Influence is one of my all time favourite books. It’s one of those books that you can re-read, every two years or so. The best part about it is as I start reading it, I find the chapters are a giving context to my life’s recent experiences. Since the book is a collection of practical influence techniques, you begin to recognise how you recently fell into an influence trap or how you could have used a technique or two to your advantage. The book is actually quite old, with its first edition published in 1984, but the techniques are as applicable today as they were back then. Cialdini calls people who use these techniques ‘compliance practitioners’. People like salesmen, teachers, doctors, advertisers, parents, basically anyone who has something to gain from your compliance to their requests.
The core idea of influence is that the human mind is constantly trying to conserve energy by retaining real attention for tasks it considers important. For other tasks a more automatic version of thinking persists, which he calls ‘Click, Whirr’. Think of a tape recorder (some of you may not know what this is), which when you press the play button, makes the whirr noise. This is sort of similar to the System 1 thinking that is based on Kahneman and Tversky’s research. This “Click, Whirr” mode of operation opens us up to influence. In such a scenario, the brain makes habitual decisions based on social norms, common customs, evolutionary psychology, upbringing and other factors.
I am going to take a shot at summarising my learnings from these techniques below.
Contrast
One of the most basic influencing techniques is anchoring people’s understanding of value to a large number to begin things. Think of all the times you’ve walked into a showroom and the salesman showed you the item of a very high value (something clearly out of your budget). They then go on and show you items of lower values. This contrast between higher and lower values makes the lower value item very favourable.
Reciprocity
This is one of the most powerful techniques as it leverages a very human trait to reciprocate a favour. If someone does something for us, we have this strong urge to return the favour quickly. This also applies to concessions someone makes for us. An example that is discussed in the book goes like this. A kid approaches the author, asking for a high value favour by asking him if he would like to buy a $15 raffle ticket for a fair half-way across town. He obviously denies, to which the kid then says, that’s fine, would you instead like to buy a $5 bar of chocolate. The author agrees. He then realises that he fell for a neat use of contrast + reciprocity technique. The contrast from $15 to $5 also made it very favourable and when the kid made a concession of $15 to $5, the author was forced to reciprocate. This is such an important technique that it deserves a complete blog post on our inherent desire to reciprocate.
Commitment and consistency
We have a strong need to remain consistent. This need far surpasses our need to be correct. Why we seek to remain consistent isn’t clear, maybe because inconsistent people are considered two-faced and hypocritical or may be we just don’t like changing a stance once we’ve made it. This simple human tendency is often exploited by people who try and ask for simple favours that end with us take a stance (however loose) on something. They then bring their real favour out by exploiting the fact that we can’t change our own stance. Mall salesmen often use this to perfection by saying they are just doing a survey and if we’d like to help them out. The survey ends with them stating how we’re so X (X could be environmentally considerate or adventurous or knowledgeable, etc). Once they state that and help establish that mental self image, they bring their real game out by asking you to buy something related to X. You find it hard to deny that since you have accepted you are X (think making a contribution to an NGO that is saving the seals in the arctic once you have accepted yourself as a saver of the environment). This need to be consistent is often accompanied with its close relative, commitment. Once you get a person to commit to something (however loosely), their need to remain consistent takes over and can help compliance practitioners achieve their end goals.
Liking
We all want to be around people like us. We want to give them our business. We inherently trust them too. All this is a simple psychological fact. Some of how we end up liking someone is not complicated. For instance, we like good looking people who dress well and are polite. The other aspects of how we end up liking someone are less conspicuous. Sales people often gauge subtle interests when they talk to you and then go on and show them up as their own interests. For instance they may find a golf kit in your trunk and say how they are planning on going golfing this weekend. They may read your car plate, guess where you’re from and gently drop in how his wife’s family is from there too. Even these seemingly tiny similarities can make us feel someone is like us and therefore make us like them and trust them. Trust is gold dust in a sales transaction and whoever has your trust generally has your $$ too.
Social proof
It is often hard for us to decide what to do in a given situation. The brain is not inclined to study all the options, weigh them and make a conscious choice, so it does a quick survey to gauge what others around us doing and decides to do that. Social proof is often so powerful it can make us do things we have no desire to do. The Tupperware parties are the prime example of social proof. You get invited to a party by a friend. You know that part of your purchase goes to the friend who invited you and since you have no desire to cut them short, you obviously buy something. Similar techniques are often used by telecallers who when fail to make a sale with you, ask for a reference of a friend who may find whatever they are selling useful. Given this concession (rule of reciprocity kicks in), you feel an urge to do something for them and so state a name or two. The telecaller then calls up your friends and start their conversation by telling how you gave them their reference and in effect offers social proof, which strongly improves his chances.
Authority figures
From birth we are told to listen to our parents, teachers, doctors, etc. We are told these are people who know what they are talking about and that we should listen to them and do what they say. There is some merit to this as lawyers, doctors, judges, teachers, etc are trained people whose opinions are far more accurate than laymen but this excessive use of conformity to authority figures, makes us very easy to influence. As we train our brain to listen to authority figures, it begins automating steps for efficiency. The brain eventually automates so much of this that it is often enough to just get a feel of authority (just by clothes or demeanour) for us to comply. Recall how many actor doctors sell toothpaste on tv. Nobody is confused as to whether they are real doctors, we know they aren’t. Those ads still work. Whenever you find yourself about to comply with what an authority figure is saying, question whether the person is an actual authority in relation to what they are talking about or just a fake one (clothes and demeanour).
Scarcity
This one is my favourite. Scarcity drives so many behaviours. Whenever we think there is even a hint of competition involved, we automatically begin valuing those things better. This is why online bids, invitation based launches, limited edition, etc type campaigns work. Sales professionals often build fake scarcity to build up interest by saying things like the stocks next month are supposed to be low because of xx. Another common example is how real estate agents often talk about how an interested party is supposed to make an offer tomorrow. By creating a sense of prospective loss (how you may lose out on getting something), they activate the scarcity driven desire to have something now. Often times your desire to own something is based on the very scarcity of the item (like a collectors item). In such cases it makes sense to give in to scarcity driven moves but more often than not we want something to use it and not just to own it. In these cases, when we find ourselves with an urge to acquire something under the influence of scarcity, we must question if that something will be equally valuable to us if it was not scarce. Simply answering this will prevent us from falling into a scarcity driven trap.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.