Wanke, Bless, & Biller tell us that people who are asked to generate just a few favourable thoughts about a position can be more persuaded to accept it than can people who are asked to generate many favourable thoughts about the position.
This 1996 research in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin reveals the power of the availability heuristic, described as far back as 1973 by Tversky & Kahneman. If I am asked to think of one reason, I find it easy and that ease of retrieval leads me to infer there must be many reasons. If I am asked to think of many reasons, I find that hard, and then I infer that there must be few reasons.
Persuasion paradigms that draw on ‘Thought Confidence are explored by Petty, Briñol and Tormala in the May 2002 Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. Their research looked at how feelings of general confidence affect the way people react to persuasive arguments.
They found that confident people will be more strongly supportive of your argument if they agree with it and more vociferous against it if they disagree. And less confident people who may start out as objectors will give your proposal a second look.
So, you should manipulate down the boss’s confidence level if you have something to propose he won't naturally favour, and boost his confidence before pitching something you know he’ll like.
You decide how you crush his spirits before pitching the unattractive idea…