Ever wonder why you buy stuff you don’t need? Why you find yourself driving away from a dealership in a car that you paid too much for? Why otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people would join a cult? Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion can help you understand these and other situations in which people influence each other.
This is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. The author, Robert Cialdini, has incredibly broad and deep social psychology knowledge and a constantly fresh curiosity about why people behave as they do. Unlike many academics, his writing style is clear and engaging, so the book is actually fun to read.
Cialdini identifies six “Weapons of Influence.” Each of these weapons is based on predictable human responses in various situations. He calls the people who apply these weapons to their work - sales people, marketers, fund-raisers, et al. - “compliance professionals.”
1. Reciprocation obligates you to future repayment of gifts, favors, invitations, etc. Reciprocation explains all kinds of interesting behavior, like why in 1985 Ethiopia, which was desperately poor and in the throes of war and famine, would send $5,000 to earthquake victims in Mexico City. It turns out that Mexico had sent Ethiopia aid in 1935. Fifty years later, “the need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural differences, long distances, acute famine, and immediate self-interest.” Reciprocation also explains free samples in grocery stores and how airport solicitors like the Hare Krishnas are successful, as well as more subtle ideas, like the “gift” of a sales person backing away from selling you a high-priced item to sell you a lower-priced one.
2. Commitment and Consistency uses our desire to behave, or to appear to behave, consistent with what we have already done or said. Cialdini cites research that shows that if you leave valuables by your beach blanket and stroll away, observers to a staged theft will intervene only about 20% of the time, but if you simply ask someone nearby to keep an eye on your things the intervention rate rises to 95%. This idea also explains why so many American soldiers appeared to collaborate with their Chinese captors during the Korean war and why college-fraternity hazing rituals are so resilient in the face of public criticism.
3. Social Proof is inferring from others’ behavior how we should behave. The laugh track in a TV sit-com tells us that we should laugh, and we do, even if we know that it’s a contrivance designed to make us laugh. Evangelical preachers have been known to seed their congregation with “ringers” who bear witness at pre-arranged times in a service. It also explains disturbing phenomena like the infamous Kitty Genovese murder in New York City in 1964. Dozens of her neighbors witnessed the brutal and prolonged attack that killed her, but none of them called the police. Many social scientists and commentators at the time ascribed their inaction to apathy and urban depersonalization, but Cialdini offers another possibility; because all of the observers were looking for “social proof” of a problem from those around them, and since none of them offered any, no one did anything. This “pluralistic ignorance, ‘in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned nothing is wrong’” means that the idea of safety in numbers is wrong, that if you’re in trouble you want one person, not several, to happen upon you, and research bears this out. Social proof can also help explain the Jonestown cult mass-suicide and other imitative behavior.
4. Liking is simply the idea that we prefer to say yes to someone we know and like. This explains the success of Tupperware parties (you’re buying from a friend, not the company) and why used-car salesmen will inevitably find several things in common with you (”You’re from Omaha! My wife’s from there.”). It also explains the Good Cop/Bad Cop phenomenon (the Good Cop looks an awful lot like a friend compared with the abusive Bad Cop) and, in the converse, why people make death threats against TV weather people when crappy weather ruins their outdoor wedding.
5. Authority is the idea that we’ll do what people in authority, or who appear to be in authority, tell us to do. It is perhaps best illustrated by the famous Milgram experiment in which research subjects would willingly inflict horrifying amounts of pain on people at the behest of an authority figure. It also explains ad copy like “9 out of 10 doctors use. . .” and the use of TV actors to lend faux authority to a pitch. Authority can be conferred by position, obviously, but also by simply adopting a title; an anonymous call to a hospital ward by someone simply identifying themselves as “Doctor Smith” resulted in 95% of nurses unhesitatingly agreeing to administer an unsafe drug prescription (don’t worry; they were intercepted and told of the ruse before they could actually give the medication). Or you can dress to convey authority; in one experiment, people were more than three times as likely to follow the lead of a jaywalker in a three-piece suit than someone in more casual clothes.
6. Scarcity explains why something that wasn’t even of interest to you 10 minutes ago suddenly becomes urgently desirable, just because you’ve been told that the store is almost out of it (I just fell for this last week, buying my brother a marginally interesting Christmas gift just because it was the last one in stock). Naturally, sales people and other compliance practitioners use this weapon all the time with messages like “Hurry! Ends Sunday,” “Final Week,” “Last Chance to Save,” etc. It also explains why we really, really want stuff that has been banned, censored, or otherwise made scarce, even if we had little interest in it before we learned of the scarcity.
I’m sure I’ll still fall prey to these weapons, but not as often now, since Cialdini ends each chapter with a “How to Say No” section. And, of course, as a marketer and sales person I will ethically employ them. I’m sure they still work, but I would love to hear Caldini’s thoughts on them now (he wrote this book before the dawn of the internet) that media is so much more transparent. Anyhow, this is a great book, a good read, and very useful to both consumers and marketers alike.
