Part 1 (1/2)

Influence Science and Practice.

Robert B. Cialdini.

About the Author.

Robert B. Cialdini is Regents' Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, where he has also been named Graduate Distinguished Research Professor. He received undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate training in psychology from the University of Wisconsin, the University of North Carolina, and Columbia University, respectively. He is past president of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.

He attributes his long-standing interest in the intricacies of social influence to the fact that he was raised in an entirely Italian family, in a predominantly Polish neighborhood, in a historically German city (Milwaukee), in an otherwise rural state.

Preface.

The initial version of Influence Influence was designed for the popular reader, and as such, an attempt was made to write it in an engaging style. In the subsequent versions, that style is retained, but in addition, I present the research evidence for my statements, recommendations, and conclusions. Although they are dramatized and corroborated through such devices as interviews, quotes, and systematic personal observations, the conclusions of was designed for the popular reader, and as such, an attempt was made to write it in an engaging style. In the subsequent versions, that style is retained, but in addition, I present the research evidence for my statements, recommendations, and conclusions. Although they are dramatized and corroborated through such devices as interviews, quotes, and systematic personal observations, the conclusions of Influence Influence are based on controlled, psychological research. This fact allows the reader to feel confident that the book is not ”pop” psychology but represents work that is scientifically grounded. The subsequent versions also provide new and updated material, chapter summaries, and study questions to enhance its utility. are based on controlled, psychological research. This fact allows the reader to feel confident that the book is not ”pop” psychology but represents work that is scientifically grounded. The subsequent versions also provide new and updated material, chapter summaries, and study questions to enhance its utility.

A potentially attractive feature of the present version of Influence Influence lies in its ability to serve as an enjoyable, practical, yet scientifically doc.u.mented offering. In a related vein, the book might be seen as a way to demonstrate that, properly presented, what often seems like dry science can actually prove to be lively, useful, and relevant to all readers' personal lives. lies in its ability to serve as an enjoyable, practical, yet scientifically doc.u.mented offering. In a related vein, the book might be seen as a way to demonstrate that, properly presented, what often seems like dry science can actually prove to be lively, useful, and relevant to all readers' personal lives.

Comment on the Fifth Edition of Influence: Science and Practice It has been some time since Influence Influence was last published. In the interim, some things have happened that deserve a place in this new edition. First, we now know more about the influence process than before. The study of persuasion, compliance, and change has advanced, and the pages that follow have been adapted to reflect that progress. In addition to an overall update of the material, I have devoted special attention to updated coverage of popular culture and new technology, as well as to research on cross-cultural social influence-how the influence process works similarly or differently in various human cultures. I have also expanded a feature that was stimulated by the responses of prior readers. was last published. In the interim, some things have happened that deserve a place in this new edition. First, we now know more about the influence process than before. The study of persuasion, compliance, and change has advanced, and the pages that follow have been adapted to reflect that progress. In addition to an overall update of the material, I have devoted special attention to updated coverage of popular culture and new technology, as well as to research on cross-cultural social influence-how the influence process works similarly or differently in various human cultures. I have also expanded a feature that was stimulated by the responses of prior readers.

This feature highlights the experiences of individuals who have read Influence Influence, recognized how one of the principles worked on (or for) them in a particular instance, and wrote to me describing the event. Their descriptions, which appear in the ”Reader's Reports” in each chapter, ill.u.s.trate how easily and frequently we can fall victim to the influence process in our everyday lives. There are now twice as many firsthand accounts of how the book's principles apply to business and personal lives.

An array of people deserve and have my appreciation for their aid in making Influence Influence possible. Several of my academic colleagues read and provided perceptive comments on the entire ma.n.u.script in its initial draft form, greatly strengthening the subsequent versions. They are Gus Levine, Doug Kenrick, Art Beaman, and Mark Zanna. In addition, the first draft was read by a few family members and friends-Richard and Gloria Cialdini, Bobette Gorden, and Ted Hall-who offered not only much-needed emotional support but insightful substantive commentary as well. possible. Several of my academic colleagues read and provided perceptive comments on the entire ma.n.u.script in its initial draft form, greatly strengthening the subsequent versions. They are Gus Levine, Doug Kenrick, Art Beaman, and Mark Zanna. In addition, the first draft was read by a few family members and friends-Richard and Gloria Cialdini, Bobette Gorden, and Ted Hall-who offered not only much-needed emotional support but insightful substantive commentary as well.

