Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion
Metadata
- Title: Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Author: Robert B Cialdini PhD
- Book URL: https://amazon.com/dp/B08HZ57WYN?tag=malvaonlin-20
- Open in Kindle: kindle://book/?action=open&asin=B08HZ57WYN
- Last Updated on: Monday, April 18, 2022
Highlights & Notes
The principles—reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment and consistency, and unity—are discussed both in terms of their function in society and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, or assent.1 Each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people: a willingness to say yes without thinking first.
Research shows that messages are more likely to be successful if recipients can first be made to feel positively toward the messenger. Three of the seven principles of influence—reciprocation, liking, and unity—seem particularly appropriate to the task.
reciprocation, liking, and unity for when relationship cultivation is primary; followed by social proof and authority for when reducing uncertainty is foremost; followed in turn by consistency and scarcity for when motivating action is the principle objective.
Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them. —Alfred North Whitehead Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. —Leonardo da Vinci
The second important thing to understand is that we, too, have our preset programs, and although they usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can dupe us into running the right programs at the wrong times.
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.
The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a simplifying principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: expensive = good. Research shows that people who are unsure of an item’s quality often use this stereotype. Thus the vacationers, who wanted “good” jewelry, saw the turquoise pieces as decidedly more valuable and desirable when nothing about them was enhanced but the price. 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.
We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects of each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then respond without thinking when one or another of the trigger features is present.
Psychologists have uncovered a number of mental shortcuts we employ in making our everyday judgments. Termed judgmental heuristics, these shortcuts operate in much the same fashion as the expensive = good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well most of the time but leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes.
We resist the seductive luxury of registering and reacting to just a single (trigger) feature of the available information when an issue is important to us.
The point is that the same thing—in this instance, room-temperature water—can be made to seem very different depending on the nature of the event preceding it.
It is more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first; to fail to do so not only loses the force of the contrast principle but also causes the principle to work against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one makes the expensive item seem even more costly—hardly a desirable consequence for sales organizations. So just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear to be hotter or colder depending on the temperature of previously presented buckets of water, it is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher or lower depending on the price of a previously presented item.
Let not thine hand be stretched out to receive and drawn back when thou shouldest repay. —Ecclesiasticus 4:30–31
The rule says that we should try to repay what another person has provided us.
I also thought that if I were to give advice to someone who’d just received thanks for a meaningful favor, I’d warn against minimizing the favor in all-too-common language that disengages the influence of the rule of reciprocation: “No big deal.” “Don’t think a thing about it.” “I would have done it for anybody.” Instead, I’d recommend retaining that (earned) influence by saying something such as, “Listen, if our positions were ever reversed, I know you’d do the same for me.” The benefits should be considerable.
In general, business operators have found that after accepting a gift, customers are willing to purchase products and agree to requests they would have otherwise declined.
For an extended discussion of how reciprocity works on social media, see https://vimeo.com/137374366.
Besides customizing a gift to a recipient’s preferences, customizing it to the recipient’s current needs can also supercharge the gift’s impact.
I’m convinced that it is the unique customizability of a reaction to a mistake that allows it to be experienced as a personalized gift or service. That feature brings the leverage of the rule of reciprocation into play, which allows us to make sense of the heightened levels of satisfaction and loyalty that can flow, so paradoxically, from a gaffe. In short, problem-free may not feel as good to people as problem-freed.
Although an obligation to repay constitutes the essence of the reciprocity rule, it’s the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. A responsibility to receive reduces our ability to choose those to whom we wish to be indebted and puts the power in the hands of others.
The ability of uninvited gifts to produce feelings of obligation is recognized by a variety of organizations.
“There’s nothing more expensive than that which comes for free.”
In combination, the reality of internal discomfort and the possibility of external shame can produce a heavy psychological cost. When seen in the light of this cost, it is not so puzzling that in the name of reciprocity, we often give back more than we have received. Neither is it so odd that we often avoid asking for a needed favor if we will not be in a position to repay it. The psychological cost may simply outweigh the material loss.
Another consequence, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
The reciprocation rule brings about mutual concession in two ways. The first is obvious: it pressures the recipient of an already made concession to respond in kind. The second, while not so obvious, is pivotally important. Because of a recipient’s obligation to reciprocate, people are freed to make the initial concession and, thereby, to begin the beneficial process of exchange. After all, if there were no social obligation to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice? To do so would be to risk giving up something and getting nothing back. However, with the rule in effect, we can feel safe making the first sacrifice to our partner, who is obligated to offer a return sacrifice.
The technique is a simple one that we can call the rejection-then-retreat technique, although it is also known as the door-in-the-face technique. Suppose you want me to agree to a certain request. One way to increase the chances I will comply is first to make a larger request of me, one that I will most likely turn down. Then, after I have refused, you make the smaller request that you were really interested in all along. Provided that you structured your requests skillfully, I should view your second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of my own—compliance with your second request.
