats.

The attitude of a persuasive person is the attitude of the thermostat.

The first step to be persuasive is to know what we want the other person to agree on.