I tend to look to politics for a lot of my lessons about human behavior. You don’t have to love politics to see the patterns. They tend to repeat themselves in every election cycle. And in the last election, I noticed something that has been quietly building for years. A noticeable rise in the number of communities voting for politicians who openly identified as Democratic Socialists. It was not something they hid. They campaigned on it. A decade or two ago, the Socialist label alone would have been radioactive. Now it shows up in everyday conversations, often without anyone flinching.
That made me stop and think. Everyone is living in more or less the same economic reality. Rising food prices. Housing affordability slipping away. Families stretched thinner than usual. Yet groups of voters interpret those pressures in wildly different ways, and not just in terms of policy. They adopt identities that feel like a significant shift from where they stood only a few years earlier, even for many who are voting for the first time. They speak about the world as if they’ve always belonged to that camp, even though plenty of them didn’t two, four, or six years ago.
It got me thinking. People weren’t just choosing candidates. They were stepping into identities. They were choosing the story they wanted to belong to. And once they choose a story, their decisions automatically align with it.
As I tried to wrap my head around why this shift felt so predictable, I remembered a model that Chase Hughes, a globally recognized behavior and influence expert, teaches called PCP (Perception > Context > Permission). I had heard him describe it before, but for some reason, this time I felt the urge to dig deeper. The more I read, the more the mechanics lined up with what I was seeing in real time. PCP explained exactly how people slowly slide into new beliefs and identities without ever feeling like they made a sharp turn.
And before I go any further, I want to make one thing clear. Everything I’m about to describe isn’t only relevant to politics. It’s highly applicable to small business owners who wish to ethically influence a prospective client’s thought process so the person can make a clear, grounded decision. And just like in politics, people rarely walk down that path alone. There’s almost always a skilled messenger guiding them, shaping how they see the situation, and helping them make sense of what matters. This isn’t manipulation. It’s understanding how humans naturally move from confusion to clarity to action.
And the moment this really clicked for me was when I came across a well-known psychological study that involved a tiny sticker and a giant yard sign.
Let me tell you that story, because it sets the stage for everything that follows.
How a Tiny Sticker Turns Into a Giant Sign
Researchers once ran an experiment in a quiet neighborhood. They went door-to-door and asked homeowners a simple question:
“Do you support safe driving?”
Of course, nearly all said they did. In fact, 91% said yes. Then the researcher handed the homeowner a tiny sticker and asked whether they would be willing to place it in their front window or door to show their support. Nothing big. Nothing intrusive. Just a tiny decal.
Most people agreed.
Two weeks later, the researchers returned with a very different request. Would the homeowner be willing to place a giant, ugly, plywood “Drive Safe” sign in the middle of their front yard? Not tasteful. Not subtle. This thing looked like a construction barrier.
89% of the people who accepted the tiny sticker said yes to the giant sign.
Now here’s the punchline. They ran the same test in the next neighborhood, but skipped the tiny sticker step. They just asked residents to put up the giant sign. Only 6% agreed.
Same region. Same demographics. Same request. The difference wasn’t the message. It was the identity.
The people who accepted the small sticker had taken a tiny step into becoming someone who “supports safe driving.” And once they made that identity public, even in a very subtle way, they felt subtle pressure to stay consistent with it.
That was the moment I realized just how powerful the PCP model is.
So, let’s go deeper into the model itself, because once you understand the psychology, you’ll see why small business owners live inside this dynamic every single day.
The PCP Model, Explained in Plain English
PCP stands for Perception, Context, and Permission. It’s the natural path humans walk as they move from an idea to an action. You don’t push someone down this path. They follow it automatically because it aligns with how they are wired.
To really understand why this works, we need to break PCP down into its three stages and watch how each one shows up in real conversations.
Perception – the lens someone already has before they open their mouth
Perception is the starting point. It’s how the other person sees the situation before you’ve said anything. And people reveal their perceptions through little throwaway comments such as:
“I’m not ready to be sold anything.”
“I’ve had bad luck with contractors.”
“I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“I just want to get a sense of things.”
These are preloaded frames. They aren’t responses to you. They’re the lens they’re using to interpret the moment.
A slight shift in perception lowers something called “psychological reactance.” Reactance is the instinct to push back the second someone feels controlled, pressured, or judged. Lower the reactance, and the conversation suddenly opens.
To make this more concrete, picture a landscaper meeting a homeowner for the first time. Instead of jumping straight into taking measurements or recommending plants, the landscaper might say, “Most families want a yard that actually fits how they live today, not how the builder laid it out.” That single line changes the entire feel of the moment. The homeowner isn’t bracing for a sales pitch. They feel understood. The frame shifts from pressure to partnership.
Or imagine a remodeler talking with a homeowner who flinches at the estimate. A simple statement like, “Most folks haven’t remodeled in years, so the numbers surprise them. My job is just to explain where the cost actually goes,” softens the tension. The homeowner moves from suspicion to curiosity. Instead of guarding themselves, they lean in a little because the remodeler isn’t trying to control the conversation. They’re trying to clarify it. Once the lens softens, people begin to think differently about the moment. And that leads right into the next stage.
Context – the moment someone begins defining themselves
Context is where identity enters the conversation. Once someone feels safe enough, they start saying short statements about who they are.
