Influence: Science and Practice

by Robert B. Cialdini

Much of the evidence presented in this book, then, comes from my experience posing as a compliance professional, or aspiring professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to getting us to say yes.

The principles—reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity—are each discussed in terms of their function in the society and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, or assent.

I chose not to treat the material self-interest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment, but not extensive description.

Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willingness to say yes without thinking first.

Termed judgmental heuristics, these shortcuts operate in much the same fashion as the expensive = good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well most of the time but leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes.

When feeling overwhelmed by a complicated and consequential choice, we still want a fully considered, point-by-point analysis of it—an analysis we may not be able to achieve except, ironically enough, through a shortcut: reliance on an expert.

There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a heavy object, we will estimate the second object to be heavier than if we had lifted it without first lifting the light one.

Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison.

The company maintained a run-down house or two on its lists at inflated prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but only to be shown to them, so that the genuine properties in the company’s inventory would benefit from the comparison.

rule of reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.

More generally, it can be said that the rule for reciprocation assures that, whether the fruit of our actions is sweet or bitter, we reap what we sow.

Certainly this is a legitimate desire of the manufacturer—to expose the public to the qualities of the product. The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule.

Exodus 23:8–“And thou shalt take no gift; for a gift blindeth them that have sight and perverteth the words of the righteous.”

those who break the reciprocity rule in the reverse direction—by giving without allowing the recipient an opportunity to repay—are also disliked for it.

As long as we perceive and define the action as a compliance device instead of a favor, the giver no longer has the reciprocation rule as an ally: The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors.

It would involve the mental act of redefinition. Merely define whatever you have received from the inspector—extinguisher, safety information, hazard inspection—not as gifts but as sales devices, and you will be free to decline (or accept) the purchase offer without even a tug from the reciprocity rule: A favor rightly follows a favor—not a piece of sales strategy.

After all, the reciprocity rule asserts that if justice is to be done, exploitation attempts should be exploited.

Once we make a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.

It allows us a convenient, relatively effortless, and efficient method for dealing with the complexities of daily life that make severe demands on our mental energies and capacities. It is not hard to understand, then, why automatic consistency is a difficult reaction to curb. It offers us a way to evade the rigors of continuing thought. With our consistency tapes operating, we can go about our business happily excused from having to think too much.

There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize.

If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment.

The theory behind this tactic is that people who have just asserted that they are doing/feeling fine—even as a routine part of a sociable exchange—will consequently find it awkward to appear stingy in the context of their own admittedly favored circumstances.

be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests, because that agreement can influence our self-concepts

Have you ever wondered what the groups that ask you to sign their petitions do with all the signatures they obtain? Often they don’t do anything with them, as the principal purpose of the petition may simply be to get the signers committed to the group’s position and, consequently, more willing to take future steps that are consistent with it.

There are certain conditions that should be present for a commitment to be effective in this way: they should be active, public, effortful, and freely chosen.

Schein (1956) describes a standard indoctrination session tactic of the Chinese: A further technique was to have the man write out the question and then the [pro-Communist] answer. If he refused to write it voluntarily, he was asked to copy it from the notebooks, which must have seemed like a harmless enough concession. (p. 161)

Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to adjust this image according to the way others perceive us (Schlenker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty, 1994). Because others see us as believing what we have written (even when we’ve had little choice in the matter), we once again experience a pull to bring self-image into line with the written statement.

One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.

The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts the number of such cancellations drastically. They merely have the customer, rather than the salesperson, fill out the sales agreement.

I wonder if it is important that the customer actually write with a pen or pencil in their own handwriting or if you get the same effect if they type something out into a computer form. There is something much more personal about handwriting. It may be that our move into the computer age has provided an underappreciated protection against hard sell techniques.

hung juries were significantly more frequent if the jurors had to express their opinions with a visible show of hands rather than by secret ballot.

2This public commitment tactic may work especially well for individuals with high levels of pride or public self-consciousness

“persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”

It appears that the commitments most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior are those that are active, public, and effortful.

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressure.

As Samuel Butler wrote more than 300 years ago, “He who agrees against his will / Is of the same opinion still.”

The impressive thing about the low-ball tactic is its ability to make a person feel pleased with a poor choice. Those who have only poor choices to offer us are especially fond of the technique. We can find them throwing low-balls in business, social, and personal situations. For instance, there’s my neighbor Tim, a true low-ball aficionado. Recall that he’s the one who, by promising to change his ways, got his girlfriend, Sara, to cancel her impending marriage to another and take him back. Since her decision to choose Tim, Sara has become more devoted to him than ever, even though he has not fulfilled his promises. She explains this by saying that she has allowed herself to see all sorts of positive qualities in Tim she had never recognized before.

As a general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information.

The only effective defense I know against the weapons of influence embodied in the combined principles of commitment and consistency is an awareness that, although consistency is generally good, even vital, there is a foolish, rigid variety to be shunned. We must be wary of the tendency to be automatically and unthinkingly consistent, for it lays us open to the maneuvers of those who want to exploit the mechanical commitment-consistency sequence for profit.

The first signal is easy to recognize. It occurs right in the pit of our stomachs when we realize we are trapped into complying with a request we know we don’t want to perform.

I have discovered a way to handle people who try to use the consistency principle on me. I just tell them exactly what they are doing.

Psychological evidence indicates that we experience our feelings toward something a split second before we can intellectualize about it (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; van den Berg et al., 2006). My suspicion is that the message sent by the heart of hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train ourselves to be attentive, we should register the feeling ever so slightly before our cognitive apparatus engages.

Indeed, research I conducted that developed a scale to measure preference for consistency found just that; individuals who scored high on preference for consistency were especially likely to comply with a requester who used the foot-in-the-door or the low-ball technique (Cialdini, Trost, and Newsom, 1995).

preference for consistency increased with the years and that, once beyond the age of 50, our subjects displayed the strongest inclination of all to remain consistent with their earlier commitments (Brown, Asher, & Cialdini, 2005).

In individualistic nations such as the United States and those of Western Europe, the focus is on the self, whereas, in more collectivistic societies, the focus is on the group. For example, individualists decide what they should do in a situation by looking primarily at their own histories, opinions, and choices rather than those of their peers. This should make them highly vulnerable to influence tactics that use as leverage what a person has previously said or done.

Not all commitments are equally effective, however, in producing consistent future action. Commitments are most effective when they are active, public, effortful, and viewed as internally motivated (uncoerced).

“Knowing what I know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same commitment?” One informative answer may come as the first flash of feeling registered.

the principle of social proof. This principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct (Lun et al., 2007). The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.

In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct (Sechrist & Stangor, 2007; Wooten & Reed, 1998; Zitek & Hebl, 2007).

All the conditions that decrease an emergency victim’s chances for bystander aid exist normally and innocently in the city, in contrast to rural areas: