Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

by Robert B. Cialdini

The book is organized around these six principles, one to a chapter. The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity—

I choose not to treat the material self-interest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment but not extensive description.

a willingness to say yes without thinking first.

fixed-action patterns,

the trigger feature.

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. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.

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. Click, whirr!

To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it.

They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work.

There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is.

Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—

“much obliged” has become a synonym for “thank you,”

For those who owed him a favor, it made no difference whether they liked him or not; they felt a sense of obligation to repay him, and they did.

The rule for reciprocity was so strong that it simply overwhelmed the influence of a factor—liking for the requester—that normally affects the decision to comply.

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

an uninvited first favor must have the ability to create an obligation.

The nature of the reciprocity rule is such that a gift so unwanted that it was jettisoned at the first opportunity had nonetheless been effective and exploitable.

Another consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.

if there were no social obligation to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice?

the larger the initial request, the more effective the procedure,

if the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the tactic backfires.

The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.

Many individuals who would not otherwise subject their friends to a high-pressure sales presentation do agree to supply referrals when the request is presented as a concession from a purchase request they have just refused.

Let’s once again say that I wish to borrow five dollars from you. By beginning with a ten-dollar request, I really can’t lose. If you agree to it, I will have gotten twice the amount from you I would have settled for. If, on the other hand, you turn down my initial request, I can retreat to the five-dollar favor that I desired from the outset and, through the action of the reciprocity and contrast principles, greatly enhance my likelihood of success. Either way, I benefit; it’s a case of heads I win, tails you lose.

The important result, though, concerned the show-up rate of those who volunteered; and, again, the rejection-then-retreat procedure was the more effective one (85 percent vs. 50 percent).21

Even for future favors, the rejection-then-retreat strategy proved superior.22

Those subjects facing the opponent who used the retreating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal.

A person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.

With this in mind, we can begin to explain the second previously puzzling feature of the rejection-then-retreat tactic—the ability to prompt its victims to agree to further requests. Since the tactic uses a concession to bring about compliance, the victim is likely to feel more satisfied with the arrangement as a result. And it stands to reason that people who are satisfied with a given arrangement are more likely to be willing to agree to further such arrangements.

Once we have determined that his initial offer was not a favor but a compliance tactic, we need only react to it accordingly to be free of its influence. As long as we perceive and define his action as a compliance device instead of a favor, he no longer has the reciprocation rule as an ally: The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors.

It would involve the mental act of redefinition. Merely define whatever you have received from the inspector—extinguisher, safety information, hazard inspection—not as gifts, but as sales devices, and you will be free to decline (or accept) his purchase offer without even a tug from the reciprocity rule: A favor rightly follows a favor—not a piece of sales strategy.

Like the other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done.

Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.

we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.

The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of social influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best interests.

But because it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we easily fall into the habit of being automatically so, even in situations where it is not the sensible way to be. When it occurs unthinkingly, consistency can be disastrous.

Sealed within the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be impervious to the sieges of reason.

Ah, the comforts of mindless consistency.

If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.

Have you noticed that callers asking you to contribute to some cause or another these days seem to begin things by inquiring about your current health and well-being?

Once you have publicly stated that all is well, it becomes much easier for the solicitor to corner you into aiding those for whom all is not well: “I’m glad to hear that, because I’m calling to ask if you’d be willing to make a donation to help out the unfortunate victims of…”

Despite the fact that the caller started each type of interaction with a warm and friendly comment, the “How are you feeling” technique was, by far, superior to its rival (33 percent vs. 15 percent compliance), because it alone drew an exploitable public commitment from its targets.

For the salesperson, the strategy is to obtain a large purchase by starting with a small one. Almost any small sale will do, because the purpose of that small transaction is not profit. It is commitment. Further purchases, even much larger ones, are expected to flow naturally from the commitment.

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.

What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about agreeing to trivial requests. Such an agreement can not only increase our compliance with very similar, much larger requests, it can also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger favors that are only remotely connected to the little one we did earlier. It’s this second, general kind of influence concealed within small commitments that scares me.

as a commitment device, a written declaration has some great advantages.

One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down.

They merely have the customer, rather than the salesman, fill out the sales agreement. According to the sales-training program of a prominent encyclopedia company, that personal commitment alone has proved to be “a very important psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their contracts.”

They live up to what they have written down.

Before I began to study weapons of social influence, I used to wonder why big companies such as Procter & Gamble and General Foods are always running those “25-, 50-, or 100 words or less” testimonial contests.