A second, larger group provided helpful suggestions for selected chapters or groups of chapters: Todd Anderson, Sandy Braver, Catherine Chambers, Judi Cialdini, Nancy Eisenberg, Larry Ettkin, Joanne Gersten, Jeff Goldstein, Betsy Hans, Valerie Hans, Joe Hepworth, Holly Hunt, Ann Inskeep, Barry Leshowitz, Darwyn Linder, Debbie Littler, John Mowen, Igor Pavlov, Janis Posner, Trish Puryear, Marilyn Rall, John Reich, Peter Reingen, Diane Ruble, Phyllis Sensenig, Roman Sherman, and Henry Wellman.

Certain people were instrumental at the beginning stages. John Staley was the first publis.h.i.+ng professional to recognize the project's potential. Jim Sherman, Al Goethals, John Keating, Dan Wagner, Dalmas Taylor, Wendy Wood, and David Watson provided early, positive reviews that encouraged author and editors alike. My editors at Allyn and Bacon, Mich.e.l.le Limoges and Liz Napolitano, were consistently congenial, helpful, and insightful. I would like to thank the following users of the book for their feedback during a telephone survey: Emory Griffin, Wheaton College; Robert Levine, California State, Fresno; Jeffrey Lewin, Georgia State University; David Miller, Daytona Beach Community College; Lois Mohr, Georgia State University; and Richard Rogers, Daytona Beach Community College. The past editions benefited substantially from the reviews of a.s.saad Azzi, Yale University; Robert M. Brady, University of Arkansas; Brian M. Cohen, University of Texas at San Antonio; Christian B. Crandall, University of Florida; Catherine Goodwin, University of Alaska; Robert G. Lowder, Bradley University; James W. Michael, Jr., Virginia Polytechnic Inst.i.tute and State University; Eugene P. Sheehan, University of Northern Colorado; Jefferson A. Singer, Connecticut College; and Sandi W. Smith, Michigan State University. Thanks to the following reviewers of this new edition: Amy M. Buddie, Kennesaw State University; Maria Czyzewska, Texas State University; A. Celeste Farr, North Carolina State University; Arthur Frankel, Salve Regina University; and Brian Smith, Graceland University.

Finally, throughout the project, no one was more on my side than Bobette Gorden, who lived every word with me.

I wish to thank the following individuals who-either directly or through their course instructors-contributed the ”Reader's Reports” used in past editions: Pat Bobbs, Annie Carto, William Cooper, Alicia Friedman, William Graziano, Mark Hastings, Endayehu Kendie, Danuta Lubnicka, James Michaels, Steven Moysey, Paul Nail, Alan J. Resnik, Daryl Retzlaff, Geofrey Rosenberger, Dan Swift, and Karla Vasks. Special thanks are due to those who provided new Reader's Reports for this edition: Hartnut Bock, Michael Conroy, Jonathan Harries, Karen Klawer (2), Katie Mueller, Paul Nail, Dan Norris, Sam Omar, Joanna Spychala, and Robert Stauth.

I would also like to invite new readers to contribute similar ”Reports” for possible publication in a future edition. They can be sent to me at the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104 or Finally, more influence-relevant information can be obtained at .

R.B.C.

Introduction.

I can admit it freely now. All my life I've been a patsy. For as long as I can recall, I've been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fund-raisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some of these people have had dishonorable motives. The others-representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance-have had the best of intentions. No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I have always found myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to the sanitation workers' ball. Probably this long-standing status as sucker accounts for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance? I have wondered why it is that a request stated in a certain way will be rejected, but a request that asks for the same favor in a slightly different fas.h.i.+on will be successful.

So in my role as an experimental social psychologist, I began to research the psychology of compliance. At first the research took the form of experiments performed, for the most part, in my laboratory and on college students. I wanted to find out which psychological principles influenced the tendency to comply with a request. Right now, psychologists know quite a bit about these principles-what they are and how they work. I have characterized such principles as weapons of influence and will be discussing some of the most important of them in this book.

After a time, though, I began to realize that the experimental work, while necessary, wasn't enough. It didn't allow me to judge the importance of the principles in the world beyond the psychology building and the campus where I was examining them. It became clear that if I was to understand fully the psychology of compliance, I would need to broaden my scope of investigation. I would need to look to the compliance professionals-the people who had been using the principles on me all my life. They know what works and what doesn't; the law of survival of the fittest a.s.sures it. Their business is to make us comply, and their livelihoods depend on it. Those who don't know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.

Of course, the compliance professionals aren't the only ones who know about and use these principles to help them get their way. We all employ them and fall victim to them to some degree in our daily interactions with neighbors, friends, lovers, and family. But the compliance pract.i.tioners have much more than the vague and amateurish understanding of what works than the rest of us have. As I thought about it, I knew that they represented the richest vein of information about compliance available to me. For nearly three years, then, I combined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining program: I systematically immersed myself in the world of compliance professionals-salespeople, fund-raisers, advertisers, and others.