The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated just enough to allow for a series of small reciprocal concessions and counteroffers that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent.
Strangely enough, then, it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic spurs people not only to agree to a desired request but to carry out that request and, finally, to volunteer to perform further requests.
Thus the uncanny ability of the rejection-then-retreat technique to make its targets meet their commitments becomes understandable: a person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.
Because the tactic uses a requester’s concession to bring about compliance, the victim is likely to feel more satisfied with the arrangement as a result. It stands to reason that people who are satisfied with a given arrangement are more likely to be willing to agree to similar arrangements.
feeling responsible for getting a better deal in a retail store led to more satisfaction with the process and more return visits to the store.
The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors.
A favor rightly follows a favor—not a sales scheme.
After all, the reciprocity rule asserts that if justice is to be done, exploitation attempts should be exploited.
There is nothing more effective in selling anything than getting customers to believe, really believe, you like them. —Joe Girard, Guinness Book of World Records “Greatest Car Salesman”
How to use it in online marketing: Use the language of your audience. Using words, phrases, and slang common to the group will work even better. On the other hand, if you use words that your audience doesn’t use or doesn’t understand, you are creating a distance between you and giving them nothing to relate to. Social media and emails are perfect to interact with your audience. Make sure you first reach out to them without asking them to do anything—just as you would with your friends.
Give a compliment behind a deserving person’s back.
Find and give genuine compliments you want the recipient to live up to.
What’s the implication? If there’s someone who ordinarily performs commendably—perhaps a conscientious colleague who often comes prepared for meetings or a helpful friend who frequently tries hard to give useful feedback on your ideas—compliment him or her not just on the behavior but, instead, on the trait. You’ll probably see more of
Often we don’t realize our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
In general, here is how it works: The teacher stands in front of the class and asks a question. Six to ten children strain in their seats and wave their hands in the teacher’s face, eager to be called on and show how smart they are. Several others sit quietly with eyes averted, trying to become invisible. When the teacher calls on one child, you see looks of disappointment and dismay on the faces of the eager students, who missed a chance to get the teacher’s approval; and you will see relief on the faces of the others who didn’t know the answer… . This game is fiercely competitive and the stakes are high, because the kids are competing for the love and approval of one of the two or three most important people in their world. Further, this teaching process guarantees that the children will not learn to like and understand each other. Conjure up your own experience. If you knew the right answer and the teacher called on someone else, you probably hoped that he or she would make a mistake so that you would have a chance to display your knowledge. If you were called on and failed, or if you didn’t even raise your hand to compete, you probably envied and resented your classmates who knew the answer. Children who fail in this system become jealous and resentful of the successes, putting them down as teacher’s pets or even resorting to violence against them in the school yard. The successful students, for their part, often hold the unsuccessful children in contempt, calling them “dumb” or “stupid.”
The crucial procedure was the researcher’s imposition of common goals on the groups.
The task, then, is not to eliminate academic competition but to break its monopoly in the classroom by introducing regular cooperative experiences that include members of all ethnic groups and lead to successful outcomes.
Hell: A sumptuously provisioned banquet hall full of hungry people with locked-strait elbow joints who can’t feed themselves because their unbendable arms won’t allow it. Heaven: Everything’s the same except people are feeding each other.
First, although the familiarity produced by contact usually leads to greater liking, the opposite occurs if the contact carries distasteful or threatening experiences with it. Therefore, when children of different racial groups are thrown into the incessant, harsh competition of the standard American classroom, we ought to—and do—see hostilities worsen. Second, the evidence that team-oriented learning is an antidote to this disorder tells us about the heavy impact of cooperation on the liking process.
As it turns out, cooperation passes the test with flying colors. Compliance professionals are forever attempting to establish that we and they are working for the same goals; that we must “pull together” for mutual benefit; that they are, in essence, our teammates.
In a related effect, researchers have found that promotional signs proclaiming SALE increase purchases (even when there is no actual savings), not simply because shoppers consciously think, “Oh, I can save money here.” Rather, owing to a separate, additional tendency, buying becomes more likely because such signs have been repeatedly associated with good prices in the shoppers’ pasts. Consequently, any product connected to a Sale sign becomes automatically evaluated more favorably.
So we want our affiliated sports teams to win to prove our own superiority, but to whom are we trying to prove it? Ourselves, certainly, but to everyone else too. According to the association principle, if we can surround ourselves with success we are connected with in even a superficial way (for example, place of residence), our public prestige should rise.
The tendency to trumpet one’s links to victors is not unique to the sports arena. After general elections in Belgium, researchers looked to see how long it took homeowners to remove their lawn signs favoring one or another political party. The better the election result for a party, the longer homeowners wallowed in the positive connection by leaving the signs up
There are several varieties of this species that bloom throughout our culture. The persistent name-dropper is a classic example. So, too, is the rock-music groupie, who trades sexual favors for the right to tell friends that she or he was “with” a famous musician for a time. No matter which form it takes, the behavior of such individuals shares a similar theme—the rather tragic view of accomplishment as deriving from outside the self.
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate one another. —Eric Hoffer
To discover why popularity is so effective, we need to understand the nature of yet another potent lever of influence: the principle of social proof. This principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. Importantly, the principle applies to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view an action as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.
“Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
The principle of social proof works best when the proof is provided by the actions of many other people.
The high-demand information was “slipped into” an ad to recruit salespeople. Its notable success fits with evidence that people are more likely to be persuaded by information, including social-proof information, when they think it is not intended to persuade them
The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the idea to be correct. The group’s assignment was clear; because the physical evidence could not be changed, the social evidence had to be. Convince, and ye shall be convinced.
In the case of social proof, there are three main optimizing conditions: when we are unsure of what is best to do (uncertainty); when the evidence of what is best to do comes from numerous others (the many); and when that evidence comes from people like us (similarity).
One way uncertainty develops is through lack of familiarity with the situation. Under such circumstances, people are especially likely to follow the lead of others.
Often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? Is the commotion next door an assault requiring the police or an especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and unwelcome? What is going on? In times of such uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for clues. From the principle of social proof, we can determine from the way the other witnesses are reacting whether the event is or is not an emergency.
They don’t help because they are unsure an emergency actually exists and whether they are responsible for taking action. When they are confident of their responsibilities for intervening in a clear emergency, people are exceedingly responsive.
In general, then, your best strategy when in need of emergency help is to reduce the uncertainties of those around you concerning your condition and their responsibilities. Be as precise as possible about your need for aid.
Observers of male–female confrontations often assume the pair is romantically involved and that intervention would be unwanted or inappropriate. To combat this perception and get aid, the woman should shout, “I don’t know you.”
If everybody’s raving about a new restaurant, it’s probably a good one that we’d like too. If the great majority of online reviewers is recommending a product, we’ll likely feel more confident clicking the purchase button.
“If one person says you have a tail, you laugh it off as stupid; but, if three people say it, you turn around.”
If we see a lot of other people doing something, it doesn’t just mean it’s probably a good idea. It also means we could probably do it too.
if lots can do it, it must not be difficult to pull off.
A great strength of “the many” is that it destroys the problem of uncertain achievability. If people learn that many others around them are conserving energy, there is little doubt as to its feasibility. It comes to seem realistic and, therefore, actionable.
The emotional difference between those two experiences is significant. Compared to holding an opinion that fits with the group’s, holding an opinion that is out of line creates psychological distress.
It seems that defying other people produced a painful emotional state that pressured participants to conform. Defying a set of computers didn’t have the same behavioral consequences, because it didn’t have the same social-acceptance consequences. When it comes to group dynamics, there’s an old saying that gets it right: “To get along, you have to go along.”
These twin needs—to foster social acceptance and to escape social rejection—help explain why cults can be so effective in recruiting and retaining members. An initial showering of affection on prospective members, called love bombing, is typical of cult-induction practices. It accounts for some of the success of these groups in attracting new members, especially those feeling lonely or disconnected. Later, threatened withdrawal of that affection explains the willingness of some members to remain in the group: After having cut their bonds to outsiders, as the cults invariably urge, members have nowhere else to turn for social acceptance.
As with “the many,” an action coming from similar others increases our confidence that it will prove valid, feasible, and socially acceptable should we perform it. Therefore, we are more inclined to follow the lead of our peers in a phenomenon we can call peer-suasion.
Consumers became more likely to follow the consensus of other consumers about purchasing a brand of sunglasses when told the others were similar to them.
“By far the strongest predictor of whether we install solar panels, buy electric cars, eat more responsibly, and support climate-friendly policies is the percentage of peers who take those steps.”
We frequently think of teenagers as rebellious and independent-minded. It is important to recognize, however, that typically this is true only with respect to their parents. Among their peers, they conform massively to what social proof tells them is proper.
People will use the actions of others to decide how to behave, especially when they view those others as similar to themselves.
A crucial feature of the information is that the comparison is not with any neighbors but is specifically with neighbors whose homes are nearby and comparable along dimensions such as size—in other words, “Homes just like yours.”
His real genius as a leader was his realization of the limitations of individual leadership. No leader can hope to persuade, regularly and single-handedly, all members of the group. A forceful leader can reasonably expect, however, to persuade some sizable proportion of group members. Then, the raw information that a substantial number of fellow group members has been convinced can, by itself, convince the rest. Thus, 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.
In short, persuasive communications should avoid employing information that can normalize undesirable conduct.
Recent research indicates that my advice to steer clear of social-proof evidence if it is not fully present is mistaken. Rather than relying only on evidence of existing social proof, a communicator can do at least as well by relying on evidence of future social proof.
When we notice a change, we expect the change will likely continue in the same direction when it appears as a trend.
Indeed, people believe that trends will continue in the same trajectory for a wide variety of behaviors, including those undertaken by only a minority of others—such as conserving water, choosing meatless meals, and completing surveys for no payment.
