personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day. - Adam Grant

But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.

If they think the behavior is safe, we should emphasize all the good things that will happen if they do it — they’ll want to act immediately to obtain those certain gains. But when people believe a behavior is risky, that approach doesn’t work. They’re already comfortable with the status quo, so the benefits of change aren’t attractive, and the stop system kicks in. Instead, we need to destabilize the status quo and accentuate the bad things that will happen if they don’t change. Taking a risk is more appealing when they’re faced with a guaranteed loss if they don’t. The prospect of a certain loss brings the go system online.

Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate more money to charity when the phrase “even a penny will help” is added to a request.