Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

by Robert B. Cialdini

She also found that younger individuals have different primary life goals that include learning, developing, and striving for achievement. Accomplishing those objectives requires a special openness to discomforting elements: demanding tasks, contrary points of view, unfamiliar people, and owning mistakes or failures. Any other approach would be maladaptive.

Instead, he spent that crucial time consciously calming his fears and simultaneously building his confidence by reviewing his past academic successes and enumerating his genuine strengths. Much of his test-taking prowess, he was convinced, stemmed from the resultant combination of diminished fear and bolstered confidence: “You can’t think straight when you’re scared,” he reminded me, “plus, you’re much more persistent when you’re confident in your abilities.”

Prior to a mathematics test, researchers asked some Asian American women students to record their gender; others were asked to record their ethnicity. Compared with a sample of Asian American women students who weren’t asked to record either characteristic, those who were reminded of their gender scored worse, while those reminded of their ethnicity scored better.63

Thus, when unity is made focal, all kinds of desirable concepts besides helpfulness are readied for action.)

How manufacturable? But there is another approach that doesn’t require finding a strong existing connection. In fact, it doesn’t require an existing connection at all. Rather, it involves creating a connection from scratch.

us (1) to register certain cues in settings where we can further our goal, and (2) to take an appropriate action spurred by the cues and consistent with the goal.

The “if/when-then” wording is designed to put us on high alert for a particular time or circumstance when a productive action could be performed. We become prepared, first, to notice the favorable time or circumstance and, second, to associate it automatically and directly with desired conduct.

Especially for goals we are highly committed to reaching, we’d be foolish not to take advantage of the pre-suasive leverage that if/when-then plans can provide.68

(1) what is more accessible in mind becomes more probable in action, and (2) this accessibility is influenced by the informational cues around us and by our raw associations to them.

But the authors also place in their collection a quote from Hollywood director Gregory Ratoff, who said, “Let me ask you a question, for your information.” Although the book’s authors consider Ratoff’s quote nonsensical, I disagree. Posing a question can provide invaluable information to its recipient. It can spur him or her to bring to mind a piece of possessed knowledge not high in consciousness at the time but that, when made focal, changes everything: for instance, the awareness that on sunny days we don’t just wear dark-colored glasses but rose-colored ones as well. In the realm of self-correction mechanisms, then, we can find another source of validation for a core tenet of pre-suasion: immediate, large-scale adjustments begin frequently with practices that do little more than redirect attention.69

It seems that the conspicuousness of the placements cued viewers to the advertisers’ sly attempts to sway their preferences and caused a correction against the potential distortion. Whereas the most subtly placed brands were chosen by 47 percent of the audience, only 27 percent picked the most prominently placed ones.

If we go to the supermarket with the idea of purchasing healthy, nutritious, and inexpensive foods, we can neutralize the draw of heavily advertised, attractively packaged, or easy-to-reach items on the shelves by weighing our choices on the basis of caloric, nutritional, and unit-pricing information on the labels.

Sleep researchers have noted that in field tests of combat artillery units, teams that are fully rested often challenge orders to fire on hospitals or other civilian targets.

after twenty-four to thirty-six sleepless hours, they often obey superiors’ directives without question and become more likely to shell anything.

Besides fatigue, numerous other conditions can keep people from recognizing and correcting potentially foolish tendencies. Indeed, such foolish tendencies are likely to predominate when a person is rushed, overloaded, preoccupied, indifferent, stressed, distracted, or, it seems, a conspiracy theorist.

In addition to its time-challenged character, other aspects of modern life undermine our ability (and motivation) to think in a fully reasoned way about even important decisions. The sheer amount of information today can be overwhelming—its complexity befuddling, its relentlessness depleting, its range distracting, and its prospects agitating. Couple those culprits with the concentration-disrupting alerts of devices nearly everyone now carries to deliver that input, and careful assessment’s role as a ready decision-making corrective becomes sorely diminished.

They are reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, and consistency.

These principles are highly effective general generators of acceptance because they typically counsel people correctly regarding when to say yes to influence attempts.

People say yes to those they owe.

There are three main features of this sort: in order to optimize the return, what we give first should be experienced as meaningful, unexpected, and customized.

what we give first should be experienced as meaningful, unexpected, and customized.

However, when other diners were invited to take two chocolates from the basket, the waitress’s tips rose by 14.1 percent. What could account for the dramatic difference? For one, the second chocolate represented a meaningful increase in the size of the gift—a doubling. Plainly, meaningful is not the same as expensive, as the second chocolate cost only pennies. Providing a costly gift can often be meaningful, but costliness isn’t necessary. Of course, the receipt of two chocolates was not only twice that of one chocolate but also more unexpected.

If a gift, favor, or service incorporates all three features of meaningfulness, unexpectedness, and customization, it can become a formidable source of change.

On the following visit, the CIA man came prepared with a fully optimized gift: four Viagra tablets, one per wife. The “potency” of this meaningful, unexpected, customized favor became manifest during the CIA agent’s next trip, when the beaming leader responded with a wealth of information about Taliban movements and supply routes.76

Accordingly, we were often given smiling lessons, grooming tips, and jokes to tell.

We were instructed to highlight similarities and provide compliments.