Thus, trends give us access to a special and potent form of social proof—future social proof.
On the basis of these results, I no longer give my previous advice to individuals who have something new to offer that possesses limited current popularity. Rather than urging them away from the principle of social proof and toward one of the other principles, I ask if over a reasonable period of time, they have honest evidence of growing popularity. If yes, I recommend making that fact the central feature of their messaging—because, as their audiences will presume, such evidence will be an indicator of genuine worth and future popularity. If over that reasonable period of time, the answer is no, I ask them to rethink what they have to offer and, perhaps, change it significantly or step away from it altogether.
There is a lesson here: an autopilot device, like social proof, should never be trusted fully; even when no saboteur has slipped misinformation into the mechanism, it can sometimes go haywire by itself. We need to check the machine from time to time to be sure that it hasn’t worked itself out of sync with the other sources of evidence in the situation—the objective facts, our prior experiences, and our own judgments.
Social proof is most influential under three conditions. The first is uncertainty.
A second condition under which social proof is most influential involves “the many”:
When we see multiple others performing an action, we become willing to follow because the action appears to be more (1) correct/valid, (2) feasible, and (3) socially acceptable.
The third optimizing condition for social-proof information is similarity.
When communicators are not able to use existing social proof because their idea, cause, or product does not have widespread support, they may be able to harness the power of future social proof by honestly describing trending support, which audiences expect to continue.
Follow an expert. —Virgil
Consequently, we are trained from birth to believe that obedience to proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong.
This paradox is, of course, the same one that attends all major levers of influence. In this instance, once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience.
The simultaneous blessing and curse of such blind obedience is its mechanical character. We don’t have to think, therefore we don’t. Although such mindless obedience leads us to appropriate action most of the time, there will be conspicuous exceptions because we are reacting, not thinking.
Take, for example, the classic case of the “rectal earache” reported by Cohen and Davis in an interview. A physician ordered ear drops to be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there. Instead of writing out completely the location “Right ear” on the prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read “place in R ear.” Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus. Obviously, rectal treatment of an earache made no sense, but neither the nurse nor the patient questioned it. The important lesson of this story is that in many situations in which a legitimate authority has spoken, what would otherwise make sense is irrelevant. In these instances, we don’t consider the situation as a whole but attend and respond to only one aspect of it.
A second kind of authority symbol that can trigger our mechanical compliance is clothing. Though more tangible than a title, the cloak of authority is every bit as fakeable.
A separate set of studies offers a reason for the employment-interview results. People judge those dressed in higher quality apparel, even higher quality T-shirts, as more competent than those in lesser quality attire—and the judgments occur automatically, in less than a second.
Research distinguishes a particularly convincing such authority, the credible one. A credible authority possesses two distinct features in the minds of an audience: expertise and trustworthiness.
Besides wanting our authorities to give us expert information, we want them to be trustworthy sources of the information. We want to believe they are offering their expert advice in an honest and impartial fashion—that is, attempting to depict reality accurately rather than to serve their self-interests.
Rather than succumbing to the tendency to describe all the most favorable features of a case upfront and reserving mention of any drawbacks until the end of the presentation (or never), a communicator who references a weakness early on is seen as more honest.
(3) advertising messages, where merchandisers who acknowledge a drawback before highlighting strengths often see large increases in sales. After Domino’s “NEW DOMINO’S” campaign of 2009 admitting to the past poor quality of its pizza, sales went sky high; as a consequence, so did Domino’s stock price.
A job candidate might say to an interviewer holding her résumé, “Although I am not experienced in this field, I am a very fast learner.” Or an information-systems salesperson might say to an experienced buyer, “While our setup costs are not the lowest, you’ll soon recoup them because of our superior efficiencies.”
The first question to ask when confronted with an authority figure’s influence attempt is, Is this authority truly an expert? The question focuses our attention on two crucial pieces of information: the authority’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic at hand. By turning to the evidence for authority status in this simple way, we avoid the major pitfalls of automatic deference.
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. —G. K. Chesterton
In the world of business, for example, research has found that managers weigh potential losses more heavily than potential gains in their decisions.
Scarcity—highlighting items low in stock. Social Proof—describing most popular and trending items. Urgency—using time limits, often with a countdown timer. Concessions—offering discounts for visitors to stay on the site. Authority/Expertise—informing visitors of alternative products that are available. Liking—including a welcoming message.
The adept merchandiser makes this tendency pay off by arranging and publicizing customer deadlines that generate interest where none may have existed before.
Why should psychological reactance emerge at the age of two? There’s a crucial change most children undergo around this time. It is when they first come to see themselves as individuals. No longer do they view themselves as mere extensions of the social milieu but rather as identifiable, singular, and separate beings. This developing concept of autonomy brings with it the concept of freedom. An independent being is one with choices; a child with the newfound realization that he or she is such a being will want to explore the length and breadth of the options.
