Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

by Robert B. Cialdini

Started: 1/4/20

“Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science.” For a long time, even high-ranking decision makers seemed to concur, preferring to base their choices on intuition, personal experience, and anecdote. Although a name change was required in each instance (statistics is now data analytics, and social science is now behavioral science), those days are gone.

They’ve been replaced by an era of “evidence-based decision making” in the major institutions of society: business, government, education, defense, sports. It’s an era that prizes information from big-data analysts and behavioral scientists. I

think I know what changed to cause the upswing: the times. By then, the idea of evidence-based decision making was gaining widespread acceptance, and Influence offered a type of valuable evidence—from scientific, social psychological research into successful persuasion—that hadn’t been available before, at least not in one handy place.

By then, the idea of evidence-based decision making was gaining widespread acceptance, and Influence offered a type of valuable evidence—from scientific, social psychological research into successful persuasion—that hadn’t been available before, at least not in one handy place.

Although staking out its own territory, behavioral economics has incorporated aspects of social psychological thinking (for instance, the frequent irrationality of human conduct) and methodology (randomized, controlled experiments).

Pre-Suasion seeks to add to the body of behavioral science information that general readers find both inherently interesting and applicable to their daily lives. It identifies what savvy communicators do before delivering a message to get it accepted.

It identifies what savvy communicators do before delivering a message to get it accepted. Their sharp timing is what is new here. Older voices have recognized the wisdom of undertaking prior action to secure subsequent success. In asserting the value of early planning, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared, “Every battle is won before it is fought.”

ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared, “Every battle is wo...

All wise counsel. But there’s a drawback: days, weeks, or months of prior activity are required.

Is it possible to enhance effectiveness not only within those lengthy time frames but also in an instant—the last instant before a communication is sent?

Communicators can elevate their success by knowing what to say or do ...

I’d expected that the aces of their professions would spend more time than the inferior performers developing the specifics of their requests for change: the clarity, logic, and desirable features of them. That’s not what I found.

PRE-SUASION The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request. They set about their mission as skilled gardeners who know that even the finest seeds will not take root in stony soil or bear fullest fruit in poorly prepared ground. They spent much of their time toiling in the fields of influence thinking about and engaging in cultivation—in ensuring that the situations they were facing had been pretreated and readied for growth.

The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request. They set about their mission as skilled gardeners who know that even the finest seeds will not take root in stony soil or bear fullest fruit in poorly prepared ground.

But much more than their less effective colleagues, they didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can

they didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can carry equal or even greater weight.

To accomplish that, they did something that gave them a singular kind of persuasive traction: before introducing their message, they arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.

before introducing their message, they arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.

Before introducing their message, high achievers arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.

There’s a critical insight in all this for those of us who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion—the process of arranging for recipients t...

The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion—the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a ...

In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all

communication: what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next.

what we present first changes the way people experience what we p...

What we present first changes the way people experiene what we present next.

Instead, after his standard

presentation and just before declaring his ($75,000) fee, he joked, “As you can tell, I’m not going to be able to charge you a million dollars for this.”

My colleague claims that this tactic of mentioning an admittedly unrealistic price tag for a job doesn’t always win the business—too many other factors are involved for that—but it almost always eliminates challenges to the charges.

Merely tossing a high number into the air before presenting the price for an expensive object seems to eliminate price objections.

and that observers’ estimates of an athlete’s performance increased if he wore a high (versus low) number on his jersey.

So it’s not one particular experience that guides what’s done later. It can be exposure to a number, the length of a line, or a piece of music; and, as we will see in later chapters,

it can be a brief burst of attention to any of a variety of selected psychological concepts. But, because this book is mainly about the things that enhance persuasion, those chapters give special treatment to the concepts that most elevate the likelihood of assent.

It’s important here to take note of my choice of the word likelihood, which reflects an inescapable reality of operating in the realm of human behavior—claims of certainties in that province are laughable. No persuasive...

likelihood, which reflects an inescapable reality of operating in the realm of human behavior—claims of certainties in that province are laughable. No persuasive practice is going to work for sure whenever it is applied. Yet there are approaches that can consistently heighten the probability of agreement. And that is...

One practice stood out as central to his success. Before beginning his sales effort, he established an aura of trust with the family.

Trust is one of those qualities that leads to compliance with requests, provided that it has been planted before the request is made.

“Think, Bob: Who do you let walk in and out of your house on their own? Only somebody you trust, right? I want to be associated with trust in those families’ minds.”

In chapter 7, I will forward the argument that all mental activity arises as patterns of associations within a vast and intricate neural network, and that influence attempts will be successful only to the extent that the associations they trigger are favorable to change.

He just arranged to be treated in way characteristic of trusted individuals of this sort.

I’m going to refer to them as openers—because they open up things for influence in two ways. In the first, they simply initiate the process; they provide the starting points, the beginnings of persuasive appeals. But it is in their second function that they clear the way to persuasion, by removing existing barriers.

openers—because they open up things for influence in two ways. In the first, they simply initiate the process; they provide the starting points, the beginnings of persuasive appeals. But it is in their second function that they clear the way to persuasion, by removing existing barriers. In that role, they promote the openings of minds and—for would-be persuaders like Jim—of protectively locked doors.

Openers initiate the process and clear away the barriers.

Of course it was never funny the times the joke was on them—when they’d lost a contract or sale because a prospective customer, caught up in some detail of a difference, missed the big picture of what they had to offer.

participants in the sessions were nearly always informed that persuasion had to be approached differently in their particular profession than in related professions. When it comes to swaying people, advertising works differently than marketing; marketing works differently than fund-raising; fund-raising works differently than public relations; public relations works differently than lobbying; lobbying works differently than recruitment. And so on.

It’s not that the trainers were wrong in distinguishing their own bailiwick from those of their professional neighbors. But this steady referencing of their uniqueness led to a pair of lapses in judgment. First, they often detoured into distinctions of little consequence. Worse, in their emphasis on what’s different among the successful persuasion professions, they didn’t focus enough on an extraordinarily useful other question: What’s the same?

Worse, in their emphasis on what’s different among the successful persuasion professions, they didn’t focus enough on an extraordinarily useful other question: What’s the same?

If they could indeed be educated to understand and employ the universal principles that undergird effective persuasion, the details of the change they were hoping to generate wouldn’t matter.

My goal during those times spent scrutinizing commercial training programs, then, was to discover what lies in parallel beneath all the truly superior professional approaches to influence.

discover what lies in parallel beneath all the truly superior professional approaches to influence.

“What do these approaches have in common to make them work so well?” The limited footprint of the answer that emerged surprised me. I identified only six psychological principles that appeared to be depl...

I’ve claimed that the six—reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, and consistency—represent certain psychological universals of persuasion; and I’ve treated each...

It became plain that, more than just learning how to deflect or reject it, large numbers of people are ravenously interested in

learning how to harness persuasion.