---
name: ethical-persuasion
description: Use when influencing conversion, engagement, or user choices.
---

# Ethical Persuasion

Out of scope: neutral copy, layout, or interaction work that does not influence a user choice or behavior; use the relevant specialist Skill instead.

Support behavior change only when the intended outcome creates clear user value and users keep meaningful choice. Business goals do not justify deception, coercion, or obstruction.

## Workflow
1. Name the behavior sought, who benefits, who may bear costs, and what current, traceable evidence from affected users supports the benefit; do not infer user value from conversion or equate it with business value or stakeholder preference. Include the option to decline or buy nothing among available choices. Treat behavioral models and case studies as hypotheses, not proof of lift.
2. Inspect the current choice architecture and the full path, including price, commitment, defaults, urgency, reminders, renewal, downgrade, opt-out, and cancellation.
3. Preserve informed choice: disclose price, billing, renewal, and exit terms before commitment; show all alternatives, including no purchase, with comparable prominence, legibility, and interaction depth across supported sizes. Do not preselect a high-commitment choice unless current user evidence supports it and the choice stays clear and reversible. Use urgency only for documented offers with consistent eligibility and real fixed deadlines; never use fabricated or visitor-resetting timers. Make decline, pause, applicable refunds/withdrawal, and cancellation usable without forced contact, retention steps, or arbitrary delay; explain when cancellation takes effect and confirm completion.
4. Offer a transparent alternative that can still meet the legitimate product goal, such as a clear plan comparison, user-controlled reminder, reversible trial, honest deadline, or explicit value explanation.
5. Define current, traceable user-outcome evidence alongside conversion. Predefine decision criteria, guardrail thresholds, stop/remediation actions, and affected-group reporting; measure comprehension, regret, complaints, refunds, cancellation friction, and renewal outcomes. Follow annual plans through first renewal where feasible. If follow-up is infeasible, report that limitation and do not infer user value from short-term conversion. Do not call an increase successful without these checks.

For dark-pattern reviews and example patterns, see `references/ethical-review.md`. Hand off research questions to `ux-discovery`; hand off control states and exit flows to `interaction-patterns`.