When something becomes less available, our freedom to have it is limited, and we experience an increased desire for it. We rarely recognize, however, that psychological reactance has caused us to want the item more; all we know is we want it. To make sense of our heightened desire for the item, we begin to assign it positive qualities.
This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak or unpopular position can get us to agree with the position by arranging to have their message restricted.
One influence tactic has been developed specifically to reinstate recipients’ freedom to choose when they are targets of an influence attempt. It’s called the “But you are free” technique, and it operates by emphasizing a request-recipient’s freedom to say no. In a set of forty-two separate experiments, adding to a request the words “But you are free to decline/refuse/say no” or a similar phrase, such as “Of course, do as you wish,” significantly increased compliance.
Finally, the impact of the freedom-reestablishing wording was considerable, often more than doubling the success of a standard request that didn’t include the crucial phrase.
The drop from abundance to scarcity produced a decidedly more positive reaction to the cookies than did constant scarcity.
The pattern offers a valuable lesson for governments: 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.
The parent who grants privileges or enforces rules erratically invites rebellion by unwittingly establishing freedoms for the child. The parent who only sometimes prohibits between-meal sweets may create the freedom to have such snacks. At that point, enforcing the rule becomes a much more difficult and explosive matter because the child is no longer merely lacking a never-possessed right but is losing an established one.
We should not be surprised, then, that research shows parents who enforce and discipline inconsistently produce characteristically rebellious children.5
And it’s always the long-established rights that people battle most ferociously to preserve.
This finding highlights the importance of competition in the pursuit of limited resources. Not only do we want the same item more when it is scarce, but we want it most when we are in competition for it.
The thought of losing out to a rival frequently turns a buyer from hesitant to zealous.
There is something almost physical about the desire to have a contested item. Shoppers at big closeout or bargain sales report being caught up emotionally in the event. Charged by the crush of competitors, they swarm and struggle to claim merchandise they would otherwise disdain. Such behavior brings to mind the “feeding frenzy” phenomenon of wild, indiscriminate eating among animal groups.
As a general rule, when the dust settles and we find losers looking and speaking like winners (and vice versa), we should be especially wary of the conditions that kicked up the dust—in the present case, open competition for a scarce resource.
Leaders would be well advised to take this desire for uniqueness into account when ensuring that all team members conform to core work goals, by also ensuring that members aren’t made to do so in exactly the same way.
The joy is not in the experiencing of a scarce commodity but in the possessing of it. It is important that we not confuse the two. Whenever we confront scarcity pressures surrounding some item, we must also confront the question of what it is we want from the item.
am today what I established yesterday or some previous day. —James Joyce
Note that Sara’s bolstered commitment came from making a hard personal choice for Tim. I believe it’s for the same reason that Amazon wants employees to make such a choice for it. The election to stay or leave in the face of an incentive to quit doesn’t serve only to identify disengaged workers, who, in a smoothly efficient process, weed themselves out. It also serves to solidify and even enhance the allegiance of those who, like Sara, opt to continue.
In general, the main reason for such swings in the direction of a choice has to do with another fundamental principle of social influence. Like the other principles, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is our desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already said or done. Once we make a choice or take a stand, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to think and behave consistently with that commitment. Moreover, those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our decision.
The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a potent driving force, often causing us to act in ways contrary to our own best interest.
To understand why consistency is so powerful a motive, we should recognize that in most circumstances, it is valued and adaptive. Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable personality trait. The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match is seen as confused, two-faced, even mentally ill. On the other side, a high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is the heart of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty. A quote attributed to the great British chemist Michael Faraday suggests the extent to which being consistent is approved—sometimes more than being right is. When asked after a lecture if he meant to imply that a hated academic rival was always wrong, Faraday glowered at the questioner and replied, “He’s not that consistent.” Certainly, then, good personal consistency is highly valued in our culture—and well it should be. Most of the time, we are better off if our approach to things is well laced with consistency. Without it, our lives would be difficult, erratic, and disjointed.
Because it is typically in our best interests to be consistent, we 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. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions. First, like most other forms of automatic responding, consistency offers a shortcut through the complexities of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us an appealing luxury: we don’t have to think hard about the issue anymore. We don’t have to sift through the blizzard of information we encounter every day to identify relevant facts; we don’t have to expend the mental energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don’t have to make any further tough decisions.
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
There is a second, more perverse attraction of mechanical consistency. Sometimes it is not the effort of hard, cognitive work that makes us shirk thoughtful activity but the harsh consequences of that activity. Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize. Because it is a preprogrammed and mindless method of responding, automatic consistency can supply a safe hiding place from troubling realizations. Sealed within the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be impervious to the sieges of reason.
Social psychologists think they know the answer: commitment. 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 aligned with the stand.
