You have food, you have alcohol, you have questions about what to wear, you have people you don't see very often, or who you see very often but not in this context. There's also a lot of pressure on the holidays in general. We have a lot of expectations that don't always align-like we want it to be a lot of different things, and maybe it can't be all of those things.
Across 49 studies involving almost 9,000 participants, rational persuasion was estimated to have a 7 to 12 percent relationship with achieving the desired outcome [4]. Further, if this technique has worked for you, it might be for reasons you don't expect. Research indicates that people confronted by a colleague listing reasons why he or she should do something often agree because it is highly uncomfortable to say no [5].
Cool feels to me like the stock market or Michelin restaurants: none of my business. I'm not alone. In a recent YouGov survey, a third of respondents said they weren't cool at school, with only 10% reporting that, yep, they actually were. Half claimed they were somewhere in between. But I know I'm missing out. Cool people are desirable and in demand; others want to be them or be with them.
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