“You never get a second chance to make a good first
impression” we’ve been advised. Turns out that making a first impression, your
opening line or gambit in persuasion, greatly influences the response of the “target”
to what follows.
Author Robert Cialdini doesn’t give this example, but I will: if you talk about capital punishment or about foreign orphans, your listener
will give you a very different answer if asked later to spell “euthanasia” (“youth
in Asia”). We pay attention to what we are set up to expect.
Dr. Cialdini gives many examples of experimental results showing
the influence of the preambles to questions and to attempts to influence. Sofa or
mattress ads with backgrounds of clouds get buyers to emphasis comfort than
cost and pay more than do ads with backgrounds of coins…for the same set of
product options. The texts were the same, but the illustrations were the
sub-texts. Many other examples are given, and often the respondents were still
influenced weeks later even when having forgotten seeing the ads at all.
Exceptionally well documented, the book is half narrative and half references
and notes.
Cialdini’s seminal best-selling book, Influence, now decades
old and still widely cited, discussed the following types of appeals:
Reciprocation: If
someone does something for us, we feel obligated to do a favor in return. Not
only does he present studies to show this, he tells how he fell prey himself.
Gifts that are meaningful, unexpected, and customized for the recipient are
particularly effective.
Liking:
Salespeople
are urged to try to get their prospects to like them. They are told to dress
well, be pleasant, friendly, joke a bit, emphasize commonalities, and provide
compliments. Some politicians are careful even to imitate the speaking patterns
of their audiences around the country.
Social
Proof: Follow the crowd. I
recall there was a play and a song with the title “50 Million Frenchmen Can’t
Be Wrong.” This was an appeal to “social proof,” one more effectively,
probably, for the French than for the Americans. Still, polls get rapt
attention by many, and we are influenced by the preferences of others, sometimes
appropriately so.
Authority:
If
someone who should know shares that expertise, we are inclined to believe it.
Expert opinion is quite persuasive…until contradicted by another expert. Your
position on man-made global warming will be strongly influenced by which experts
to whom you give credence. Particularly persuasive are those who admit their
imperfections up front, then make their points definitively. Cialdini shows how
Warren Buffett has mastered this.
Scarcity:
“Get
it while it’s hot” and “only a few left” and “only x per customer” are variants
of the appeal to FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. The perceived values of many things
depend in part on utility and scarcity: water in the desert versus at the lake.
Consistency:
We
like to think of ourselves as consistent, despite Ralph Waldo Emerson’s warning
against “a foolish consistency….” It is a virtue of sorts. Mall-goers asked
whether they would sample a new soda flavor agreed much more often when the request
was preceded by asking them whether they were adventurous. Most said they were,
and most then sampled the new drink, in contrast to what happened when there was
no introductory, pre-suasion, question.
These first six were important parts of Cialdini’s earlier
book, Influence. Subsequently, he has
come to add a seventh principal factor of influence: the idea that some others
are not merely like us, but are of us, he terms this
Unity:
how
we feel about a family member, such as a sibling, as opposed to how we value a
friend or colleague. It is not just DNA, although race and ethnicity are often
in this category, but some other associations sometimes carry this weight:
gender, age, political and religious affiliations. You know it when you feel it:
“this person is one of Us.” Much stronger than “like us.” One distinguishing
element is that the conduct of one of the members affects the self-esteem of
the others, “we is the shared me.” Actual kinship and occupying the
same place are two elements that can lead to this feeling, as can moving together,
acting together, for example in celebration. Dancing, too?
This fascinating book has a wealth of ideas that will make
you more aware of the factors that influence you and prepare you to be more
skilled when you seek to influence others.
see my WRITE YOUR BOOK WITH ME
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