[MUSIC] We're discussing strategies for addressing the persuasive challenge of influencing people's perceived ability to perform the desired behavior. In the previous segment, we talked about one possible strategy, namely directly removing barriers to behavioral performance, making it easy for people to do what you want. But there are two additional strategies to also have in your toolkit, and here's the second one. Providing opportunities for rehearsal or practice of the behavior. That is creating opportunities where people can, sort of on a trial basis, successfully perform the behavior. Here's an example from a study involving strength training by sedentary older adults. You get these older people, they don't exercise. They're all prepared to believe that doing strength training would be a good thing but they have doubts about their ability to do that sort of exercise. Notice positive attitudes, but low perceived behavioral ability. In this study, having just one supervised training session significantly enhanced their perceived ability to perform that behavior. That is, all it took was just a little practice, a little rehearsal and people became convinced of their own abilities. Here's another example. We'd like young people to follow safer sex practices. And for a lot of them, they're perfectly willing to do that. They're convinced of the importance of safer sex. But they don't always have confidence about their ability to have the necessary conversation with a prospective sexual partner. Again, notice positive attitudes, doubts about ability. But there are these educational programs in which participants role play these conversations. Practice them, rehearse them. And the people who go through these programs characteristically report much greater confidence about their ability to have those safer sex conversations because they've practiced them, they've rehearsed them. The idea behind this second strategy, the strategy of giving people opportunities for rehearsal or practice, is that once people have seen themselves do it, then they realize that obviously that they can do it. That is rehearsal or practice involves instilling a belief along the lines of I've done it before, so I can do it again. I could see that I could do that strength training. I could see that I could have that safer sex conversation. So, second strategy for influencing perceived behavioral ability. Give people opportunities to rehearse or practice the behavior. A third strategy is exposure to modeling. That is, seeing someone else successfully perform the behavior. Seeing someone else model the behavior for them. Here's an example study elementary school teachers were learning about various classroom management techniques. And they thought the techniques sounded great, but they thought, I couldn't really do that, I wont be able to implement those techniques. Positive attitudes notice, but doubts about behavioral ability. But then, they saw a video that demonstrated the techniques. They saw a classroom teacher actually using those techniques successfully, modelling the behavior. And they realized that in fact they could use those techniques. The teachers were more convinced about their ability to implement those classroom management techniques once they saw someone else doing it successfully. Notice the relationship of this modeling idea to the previous strategy, rehearsal or practice. Rehearsal involves having the person himself or herself successfully perform the behavior. Modeling involved vicarious success, seeing someone else successfully perform the behavior and so where rehearsal involves instilling the belief I've done it before so I can do it again, modeling involves instilling a belief like well if they can do it, I can do it. That's the third strategy, modeling, seeing someone else perform the behavior successfully. So, imagine you've got this problem. Some of your employees are not turning in some paperwork on time, expense reports, billings, time sheets, whatever. There is some paperwork that is not being submitted promptly. And so, you go talk to them about how important it is to get those things turned in on schedule. How important it is because you're thinking they must not realize how important it is, because if they realized that, well then they'd do it. Not necessarily. I mean that might be the problem or part of the problem, but perceived behavioral ability, perceived difficulty, might also be part of the picture. So before rushing off to try to get them to have positive attitudes, you might at least ask yourself are there ways we could make that process easier for people? Streamline it somehow? Remove barriers. Do we need to give them some guided practice at doing it? Rehearsal. Could we maybe show them how other people manage to get this done on time. How those people do it. Modeling. So, as a wrap-up of this third persuasion challenge, influencing perceived ability. It's a common mistake for persuader's to think that the challenge to be overcome is always attitude. Actually in many cases,people may already have the desired attitudes. But they think they can't perform the behavior, or they think it's too hard, and when that's the persuasive challenge you're facing, the three strategies we've talked about, directly removing obstacles, providing opportunities for rehearsal, and exposure to modelling, those can be useful strategic options to have in mind. [MUSIC]
