The Pre-Suasion Question

"Do you consider yourself a helpful person?"

You said yes. Of course you did. Who says no to that?

Researchers asked 73 strangers this question in a 2006 study. Then they requested help with a survey. Compliance jumped from 33% to 73%.

Not persuasion. Pre-suasion.

The question before the question creates the opening.

Here's what happened: you claimed an identity. Now you have to act consistent with it. Saying "yes, I'm helpful" then refusing to help creates cognitive friction. The brain hates that friction more than it hates the inconvenience.

This is why salespeople ask "Are you the kind of person who..." before the pitch. Why interviewers ask about your values before the hard questions. Why the donation call starts with "Do you care about children?"

They're not gathering information.

They're laying track.

Most people think influence happens at the ask. It doesn't. The ask is just where compliance surfaces. The real work happened 30 seconds earlier, when you defined who you are.

Watch for the setup. The identity question that seems harmless. The alignment check that feels like conversation.

That's where the architecture gets built. Everything after is just execution.

This is THE SPLIT in action: the Narrator commits, then the Operator must follow. Execution Reveals maps how this mechanism scales.