Review: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

A good read on six principles of human psychology that can help you to persuade others. This is a “pop psychology” book, so as always, take the contents of the book as good rules of thumb, rather than hard scientific principles. That said, a good rule of thumb can be very useful in life, and this book presents 6 rules that you should take into account.

1. Reciprocity. If you give someone a gift or do them a favor, they are socially obligated to give something back. Key idea: before making a request of someone, do them a favor. Even if it’s something really small (e.g., Hare Krishna followers giving free flowers, supermarkets giving away free samples), you’re much more likely to have your request accepted. It’s impolite to reject a gift and even more so to not reciprocate, so this is a powerful psychological concept.

2. Scarcity. People want something more if there is less of it available, and especially if others compete with them for it. If you want a customer to be more likely to buy your product, you can tell them it’s running out, or there’s a deadline, or better yet, some other company is going to buy the last available one! This is why real estate agents rarely do 1-on-1 showings of houses and instead love to do open houses, where many potential buyers show up at the same time and realize how many others are competing with them for this scarce resource.

3. Consistency. If you’ve said or done something previously—if you’ve committed to something, especially publicly—you’re much more likely to maintain or even expand on that behavior. There is a huge amount of power in getting someone to commit to something, even if it’s something small, before asking for something bigger. And if the commitment is public and/or in writing, it’s much more powerful. For example, if you sell cleaning products, get the customer to talk about their problem, the ideal solution, and how they’d feel if they had such a solution. Ask them if they are the type of person who likes a clean and tidy home. Ask them to talk about how much messiness bothers them and how much better they feel when everything is put away. Now that they identify as the type of person who likes cleanliness, when you offer them your cleaning product, they will be much more likely to accept.

4. Authority. People trust experts. This one is fairly obvious, but an important idea is that, in some cases, you should take extra effort to make people aware of your authority. For example, patients comply more with a doctor’s advice if the doctor’s diploma is hanging in a visible spot in their office.

5. Social proof. People look to others for how to behave, especially in uncertain situations. Cialdini has a number of great stories around this principle. One is the classic case where a woman was killed in a NYC street and even though there were 30+ witnesses, no one called the police or tried to help. Instead, they all looked at each other, saw no one was reacting, and assumed since no one else was reacting, it must be OK. Another is the impact of front-page news stories: for example, if a famous person commits suicide, the number of suicides goes up, especially amongst people who are similar to the celebrity (e.g., same gender, race, age). And yet another was the idea of opera claqueurs, who are paid to attend operas and applaud, cheer, laugh, cry, etc. It’s the original version of the sitcom laugh track.

6. Liking. People listen much more to those they like: or, more specifically, to those who are similar to them, those who compliment them, and those that cooperate with them. This is one of the reasons attractive people have massive benefits in society. We like the way someone looks and unconsciously will treat them better and trust them more.

7. (bonus) Contrast. This is another important principle mentioned in the book, though it’s not listed as one of the “big 6.” The idea is that instead of trying to gauge the absolute value of something, most people determine value by comparing with something else (other books, such as “Thinking: Fast and Slow” talk extensively about “priming effects”). For example, when negotiating, start with a very high price, and then back off to the real number you want; that real number will seem much more reasonable by contrast. In fact, by backing off to your real number, this “concession” will feel like a gift to the other person, so you’ll likely not only benefit from contrast, but reciprocity too.

The common theme amongst all these ideas—and many other psychological principles—is that our brains are always looking for shortcuts. It’s too inefficient to make all decisions from first principles, so we develop heuristics that let us make decisions quickly. These shortcuts and heuristics work most of the time, but if you know what they are, you can take advantage of them.

I have to admit that while reading this book, some of the tricks Cialdini describes are a bit questionable; others feel downright immoral. For example, he talks about a trick car dealers use where they offer you a low price and get you to agree to buy the car at that price. They might even let you take it home for a day and tell all your neighbors about the great deal you got. But when you come back the next day to sign the paperwork, they tell you there had been a mistake, and the price is now higher. Because the customer has already committed to themselves, their family, and their neighbors, to buying the car, they often go along with this higher price, even if they never would’ve accepted it had it been the original offer.

That to me feels manipulative and wrong. But then again, we are all manipulating each other all the time. A salesman may wear a suit to impress a customer more; a saleswoman will wear makeup; a web designer will make the website look clean and snappy; a SaaS company will list the price per month rather than per year; and so on. There’s a line in there somewhere, but it’s not always obvious where it is.

One of the other interesting insights from this book is that the reason the brain uses all these shortcuts is that the world is complicated and the amount of information can be overwhelming. What’s worrying is that the amount of information we have access to is increasing due to the Internet. Will this lead to people using even more shortcuts and leaving themselves open to even more abuse? Is this what makes fake news and the election of Trump possible?

Rating: 5 stars