INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion Notes

This book was recommended to me by my mentor and friend Glenn Livingston. It has truly changed the way that I view marketing and the world in general. I consider it one of the most important books I have ever read.

Since I first read INFLUENCE, it has been committed to memory through pure brute force. These days it seems to take a lot more for me to really understand a subject thoroughly - and this stuff is so important that I really sacrificed:

1. I read the book
2. I read the book again and highlighted all the important sounding snippets
3. I copied each of the highlighted sections, in my own handwriting, onto 3x5 cards
4. I wrote and gave a speech on the principles to a classroom of Colorado State University business students
5. I copied my 3x5 cards here, for your reading pleasure (actually, mostly, my learning opportunity)

Here are the notes (from my 3x5 cards) that I took from INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, spanning several long posts.

(I actually posted the last chapters first, so as to appear on this blog in the proper order.)

Intro

• Those who don't know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.
• Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall into 6 basic categories:
• Consistency
• Reciprocation
• Social Proof
• Authority
• Liking
• Scarcity
• The ever-accelerating pace and information crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent in the future.

Weapons

• We too, have our pre-programmed tapes.
• 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.
• The word "because" triggered an automatic compliance response from Langer's subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reasons to comply.
• There are many situations in which human behavior does not work in a mechanical, tape-activated way, what is astonishing is how often it does.
• A standard principle - stereotype, a guide to their buying:
• Expensive = Good
• 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. Click, whirr.
• They were playing a shortcut version of betting the odds. Instead of stacking all the odds in their favor, they were counting on just one - the one they knew to be usually associated with the quality of any item. The high price.
• Automatic, stereo-typed behavior is prevalent in much of human action.
• We must often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond mindlessly when one or another of these trigger features is present.
• Mailed out coupons - that because of a printing error - offered no savings to recipients produced just as much customer response as did error-free coupons that offered substantial savings.
• Our automatic behavior patterns: They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who knows how they work.
• Once more Harry would reply "Fort-two dollars." At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, "He says twenty-two dollars." Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with this "expensive = good" bargain.
• With proper execution, the exploiters need hardly strain a muscle to get their way. In this sense, the approach is not unlike that of the Japanese martial-art form called Jujitsu.
• An enormous additional benefit - the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see their compliance as determined by the action of natural forces rather than by the designs of the person who profits from the compliance.
• The contrast principle: if the second item is fairly different than the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is.
• Contrast: The great advantage of this principle is not only that is works but also that it is virtually undetectable. Those who employ it can cash in on its influence without any appearance of having structured the situation in their favor.
• Contrast: A man might balk at the idea of spending $95 for a sweater, but if he has just bought a $495 suit, a $95 sweater does not seem excessive.
• Contrast: Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly.
• Contrast: It is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher o lower, depending on the price of the previously presented item.
• Contrast: "The house I got them spotted for looks really great after they've first looked at a couple of dumps."
• Contrast: Automobile dealers use the contrast principle by waiting until the price for a new car has been negotiated before suggesting one option after another that might be added to the deal.