As we’ve already seen, social psychologists are not the only ones who understand the connection between commitment and consistency. Commitment strategies are aimed at us by compliance professionals of nearly every sort. Each of the strategies is intended to get us to take some action or make some statement that will trap us into later compliance through consistency pressures. Procedures designed to create commitments take various forms. Some are bluntly straightforward; others are among the most subtle compliance tactics we will encounter. On the blunt side, consider the approach of Jack Stanko, used-car sales manager for an Albuquerque auto dealership. While leading a session called “Used Car Merchandising” at a National Auto Dealers Association convention in San Francisco, he advised one hundred sales-hungry dealers as follows: “Put ’em on paper. Get the customer’s OK on paper. Control ’em. Ask ’em if they would buy the car right now if the price is right. Pin ’em down.” Obviously, Mr. Stanko—an expert in these matters—believes that the way to customer compliance is through commitments, which serve to “control ’em.”
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.
Hearts and Minds Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. —C. S. Lewis
Notice that all of the foot-in-the-door experts seem to be excited about the same thing: you can use small commitments to manipulate a person’s self-image; you can use them to turn citizens into “public servants,” prospects into “customers,” and prisoners into “collaborators.” Once you’ve got a person’s self-image where you want it, that person should comply naturally with a whole range of requests aligned with this new self-view.
Not all commitments affect self-image equally, however. There are certain conditions that should be present for commitments to be most effective in this way: they should be active, public, effortful, and freely chosen.
But 86 percent of users report that they sometimes quit the registration process because the form is too long or prying. What have site developers done to overcome this barrier without reducing the amount of information they get from customers? They’ve reduced the average number of fields of requested information on the form’s first page. Why? They want to give users the feeling of having started and finished the initial part of the process. As design consultant Diego Poza put it, “It doesn’t matter if the next page has more fields to fill out (it does), due to the principle of commitment and consistency, users are much more likely to follow through.” The available data have proved him right: Just reducing the number of first-page fields from four to three increases registration completions by 50 percent.
People have a natural tendency to think 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 the person did not freely choose to make the statement.
According to master negotiator Henry Kissinger, Sadat was successful because he got others to act in his interests by giving them a reputation to uphold.
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.
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. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.
Like the Amway corporation, these organizations found that something special happens when people put their commitments on paper: they live up to what they write down.
One reason written testaments are effective in bringing about genuine personal change is that they can so easily be made public.
Whenever one takes a stand visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.
For appearances’ sake, the more public a stand, the more reluctant we are to change it.
So want to change your life? Make a specific commitment, use social media to broadcast it and use the internal pressure you then feel to get you to follow through. This in turn should cause you to see yourself in a new way and therefore keep you continuing to follow through.
The finding that we are truest to our decisions if we have bound ourselves to them publicly can be put to good use.
The evidence is clear: the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater its ability to influence the attitudes and actions of the person who made it.
“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.”
Author’s note: Much like the young women in Aronson and Mills’s study, Paola has become happy with and committed to what she endured to obtain.
It appears the commitments most effective in changing self-image and future behavior are those that are active, public, and effortful.
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 pressure. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform certain actions, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the acts. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to them. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment. In fact, large material rewards or threats may even reduce or “undermine” our sense of inner responsibility for an act, causing excessive reluctance to perform it when the reward is no longer present.
All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe in. Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want more than that, if we want our children to believe in the correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take.
The important thing is to use a reason that initially produces the desired behavior and, at the same time, allows a child to take personal responsibility for the behavior. Thus, the less detectable outside pressure such a reason contains, the better.
“He who agrees against his will / Is of the same opinion still.”8
For a pair of reasons we have already considered, compliance professionals love commitments that produce inner change. First, the change is not specific to the situation where it initially occurred; it covers a whole range of related situations too. Second, the effects of the change are lasting. Once people have been induced to take actions that shift their self-images to that of, let’s say, public-spirited citizens, they are likely to be public spirited in a variety of other circumstances where their compliance may also be desired. And they are likely to continue their public-spirited behavior for as long as their new self-images hold.
Mere reminders of past commitments can spur individuals to act in accord with those earlier positions, stands, or actions. Bring the commitment back to top of mind, and the need for consistency takes over to align related responding once again.
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Or, at least, so goes a frequently heard quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?”
Within the realm of compliance, securing an initial commitment is the key. After making a commitment (that is, taking an action, stand, or position), people are more willing to agree to requests in keeping with the prior commitment. Thus, many compliance professionals try to induce people to take an initial position that is consistent with a behavior they will later request from these people. Not all commitments are equally effective in producing consistent future action. Commitments are most effective when they are active, public, effortful, and viewed as internally motivated (voluntary), because each of these elements changes self-image. The reason they do so is that each element gives us information about what we must truly believe.
If we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to one another. —Mother Teresa
Automatically and incessantly, everyone divides people into those to whom the pronoun we does and does not apply.
