PART 1: PRE-SUASION: THE FRONTLOADING OF ATTENTION

Chapter 2. Privileged Moments Chapter 2 explicates the concept of privileged moments, identifiable points in time when an individual is particularly receptive to a communicator’s message. The chapter also presents and supports a fundamental thesis: the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is often not the one that offers the most accurate or useful counsel; instead, it is the one that has been elevated in attention (and thereby in privilege) at the moment of decision.
Chapter 3. The Importance of Attention . . . Is Importance Chapter 3 explores and documents one central reason that channeled attention leads to persuasion: the human tendency to assign undue levels of importance to an idea as soon as one’s attention is turned to it. The chapter looks at the effects of channeled attention in three different arenas: effective online marketing efforts, positive consumer product reviews, and successful wartime propaganda campaigns. Chapter 4. What’s Focal Is Causal Chapter 4 adds a second reason for why channeled attention leads to persuasion. In the same way that attentional focus leads to perceptions of importance, it also leads to perceptions of causality. If people see themselves giving special attention to some factor, they become more likely to think of it as a cause. The influence-related upshots of the “what’s focal is presumed causal” effect are examined in domains such as lottery number choices and false confessions in police interrogations.
Chapter 5. Commanders of Attention 1: The Attractors If elevated attention provides persuasive leverage, are there any features of information that automatically invite such attention and therefore don’t even require a communicator’s special efforts? Chapter 5 examines several of these naturally occurring commanders of attention: the sexual, the threatening, and the different.
Chapter 6. Commanders of Attention 2: The Magnetizers Besides the advantages of drawing attention to a particular stimulus, there is considerable benefit to holding it there. The communicator who can fasten an audience’s focus onto the favorable elements of an argument raises the chance that the argument will go unchallenged by opposing points of view, which get locked out of the attentional environment as a consequence. Chapter 6 covers certain kinds of information that combine initial pulling power with staying power: the self-relevant, the unfinished, and the mysterious.

PART 2: PROCESSES: THE ROLE OF ASSOCIATION
Chapter 7. The Primacy of Associations: I Link, Therefore I Think. Once attention has been channelled to a selected concept, what is it about the concept that leads to a shift in responding? All mental activity is composed of patterns of associations, and influence attempts, including persuasive ones, will be successful only to the extent that the associations they trigger are favorable to change. Chapter 7 shows how both language and imagery can be used to produce desirable outcomes such as greater job performance, more positive personnel evaluations, and—in one especially noteworthy instance—the release of prisoners kidnapped by the Afghan Taliban.
Chapter 8. Persuasive Geographies: All the Right Places, All the Right Traces There is a geography of influence. Just as words and images can prompt certain associations favorable to change, so can places. Thus, it becomes possible to send ourselves in desired directions by locating to physical and psychological environments replete with cues associated with our relevant goals. It’s also possible for influencers to achieve their goals by shifting others to environments with supportive cues. For instance, young women do better on science, math, and leadership tasks if assigned to rooms with cues (photos, for example) of women known to have mastered the tasks.
Chapter 9. The Mechanics of Persuasion: Causes, Constraints, and Correctives A communicator persuades by focusing recipients initially on concepts that are aligned, associatively, with the information yet to be delivered. But by what mechanism? The answer involves an underappreciated characteristic of mental activity: its elements don’t just fire when ready; they fire when readied. Chapter 9 examines this mechanism’s operation in such varied phenomena as how advertising imagery works, how infants can be persuaded toward helpfulness, and how opiate drug addicts can be persuaded into performing an important therapeutic activity that none would consent to otherwise.

PART 3: BEST PRACTICES: THE OPTIMIZATION OF PRE-SUASION
Chapter 10. Six Main Roads to Change: Broad Boulevards as Smart Shortcuts On which specific concepts should an audience’s attention be focused for the greatest persuasive effect? Attention should be channeled to one or another of the universal principles of influence treated in my earlier book, Influence: reciprocity, liking, authority, social proof, scarcity, and consistency. There is good reason for their prevalence and success, for these are the principles that typically steer people in the right direction when they are deciding what to do.
Chapter 11. Unity 1: Being Together Chapter 11 reveals an additional (seventh) universal principle of influence: unity. There is a certain type of unity—of identity—that best characterizes a "we" relationship and that, if persuasively raised to consciousness, leads to more acceptance, cooperation, liking, help, trust, and, consequently, assent. The chapter describes the first of two main ways to build "we" relationships: by presenting cues of genetic commonality associated with family and place.
Chapter 12. Unity 2: Acting Together Besides the unitizing effect of being together in the same genealogy or geography, Relationships can result from acting together synchronously or collaboratively. When people act in unitary ways, they become unitized, and when such activity is arranged persuasively, it produces mutual liking and support. Chapter 12 provides illustrations in the forms of greater helping among strangers, cooperation among teammates, self-sacrifice among four-year-olds, friendship among schoolchildren, love among college students, and loyalty between consumers and brands.
Chapter 13. Ethical Use: A Pre-Suasive Consideration Those using a persuasive approach must decide what to present immediately before their message. But they also have to make an even earlier decision: whether, on ethical grounds, to employ such an approach. Often, communicators from commercial organizations place profit above ethics in their appeals. Thus, there is reason to worry that the persuasive practices described in this book will be used unethically. However, chapter 13 argues against unethical use, offering data from studies indicating that such tactics undermine organizational profits in three potent ways.
Chapter 14: Post-Suasion: Aftereffects