Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Cialdini expresses that, though people are obviously influenced by friends and those they like, they are also influenced by likable people whom they scarcely know. It is virtually impossible to convince people of scientific realities against which they are predisposed—notably, the theory of evolution. However, when researchers tell disbelievers that popular celebrities support evolution, disbelievers express more openness to the possibility that evolution is factual.

In “Liking for Profit,” Cialdini explains the marketing strategy of Tupperware, the primary sales technique of which is the home party. A homemaker invites personal friends; after an introduction with games and prizes, the Tupperware rep takes sales orders, a monetary percentage of which goes to the homemaker. Friends feel obligated to attend and purchase. This strategy works even when friends are not present. The Shaklee Corporation requests its customers to supply the names of friends. Since friends sent Shaklee to them, the second tier is more likely to purchase products as well.

Cialdini writes in “Strategic Friendship: Making Friends to Influence People” that compliance professionals employ the liking rule by making the customer like them. He tells of legendary car salesman Joe Girard, who sent out postcards to 13,000 customers annually, saying simply, “I like you.”

In “Why Do I Like You? Let Me List the Ways,” Cialdini lists qualities that make compliance professionals more attractive. First is “Physical Attractiveness.” He writes, “[R]esearch indicates we may have sorely underestimated the size and reach of that advantage” (82). People who are attractive are also assumed to be more intelligent, kind, and honest, among many other positive traits. Cialdini calls this the “halo effect”: One characteristic surpasses all others when judging someone’s worthiness.

“Similarity” evolves from the simple principle, “We like people who are like us” (84). Compliance professionals, Cialdini writes, learn how to find commonality with potential clients to make themselves more likeable. Even seemingly small and insignificant similarities can be exploited to promote bonding. There are programs that teach professionals how to mimic elements of a potential client’s behavior and speech to demonstrate similarity.

“Compliments” deals with the inability of human beings to resist compliments. Cialdini writes, “[W]e are phenomenal suckers for flattery” (91). Two tools make compliments even more effective. The first is the behind-the-back compliment shared with a friend or associate of the intended recipient: The compliment will find its way to the recipient and will be perceived as genuine. The second is the compliment that sets a goal for the recipient: praising the recipient for potential actions as a way of encouraging a particular behavior. He refers to this as “altercasting.”

In “Contact and Cooperation,” Cialdini discusses how constant exposure to something makes one sympathetic to it, even though an individual is unaware of the effect.

In “Going to School on the Matter,” the author discusses the notion that being exposed to children of other races in school promotes acceptance between the two groups. In actuality, he observes, school fosters competition, encouraging students to stay in their own separate groups rather than intermingling. The distinctions between the groups are not broken down cooperatively. In the next session, “Off to Camp,” he describes how antagonistic groups of children learn to be cooperative through working on projects together. This brings about a surprising degree of harmony and unanimity. He terms this type of effort the “jigsaw route” in the following subsection, “Back to School.” This method has been used to bring about harmony in newly desegregated school settings.

Cialdini describes how compliance professionals use the idea of “working together” to overcome challenges as a sales tool. It is also employed by peace officers to elicit confessions by persuading a potential criminal to achieve commonality with an officer.

In “Conditioning and Association,” the author writes, “[A]n innocent association with either bad things or good things will influence how people feel about us” (108). Newscasters and weather reporters suffer as a result of this phenomenon. Compliance professionals have learned how to use this association to their benefit. The most obvious example of this is the use of attractive models and spokespersons in advertisements. Also, product labels conveying good news about an item increase its salability.

Using celebrities to promote items is also a highly successful manner of advertising, not only for goods but also in political campaigns. Cialdini connects this process to Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with training dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell: Compliance professionals go out of their way to associate brand names and consumer goods along with something very pleasant or beautiful in advertisements.

In “From the News and Weather to the Sports,” he describes the way people place huge significance on the sports teams they identify with. Association with winning teams, as with winning politicians, conveys glory to those who support the winners. Supporters stop identifying closely with teams or politicians who do not succeed.

In his “Defense” section, Cialdini counsels readers not to automatically turn one’s defenses against a promoted product but rather to notice feelings of attraction to the compliance professional who is trying to make a connection through liking. The proper response is to focus exclusively on the merits of the transaction. He writes, “That is why it is so important to be alert to a sense of undue liking for a compliance practitioner. The recognition of that feeling can serve as our reminder to separate the dealer from the merits of the deal” (124).