Similarities. We like those who are like us. It’s

effects. Parallels in language style (the types of words and verbal expressions conversation partners use) increase romantic attraction, relationship stability, and, somewhat amazingly, the likelihood that a hostage negotiation will end peacefully.

Compliments. “I can live for two months,” confessed Mark Twain, “on a good compliment.”

It’s an apt metaphor, as compliments nourish and sustain us emotionally. They also cause us to like and benefit those who provide them; and this is true whether the praise is for our appearance, taste, personality, work habits, or intelligence.

Other researchers found that individuals who worked on a computer task and received flattering task-related feedback from the computer developed more favorable feelings toward the machine, even though they were told that the feedback had been preprogrammed and did not reflect their actual task performance at all. Nonetheless, they became prouder of their performances after receiving this hollow form of praise.

That’s because people trust that those who like them will try to steer them correctly. So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them. There’s a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.79

Validity. After receiving information that multiple, comparable others have responded in a particular way, that response seems more valid, more right to us, both morally and practically.

In addition to clarifying what’s right morally, social proof reduces uncertainty about what’s right pragmatically. Not every time, but the crowd is usually correct about the wisdom of actions, making the popularity of an activity a stand-in for its soundness.

At the end of the month, we recorded how much energy was used and learned that the social-proof-based message had generated 3.5 times as much energy savings as any of the other messages.

A great strength of social-proof information is that it destroys the problem of uncertain achievability. If people learn that many others like them are conserving energy, there is little doubt as to its feasibility. It comes to seem realistic and, therefore, implementable.81

The most famous of these contentions is embodied in the assertion of the communication theorist Marshall McLuhan that “The medium is the message”—the idea that the channel through which information is sent is a form of consequential messaging itself, which affects how recipients experience content.

When a legitimate expert on a topic speaks, people are usually persuaded.

A credible authority possesses the combination of two highly persuasive qualities: expertise and trustworthiness.

It turns out to be possible to acquire instant trustworthiness by employing a clever strategy. Rather than succumbing to the tendency to describe all of the most favorable features of an offer or idea up front and reserving mention of any drawbacks until the end of the presentation (or never), a communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest. The advantage of this sequence is that, with perceived truthfulness already in place, when the major strengths of the case are advanced, the audience is more likely to believe them. After all, they’ve been conveyed by a trustworthy source, one whose honesty has been established (pre-suasively) by a willingness to point not just to positive aspects but also to negative ones.

The tactic can be particularly successful when the audience is already aware of the weakness; thus, when a communicator mentions it, little additional damage is done, as no new information is added—except, crucially, that the communicator is an honest individual.

We want more of what we can have less of. For instance, when access to a desired item is restricted in some way, people have been known to go a little crazy for it.

Although there are several reasons that scarcity drives desire, our aversion to losing something of value is a key factor. After all, loss is the ultimate form of scarcity, rendering the valued item or opportunity unavailable.

Therefore communicators who can get us to take a pre-suasive step, even a small one, in the direction of a particular idea or entity will increase our willingness to take a much larger, congruent step when asked. The desire for consistency will prompt it. This powerful pull toward personal alignment is used in a wide range of influence settings.

Organizations can raise the probability that an individual will appear at a meeting or event by switching from saying at the end of a reminder phone call, “We’ll mark you on the list as coming then. Thank you!” to “We’ll mark you on the list as coming then, okay? [Pause for confirmation.] Thank you.” One blood services organization that made this tiny, commitment-inducing wording change increased the participation of likely donors in a blood drive from 70 percent to 82.4 percent.85

At the first stage, the main goal involves cultivating a positive association, as people are more favorable to a communication if they are favorable to the communicator. Two principles of influence, reciprocity and liking, seem particularly appropriate to the task. Giving first (in a meaningful, unexpected, and customized fashion), highlighting genuine commonalities, and offering true compliments establish mutual rapport that facilitates all future dealings. At the second stage, reducing uncertainty becomes a priority. A positive relationship with a communicator doesn’t ensure persuasive success. Before people are likely to change, they want to see any decision as wise. Under these circumstances, the principles of social proof and authority offer the best match. Pointing to evidence that a choice is well regarded by peers or experts significantly increases confidence in its wisdom. But even with a positive association cultivated and uncertainty reduced, a remaining step needs to be taken. At this third stage, motivating action is the main objective. That is, a well-liked friend might show me sufficient proof that experts recommend (and almost all my peers believe) that daily exercise is a good thing, but that might not be enough to get me to do it. The friend would do well to include in his appeal the

principles of consistency and scarcity by reminding me of what I’ve said publicly in the past about the importance of my health and the unique enjoyments I would miss if I lost it. That’s the message that would most likely get me up in the morning and off to the gym.

Our ability to create change in others is often and importantly grounded in shared personal relationships, which create a pre-suasive context for assent.

Put simply, we is the shared me.

The evidence for overlapping self and other identities within we-based groups is varied and impressive. People often fail to distinguish correctly between themselves and in-group members: unduly assigning their own characteristics to those others, repeatedly failing to recall which personal traits they had rated previously for in-group members or for themselves, and taking significantly longer to identify traits that differentiated in-group members from themselves—all of which reflects a confusion of self and other.