INFLUENCE The Psychology of Persuasion ROBERT B. CIALDINI PH.D. This book is dedicated to Chris, who glows in his father’s eye Contents Introduction v 1 Weapons of Influence 1 2 Reciprocation: The Old Give and Take…and Take 13 3 Commitment and Consistency: Hobgoblins of the Mind 43 4 Social Proof: Truths Are Us 87 5 Liking: The Friendly Thief 126 6 Authority: Directed Deference 157 7 Scarcity: The Rule of the Few 178 Epilogue Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age 205 Notes 211 Bibliography 225 Index 241 Acknowledgments About the Author Cover Copyright About the Publisher INTRODUCTION I can admit it freely now. All my life I’ve been a patsy. For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fundraisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some of these people have had dishonorable motives. The others—representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance—have had the best of intentions. No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I have always found myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to the sanitation workers’ ball. Probably this long-standing status as sucker accounts for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance? I wondered why it is that a request stated in a certain way will be rejected, while a request that asks for the same favor in a slightly different fashion will be successful. So in my role as an experimental social psychologist, I began to do research into the psychology of compliance. At first the research vi / Influence took the form of experiments performed, for the most part, in my laboratory and on college students. I wanted to find out which psychological principles influence the tendency to comply with a request. Right now, psychologists know quite a bit about these principles—what they are and how they work. I have characterized such principles as weapons of influence and will report on some of the most important in the upcoming chapters. After a time, though, I began to realize that the experimental work, while necessary, wasn’t enough. It didn’t allow me to judge the importance of the principles in the world beyond the psychology building and the campus where I was examining them. It became clear that if I was to understand fully the psychològy of compliance, I would need to broaden my scope of investigation. I would need to look to the compliance professionals—the people who had been using the principles on me all my life. They know what works and what doesn’t; the law of survival of the fittest assures it. Their business is to make us comply, and their livelihoods depend on it. Those who don’t know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish. Of course, the compliance professionals aren’t the only ones who know about and use these principles to help them get their way. We all employ them and fall victim to them, to some degree, in our daily interactions with neighbors, friends, lovers, and offspring. But the compliance practitioners have much more than the vague and amateurish understanding of what works than the rest of us have. As I thought about it, I knew that they represented the richest vein of information about compliance available to me. For nearly three years, then, I combined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining program of systematic immersion into the world of compliance professionals—sales operators, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers, and others. The purpose was to observe, from the inside, the techniques and strategies most commonly and effectively used by a broad range of compliance practitioners. That program of observation sometimes took the form of interviews with the practitioners themselves and sometimes with the natural enemies (for example, police buncosquad officers, consumer agencies) of certain of the practitioners. At other times it involved an intensive examination of the written materials by which compliance techniques are passed down from one generation to another—sales manuals and the like. Most frequently, though, it has taken the form of participant observation. Participant observation is a research approach in which the researcher becomes a spy of sorts. With disguised identity and intent, the investigator infiltrates the setting of interest and becomes a full-fledged Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / vii participant in the group to be studied. So when I wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of encyclopedia (or vacuum-cleaner, or portraitphotography, or dance-lesson) sales organizations, I would answer a newspaper ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public-relations, and fund-raising agencies to examine their techniques. Much of the evidence presented in this book, then, comes from my experience posing as a compliance professional, or aspiring professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to getting us to say yes. One aspect of what I learned in this three-year period of participant observation was most instructive. Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power. The book is organized around these six principles, one to a chapter. The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity—are each discussed in terms of their function in the society and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, assent, etc. It is worthy of note that I have not included among the six principles the simple rule of material self-interest—that people want to get the most and pay the least for their choices. This omission does not stem from any perception on my part that the desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs is unimportant in driving our decisions. Nor does it come from any evidence I have that compliance professionals ignore the power of this rule. Quite the opposite: In my investigations, I frequently saw practitioners use (sometimes honestly, sometimes not) the compelling “I can give you a good deal” approach. I choose not to treat the material selfinterest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment but not extensive description. Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willingness to say yes without thinking first. The evidence suggests that the ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent in the future. It will be increasingly important for the society, therefore, to understand the how and why of automatic influence. It has been some time since the first edition of Influence was published. viii / Influence In the interim, some things have happened that I feel deserve a place in this new edition. First, we now know more about the influence process than before. The study of persuasion, compliance, and change has advanced, and the pages that follow have been adapted to reflect that progress. In addition to an overall update of the material, I have included a new feature that was stimulated by the responses of prior readers. That new feature highlights the experiences of individuals who have read Influence, recognized how one of the principles worked on (or for) them in a particular instance, and wrote to me describing the event. Their descriptions, which appear in the Reader’s Reports at the end of each chapter, illustrate how easily and frequently we can fall victim to the pull of the influence process in our everyday lives. I wish to thank the following individuals who—either directly or through their course instructors—contributed the Reader’s Reports used in this edition: Pat Bobbs, Mark Hastings, James Michaels, Paul R. Nail, Alan J. Resnik, Daryl Retzlaff, Dan Swift, and Karla Vasks. In addition, I would like to invite new readers to submit similar reports for possible publication in a future edition. They may be sent to me at the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104. —ROBERT B. CIALDINI Chapter 1 WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. —ALBERT EINSTEIN I opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD RECENTLY curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to “push” the items hard, again without success. Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, “Everything in this display case, price × ½,” hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the “½” in her scrawled message as a “2,” the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original price! 2 / Influence That’s when she called me. I thought I knew what had happened but told her that, if I were to explain things properly, she would have to listen to a story of mine. Actually, it isn’t my story; it’s about mother turkeys, and it belongs to the relatively new science of ethology—the study of animals in their natural settings. Turkey mothers are good mothers—loving, watchful, and protective. They spend much of their time tending, warming, cleaning, and huddling the young beneath them. But there is something odd about their method. Virtually all of this mothering is triggered by one thing: the “cheep-cheep” sound of young turkey chicks. Other identifying features of the chicks, such as their smell, touch, or appearance, seem to play minor roles in the mothering process. If a chick makes the “cheep-cheep” noise, its mother will care for it; if not, the mother will ignore or sometimes kill it. The extreme reliance of maternal turkeys upon this one sound was dramatically illustrated by animal behaviorist M. W. Fox in his description of an experiment involving a mother turkey and a stuffed polecat.1 For a mother turkey, a polecat is a natural enemy whose approach is to be greeted with squawking, pecking, clawing rage. Indeed, the experimenters found that even a stuffed model of a polecat, when drawn by a string toward a mother turkey, received an immediate and furious attack. When, however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a small recorder that played the “cheep-cheep” sound of baby turkeys, the mother not only accepted the oncoming polecat but gathered it underneath her. When the machine was turned off, the polecat model again drew a vicious attack. How ridiculous a female turkey seems under these circumstances: She will embrace a natural enemy just because it goes “cheep-cheep,” and she will mistreat or murder one of her own chicks just because it does not. She looks like an automaton whose maternal instincts are under the automatic control of that single sound. The ethologists tell us that this sort of thing is far from unique to the turkey. They have begun to identify regular, blindly mechanical patterns of action in a wide variety of species. Called fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of behavior, such as entire courtship or mating rituals. A fundamental characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviors that compose them occur in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time. It is almost as if the patterns were recorded on tapes within the animals. When the situation calls for courtship, the courtship tape gets played; when the situation calls for mothering, the maternal-behavior tape gets Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 3 played. Click and the appropriate tape is activated; whirr and out rolls the standard sequence of behaviors. The most interesting thing about all this is the way the tapes are activated. When a male animal acts to defend his territory, for instance, it is the intrusion of another male of the same species that cues the territorial-defense tape of rigid vigilance, threat, and, if need be, combat behaviors. But there is a quirk in the system. It is not the rival male as a whole that is the trigger; it is some specific feature of him, the trigger feature. Often the trigger feature will be just one tiny aspect of the totality that is the approaching intruder. Sometimes a shade of color is the trigger feature. The experiments of ethologists have shown, for instance, that a male robin, acting as if a rival robin had entered its territory, will vigorously attack nothing more than a clump of robin-redbreast feathers placed there. At the same time, it will virtually ignore a perfect stuffed replica of a male robin without red breast feathers; similar results have been found in another species of bird, the bluethroat, where it appears that the trigger for territorial defense is a specific shade of blue breast feathers.2 Before we enjoy too smugly the ease with which lower animals can be tricked by trigger features into reacting in ways wholly inappropriate to the situation, we might realize two things. First, the automatic, fixedaction patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise. By reacting to just that one stimulus, the average mother turkey will nearly always behave correctly. It takes a trickster like a scientist to make her tapelike response seem silly. The second important thing to understand is that we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can be used to dupe us into playing them at the wrong times.3 This parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A wellknown 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. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use 4 / Influence the Xerox machine? Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.” But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the “cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys—even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat—so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply. Click, whirr!4 Although some of Langer’s additional findings show that 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. For instance, consider the strange behavior of those jewelry-store customers who swooped down on an allotment of turquoise pieces only after the items had been mistakenly offered at double their original price. I can make no sense of their behavior, unless it is viewed in click, whirr terms. The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.” Thus the vacationers, who wanted “good” jewelry, saw the turquoise pieces as decidedly more valuable and desirable when nothing about them was enhanced but the price. 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! It is easy to fault the tourists for their foolish purchase decisions. But a close look offers a kinder view. These were people who had been brought up on the rule “You get what you pay for” and who had seen that rule borne out over and over in their lives. Before long, they had translated the rule to mean “expensive = good.” The “expensive = good” stereotype had worked quite well for them in the past, since normally the price of an item increases along with its worth; a higher price typically reflects higher quality. So when they found themselves in the position of wanting good turquoise jewelry without much knowledge of Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 5 turquoise, they understandably relied on the old standby feature of cost to determine the jewelry’s merits. Although they probably did not realize it, by reacting solely to the price feature of the turquoise, they were playing a shortcut version of betting the odds. Instead of stacking all the odds in their favor by trying painstakingly to master each of the things that indicate the worth of turquoise jewelry, they were counting on just one—the one they knew to be usually associated with the quality of any item. They were betting that price alone would tell them all they needed to know. This time, because someone mistook a “½” for a “2,” they bet wrong. But in the long run, over all the past and future situations of their lives, betting those shortcut odds may represent the most rational approach possible. In fact, automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of human action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary. You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated stimulus environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet. To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must very 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. Sometimes the behavior that unrolls will not be appropriate for the situation, because not even the best stereotypes and trigger features work every time. But we accept their imperfection, since there is really no other choice. Without them we would stand frozen—cataloging, appraising, and calibrating—as the time for action sped by and away. And from all indications, we will be relying on them to an even greater extent in the future. As the stimuli saturating our lives continue to grow more intricate and variable, we will have to depend increasingly on our shortcuts to handle them all. The renowned British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead recognized this inescapable quality of modern life when he asserted that “civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” Take, for example, the “advance” offered to civilization by the discount coupon, which allows consumers to assume that they will receive a reduced purchase price by presenting the coupon. The extent to which we have learned to operate mechanically on that assumption is illustrated in the experience of one automobile-tire company. 