Persuasion by Our Own Actions Anyone who has ever acted on stage knows how easy it is to become so absorbed in a role that the experience seems real. Fake laughter can make an actor feel happy; crocodile tears can turn into sadness. Even in the high stakes of real life, the effect can be dramatic. In 1974, Patty Hearst, a sheltered college student from a wealthy California family, was kidnapped. By the time she was arrested months later, she was a gun-toting revolutionary who called herself Tania. How could someone be so totally converted? Reflecting back, Hearst said, “I had thought I was humoring [my captors] by parroting their clichés and buzzwords without believ- ing in them.… In trying to convince them I convinced myself”