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“You know, Robert, your book Influence is so famous in Poland, my students think you’re dead.”
“If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change,”
messages are more likely to be successful if recipients can first be made to feel positively toward the messenger.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
The result was once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance.
Price alone had become a trigger feature for quality, and a dramatic increase in price alone had led to a dramatic increase in sales among the quality-hungry buyers.
In the struggle for survival, nearly every form of life has its mimics—right
room-temperature water—can be made to seem very different depending on the nature of the event preceding it.
Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend. However, I am getting a “D” in American History, and an F in Chemistry, and I want you to see those marks in their proper perspective.
Joe was more successful in selling his raffle tickets to the subjects who had received his earlier favor.
subjects bought more raffle tickets from Joe the more they liked him.
For those who owed him a favor, it made no difference whether they liked him or not;
mailing a $5 “gift” check along with an insurance survey was twice as effective as offering a $50 payment for sending back a completed survey.
even if they didn’t particularly like the candy they were given, they still felt obligated to return the favor by purchasing something.
people often believe what they prefer to believe.
visitors entered with a need for food, and matching the gift to the need made the difference.
problem-free may not feel as good to people as problem-freed.
a request is not necessary to produce our feeling of indebtedness.
“There’s nothing more expensive than that which comes for free.”
Even for future favors, the rejection-then-retreat strategy proved superior.
there is no connection between one’s belief in evolution and one’s understanding of its logic.
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”—and
to change feelings, counteract them with other feelings;
flattery’s the food of fools.”
compliment him or her not just on the behavior but, instead, on the trait. You’ll probably see more of it.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
“The nature of bad news infects the teller.”
any product connected to a Sale sign becomes automatically evaluated more favorably.
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate one another.
dishes became more popular because of their popularity.
popularity precipitates popularity.
people are more likely to be persuaded by information, including social-proof information, when they think it is not intended to persuade them
what we prefer to be true will seem to be true.
When Prophesy Fails.
publicity and recruitment efforts provided the only remaining hope.
because the physical evidence could not be changed, the social evidence had to be. Convince, and ye shall be convinced.
It wasn’t the crackpot Bell who was most convincing. It was the Londoners themselves who validated his theory, each to the other.
“To get along, you have to go along.”
the most influential leaders are those who know how to arrange group conditions to allow the principle of social proof to work in their favor.
The strongest influence on market share, 80 percent, was due to geographical region.
trends don’t just tell us where others’ behaviors have been and are now; we think they also tell us where others’ behaviors will be.
Buffett knows more than how to be an impressively successful investor; he knows how to communicate impressively about being an impressively successful investor.
if a site includes some negative reviews, the conversion rate jumps by 67 percent.
Seeming to argue against his financial interests served those interests extremely well.
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
imperfections that would otherwise make for rubbish make for prized possessions when they bring along an abiding scarcity.
presenting an item in abundance reduces its perceived value.
those whose cookies became scarce through the process of social demand liked them significantly more than did those whose cookies became scarce by mistake.
I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
their confidence that they made the right choice improves significantly once the decision is finalized.