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 6 / Influence savings. The obvious but instructive point here is that we expect discount coupons to do double duty. Not only do we expect them to save us money, we also expect them to save us the time and mental energy required to think about how to do it. In today’s world, we need the first advantage to handle pocketbook strain; but we need the second advantage to handle something potentially more important—brain strain. It is odd that despite their current widespread use and looming future importance, most of us know very little about our automatic behavior patterns. Perhaps that is so precisely because of the mechanistic, unthinking manner in which they occur. Whatever the reason, it is vital that we clearly recognize one of their properties: They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work. To understand fully the nature of our vulnerability, another glance at the work of the ethologists is in order. It turns out that these animal behaviorists with their recorded “cheep-cheeps” and their clumps of colored breast feathers are not the only ones who have discovered how to activate the behavior tapes of various species. There is a group of organisms, often termed mimics, that copy the trigger features of other animals in an attempt to trick these animals into mistakenly playing the right behavior tapes at the wrong times. The mimic will then exploit this altogether inappropriate action for its own benefit. Take, for example, the deadly trick played by the killer females of one genus of firefly (Photuris) on the males of another firefly genus (Photinus). Understandably, the Photinus males scrupulously avoid contact with the bloodthirsty Photuris females. But through centuries of experience, the female hunters have located a weakness in their prey—a special blinking courtship code by which members of the victims’ species tell one another they are ready to mate. Somehow, the Photuris female has cracked the Photinus courtship code. By mimicking the flashing mating signals of her prey, the murderess is able to feast on the bodies of males whose triggered courtship tapes cause them to fly mechanically into death’s, not love’s, embrace. Insects seem to be the most severe exploiters of the automaticity of their prey; it is not uncommon to find their victims duped to death. But less uncompromising forms of exploitation occur as well. There is, for instance, a little fish, the saber-toothed blenny, that takes advantage of an unusual program of cooperation worked out by members of two other species of fish. The cooperating fish form a Mutt and Jeff team consisting of a large grouper fish on the one hand and a much smaller type of fish on the other. The smaller fish serves as a cleaner to the larger one, which allows the cleaner to approach it and even enter its mouth to pick off fungus and other parasites that have attached themselves to Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 7 the big fish’s teeth or gills. It is a beautiful arrangement: The big grouper gets cleaned of harmful pests, and the cleaner fish gets an easy dinner. The larger fish normally devours any other small fish foolish enough to come close to it. But when the cleaner approaches, the big fish suddenly stops all movement and floats open-mouthed and nearly immobile in response to an undulating dance that the cleaner performs. This dance appears to be the trigger feature of the cleaner that activates the dramatic passivity of the big fish. It also provides the saber-toothed blenny with an angle—a chance to take advantage of the cleaning ritual of the cooperators. The blenny will approach the large predator, copying the undulations of the cleaner’s dance and automatically producing the tranquil, unmoving posture of the big fish. Then, true to its name, it will quickly rip a mouthful from the larger fish’s flesh and dart away before its startled victim can recover.5 There is a strong but sad parallel in the human jungle. We too have exploiters who mimic trigger features for our own brand of automatic responding. Unlike the mostly instinctive response sequences of nonhumans, our automatic tapes usually develop from psychological principles or stereotypes we have learned to accept. Although they vary in their force, some of these principles possess a tremendous ability to direct human action. We have been subjected to them from such an early point in our lives, and they have moved us about so pervasively since then, that you and I rarely perceive their power. In the eyes of others, though, each such principle is a detectable and ready weapon—a weapon of automatic influence. There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and who employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter requesting others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling. The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way they structure their requests, the way they arm themselves with one or another of the weapons of influence that exist within the social environment. To do this may take no more than one correctly chosen word that engages a strong psychological principle and sets an automatic behavior tape rolling within us. And trust the human exploiters to learn quickly exactly how to profit from our tendency to respond mechanically according to these principles. Remember my friend the jewelry-store owner? Although she benefited by accident the first time, it did not take her long to begin exploiting the “expensive = good” stereotype regularly and intentionally. Now, during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially. She claims that this is marvelously cost-effective. When it works on the 8 / Influence unsuspecting vacationers—as it frequently does—it results in an enormous profit margin. And even when it is not initially successful, she can mark the article “Reduced from _____” and sell it at its original price while still taking advantage of the “expensive = good” reaction to the inflated figure. By no means is my friend original in this last use of the “expensive = good” rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men’s tailor shop in Rosten’s neighborhood while he was growing up in the 1930s. Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit he liked and had asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for this suit?” Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the suit’s true price—Harry would call back, “For that beautiful all-wool suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, “Forty-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 his “expensive = good” bargain before Poor Sid discovered the “mistake.” There are several components shared by most of the weapons of automatic influence to be described in this book. We have already discussed two of them—the nearly mechanical process by which the power within these weapons can be activated, and the consequent exploitability of this power by anyone who knows how to trigger them. A third component involves the way that the weapons of automatic influence lend their force to those who use them. It’s not that the weapons, like a set of heavy clubs, provide a conspicuous arsenal to be used by one person to bludgeon another into submission. The process is much more sophisticated and subtle. With proper execution, the exploiters need hardly strain a muscle to get their way. All that is required is to trigger the great stores of influence that already exist in the situation and direct them toward the intended target. In this sense, the approach is not unlike that of the Japanese martial-art form called jujitsu. A woman employing jujitsu would utilize her own strength only minimally against an opponent. Instead, she would exploit the power inherent in such naturally present principles as gravity, leverage, momentum, and inertia. If she knows how and where to engage the action of these principles, she can easily defeat a physically Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 9 stronger rival. And so it is for the exploiters of the weapons of automatic influence that exist naturally around us. The exploiters can commission the power of these weapons for use against their targets while exerting little personal force. This last feature of the process allows the exploiters 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 that compliance. An example is in order. There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a heavy object, we will estimate the second object to be heavier than if we had lifted it without first trying the light one. The contrast principle is well established in the field of psychophysics and applies to all sorts of perceptions besides weight. If we are talking to a beautiful woman at a cocktail party and are then joined by an unattractive one, the second woman will strike us as less attractive than she actually is. In fact, studies done on the contrast principle at Arizona State and Montana State universities suggest that we may be less satisfied with the physical attractiveness of our own lovers because of the way the popular media bombard us with examples of unrealistically attractive models. In one study college students rated a picture of an averagelooking member of the opposite sex as less attractive if they had first looked through the ads in some popular magazines. In another study, male college-dormitory residents rated the photo of a potential blind date. Those who did so while watching an episode of the Charlie’s Angels TV series viewed the blind date as a less attractive woman than those who rated her while watching a different show. Apparently it was the uncommon beauty of the Angels female stars that made the blind date seem less attractive.6 A nice demonstration of perceptual contrast is sometimes employed in psychophysics laboratories to introduce students to the principle firsthand. Each student takes a turn sitting in front of three pails of water—one cold, one at room temperature, and one hot. After placing one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, the student is told to place both in the lukewarm water simultaneously. The look of amused bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though both hands are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold water feels as if it is now in hot water, while the one that was in the hot water feels as if it is now in cold water. The point is that the same 10 / Influence thing—in this instance, room-temperature water—can be made to seem very different, depending on the nature of the event that precedes it. Be assured that the nice little weapon of influence provided by the contrast principle does not go unexploited. The great advantage of this principle is not only that it 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. Retail clothiers are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men’s store and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you were the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him likely to spend the most money? Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to purchase a suit, he may be reluctant to spend very much more on the purchase of a sweater. But the clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison. 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. The same principle applies to a man who wishes to buy the accessories (shirt, shoes, belt) to go along with his new suit. Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence supports the contrast-principle prediction. As sales motivation analysts Whitney, Hubin, and Murphy state, “The interesting thing is that even when a man enters a clothing store with the express purpose of purchasing a suit, he will almost always pay more for whatever accessories he buys if he buys them after the suit purchase than before.” It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations. So, just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear to be hotter or colder, depending on the temperature of previously presented water, it is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher or lower, depending on the price of a previously presented item. Clever use of perceptual contrast is by no means confined to clothiers. I came across a technique that engaged the contrast principle while I was investigating, undercover, the compliance tactics of real-estate companies. To “learn the ropes,” I was accompanying a company realty salesman on a weekend of showing houses to prospective home buyers. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 11 The salesman—we can call him Phil—was to give me tips to help me through my break-in period. One thing I quickly noticed was that whenever Phil began showing a new set of customers potential buys, he would start with a couple of undesirable houses. I asked him about it, and he laughed. They were what he called “setup” properties. The company maintained a run-down house or two on its lists at inflated prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but to be shown to them, so that the genuine properties in the company’s inventory would benefit from the comparison. Not all the sales staff made use of the setup houses, but Phil did. He said he liked to watch his prospects’ “eyes light up” when he showed the place he really wanted to sell them after they had seen the run-down houses. “The house I got them spotted for looks really great after they’ve first looked at a couple of dumps.” 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. In the wake of a fifteen-thousanddollar deal, the hundred or so dollars required for a nicety like an FM radio seems almost trivial in comparison. The same will be true of the added expense of accessories like tinted windows, dual side-view mirrors, whitewall tires, or special trim that the salesman might suggest in sequence. The trick is to bring up the extras independently of one another, so that each small price will seem petty when compared to the already-determined much larger one. As the veteran car buyer can attest, many a budget-sized final price figure has ballooned from the addition of all those seemingly little options. While the customer stands, signed contract in hand, wondering what happened and finding no one to blame but himself, the car dealer stands smiling the knowing smile of the jujitsu master. READER’S REPORT From the Parent of a College Coed Dear Mother and Dad: Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you are sitting down, okay? Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out the window of my dormitory when it caught on fire shortly after my arrival here is pretty well healed now. I only spent two 12 / Influence weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get those sick headaches once a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory, and my jump, was witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me in the hospital and since I had nowhere to live because of the burntout dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It’s really a basement room, but it’s kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven’t got the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show. Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has a minor infection which prevents us from passing our pre-marital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him. Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend. However, I am getting a “D” in American History, and an “F” in Chemistry and I want you to see those marks in their proper perspective. Your loving daughter, Sharon Sharon may be failing chemistry, but she gets an “A” in psychology. Chapter 2 RECIPROCATION The Old Give and Take…and Take Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON experiA ment. He sent Christmas cards to a sample of perfect strangers. FEW YEARS AGO, A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR TRIED A LITTLE Although he expected some reaction, the response he received was amazing—holiday cards addressed to him came pouring back from the people who had never met nor heard of him. The great majority of those who returned a card never inquired into the identity of the unknown professor. They received his holiday greeting card, click, and, whirr, they automatically sent one in return. While small in scope, this study nicely shows the action of one of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us—the rule for reciprocation.1 The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours. By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and the like. So typical is it for indebtedness to accompany the receipt of such things that a term like “much obliged” has become a synonym for “thank you,” not only in the English language but in others as well. The impressive aspect of the rule for reciprocation and the sense of obligation that goes with it is its pervasiveness in human culture. It is so widespread that after intensive study, sociologists such as Alvin 14 / Influence Gouldner can report that there is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule.2 And within each society it seems pervasive also; it permeates exchanges of every kind. Indeed, it may well be that a developed system of indebtedness flowing from the rule for reciprocation is a unique property of human culture. The noted archaeologist Richard Leakey ascribes the essence of what makes us human to the reciprocity system: “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation,”3 he says. Cultural anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox view this “web of indebtedness” as a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for the division of labor, the exchange of diverse forms of goods, the exchange of different services (making it possible for experts to develop), and the creation of a cluster of interdependencies that bind individuals together into highly efficient units.4 It is the future orientation inherent in a sense of obligation that is critical to its ability to produce social advances of the sort described by Tiger and Fox. A widely shared and strongly held feeling of future obligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution, because it meant that one person could give something (for example, food, energy, care) to another with confidence that it was not being lost. For the first time in evolutionary history, one individual could give away any of a variety of resources without actually giving them away. The result was the lowering of the natural inhibitions against transactions that must be begun by one person’s providing personal resources to another. Sophisticated and coordinated systems of aid, gift giving, defense, and trade became possible, bringing immense benefit to the societies that possessed them. With such clearly adaptive consequences for the culture, it is not surprising that the rule for reciprocation is so deeply implanted in us by the process of socialization we all undergo. I know of no better illustration of how reciprocal obligations can reach long and powerfully into the future than the perplexing story of five thousand dollars of relief aid that was sent in 1985 between Mexico and the impoverished people of Ethiopia. In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City. It is both a personal bane and a professional blessing that whenever I am confused by some aspect of human behavior, I feel driven to investigate further. In this instance, I was able to track down a fuller account of the story. Fortunately a journalist who had been as bewildered as I was by the Ethiopians’ action had asked for an explanation. The answer he received offers eloquent validation of the reciprocity rule: Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy. So informed, I remained awed, but I was no longer puzzled. The need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural differences, long distances, acute famine, and immediate self-interest. Quite simply, a half century later, against all countervailing forces, obligation triumphed. Make no mistake, human societies derive a truly significant competitive advantage from the reciprocity rule, and consequently they make sure their members are trained to comply with and believe in it. Each of us has been taught to live up to the rule, and each of us knows about the social sanctions and derision applied to anyone who violates it. The labels we assign to such a person are loaded with negativity—moocher, ingrate, welsher. Because there is general distaste for those who take and make no effort to give in return, we will often go to great lengths to avoid being considered one of their number. It is to those lengths that we will often be taken and, in the process, be “taken” by individuals who stand to gain from our indebtedness. To understand how the rule for reciprocation can be exploited by one who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might closely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan of Cornell University. one who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might closely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan of Cornell University. one who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might closely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan of Cornell University. one who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might closely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan of Cornell University. ne who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might losely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan f Cornell University. who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might ely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan Cornell University. ho recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might y examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan nell University. 60 / Influence of kind treatment, and statements sympathetic to communism. The hope was that the Chinese would want such letters to surface and would, therefore, allow their delivery. Of course, the Chinese were happy to cooperate because those letters served their interests marvelously. First, their worldwide propaganda effort benefited greatly from the appearance of pro-Communist statements by American servicemen. Second, in the service of prisoner indoctrination, they had, without raising a finger of physical force, gotten many men to go on record as supporting the Chinese cause. A similar technique involved political essay contests that were regularly held in camp. The prizes for winning were invariably small—a few cigarettes or a bit of fruit—but were sufficiently scarce that they generated a lot of interest from the men. Usually the winning essay was one that took a solidly pro-Communist stand…but not always. The Chinese were wise enough to realize that most of the prisoners would not enter a contest that they could win only by writing a Communist tract. And the Chinese were clever enough to know how to plant small commitments to communism in the men that could be nurtured into later bloom. So the prize was occasionally given to an essay that generally supported the United States but that bowed once or twice to the Chinese view. The effects of this strategy were exactly what the Chinese wanted. The men continued to participate voluntarily in the contests because they saw that they could win with an essay highly favorable to their own country. But perhaps without realizing it, they began to shade their essays a bit toward communism in order to have a better chance of winning. The Chinese were ready to pounce on any concession to Communist dogma and to bring consistency pressures to bear upon it. In the case of a written declaration within a voluntary essay, they had a perfect commitment from which to build toward collaboration and conversion. Other compliance professionals also know about the committing power of written statements. The enormously successful Amway Corporation, for instance, has hit upon a way to spur their sales personnel to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of the staff are asked to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to those goals by personally recording them on paper: One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and . Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 61 write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.10 If the Amway people have found “something magical about writing things down,” so have other business organizations. Some door-to-door sales companies use the magic of written commitments to battle the “cooling-off” laws recently passed in many states. The laws are designed to allow customers a few days after purchasing an item to cancel the sale and receive a full refund. At first this legislation hurt the hard-sell companies deeply. Because they emphasize high-pressure tactics, their customers often buy, not because they want the product but because they are duped or intimidated into the sale. When the new laws went into effect, these customers began canceling in droves. The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts the number of such cancellations drastically. They merely have the customer, rather than the salesman, fill out the sales agreement. According to the sales-training program of a prominent encyclopedia company, that personal commitment alone has proved to be “a very important psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their contracts.” Like the Amway Corporation, then, these organizations have found that something special happens when people personally put their commitments on paper: They live up to what they have written down. Another common way for businesses to cash in on the “magic” of written declarations occurs through the use of an innocent-looking promotional device. Before I began to study weapons of social influence, I used to wonder why big companies such as Procter & Gamble and General Foods are always running those “25-, 50-, or 100 words or less” testimonial contests. They all seem to be alike. The contestant is to compose a short personal statement that begins with the words, “Why I like…” and goes on to laud the features of whatever cake mix or floor wax happens to be at issue. The company judges the entries and awards some stunningly large prizes to the winners. What had puzzled me was what the companies got out of the deal. Often the contest requires no purchase; anyone submitting an entry is eligible. Yet, the companies appear to be strangely willing to incur the huge costs of contest after contest. I am no longer puzzled. The purpose behind the testimonial contests is the same as the purpose behind the political essay contests of the Chinese Communists. In both instances, the aim is to get as many people as possible to go on record as liking the product. In Korea, the product was a brand of Chinese communism; in the United States, it might be a brand of cuticle remover. The type of product doesn’t matter; the 62 / Influence process is the same. Participants voluntarily write essays for attractive prizes that they have only a small chance to win. But they know that for an essay to have any chance of winning at all, it must include praise for the product. So they find praiseworthy features of the product and describe them in their essays. The result is hundreds of men in Korea or hundreds of thousands of people in America who testify in writing to the product’s appeal and who, consequently, experience that “magical” pull to believe what they have written. The Public Eye One reason that written testaments are effective in bringing about genuine personal change is that they can so easily be made public. The prisoner experience in Korea showed the Chinese to be quite aware of an important psychological principle: Public commitments tend to be lasting commitments. The Chinese constantly arranged to have the proCommunist statements of their captives seen by others. A man who had written a political essay the Chinese liked, for example, might find copies of it posted around camp, or might be asked to read it to a prisoner discussion group, or even to read it on the camp radio broadcast. As far as the Chinese were concerned, the more public the better. Why? Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person. Remember that earlier in this chapter we described how desirable good personal consistency is as a trait; how someone without it could be judged as fickle, uncertain, pliant, scatterbrained, or unstable; how someone with it is viewed as rational, assured, trustworthy, and sound. Given this context, it is hardly surprising that people try to avoid the look of inconsistency. For appearances’ sake, then, the more public a stand, the more reluctant we will be to change it. An illustration of how public commitments can lead to doggedly consistent further action is provided in a famous experiment performed by a pair of prominent social psychologists, Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard. The basic procedure was to have college students first estimate in their own minds the length of lines they were shown. At this point, one sample of the students had to commit themselves publicly to their initial judgments by writing them down, signing their names to them, and turning them in to the experimenter. A second sample of students also committed themselves to their first estimates, but they did so privately by putting them on a Magic Writing Pad and then erasing them by lifting the Magic Pad’s plastic cover before anyone could see what they had written. A third set of students did not commit them- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 63 selves to their initial estimates at all; they just kept the estimates in mind privately. In these ways, Deutsch and Gerard had cleverly arranged for some students to commit themselves publicly, some privately, and some not at all to their initial decisions. What Deutsch and Gerard wanted to find out was which of the three types of students would be most inclined to stick with their first judgments after receiving information that those judgments were incorrect. So all of the students were given new evidence suggesting that their initial estimates were wrong, and they were then given the chance to change their estimates. The results were quite clear. The students who had never written down their first choices were the least loyal to those choices. When new evidence was presented that questioned the wisdom of decisions that had never left their heads, these students were the most influenced by the new information to change what they had viewed as the “correct” decision. Compared to these uncommitted students, those who had merely written their decisions for a moment on a Magic Pad were significantly less willing to change their minds when given the chance. Even though they had committed themselves under the most anonymous of circumstances, the act of writing down their first judgments caused them to resist the influence of contradictory new data and to remain consistent with the preliminary choices. But Deutsch and Gerard found that, by far, it was the students who had publicly recorded their initial positions who most resolutely refused to shift from those positions later. Public commitment had hardened them into the most stubborn of all. This sort of stubbornness can occur even in situations where accuracy should be more important than consistency. In one study, when six- or twelve-person experimental juries were deciding a close case, hung juries were significantly more frequent if the jurors had to express their opinions with a visible show of hands rather than by secret ballot. Once jurors had stated their initial