Masterful speeches can work back and forth and back forth among different time frames, interweaving present, future and even past events to make one's point and give the listener a feeling of continuity in one's vision.
Switch Levels
Similar to switching between timeframes, one can switch between levels of complexity: from the individual, to the group, to the societal, to all of humankind.
Avoid Negatives
The unconscious mind usually doesn't hear negatives. It hears “not” as “is” (how do you react to "I am not a crook"?). And it doesn’t hear “un” or “dis”, or even "I will stop" or "I will end" sometimes.
As summarized in an article in the Washington Post:
The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.The Post concludes that the studies show that "rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth".This phenomenon may help explain why large numbers of Americans incorrectly think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in planning the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi. While these beliefs likely arose because Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to connect Iraq with Sept. 11, the experiments suggest that intelligence reports and other efforts to debunk this account may in fact help keep it alive.
So try to avoid negatives and stick to positive statements.
Putting It All Together
Thom Hartmann summarized successful and persuasive communication as follows:
“Tell a story to capture their attention. Build into the story visual and auditory metaphors and elements, each designed to evoke emotional responses. Embed into the most emotional parts of the stories the information you want remembered. And pace the story so that listeners and viewers move to your beat . . . .”Throw in some indirect you statements, future pacing and level-switching, frame the issue in your own, positive way, and use strong anchor words, and you're on your way to becoming a highly effective truth activist.
1 The book is Cracking the Code by Thom Hartmann. While I disagree with Hartmann's assessment of conservatives and liberals, I respect his knowledge of communications and marketing. Indeed, Hartmann studied with one of the leading experts in this field, and taught advertising agencies some of their modern tricks of persuasion.
This summary cannot provide a full taste of how to apply these methods. I highly recommend that everyone read Cracking the Code to learn more about these persuasion techniques.
If you have any ethical reservations about using these techniques, please note that I am only advocating using them to promote the truth. I am completely opposed to using psychology or marketing techniques to spread disinformation.
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