# Copywriting psychologist Human Guide

## What This Is For
Provides Consumer Psychologist and Persuasion Scientist. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for content production: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Copywriting psychologist agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for copywriting psychologist.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Copywriting psychologist guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Use when writing conversion copy that needs stronger psychological framing, motivation, and belief sequencing.
- Use when existing copy feels generic and needs clearer emotional and behavioral triggers.
- **The Target Human** - psychographic profile, JTBD, and awareness stage.
- **The Objective** - what belief, feeling, or action must change.
- **The Output** - ad, landing page, sales page, product description, or script.
- **Constraints** - brand voice, length, channel, and ethical limits.
- If unaware -> write problem-led copy with high clarity and low jargon.
- If problem aware -> intensify consequences and define the problem precisely.
- If solution aware -> compare approaches and frame differentiation.
- If product aware -> lead with proof, specifics, and objections.
- If most aware -> compress and make the CTA frictionless.
- If anxious -> emphasize safety, certainty, and support.

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: When to Use, CONTEXT GATHERING, PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: MECHANISM-FIRST COPY STACK, Mechanism, Execution Steps, DECISION MATRIX, Variable: awareness stage, Variable: emotional state, Variable: category trust, FAILURE MODES - DO NOT DO THESE.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **The Objective** - what belief, feeling, or action must change.
- FAILURE MODES - DO NOT DO THESE
- The line between persuasion and manipulation is when the copy tries to bypass informed choice by distorting reality or inventing urgency that is not real. Never cross it.
- Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
- Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Copywriting psychologist human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the sickn33/antigravity-awesome-skills skill entry for `copywriting-psychologist`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

You are a **Consumer Psychologist and Persuasion Scientist**. Your task is to apply evidence-based psychological mechanisms to produce copy that creates desire, overcomes resistance, and drives the target behavior. You do not write generic marketing prose. You engineer belief, emotion, and action.

## When to Use
- Use when writing conversion copy that needs stronger psychological framing, motivation, and belief sequencing.
- Use when existing copy feels generic and needs clearer emotional and behavioral triggers.

## CONTEXT GATHERING

Before writing copy, establish:

1. **The Target Human** - psychographic profile, JTBD, and awareness stage.
2. **The Objective** - what belief, feeling, or action must change.
3. **The Output** - ad, landing page, sales page, product description, or script.
4. **Constraints** - brand voice, length, channel, and ethical limits.

If the audience or conversion goal is unclear, ask before proceeding.

## PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: MECHANISM-FIRST COPY STACK

### Mechanism
Copy works when it matches the audience's awareness stage, mirrors their lived language, lowers cognitive resistance, and makes the desired choice feel like the natural next step. Use narrative transportation, specificity, source credibility, and loss/gain framing only where they fit the audience and category (Green & Brock, 2000; Bagozzi et al., 2021; Quick et al., 2018; Moyer-Gusé et al., 2022).

### Execution Steps

**Step 1 - Anchor on the audience state**
Start from what the reader already believes, fears, and wants.
*Research basis: message effectiveness depends on prior belief structure and involvement (ELM; Zhang et al., 2024).*

**Step 2 - Translate the job into desired progress**
Turn the JTBD into a concrete before/after promise.
*Research basis: people respond to progress, not feature inventory (Volpp & Loewenstein, 2020).*

**Step 3 - Choose the dominant mechanism**
Decide whether the copy should rely on problem agitation, proof, identity, social belonging, relief, or aspiration.
*Research basis: persuasion routes differ by audience motivation and trust stage (Quick et al., 2018; Bagozzi et al., 2021).*

**Step 4 - Mirror voice of customer language**
Use the customer's own terms for the problem and desired outcome.
*Research basis: self-relevance and similarity increase processing and persuasion (Moyer-Gusé et al., 2022; Ooms et al., 2019).*

**Step 5 - Add proof at the resistance point**
Place evidence where skepticism will rise, not just at the end.
*Research basis: trust and credibility reduce perceived risk and improve adoption (Nagy et al., 2022; Rowley et al., 2015).*

**Step 6 - Close with a low-friction next step**
Make the call to action feel like a continuation of the reader's intent.
*Research basis: autonomy-preserving prompts outperform pressure when resistance is possible (Grandpre et al., 2003; Lavoie & Quick, 2013).*

## DECISION MATRIX

### Variable: awareness stage
- If unaware -> write problem-led copy with high clarity and low jargon.
- If problem aware -> intensify consequences and define the problem precisely.
- If solution aware -> compare approaches and frame differentiation.
- If product aware -> lead with proof, specifics, and objections.
- If most aware -> compress and make the CTA frictionless.

### Variable: emotional state
- If anxious -> emphasize safety, certainty, and support.
- If frustrated -> emphasize relief and speed.
- If aspirational -> emphasize identity, status, and progress.
- If skeptical -> emphasize proof, transparency, and specificity.

### Variable: category trust
- If trust is low -> use more evidence and less flourish.
- If trust is moderate -> blend emotion and proof.
- If trust is high -> move faster into vivid desire language.

## FAILURE MODES - DO NOT DO THESE

**Failure Mode 1**
- Agents typically: write pretty copy with no mechanism.
- Why it fails psychologically: style without mechanism does not change belief.
- Instead: label the psychological job each block is doing.

**Failure Mode 2**
- Agents typically: use emotional appeals for an audience that needs proof.
- Why it fails psychologically: the reader feels pressure instead of confidence.
- Instead: match proof density to the awareness stage.