The problem that reframing addresses is the way that people generalize. Some people don't ever consider that they will be in the same Position three years from now if they buy a car that won't last. Or they buy a used car because it's cheaper, and they don't think about things like not being able to depend on it, having to rent a car while it's being fixed, and so on. When they are buying a car and they look at prices, they see the difference in total price, but they don't ask the question «When?» Something that's cheaper now may be much more expensive in the long run.
This is exactly the same situation as the father who says to his daughter «Don't ever be stubborn," rather than realizing «She's hard to control, and it's a bother; I want to find a way around it, but this same behavior is going to pay off for me in other situations later on.» There's no utilization in the process by which most people generalize. Refram–ing is saying «You can look at it that way, or you can look at it this way, or you can look at it this other way. The meaning that you attach is not the 'real' meaning. All of these meanings are well–formed within your way of understanding the world.»
Think of the clean–freak mother that Leslie worked with. When Leslie had the woman visualize the clean carpet and said to her «And realize this means you are alone!» the old meaning was «You are a good mother and housecleaner» and the new one was «The people you love aren't around you!»
Leslie just changed one response in that mother, but that radically changed the entire family. Before, the mother would see footprints, feel bad, and then nag the family for being so careless and inconsiderate. Afterwards, she would see the footprints, feel good that the people she loved were nearby, and then do something nice for them. She became just as good at appreciating her family as she had been at nagging them! After a few weeks of that, the family was completely different.
Broadening people's views through reframing doesn't force them to do something. It will only get them to do it if the new view makes more sense to them than what they have been thinking, and is an undeniably valid way of looking at the world.
When people think of buying something, they usually make up their minds ahead of time, and don't even consider alternatives. They don't realize that they can buy a car over three years or five years, or they can lease it or pay cash. There are always variables like that which they have never considered. Those variables are the bases for making the product fit into the way they think about themselves. If someone comes into a Mercedes showroom, they already want the car. It's just a matter of making it possible for that desire to fit in with all their other criteria.
Of course, no one's understanding will ever completely match the world out there. You can't ever know whether a car is going to last. You can always get a «lemon.» Or you might buy a crummy car that later turns out to be one of those priceless used cars that lasts forever. People who bought Edsels thought they got burned, but look how much they're worth now!
If you call up a woman and say «I sell pots and pans door–to–door. I want to come over to your house» and she says «Come on over," at that moment you know that there is at least a part of her that's interested in pots and pans. There's a part of her that wants to buy them, and there are probably other parts that can't yet fit buying them into her well–formedness conditions for her to actually buy something. If you don't take those other parts into consideration when you make a sale, you get what's called «buyer's remorse.»
I think buyer's remorse isn't regret. Buyer's remorse simply means that the product was not adequately sold, and that the decision to buy it was not fully made. In other words, the product wasn't shaped into something that met all the person's standards. Then later when one of these standards is violated, the buyer says «I should have known better," and that wrecks everything. From then on, the product is an anchor for unpleasant feelings.
We once worked with some people who sold china door–to–door. Their problems stemmed from the fact that door–to–door salesmen are the lowest on the prestige ladder. People assume that door–to–door salesmen will try to fast–talk them into buying overpriced goods. Their china was good and reasonably priced; their customers really wanted the china and bought it. Then when the customers went to work the next day, their friends said «Oh! You fell for a door–to–door routine?» and then they felt cheated.
My proposal was for the salespeople to future–pace that problem away. Immediately after writing up a contract, I would have them say this to their clients: «Look. I've got this contract here and I'll rip it up right now if you want me to. I know that people are going to say 'You bought something from a door–to–door salesman? You got burned.' You either want something or you don't. If you don't want the china, I'll tear up the contract.» At that point you can tear the top of the contract a little bit to give them a thrill. You just look at them and say «A lot of door–to–door people sell overpriced goods. If you want to go out and look around and compare, that's fine. I need to know that you want to buy, and that you are sure you want to. I don't want you to come back to me dissatisfied later on. I want customers to send me other people because they're satisfied with what they bought. I know that some people are going to say that you were cheated, and if that creates doubt in you, it's bad for me. I need for you to be sure enough that you won't spoil my reputation.»
That effectively reframes something that is going to happen in the future. When it does happen, it will now elicit a different response. Rather than «Oh, I'm just another sucker» the person responds «Oh, he told me this was going to happen.» That makes the person even more confident, because the salesperson knew what was going to happen in advance.
When I proposed that idea to the china salesmen, they were scared to death. They thought that they would lose a lot of sales. But that proposal is not only protecting the salesperson, it is protecting the client. If you don't do that for your client, you deserve all the customer dissatisfaction you get.
A lot of salespeople think of themselves as taking advantage of people, but their real job is to protect people. I think that should be an industry–wide reframe. The salespeople who operate that way make much more money with a lot less work, because they get so many referrals. They don't have to try to force people into anything. Many salespeople act like bulldozers, and there are a certain number of people who can be bulldozed. But you get a lot of buyer's remorse from that, and you end up having to work a lot harder.
Reframes are not con–jobs. What makes a reframe work is that it adheres to the well–formedness conditions of a particular person's needs. It's not a deceptive device. It's actually accurate. The best reframes are the ones which are as valid a way of looking at the world as the way the person sees things now. Reframes don't necessarily need to be more valid, but they really can't be less valid.
When the father says «Oh, my daughter's just too stubborn» and you say «Aren't you proud that she can say 'no' to men with bad intentions?» that's a really valid way of looking at that situation. At another time and place, that father would actually look at it that way and be proud of her, but he didn't think about it until you brought it up.
You can't reframe anything to anything else. It has to be something which fits that person's experience. Saying to that father «You should like your daughter's being stubborn because that means she's a liberated woman» probably isn't going to work with him. You have to find a valid set of perceptions in terms of that particular person's model of the world.