views publicly, they were reluctant to allow themselves to change publicly, either. Should you ever find yourself as the foreperson of a jury under these conditions, then, you could reduce the risk of a hung jury by choosing a secret rather than public balloting technique.11 The Deutsch and Gerard finding that we are truest to our decisions if we have bound ourselves to them publicly can be put to good use. Consider the organizations dedicated to helping people rid themselves of bad habits. Many weight-reduction clinics, for instance, understand that often a person’s private decision to lose weight will be too weak to withstand the blandishments of bakery windows, wafting cooking scents, and late-night Sara Lee commercials. So they see to it that the 64 / Influence decision is buttressed by the pillars of public commitment. They require their clients to write down an immediate weight-loss goal and show that goal to as many friends, relatives, and neighbors as possible. Clinic operators report that frequently this simple technique works where all else has failed. Of course, there’s no need to pay a special clinic in order to engage a visible commitment as an ally. One San Diego woman described to me how she employed a public promise to help herself finally stop smoking: I remember it was after I heard about another scientific study showing that smoking causes cancer. Every time one of those things came out, I used to get determined to quit, but I never could. This time, though, I decided I had to do something. I’m a proud person. It matters to me if other people see me in a bad light. So I thought, “Maybe I can use that pride to help me dump this damn habit.” So I made a list of all the people who I really wanted to respect me. Then I went out and got some blank business cards and I wrote on the back of each card, “I promise you that I will never smoke another cigarette.” Within a week, I had given or sent a signed card to everybody on the list—my dad, my brother back East, my boss, my best girlfriend, my ex-husband, everybody but one—the guy I was dating then. I was just crazy about him, and I really wanted him to value me as a person. Believe me, I thought twice about giving him a card because I knew that if I couldn’t keep my promise to him I’d die. But one day at the office—he worked in the same building as I did—I just walked up to him, handed him the card, and walked away without saying anything. Quitting “cold turkey” was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There must have been a thousand times when I thought I had to have a smoke. But whenever that happened, I’d just picture how all of the people on my list, especially this one guy, would think less of me if I couldn’t stick to my guns. And that’s all it took. I’ve never taken another puff. You know, the interesting thing is the guy turned out to be a real schmuck. I can’t figure out what I saw in him back then. But at the time, without knowing it, he helped me get through the toughest part of the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do. I don’t even like him anymore. Still, I do feel grateful in a way because I think he saved my life. The Effort Extra Yet another reason that written commitments are so effective is that they require more work than verbal ones. And the evidence is clear that Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 65 the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater is its ability to influence the attitudes of the person who made it. We can find that evidence quite close to home or as far away as the back regions of the primitive world. For example, there is a tribe in southern Africa, the Thonga, that requires each of its boys to go through an elaborate initiation ceremony before he can be counted a man of the tribe. As with many other primitive peoples, a Thonga boy endures a great deal before he is admitted to adult membership in the group. Anthropologists Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony have described this three-month ordeal in brief but vivid terms: When a boy is somewhere between 10 and 16 years of age, he is sent by his parents to “circumcision school,” which is held every 4 or 5 years. Here in company with his age-mates he undergoes severe hazing by the adult males of the society. The initiation begins when each boy runs the gauntlet between two rows of men who beat him with clubs. At the end of this experience he is stripped of his clothes and his hair is cut. He is next met by a man covered with lion manes and is seated upon a stone facing this “lion man.” Someone then strikes him from behind and when he turns his head to see who has struck him, his foreskin is seized and in two movements cut off by the “lion man.” Afterward he is secluded for three months in the “yard of mysteries,” where he can be seen only by the initiated. During the course of his initiation, the boy undergoes six major trials: beatings, exposure to cold, thirst, eating of unsavory foods, punishment, and the threat of death. On the slightest pretext, he may be beaten by one of the newly initiated men, who is assigned to the task by the older men of the tribe. He sleeps without covering and suffers bitterly from the winter cold. He is forbidden to drink a drop of water during the whole three months. Meals are often made nauseating by the half-digested grass from the stomach of an antelope, which is poured over his food. If he is caught breaking any important rule governing the ceremony, he is severely punished. For example, in one of these punishments, sticks are placed between the fingers of the offender, then a strong man closes his hand around that of the novice, practically crushing his fingers. He is frightened into submission by being told that in former times boys who had tried to escape or who had revealed the secrets to women or to the uninitiated were hanged and their bodies burned to ashes.12 On the face of it, these rites seem extraordinary and bizarre. Yet, at the same time, they can be seen to be remarkably similar in principle 66 / Influence and even in detail to the common initiation ceremonies of school fraternities. During the traditional “Hell Week” held yearly on college campuses, fraternity pledges must persevere through a variety of activities designed by the older members to test the limits of physical exertion, psychological strain, and social embarrassment. At week’s end, the boys who have persisted through the ordeal are accepted for full group membership. Mostly their tribulations have left them no more than greatly tired and a bit shaky, although sometimes the negative effects are more serious. What is interesting is how closely the particular features of Hell Week tasks match those of the tribal initiation rites. Recall that anthropologists identified six major trials to be endured by a Thonga initiate during his stay in the “yard of mysteries.” A scan of newspaper reports shows that each trial also has its place in the hazing rituals of Greek-letter societies: • Beatings. Fourteen-year-old Michael Kalogris spent three weeks in a Long Island hospital recovering from internal injuries suffered during a Hell Night initiation ceremony of his high-school fraternity, Omega Gamma Delta. He had been administered the “atomic bomb” by his prospective brothers, who told him to hold his hands over his head and keep them there while they gathered around to slam fists into his stomach and back simultaneously and repeatedly. • Exposure to cold. On a winter night, Frederick Bronner, a California junior-college student, was taken three thousand feet up and ten miles into the hills of a national forest by his prospective fraternity brothers. Left to find his way home wearing only a thin sweatshirt and slacks, Fat Freddy, as he was called, shivered in a frigid wind until he tumbled down a steep ravine, fracturing bones and hurting his head. Prevented by his injuries from going on, he huddled there against the cold until he died of exposure. • Thirst. Two Ohio State University freshmen found themselves in the “dungeon” of their prospective fraternity house after breaking the rule requiring all pledges to crawl into