TO EXECUTE IMPOSSIBLE TO PARDON

First impressions can be extremely important in dispute resolution and those who fail to make a good one may face difficulties later on.

Consider the following example:

Alan: intelligent - industrious - impulsive - critical - stubborn - envious

Dan: envious - stubborn - critical - impulsive - industrious - intelligent

Although you clearly see that the two persons have been described with exactly the same set of adjectives you probably cannot help but seeing Alan as a nice person with certain downsides and Dan as a not-so-nice guy whose few upsides must, however, be admitted.

Now consider the phrase we began with:

TO EXECUTE IMPOSSIBLE TO PARDON

What do you think it means? To execute? Or to pardon? It can mean either with equal plausibility.

Chances are that you are more inclined to conclude that this is a death sentence.

And why is that? The first word in the phrase was «to execute», which was likely to shape you opinion about what was to follow. It is very hard to change opinions even ones like this - made on the spot. So the rest of the phrase was likely perceived as confirming such impressionistic opinion rather that rebutting it.

The picture synonymous with execution probably reinforced the impression although you only saw it once on the very first slide (if you watched the video).

Clever and apparently innocent manipulations with wordings can be used to produce a strong and enduring shift in a decision-maker's perception of you case. The same can be applied to the order in which pieces of evidence should be presented.