Promises & Threats
Promises and threats, save for their polarity, fall into the category of seeking to influence another's behaviour. The one seeks to incentivize positive behaviour the other seeks to deter negative behaviour.
A promise is an assurance of certain rewards to come the way of an individual or group of individuals who follow a desired path or course of action deemed desirable by the principal (the person making the promise).
A Threat is an assurance of certain punishments to come the way of an individual or group of individuals who follow a path or take actions that the principal deems undesirable.
The key thing to note here is that both threats and promises are in the domain of words, that you make a promise or a threat does not necessarily mean there will be a translation into corresponding action.
Success Criteria
When then can we consider a promise or threat to be successful?
A promise that is fulfilled is a success. A threat that is fulfilled is a failure.
Why?
Consider that promises are made to encourage positive behaviour or positive results, threats are made to prevent negative behaviour or results.
If you promise a kid a bike on the condition that he comes first in his class, fulfilling that promise means you successfully got the child to come first.
Say you tell a roommate not to touch your shoes again else you will punch him in the face, that threat will be considered a failure if you actually end up throwing the punch, because your actual goal was to prevent your shoes from being taken.
Increasing Odds
- Do not make promises or threats that you will not follow through on.
- Tone it down.
- If you do not follow through, you better have a good explanation.
If the kid does come first and you do not get the bike, now your words are no different from air and will carry little to no weight in the future, which means you loose the ability to influence the child in the future.
Your roommate wears your shoe and you do not throw the punch, your pants have just become fair game.
Promises and threats are a play for the future, you do not want futuristic conditions to make it impossible to follow through, so it may be prudent to go a bit lower than you know you really can.
Thank you for reading.