Thus, successful social influence is often pivotally grounded in “we” relationships. Still, a central question remains: What’s the best way to characterize such relationships? The answer requires a subtle but crucial distinction. “We” relationships are not those that allow people to say, “Oh, that person is like us.” They are the ones that allow people to say, “Oh, that person is one of us.” The unity rule of influence can thus be worded: People are inclined to say yes to someone they consider one of them. The experience of unity is not about simple similarities (although those can work, too, via the liking principle). It’s about identities, shared identities. It’s about tribe-like categories that individuals use to define themselves and their groups, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and family, as well as political and religious affiliations. For instance, I might have many more tastes and preferences in common with a colleague at work than with a sibling, but there is no question which of the two I would consider of me and which I would consider merely like me. A key characteristic of these categories is that their members tend to feel “at one” with, merged with, one another. They are the categories in which the conduct of one member influences the self-esteem of other members. Put simply, the “we” is the shared me.
Said differently, and in less politically loaded language, deception that strengthens a “we”-group is viewed by members as morally superior to truth-telling that weakens their group.
Party identification is so strong that criticism of the party feels like a threat to the self, which triggers a host of defensive psychological mechanisms.”
Think of it: people were more willing to seek the judgment of a political ally on a task, no matter that (a) the task was irrelevant to politics, (b) the ally was inferior at the task, and, (c) consequently, they would probably lose money!
“All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality … and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he [or she] wins, you win.” Viewed in this light, the intense passion of sports fans makes sense. The game is no light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent form and artistry. The self is at stake. That is why hometown crowds are so adoring and, tellingly, so grateful to those responsible for home-team victories.
One possibility is to use language and imagery to bring the concept of kin to our consciousness. For example, collectives that create a sense of “we”-ness among their members are characterized by the use of familial images and labels—such as “brothers,” “sisterhood,” “forefathers,” “motherland,” “ancestry,” “legacy,” “heritage,” and the like—which lead to an increased willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests for the welfare of the group.
There is no doubt that the unitizing powers of family and of place can be harnessed by a skilled communicator—witness the effectiveness of Warren Buffett and Rabbi Kalisch in these regards. At the same time, there is another kind of unitizing effect available to those seeking elevated influence. It comes not from belonging together in the same genealogy or geography but from acting together synchronously or collaboratively.
Indeed, the archaeological and anthropological records are clear on the point: all human societies have developed ways to respond together, in unison or coordination, with songs, marches, rituals, chants, prayers, and dances. What’s more, they’ve been doing so since prehistoric times; collective dance, for instance, is depicted extraordinarily often in the drawings, rock art, and cave paintings of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras. The behavioral-science record is equally clear as to why. When people act in unitary ways, they become unitized. The resultant feeling of group solidarity serves societies’ interests well, producing degrees of loyalty and self-sacrifice normally associated with much smaller family units. Thus, human societies, even ancient ones, have discovered group-bonding “technologies” involving coordinated responding. The effects are similar to those of kinship—feelings of “we”-ness, merger, confusion of self and other, and willingness to sacrifice for the group. It is no surprise, then, that in tribal societies, warriors frequently dance together, rhythmically, before battle.
When intensely involved in joint projects, participants’ brain-wave patterns began to match one another’s, rising and falling together. Thus, when people function together synchronously, they are on the same wavelength, literally.
Thus, groups can promote unity, liking, and subsequent supportive behavior in a variety of situations by first arranging for synchronous responding. But the tactics we’ve reviewed so far—simultaneous story reading, table tapping, and water sipping—don’t seem readily implementable, at least not in any large-scale fashion. Marching in unison might be better in this regard, but only marginally. Isn’t there some generally applicable mechanism that social entities could deploy to bring about such coordination to influence members toward group goals? There is. It’s music. And fortunately for individual communicators, it can be employed to move others toward the goals of a single agent of influence.
Take, for instance, musician Elvis Costello’s quote concerning the difficulty of properly describing music through the cognitive process of writing: “Writing about music,” he said, “is like dancing about architecture.”
The first, a quote from Voltaire, is contemptuous: “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.” The second, an adage from the advertising profession, is tactical: “If you can’t make your case to an audience with facts, sing it to them.” Thus, communicators whose ideas have little rational firepower don’t have to give up the fight; they can undertake a flanking maneuver. Equipping themselves with music and song, they can move their campaign to a battleground where rationality possesses little force, where sensations of harmony, synchrony, and unity win the day.
Throughout human history, shared pain has been a bonding agent, fusing identities into “we”-based attachments.
The considerable influence of shared suffering on subsequent in-group cohesion and promotion is one of those confidence-inspiring patterns for me.
I’d expected that the more involvement managers felt they’d had in generating the final product in concert with an employee, the higher they would rate its quality, which is what we found: managers led to believe they’d had a large role in developing the end product (an ad for a new wristwatch) rated the ad 50 percent more favorably than did managers led to believe they’d had little developmental involvement—even though the final ad they saw was identical in all cases. In addition, we found that the managers with the greatest perceived involvement rated themselves more responsible for the ad’s quality in terms of their greater perceived managerial control over their employee, which I’d also expected.
- Crear vinculo entre el equipo y lo que estan creando
The more the managers attributed the success of the project to themselves, the more they also attributed it to the ability of their employee.