My purpose was to observe, from the inside, the techniques and strategies most commonly and effectively used by a broad range of compliance pract.i.tioners. That program of observation sometimes took the form of interviews with the pract.i.tioners themselves and sometimes with the natural enemies (for example, police bunco-squad officers, consumer agencies) of certain of the pract.i.tioners. At other times, it involved an intensive examination of the written materials by which compliance techniques are pa.s.sed down from one generation to another-sales manuals and the like.

Most frequently, though, it took the form of partic.i.p.ant observation. Partic.i.p.ant observation is a research approach in which the researcher becomes a spy of sorts. With disguised ident.i.ty and intent, the investigator infiltrates the setting of interest and becomes a full-fledged partic.i.p.ant in the group to be studied. So when I wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of encyclopedia (or vacuum cleaner, or portrait photography, or dance lesson) sales organizations, I would answer a newspaper ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public relations, and fund-raising agencies to examine their techniques. Much of the evidence presented in this book, then, comes from my experience posing as a compliance professional, or aspiring professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to getting us to say yes.

One aspect of what I learned in this three-year period of partic.i.p.ant observation was most instructive. Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance pract.i.tioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power. This book is organized around these six principles. The principles-reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity-are each discussed in terms of their function in the 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 a.s.sent.1 1It is worth noting that I have not included among the six principles the simple rule of material self-interest: that people want to get the most and pay the least for their choices. This omission does not stem from any perception on my part that the desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs is unimportant in driving our decisions. Nor does it come from any evidence that I have that compliance professionals ignore the power of this rule. Quite the opposite: in my investigations, I frequently saw pract.i.tioners use (sometimes honestly, sometimes not) the compelling ”I can give you a good deal” approach. I chose not to treat the material self-interest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment, but not extensive description.

Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willingness to say yes without thinking first. The evidence suggests that the ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent in the future. It will be increasingly important for the society, therefore, to understand the how and why of automatic influence.

Chapter 1.

Weapons of Influence Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.

Alfred North Whitehead.

I GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD recently opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by s.h.i.+fting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to ”push” the items hard-again without success. recently opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by s.h.i.+fting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to ”push” the items hard-again without success.

Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, ”Everything in this display case, price X,” hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the ”” in her scrawled message as a ”2,” the entire allotment had sold at twice the original price!

That's when she called me. I thought I knew what had happened but told her that, if I were to explain things properly, she would have to listen to a story of mine. Actually, it isn't my story; it's about mother turkeys, and it belongs to the relatively new science of ethology-the study of animals in their natural settings. Turkey mothers are good mothers-loving, watchful, and protective. They spend much of their time tending, warming, cleaning, and huddling their young beneath them; but there is something odd about their method. Virtually all of this mothering is triggered by one thing: the ”cheep-cheep” sound of young turkey chicks. Other identifying features of the chicks, such as their smell, touch, or appearance, seem to play minor roles in the mothering process. If a chick makes the cheep-cheep noise, its mother will care for it; if not, the mother will ignore or sometimes kill it.

The extreme reliance of maternal turkeys upon this one sound was dramatically ill.u.s.trated by animal behaviorist M. W. Fox (1974) in his description of an experiment involving a mother turkey and a stuffed polecat. For a mother turkey, a polecat is a natural enemy whose approach is to be greeted with squawking, pecking, clawing rage. Indeed, the experiments found that even a stuffed model of a polecat, when drawn by a string to a mother turkey, received an immediate and furious attack. When, however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a small recorder that played the cheep-cheep sound of baby turkeys, the mother not only accepted the oncoming polecat but gathered it underneath her. When the machine was turned off, the polecat model again drew a vicious attack.

Click, Whirr How ridiculous a mother turkey seems under these circ.u.mstances: She will embrace a natural enemy just because it goes cheep-cheep and she will mistreat or murder one of her chicks just because it does not. She acts like an automaton whose maternal instincts are under the automatic control of that single sound. The ethologists tell us that this sort of thing is far from unique to the turkey. They have begun to identify regular, blindly mechanical patterns of action in a wide variety of species. whose maternal instincts are under the automatic control of that single sound. The ethologists tell us that this sort of thing is far from unique to the turkey. They have begun to identify regular, blindly mechanical patterns of action in a wide variety of species.

