Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

by Robert B. Cialdini

So when I wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of magazine (or vacuum-cleaner or portrait-photograph or health-supplement) sales organizations, I would answer an ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public-relations, and fundraising agencies to examine their techniques.

Research shows that messages are more likely to be successful if recipients can first be made to feel positively toward the messenger. Three of the seven principles of influence—reciprocation, liking, and unity—seem particularly appropriate to the task.

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor, we will be more successful if we provide a reason.

Psychologists have uncovered a number of mental shortcuts we employ in making our everyday judgments. 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.

We resist the seductive luxury of registering and reacting to just a single (trigger) feature of the available information when an issue is important to us.

The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule.

Because reciprocal arrangements are so vital in human social systems, we have been conditioned to feel uncomfortable when beholden. If we were to ignore the need to return another’s initial favor, we would stop one reciprocal sequence dead and make it less likely that our benefactor would do such favors in the future.