Here we must admit we are skeptical. Anyone who has ever tried to convince a dog to part with a bone or a child with a toy could attest to the diminishing returns that an intelligence advantage has in such a situation.
I’m clearly better at getting a dog to part with a bone than another dog is. I’m apt to use strategies like distracting it, or offering it something else that it wants more.
And furthermore, some people are way better at being persuasive than others, often by using explicit strategies to empathize with and come to understand someone’s positions, helping them uncover their cruxes, non-confrontationally, and then offering info and argument that bears on those cruxes.
Those skills are hard, and while there are definitely non-intelligence factors to proficiency with them, I can tell you that intelligence definitely helps. When I attend workshops on similar skills, a lot of people have difficulty with them because they’re hard to grasp or because there are multiple concepts that they need to keep in mind at once.
Maybe the returns to intelligence as applied to persuasion are diminishing, but they don’t look negligible.
I’m clearly better at getting a dog to part with a bone than another dog is. I’m apt to use strategies like distracting it, or offering it something else that it wants more.
And furthermore, some people are way better at being persuasive than others, often by using explicit strategies to empathize with and come to understand someone’s positions, helping them uncover their cruxes, non-confrontationally, and then offering info and argument that bears on those cruxes.
Those skills are hard, and while there are definitely non-intelligence factors to proficiency with them, I can tell you that intelligence definitely helps. When I attend workshops on similar skills, a lot of people have difficulty with them because they’re hard to grasp or because there are multiple concepts that they need to keep in mind at once.
Maybe the returns to intelligence as applied to persuasion are diminishing, but they don’t look negligible.