Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

by Robert B. Cialdini

An examination of the Chinese prison-camp program shows that its personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was elementary: Start small and build.

prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential (“The United States is not perfect.” “In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. A man who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case.

make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe, isn’t it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay e...

Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti-American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other POW camps in North Korea, as well as to American forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would f...

Aware that he had written the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “collaborator” label, often ...

The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique.

According to Freedman and Fraser, What may occur is a change in the person’s feelings about getting involved or taking action. Once he has agreed to a request, his attitude may change, he may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who cooperates with good causes.30

What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests.

remotely connected to the little one we did earlier. It’s this second, general kind of influence concealed within small commitments that scares me. It scares me enough that I am rarely willing to sign a petition anymore, even for a position I support. Such an action has the potential to influence not only my future behavior but also my self-image in ways I may not want.

Not all commitments affect self-image, however. There are certain conditions that should be present for a commitment to be effective in this way. To discover what they are, we can once again look to the American experience in the Chinese prison camps of Korea. It is important to understand that the major intent of the Chinese was not simply to extract information from their prisoners. It was to indoctrinate them, to change their attitudes and perceptions of themselves, of their political system, of their country’s role in the war, and of communism. And there is evidence that the program often worked alarmingly well.

appears that the real goal of the Chinese was to modify, at least for a time, the hearts and minds of their captives. If we measure their achievement in terms of “defection, disloyalty, changed attitudes and beliefs, poor discipline, poor morale, poor esprit, and doubts as to America’s role,” Dr. Segal concluded that “their efforts were highly successful.”

Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds.

Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions. What the Chinese have discovered is that the man himself uses this same evidence to decide what he is like.

Understanding fully this important principle of self-perception, the Chinese set about arranging the prison-camp experience so that their captives would consistently act in desired ways.

Before long, the Chinese knew, these actions would begin to take their toll, causing the men to change their views of themselves to align with what they had done. Writing was one sort of confirming action that the Chinese urged incessantly upon the men. It was never enough for the prisoners to listen quietly or even to agree verbally with the Chinese line; they were always pushed to write it down as well.

But more important for the purpose of commitment, it can persuade them that the author genuinely believes what was written. People have a natural tendency to think that a statement reflects the true attitude of the person who made it. What is surprising is that they continue to think so even when they know that the person did not freely choose to make the statement.

Think of the double-barreled effects on the self-image of a prisoner who wrote a pro-Chinese or anti-American statement. Not only was it a lasting personal reminder of his action, it was also likely to persuade those around him that the statement reflected his actual beliefs. And, as we will see in Chapter 4, what those around us think is true of us is enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true.

Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by consistency pressures.

From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to adjust this image according to the way others perceive us.

these organizations have found that something special happens when people personally put their commitments on paper: They live up to what they have written down.

The result is hundreds of men in Korea or hundreds of thousands of people in America who testify in writing to the product’s appeal and who, consequently, experience that “magical” pull to believe what they have written.

The prisoner experience in Korea showed the Chinese to be quite aware of an important psychological principle: Public commitments tend to be lasting commitments.

arranged to have the pro-Communist statements of their captives seen by others.

Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.

“persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”

Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation rituals begin to make sense.

the case of West Point cadet John Edwards, who was expelled from the U.S. Military Academy in 1988 on charges involving the authorized hazing that all first-year cadets experience at the hands of upperclassmen to ensure that the newcomers can withstand the rigors of West Point training. It was not that Mr. Edwards, who ranked academically near the top of his eleven-hundred-member class, had been unable to bear up under the ritual when he was subjected to it. Nor was he expelled because he had been aberrantly cruel in his treatment of the younger cadets. His offense was that he would not expose the newcomers to what he felt was “absurd and dehumanizing” treatment. Once again, then, it appears that, for groups concerned

commitments are most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effortful.

Although the settings are quite different, the surveyed fraternities refused to allow civic activities into their initiation ceremonies for the same reason that the Chinese withheld large prizes in favor of less powerful inducements: They wanted the men to own what they had done.

fraternity chapters and Chinese Communists were playing for keeps. It was not enough to wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be made to take inner responsibility for their actions.

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures.

large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to

All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe

The interesting result was that, of the boys playing with a toy, 77 percent chose to play with the robot that had been forbidden to them earlier. Freedman’s severe threat, which had been so successful six weeks before, was almost totally unsuccessful when he was no longer able to back it up with punishment.

Adults facing the child-rearing experience can take a cue from the Freedman study. Suppose a couple wants to impress upon their daughter that lying is wrong. A strong, clear threat (“It’s bad to lie, honey; so if I catch you at it, I’ll cut your tongue out”) might well be effective when the parents are present or when the girl thinks she can be discovered. But it will not achieve the larger goal of convincing her that she does not want to lie because she thinks it’s wrong. To do that, a much subtler approach is required.

It’s a tricky business, because exactly what this barely sufficient reason will be changes from child to child.

Wise parents will know which kind of reason will work on their own children.

The important thing is to use a reason that will initially produce the desired behavior and will, at the same time, allow a child to take personal responsibility for that behavior.

Selecting just the right reason is not an easy task for parents. But the effort should pay off. It is likely to mean the difference between short-l...

once a man has been induced to take action that shifts his self-image to that of, let’s say, a public-spirited citizen, he is likely to be public-spirited in a variety of other circumstances where his compliance may also be desired, and he is likely to continue his public-spirited behavior for as long as his new self-image holds.

The advantage to an unscrupulous compliance professional is tremendous. Because we build new struts to undergird choices we have committed ourselves to, an exploitative individual can offer us an inducement for making such a choice, and after the decision has been made, can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs.

The impressive thing about the lowball tactic is its ability to make a person feel pleased with a poor choice.

As a general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information. It’s just that, if I said a word, I am confident she would hate me for it.

Just good intentions coupled with information about saving fuel, then, were not enough to change habits.

the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.

an Arizona State University research team that infiltrated the Billy Graham organization reported on such advance preparations prior to one of his Crusade visits. “By the time Graham arrives in town and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions on when to come forth at varying intervals to create the impression of a spontaneous mass outpouring.”

At the height of the disco craze, certain discotheque owners manufactured a brand of visible social proof for their clubs’ quality by creating long waiting lines outside when there was plenty of room inside.

Same in late 90s and early 2000s clubs and bars in Atlanta

people suffering from phobias can be rid of these extreme fears in an amazingly simple fashion.

children chosen because they were terrified of dogs merely watched a little boy playing happily with a dog for twenty minutes a day. This exhibition produced such marked changes in the reactions of the fearful children that after only four days, 67 percent of them were willing to climb into a playpen with a dog and remain confined there, petting and scratching it while everyone else left the room.

film clips had the same effect.