Called fixed-action patterns fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of behavior, such as entire courts.h.i.+p or mating rituals. A fundamental characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviors comprising them occur in virtually the same fas.h.i.+on and in the same order every time. It is almost as if the patterns were recorded on tapes within the animals. When a situation calls for courts.h.i.+p, a courts.h.i.+p tape gets played; when a situation calls for mothering, a maternal behavior tape gets played. Click Click and the appropriate tape is activated; and the appropriate tape is activated; whirr whirr and out rolls the standard sequence of behaviors. and out rolls the standard sequence of behaviors.

The most interesting aspect of all this is the way the tapes are activated. When an animal acts to defend its territory for instance, it is the intrusion of another animal of the same species that cues the territorial-defense tape of rigid vigilance, threat, and, if need be, combat behaviors; however, there is a quirk in the system. It is not the rival as a whole that is the trigger; it is, rather, some specific feature, the trigger feature trigger feature. Often the trigger feature will be just one tiny aspect of the totality that is the approaching intruder. Sometimes a shade of color is the trigger feature. The experiments of ethologists have shown, for instance, that a male robin, acting as if a rival robin had entered its territory, will vigorously attack nothing more than a clump of robin red breast feathers placed there. At the same time, it will virtually ignore a perfect stuffed replica of a male robin without without red breast feathers (Lack, 1943). Similar results have been found in another species of bird, the bluethroat, where it appears that the trigger for territorial defense is a specific shade of blue breast feathers (Peiponen, 1960). red breast feathers (Lack, 1943). Similar results have been found in another species of bird, the bluethroat, where it appears that the trigger for territorial defense is a specific shade of blue breast feathers (Peiponen, 1960).

Before we enjoy too smugly the ease with which trigger features can trick lower animals into reacting in ways wholly inappropriate to the situation, we should realize two things. First, the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well most of the time. For example, because only normal, healthy turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single cheep-cheep noise. By reacting to just that one stimulus, the average mother turkey will nearly always behave correctly. It takes a trickster like a scientist to make her tapelike response seem silly. The second important thing to understand is that we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can dupe us into playing the tapes at the wrong times.1 1Although several important similarities exist between this kind of automaticity in humans and lower animals, there are some important differences as well. The automatic behavior patterns of humans tend to be learned rather than inborn, more flexible than the lock-step patterns of the lower animals, and responsive to a larger number of triggers.

This parallel form of human automaticity is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by social psychologist Ellen Langer and her co-workers (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978). 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. People simply like to have reasons for what they do (b.a.s.t.a.r.di & Shafir, 2000). Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?” The effectiveness of this request plus-reason was nearly total: 94 percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Under those circ.u.mstances only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words Chanowitz, 1978). 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. People simply like to have reasons for what they do (b.a.s.t.a.r.di & Shafir, 2000). Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?” The effectiveness of this request plus-reason was nearly total: 94 percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Under those circ.u.mstances only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words because I'm in a rush because I'm in a rush. However, a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, because because, that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer's third type of request used the word because because and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance. Just as the cheep-cheep sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from mother turkeys, even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat, so the word and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: ”Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance. Just as the cheep-cheep sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from mother turkeys, even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat, so the word because because triggered an automatic compliance response from Langer's subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply. triggered an automatic compliance response from Langer's subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply. Click Click, whirr whirr.2 2Perhaps the common ”because . . . just because” response of children asked to explain their behavior can be traced to their shrewd recognition of the unusual amount of power adults appear to a.s.sign to the word because because.

Although some of Langer's additional findings show that there are many situations in which human behavior does not work in a mechanical, tape-activated way, she and many other researchers are convinced that most of the time it does (Bargh & Williams, 2006; Langer, 1989). For instance, consider the strange behavior of those jewelry store customers who swooped down on an allotment of turquoise pieces only after the items had been mistakenly offered at double their original price. I can make no sense of their behavior unless it is viewed in click click, whirr whirr terms. terms.

The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle-a stereotype-to guide their buying: expensive = good. Much research shows that people who are unsure of an item's quality often use this stereotype (Cronley et al., 2005). 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. 3 3 3In marketing lore, the cla.s.sic case of this phenomenon is that of Chivas Regal Scotch Whiskey, which had been a struggling brand until its managers decided to raise its price to a level far above its compet.i.tors. Sales skyrocketed, even though nothing was changed in the product itself (Aaker, 1991). A recent brain-scan study helps explain why. When tasting the same wine, partic.i.p.ants not only rated themselves as experiencing more pleasure if they thought it cost $45 versus $5, their brain centers a.s.sociated with pleasure became more activated by the experience as well (Pla.s.smann et al., 2008).