Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

by Robert B. Cialdini

way information is evaluated. The act of limiting access to a message causes individuals to want to receive it and to become more favorable to it. In the case of censorship, the effect of greater favorability toward a restricted message occurs even before the message has been received. In addition, messages are more effective if perceived as containing exclusive (scarce) information. The scarcity principle is most likely to hold under two optimizing conditions. First, scarce items are heightened in value when they are newly scarce. That is, we value those things that have recently become restricted more than we do those that were restricted all along. Second, we are most attracted to scarce resources when we compete with others for them. It is difficult to steel ourselves cognitively against scarcity pressures because they have an emotion-arousing quality that makes thinking difficult. In defense, we might try to be alert to a rush of arousal in situations involving scarcity. Once alerted, we can take steps to calm the arousal and assess the merits of the opportunity in terms of why we want it.