Safety first
If the person you are dealing with has ever been violent, threatened you, or controls your money, movements, or contact with others, do not treat these as conversation tactics. Confrontation and leaving can escalate danger. Talk to a domestic-violence advocate before you change how you respond. In the US: 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org. Elsewhere: international directory.

Broken Record

Takes practice

Calmly repeat the same short statement of what you want or will not do, in the same words and tone, as many times as it takes, without being drawn into answering each new argument.

How to do it

  1. 1Before the conversation, reduce your position to one sentence you can say without heat: "I would like a refund", "I am not going to lend you the money", "I am not available on Saturday".
  2. 2Say it. When the other person objects, acknowledge that you heard them in a few words and say it again: "I understand you are disappointed. I am not available on Saturday."
  3. 3Do not answer the content of each new objection. Every answer is a new topic, and the technique works by refusing to open new topics.
  4. 4Keep your voice level and your wording nearly identical. Rising volume or increasingly elaborate phrasing signals that pressure is working.
  5. 5Decide beforehand what would count as new information that genuinely changes your view. Absent that, persistence from the other side is not a reason.
  6. 6End it when repetition has done its work or clearly will not: "We have both said what we have to say", and leave, hang up, or escalate to a manager or a written complaint.

What to say

  • “I understand, and I would still like a refund.”
  • “That may be so. I am not going to be able to do it.”
  • “I hear that it is important to you. My answer has not changed.”

When to use it

  • •A salesperson, retention agent, or fundraiser is working through a scripted sequence of objection-handlers.
  • •You are returning a faulty product, cancelling a service, or asking for something you are entitled to, and are being deflected.
  • •A friend, relative, or colleague keeps re-asking a question you have already answered, hoping that fatigue will produce a different answer.

Counters

High-Pressure Sales ClosingNaggingObstructionRoach MotelPatience as WeaponGuilt TrippingDoor-in-the-FaceFoot-in-the-DoorNibblingRed HerringMoving the GoalpostsSea LioningUpselling/Cross-sellingReferral PressureConfirmshaming

Evidence and how strong it is

Broken record is the first technique taught in Smith's When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (1975), which popularized "systematic assertive therapy", and it appears in most later assertiveness manuals (for example Alberti & Emmons, Your Perfect Right). Assertiveness training as a multi-component program has a reasonable evidence base from trials run mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, reviewed by Speed, Goldstein and Goldfried (2018), but the component techniques have rarely been tested separately, and the older trials were small by modern standards. The logic of the technique is that many pressure tactics work by attrition and topic-switching: each objection you answer commits you to a debate whose agenda the other side controls, and compliance professionals are trained on exactly those objection trees (Cialdini 2007). Refusing the debate removes the mechanism. Evidence strength: clinical consensus and long practitioner use; limited direct testing of this component.

Cautions
  • It is a tool for situations where you owe no further discussion: commercial pressure, repeated requests, settled decisions. In a relationship of mutual good faith it shuts down conversation that ought to happen and will be experienced, accurately, as stonewalling.
  • With an abusive or controlling person, flat repeated refusal is a form of confrontation, and confrontation, like leaving, can escalate danger. Do not test this technique on someone you are afraid of. Speak with a domestic-violence advocate first: US 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org; hotpeachpages.net for other countries.
  • It can harden you against real new information. Deciding in advance what would change your mind keeps persistence from turning into closed-mindedness.
  • It does not work on people with power over the outcome who are not interested in your consent, such as an official applying a rule. Use the complaint or appeal process instead.
  1. Smith, M. J. (1975). When I Say No, I Feel Guilty. Dial Press
    The original description of the broken-record technique as calm, persistent repetition of one's point.
  2. Alberti, R. E., & Emmons, M. L. (2017). Your Perfect Right: Assertiveness and Equality in Your Life and Relationships (10th ed.). Impact Publishers / New Harbinger
    A long-running assertiveness manual (first published 1970) that places persistence techniques within a broader model of assertive, as distinct from aggressive, behavior.
  3. Speed, B. C., Goldstein, B. L., & Goldfried, M. R. (2018). Assertiveness training: A forgotten evidence-based treatment. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 25(1), e12216
    Review of the evidence for assertiveness training as a package and of the limits of the older trial literature.
  4. Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (rev. ed.). Harper Business
    Description of how compliance professionals sequence requests and concessions, which is the process the technique declines to enter.
Last reviewed

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