“I want this done right.”
“I’m a long-term planner.”
“I like understanding what I’m buying.”
“I’m the kind of person who maintains things instead of waiting for problems.”
These statements reveal identity, and it is from there that the decision really comes. This is the same dynamic that showed up in the tiny-sticker experiment. When homeowners agreed to place that tiny sticker in their window, they weren’t making a decision about signage. They were making a statement, even if they didn’t realize it, about the kind of person they believed themselves to be. That tiny step created the identity frame. From that point forward, every later decision is filtered through that identity frame.
Let’s go back to our examples.
The landscaper asks, “Which part of your yard feels out of sync with how you actually live?” The homeowner now describes their identity: a parent, a gardener, an entertainer, a dog owner. They’re not just talking about plants. They’re talking about themselves.
The remodeler asks, “Are you more of a long-term planner or a fix-it-as-you-go type?” Either answer works, and both tell you how the client views themselves. And once they say it out loud, their decisions will naturally align with that identity because contradicting it feels uncomfortable.
In politics, this same process plays out. A voter begins by agreeing with a small idea. Maybe it’s fairness. Perhaps it’s a frustration about rent. Maybe it’s a concern about food prices. And once they agree with that small piece, they begin saying things like, “I’m someone who supports fairness” or “I believe in looking out for the vulnerable.” These are identity statements. Once a person adopts them, the next steps follow the identity.
Which is precisely where permission comes in.
Permission – the moment a decision feels like alignment instead of pressure
Permission is where everything finally comes together. This is the moment when a person decides what to do next, and that decision is almost always driven by identity. Once someone has said who they are, even in a small way, they feel a quiet internal pull to act in a way that matches that identity.
This is also where cognitive dissonance shows up. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when their actions don’t line up with their self-image. Humans can tolerate a lot of things, but contradicting their own identity is not one of them. The easiest way to make that tension disappear is to choose the action that preserves their identity. That’s the real engine behind the Permission stage.
Think back to the sticker experiment. People didn’t put the giant billboard in their yard because they suddenly cared more about safe driving. They did it because rejecting the sign would have clashed with the identity they had formed by accepting the tiny sticker to place on their window. The behavior didn’t create the identity. The identity created the behavior.
You can actually hear this shift the moment it happens. People start talking to themselves in alignment with who they said they were.
“Since I care about quality, I should probably look at the better materials.”
“If I’m a long-term planner, it makes sense to do this right.”
“I want my home to match how we actually live.”
“I’m someone who supports fairness, so this is what I believe.”
Those lines aren’t reactions to your pitch. They are reactions to their own identity.
You see this same pattern in everyday business conversations. After shifting perception and drawing out identity through context, the landscaper might say, “If you’d like, I can sketch a couple of options people in your situation usually consider.” The homeowner readily agrees because they have already said they want a yard that fits their lifestyle. Backing away now would feel inconsistent.
The remodeler does the same thing by saying, “Since you’re thinking long-term, let me show you the part of the project that protects you over the next decade.” The client doesn’t lean in because of the pitch. They lean in because it fits the person they just declared themselves to be.
And in politics, this final stage is where the identity fully locks into place. The voter who once made a small agreement about fairness or affordability now feels like part of a movement. They’re no longer supporting a policy. They’re acting in accordance with the kind of person they believe themselves to be. The trap closes quietly. Identity becomes the gravity, and everything else starts to orbit it.
Permission isn’t about applying pressure. It’s about helping the next step feel like a natural continuation of the identity the person already adopted. At that point, you’re not convincing them of anything. You’re simply aligning their actions with the story they already told you about themselves.
Why PCP Matters More Than Ever for Business Owners
Once I really understood this model, the pattern in the 2025 election cycle snapped into focus. People didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly decide they were Democratic Socialists. They were guided there incrementally, much like the tiny-sticker experiment.
It started with a perception shift: housing feels unaffordable, rent keeps rising, and the system doesn’t seem to be working for them. That’s the tiny sticker. Easy to agree with.
Then came the context: if housing is broken, solutions like rent control or heavier government involvement must make sense. That’s where identity starts to form. You’re now someone who believes the system needs intervention.
And then came permission: vote for me and I’ll lower your rent. By that point, not voting for him would have created tension. After agreeing that housing was broken and that rent control made sense, voting any other way would have conflicted with the identity they had already accepted. That’s cognitive dissonance at work. Casting the ballot wasn’t a radical leap at all. It was the giant sign in the yard, an action that simply brought behavior back into alignment with an identity built through one small agreement at a time.
And that same psychology shows up in business conversations every day. Customers. Employees. Vendors. Partners. They all follow this path.
First is perception
Second is context
Then there is permission
People rarely contradict their identity. They want their actions, decisions, and commitments to line up with who they believe themselves to be. When you understand how that path works, you stop pushing conversations uphill. You start working with human nature instead of against it.
And for small business owners who want to ethically influence a prospective client’s thought process, the PCP model becomes one of the most practical tools you can have. When you see how people form identity and how identity shapes action, you start having clearer conversations, not harder ones.
Because at the end of the day, behavior follows identity, and one’s identity is formed one small agreement at a time.
How can you use the PCP model in your business today?
