“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. [W]hen making a decision, we will less frequently engage in a fully considered analysis of the total situation [and] revert increasingly to a focus on a single, usually reliable feature of the situation.”
Says Robert Cialdini in the conclusion to Influence after having parsed through six such features. In complex situations, one of these features tends to trigger an automatic behavior, allowing you to decide on your course of action without having to analyze all the available information. “Compliance practitioners” use or exploit your tendency for automatic, shortcut responding to make you comply with their requests.
The six informational shortcuts are:
- Reciprocity. This social rule requires you to repay what another person has provided. You will also reciprocate unsolicited favors and negotiation concessions.
- Consistency and commitment. You desire to be and look consistent in your words, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Your initial commitment, particularly if active, public, effortful, and uncoerced typically triggers the chain of events.
- Social proof. You look at what other people are doing as a guide to what you should do. Imitation response kicks in also when you’re merely informed of other people’s actions, and works best in the conditions of situational uncertainty and others’ similarity to you.
- Liking. You prefer to say yes to people you know and like. Physical attractiveness, similarity (to you), praise, familiarity, cooperation, and association can help generate liking.
- Authority. You have a tendency to obey authority, even when it comes in the form of symbols, such as titles, clothing (uniforms), or status objects like cars.
- Scarcity. You value more what is less available, particularly because it indicates quality and desirability by others. You perceive things becoming less accessible as the loss of freedom and respond by wanting them even more. Limited access to information makes that information more desirable and agreeable.
Cialdini also outlines the ways to guard and defend against these automatic behaviors. Each requires a conscious stepping out of the situational context and analysis of other information. Refusal to succumb – saying no – is the running theme among these defenses, which poses a danger of becoming an automated behavior itself.
Influence pulls together a ton of studies, experiments, and other research to make its points. This makes for engaging reading, though some of the examples get excessive treatment.
I learned about this book from a trial lawyer who uses the principles of influence in his work. Marketers seem to love it as well, and for good reason. Whether you use the book for business or in your personal life, and whether you’re on the distributing or receiving end of compliance requests, you need to understand how the situational triggers work in making people comply with other people’s requests.
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Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 5th edition, Boston: Pearson Education, 2009.