If co-creation causes at least a temporary merging of identities, then what applies to one partner also applies to the other, distributional logic notwithstanding.
Asking for Advice Is Good Advice We all admire the wisdom of those who have come to us for advice. —Ben Franklin
Companies struggle to get consumers to feel bonded with and therefore loyal to their brands; it’s a battle they’ve been winning by inviting current and prospective customers to co-create with them novel or updated products and services, most often by providing the company with information about desirable features.
However, within such marketing partnerships, requested consumer input must be framed as advice to the company, not as opinions about or expectations for the company. The differential phrasing may seem minor, but it is critical to achieving the company’s unitization goal. Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s. Providing an opinion or expectation, on the other hand, puts a person in an introspective state of mind, which involves focusing on oneself. These only slightly different forms of feedback—and the different merging versus separating mindsets they produce—can have a have a significant impact on consumer engagement with a brand.
One more finding from the survey clinches the unitization case for me: the participants rated all three types of feedback equally helpful to the restaurateurs. So it wasn’t that those who gave advice felt connected with the brand because they thought they had aided it more. Instead, having to give advice put participants in a togetherness state of mind rather than a separateness state of mind just before they had to reflect on what to say about the brand.
“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.” I’d only add on the basis of scientific evidence that if we get that advice, we usually get that accomplice. And what better abettor to have on a project than someone in charge?
However, a second implication—providing family-like experiences in the home to cross-group children—is much more manageable. It involves a two-step process in which parents identify cross-group children in their kids’ classrooms, sports teams, or dance troupes and then invite one (with parental approval) to come to the house for a playdate or sleepover. Once there, the key in my view is not to afford the visitor guest status. The family’s children should see the visitor treated as one of them.
those who live in ethnically or racially diverse neighborhoods become more likely to identify with all humanity, making them generally more helpful; plus, the increased contact normally leaves them more favorable and less prejudiced toward cross-group others.
We learned in chapter 2 that the rule of reciprocation governs all kinds of behaviors. One of them is self-disclosure; when a conversation partner reveals a piece of personal information, the other almost invariably provides one in return.
The upshot is clear—and not particularly difficult to manage: if your aim is to decrease feelings of hostility and prejudice that normally accompany the cross-group divisions of our world, then arrange to make a cross-group friend, model the friendship to those near to you, meet the friend in a public place, and disclose a piece of personal information in the ensuing dialogue.
Want to make Democrats and Republicans in the United States feel more positively toward one another? Remind them of their common identity as Americans.
For instance, traditionally opposed groups become united by a mutual enemy.
Still worse for proponents of the unity point of view, there’s yet another powerful feature of human nature that shunts us toward rivalry and separation: the experience of threat. Whenever the welfare or reputation of our group is threatened, we lash out—demeaning the values, worth, and even humanity of rival groups. In a time when competing national, ethnic, and religious entities have the ability to inflict large-scale terror and damage on one another through destructive technology and ruinous weaponry, we would be well advised to find ways of reducing intergroup hostility by turning toward harmony.
Might it be possible to deter malevolent members of “we”-based work groups from the self-dealing activity we see in alliances as diverse as business units, labor unions, and religious organizations? I believe so, but it would require that each such alliance take three steps: (1) recognize that its corrupt actors presume they are protected by “we”-groups’ willingness to excuse members who breach ethical rules, (2) announce to all concerned that such leniency will not be forthcoming in this particular “we”-group, and (3) establish a consequent no-tolerance policy of dismissal for proven abuses.
The experience of acting together in unison or coordination is a second fundamental factor leading to a sense of unity with others. Shared musical experience is one way people can act together and feel consequent unity. Other ways involve repeated reciprocal exchange, joint suffering, and co-creation.
Every day in every way, I’m getting better. —Émile Coué Every day in every way, I’m getting busier. —Robert Cialdini
They are the most popular prompts precisely because they are the most reliable ones—those that normally point us toward a correct choice. That’s why we employ the factors of reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment and consistency, and unity so often and so automatically in making our compliance decisions. Each, by itself, provides a highly reliable cue as to when we will be better off saying yes instead of no.
But notice something telling: our modern era, often termed the Information Age, has never been called the Knowledge Age. Information does not translate directly into knowledge. It must first be processed—accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.
Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to process information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the abundance of change, choice, and challenge that is characteristic of modern life. More and more frequently, we find ourselves in the position of lower animals—with a mental apparatus unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the external environment. Unlike the lower animals, whose cognitive powers have always been relatively deficient, we have created our own deficiency by constructing a radically more complex world. The consequence is the same as that of the animals’ long-standing one: when making a decision, we will less frequently engage in a fully considered analysis of the total situation.
The most reliable and, therefore, most popular such single triggers for compliance are those described throughout this book. They are commitments, opportunities for reciprocation, the compliant behavior of similar others, feelings of liking or unity, authority directives, and scarcity information.