If I were Urmila...

This post is based on last week’s Sweet vine, bitter berries.

What would I do if I were Urmila? I asked myself this question several times. Every time I came up with the same answer. I would do exactly as she did until the doctor said, “Now you’re in my hands.”

We know nothing about the background of either the doctor or of Urmila other than the bare facts in the story. What is obvious is that she wasn’t looking out for any sexual adventure. If she was, the doctor wouldn’t be drugging her and making her do things she wouldn’t when conscious.

As one of the readers says, this is a story of deception. But deception is the finest form of persuasion. The problem is with the objectives. The techniques are the same. It’s worth identifying them so that we can adopt them for ethically acceptable objectives.

I see two faces of the doctor. He is a great persuader until Urmila takes the juice at his accomplice’s place. From that moment on he is a beastly criminal. He uses coercion including blackmailing, not persuasion or seduction, to make Urmila do his bidding. It is despicable to shoot a deer in a cage. And I hope the law catches up with him in spite of his obvious influence in high places including the judiciary.

What we will examine is why Urmila so readily accepted his offers and suggestions. Why was he so persuasive? The simple answer is that he earned her complete trust. As Aristotle says, of all the persuasion factors, the persuader’s credibility is the most important one. This is because once we trust someone, they can persuade us to do virtually anything. Our conscious mind, which is rational and critical, happily steps back and relaxes once it is reassured by trust.

Life would be terrible if we suspected that everyone around us was out to cheat us or take advantage of us. We want to trust people around us because that is when we feel at home. 

What are the factors that helped the doctor get Urmila’s complete trust? He was a prominent doctor working for the Chief Justice.  He belonged to her cast and village. But more than anything else, he was not in a hurry in a way that would alert her antennae. He met her occasionally, and offered her a ride home occasionally. It is almost as if he was not going out of his way but just being nice to a person from his circle. I assume that he avoided any kind of sexual innuendos when he talked to her.

On its own, none of these factors would create total trust. But when they came together they were deadly. If I were Urmila I wouldn’t sense any danger whatsoever because he built up his credibility bit by bit over a few weeks.

What do we learn from this? We are often not persuasive because we don’t build up our credibility. We don’t do enough to earn the trust of people around us, especially subordinates, through our actions over time. We delude ourselves into thinking that we are credible and rely too heavily on the power of the position we hold.

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