Notes from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

David Foster Wallace gave [a magnificent commencement speech](http://ryskamp.org/misc/david-foster-wallace-kenyon-commencement.html) where he noted that the most important thing an education gives you is the ability to think for yourself, instead of just being on an autopilot that someone else programs:

> I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.

That’s the real message of Cialdini’s book too–know the ways other people work so that you can make intelligent and personal decisions. But it has traditionally been referred to as a manual for those on the other side of the equation.

Cialdini goes through six main ways that “compliance professionals” use to coerce behavior:

1. _Reciprocation_: when given a gift, most people will instinctively want to reciprocate, lest they appear ungrateful. Thus companies often offer a “free sample”, a “test drive”; to resist this we must only realize that they _didn’t_ give us a gift, just a sales pitch.

2. _Commitment and Consistency_: if you make a public commitment, it is difficult for you to act against what you’ve already said or written. Even the casual “how are you” “ok” exchange implies that you are doing fine–and probably in a great position to buy something. This can also be a _good_ thing, if you are getting people to commit to doing good. Follow the feeling in the pit of your stomach to tell you when a commitment has gone awry and needs to be broken.

3. _Social proof_: we usually follow the cues of others when deciding what to do. This is usually a good thing–it’s good to play nice with others. But when situations are faked, it can lead us astray. Watch for obviously faked scenarios, like the “man-on-the-street” interviews in many commercials. Alternatively, use positive situations to convince people of good behaviors.

4. _Liking_: most obviously employed by the car salesman who every month sent a card to every buyer he’d ever had saying “I like you”, this implies that people we like–because of similarity, compliments, familiarity, team spirit, association, or other reasons–have more influence on us than other people. Watch out for people you “like more than you should”. Of course, this is another positive opportunity–just being nice to people pays you back as well.

5. _Authority_: the most commonly-acknowledged method, it says that we let authority override most other decision factors. Three things especially are to blame: titles (Doctor), clothes (nice suit), and trappings (fancy car). Each is easily faked as well. Watch for both _actual_ authority and proven sincerity to make sure you’re not being taken. Even those can be faked as well though…

6. _Scarcity_: people desire most what they know is limited. They also act emotionally about such things. Compliance professionals will fake or force scarcity to create this behavior.

Simple awareness of these tactics is often enough to prevent their unauthorized use on us. All of them, of course, come from perfectly natural and good instincts in us, and without the shortcuts they provide we couldn’t survive in our complex world. The key is to watch for the equally-instinctual cues that something is fake, something wrong, and then to close the door on the offer.

After all, that expensive education had better have given me _something_ of use, even if it is “just” the ability to think for myself…

### Notes

Defn: _Contrast principle_: Things look cheaper or more expensive, bigger or smaller, in contrast to things around them. This is why when you buy accessories after buying an expensive suit, you will pay more for them than you otherwise would. – 13

> It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. – Leonardo da Vinci – 37

Acting out something makes you believe in it. Think about how smiling can _make_ you feel happy, because you only smile when you’re happy, right?

> Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions. What the Chinese [prison camp officials] have discovered is that the man himself uses this same evidence to decide what he is like. – 75

Note to self in case I’m ever selected as a jury foreman–don’t make people announce publicly their views because it makes them reluctant to change them, even when faced with evidence.

> Once jurors had stated their initial views publicly, they were reluctant to allow themselves to change publicly, either. Should you ever find yourself as the foreperson of a jury under these conditions, then, you could reduce the risk of a hung jury by choosing a secret rather than public balloting technique. – 83

More evidence that convenience conflicts with value…

> And the evidence is clear that the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater is its ability to influence the attitudes of the person who made it. – 85

Major rewards can actually make people feel less ownership of their actions, since they can explain them away as being caused by the lure of the reward. Good for raising children, who are learning how responsibility works.

> 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 pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure…the same is true of a strong threat. – 93

Two versions of an Emerson quote, depending which point you’d like to make.

> “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

> “A _foolish_ consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (the real quote)

Interesting quote about the rate of innovators…

> “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.” – Cavett Robert – 118

Social proof extends even to “virtual” social proof.

> To reduce their fears, it was not necessary to provide live demonstrations of another child playing with a dog; film clips had the same effect. – 118

Yet another example of height relating to power…let’s hope for aesthetics’ sake I never become powerful, I’d look 7 feet tall.

> To one class, [a visitor] was presented as a student; to a second class, a demonstrator; to another, a lecturer; to yet another, a senior lecturer; to a fifth, a professor…it was found that with each increase in status, the same man grew in perceived height by an average of a half inch, so that as the “professor” he was seen as two and a half inches taller than as the “student”…[and] because we see size and status as related, it is possible for certain individuals to benefit by substituting the former for the latter. – 223

Authority puts us on autopilot more than almost anything.

> 95 percent of regular staff nurses complied unhesitatingly with a patently improper instruction…and started for the patient’s room to administer it. – 225

Similar conclusions to The Paradox of Choice: that we can’t always think everything through from scratch, but rather must choose our battles.

> With the sophisticated mental apparatus we have used to build world eminence as a species, we have created an environment so complex, fast-paced, and information-laden that we must increasingly deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago transcended. – 275

An interesting observation on the limits of human knowledge…

> John Stuart Mill, the British economist, political thinker, and philosopher of science, died more than a hundred years ago. The year of his death (1873) is important because he is reputed to have been the last man to know everything there was to know in the world. – 275