One of the most surprising scientific findings about the brain is that while we think we make our decisions rationally and logically, it can be proved that in fact, we don’t.

It’s the unconscious part of our mind that actually decides what we’re going to do.

That’s obviously vital information for anyone who wants to persuade people of anything.

In the experiments by Benjamin Libet (1985), people were asked to make a spontaneous movements of their fingers at will, while wired up to brain-monitoring equipment. About a second before the movement, the trace showed a blip of “readiness potential”… and about 0.2 seconds later came the conscious urge to move the finger!

As Iain McGilchrist writes in The Master and His Emissary, “The brain seemed to know in advance that its ‘owner’ was going to make a decision to carry out an action.”

He goes on (citing Julian Jaynes), “Very little brain activity is in fact conscious (current estimates are certainly less than 5 per cent, and probably less than 1 per cent), and we take decisions, solve problems, make judgements, discriminate, reason, and so on, without any need for conscious involvement.”

This research is well known to the scientific experts, perhaps less so to professional persuaders.

But as persuaders, it should matter to us. Surely we need to learn more effective ways to communicate with the unconscious part of the mind which is taking the buying decisions?

And that’s where “Elephant Whispering” comes in…