Persuasive Primitives: A Small Vocabulary for Big Strategic Shifts

Define persuasive primitives as atomic tactics like emotional appeal, authority, and logical coherence, and show how choosing the right subset depends on the audience and moment. Explain what "grounded explanations" mean and why evidence spans matter.

Persuasive primitives are the smallest meaningful units of persuasive strategy—atomic tactics that can be identified, combined, and evaluated independently. Emotional appeal, authority invocation, logical coherence, reciprocity, scarcity framing: these are primitives. Complex persuasive moves are combinations of primitives, and the effectiveness of the combination depends on both the primitives selected and the sequence in which they appear.

Grounded explanations connect a recommended primitive to specific evidence from the dialogue context—a span of text that shows why this primitive is appropriate for this audience at this moment. Without grounding, recommendations are generic; with grounding, they are accountable.