Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

by Robert B. Cialdini

Trappings

Possessions is the last thing that causes compliance within the authority principle. This is cars, jewelry, houses, girls, etc.

HOW TO SAY NO

Remove the element of surprise and ask if the authority principle in play a real expert. Second, assess how truthful the authority figure could be, what do they have to gain? Also be weary of those who mention their shortcomings, small, compared to their advantages.

Yet there is a perverse complication—the familiar one inherent in all weapons of influence: We shouldn’t want to resist altogether, or even most of the time.

In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.

the ability to acquire, store, and manage information is becoming increasingly the determinant of wealth and power,

Almost invariably, our response to the banning of information is a greater desire to receive that information and a more favorable attitude toward it than before the ban.

The results of the experiment quickly become apparent when the company salespeople began to urge the owner to buy more beef because there wasn’t enough in the inventory to keep up with all the orders they were receiving. Compared to the customers who got only the standard sales appeal, those who were also told about the future scarcity of beef bought more than twice as much. But the real boost in sales occurred among the customers who heard of the impending scarcity via “exclusive” information. They purchased six times the amount that the customers who received only the standard sales pitch did. Apparently the fact that the news carrying the scarcity of information was itself scarce made it especially persuasive.116

Do we value more those things that have recently become less available to us, or those things that have always been scarce? In the cookie experiment, the answer was plain. The drop from abundance to scarcity produced a decidedly more positive reaction to the cookies than did constant scarcity.

This pattern offers a valuable lesson for would-be rulers: When it comes to freedoms, it is more dangerous to have given for a while than never to have given at all.

Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.

people see a thing as more desirable when it has recently become less available than when it has been scarce all along. We should not be surprised, then, when research shows that parents who enforce discipline inconsistently produce generally rebellious children.

The results showed that those whose cookies became scarce through the process of social demand liked them significantly more than those whose cookies became scarce by mistake. In fact, the cookies made less available through social demand were rated the most desirable of any in the study.

The feeling of being in competition for scarce resources has powerfully motivating properties. The ardor of an indifferent lover surges with the appearance of a rival. It is often for reasons of strategy, therefore, that romantic partners reveal (or invent) the attentions of a new admirer.

scarcity plus rivalry.

In such cases it is vital to remember that scarce things do not taste or feel or sound or ride or work any better because of their limited availability.

For a car he had purchased on the prior weekend, he would place an ad in the Sunday paper. Because he knew how to construct a good ad, he usually received an array of calls from potential buyers on Sunday morning. Each prospect who was interested enough to want to see the car was given an appointment time—the same appointment time. So if six people were scheduled, they were all scheduled for, say, two o’clock that afternoon. This little device of simultaneous scheduling paved the way for later compliance because it created an atmosphere of competition for a limited resource.