worldview and perspective on Persuasion

Most leaders focus on how to succeed in a task. A far better approach is to focus on who you are.

While sexual sin, financial scandals, and toxic work environments hurt pastoral credibility, a more subtle, and probably more common danger is carelessness with the truth. Intellectual integrity matte...

The first type of fool in the Bible is the character that might be called the fool proper. Folly in a fallen world is obviously partly relativistic, and we are always wise to say, “Says who?” Differen...

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.

One of the earliest forms of Christian art isn’t a painting, sculpture or even a catacomb fresco. It’s a patch of graffiti on plaster, discovered in the Paedagogium on the Palatine Hill in Rome and da...

Arguments won’t change people. Simply giving away kindness won’t either. Only Jesus has the power to change people, and it will be harder for them to see Jesus if their view of Him is blocked by our b...

Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...

A mind is more like a pile of millions of little rocks than a single big boulder. To change a mind, we need to carry thousands of little rocks from one pile to another, one at a time. This is because ...

One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitude and feelings.

You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.

We will often stop at nothing to avoid cognitive dissonance. We will twist logic, bend reason, conveniently forget facts, invent new stories, even destroy relationships—all in the name of preserving o...

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

Attitudes are more important than facts

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

Our propensity to deceive ourselves about our place and purpose makes it so very difficult to see the truth of our lives, to understand the meaning of our moment in history and our responsibility to i...

Advertising as we now know it started not on Madison Avenue but in another city: Berlin. With another group of power brokers: the Nazis. They took the ideas of an Austrian psychotherapist named Freud,...

In this post-truth world, any marketing BS seems tolerable.

History is always a matter of trying to think into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves.

Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the h...

It is always crucial to remember that our beliefs are formed not only through reason and argument but also through social conditioning.

Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth.”

The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

The way to a person’s heart is to capture their imagination (mind), move their emotions (affections), and challenge their actions (will).

First, we do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility. Instead, we believe poorly formed convictions cause incivility.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Since the rise of capitalism, it has been known that capturing someone’s attention could cause him to part with some money.

You cannot expect people to seriously consider your idea without accepting the possibility that they will challenge it. Accepting that process of engagement as the terrain of leadership liberates you ...

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices…[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we...