the dining area prior to Hell Week meals. Once locked in the house storage closet, they were given only salty foods to eat for nearly two days. Nothing was provided for drinking purposes except a pair of plastic cups in which they could catch their own urine. • Eating of unsavory foods. At Kappa Sigma house on the campus of the University of Southern California, the eyes of eleven pledges bulged when they saw the sickening task before them. Eleven quarter-pound slabs of raw liver lay on a tray. Cut thick and soaked in oil, each was to be swallowed whole, one to a boy. Gagging and choking re- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 67 peatedly, young Richard Swanson failed three times to down his piece. Determined to succeed, he finally got the oil-soaked meat into his throat where it lodged and, despite all efforts to remove it, killed him. • Punishment. In Wisconsin, a pledge who forgot one section of a ritual incantation to be memorized by all initiates was punished for his error. He was required to keep his feet under the rear legs of a folding chair while the heaviest of his fraternity brothers sat down and drank a beer. Although the pledge did not cry out during the punishment, a bone in each of his feet was broken. • Threats of death. A pledge of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was taken to a beach area of New Jersey and told to dig his “own grave.” Seconds after he complied with orders to lie flat in the finished hole, the sides collapsed, suffocating him before his prospective fraternity brothers could dig him out. There is another striking similarity between the initiation rites of tribal and fraternal societies: They simply will not die. Resisting all attempts to eliminate or suppress them, such hazing practices have been phenomenally resilient. Authorities, in the form of colonial governments or university administrations, have tried threats, social pressures, legal actions, banishments, bribes, and bans to persuade the groups to remove the hazards and humiliations from their initiation ceremonies. None has been successful. Oh, there may be a change while the authority is watching closely. But this is usually more apparent than real, the harsher trials occurring under more secret circumstances until the pressure is off and they can surface again. On some college campuses, officials have tried to eliminate dangerous hazing practices by substituting a “Help Week” of civic service or by taking direct control of the initiation rituals. When such attempts are not slyly circumvented by fraternities, they are met with outright physical resistance. For example, in the aftermath of Richard Swanson’s choking death at USC, the university president issued new rules requiring that all pledging activities be reviewed by school authorities before going into effect and that adult advisers be present during initiation ceremonies. According to one national magazine, “The new ‘code’ set off a riot so violent that city police and fire detachments were afraid to enter campus.” Resigning themselves to the inevitable, other college representatives have given up on the possibility of abolishing the degradations of Hell Week. “If hazing is a universal human activity, and every bit of evidence points to this conclusion, you most likely won’t be able to ban it effectively. Refuse to allow it openly and it will go underground. You can’t 68 / Influence ban sex, you can’t prohibit alcohol, and you probably can’t eliminate hazing!”13 What is it about hazing practices that make them so precious to these societies? What could make the groups want to evade, undermine, or contest any effort to ban the degrading and perilous features of their initiation rites? Some have argued that the groups themselves are composed of psychological or social miscreants whose twisted needs demand that others be harmed and humiliated. But the evidence does not support such a view. Studies done on the personality traits of fraternity members, for instance, show them to be, if anything, slightly healthier than other college students in their psychological adjustment. Similarly, fraternities are known for their willingness to engage in beneficial community projects for the general social good. What they are not willing to do, however, is substitute these projects for their initiation ceremonies. One survey at the University of Washington found that, of the fraternity chapters examined, most had a type of Help Week tradition but that this community service was in addition to Hell Week. In only one case was such service directly related to initiation procedures.14 The picture that emerges of the perpetrators of hazing practices is of normal individuals who tend to be psychologically stable and socially concerned but who become aberrantly harsh as a group at only one time—immediately before the admission of new members to the society. The evidence, then, points to the ceremony as the culprit. There must be something about its rigors that is vital to the group. There must be some function to its harshness that the group will fight relentlessly to maintain. What? My own view is that the answer appeared in 1959 in the results of a study little known outside of social psychology. A pair of young researchers, Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills, decided to test their observation that “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.” The real stroke of inspiration came in their choice of the initiation ceremony as the best place to examine this possibility. They found that college women who had to endure a severely embarrassing initiation ceremony in order to gain access to a sex discussion group convinced themselves that their new group and its discussions were extremely valuable, even though Aronson and Mills had previously rehearsed the other group members to be as “worthless and uninteresting” as possible. Different coeds, who went through a much milder initiation ceremony or went through no initiation at all, were decidedly less positive about the “worthless” new group they had joined. Additional research showed the same results when Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 69 coeds were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to get into a group. The more electric shock a woman received as part of the initiation ceremony, the more she later persuaded herself that her new group and its activities were interesting, intelligent, and desirable.15 Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation rituals begin to make sense. The Thonga tribesman watching, with tears in his eyes, his ten-year-old son tremble through a night on the cold ground of the “yard of mysteries,” the college sophomore punctuating his Hell Night paddling of his fraternity “little brother” with bursts of nervous laughter—these are not acts of sadism. They are acts of group survival. They function, oddly enough, to spur future society members to find the group more attractive and worthwhile. As long as it is the case that people like and believe in what they have struggled to get, these groups will continue to arrange effortful and troublesome initiation rites. The loyalty and dedication of those who emerge will increase to a great degree the chances of group cohesiveness and survival. Indeed, one study of fifty-four tribal cultures found that those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group solidarity.16 Given Aronson and Mills’s demonstration that the severity of an initiation ceremony significantly heightens the newcomer’s commitment to the group, it is hardly surprising that groups will oppose all attempts to eliminate this crucial link to their future strength. Military groups and organizations are by no means exempt from these same processes. The agonies of “boot camp” initiations to the armed services are legendary. The novelist William Styron, a former Marine, catalogs his own experiences in language we could easily apply to the Thongas (or, for that matter, to the Kappas or Betas or Alphas): “the remorseless close-order drill hour after hour in the burning sun, the mental and physical abuse, the humiliations, the frequent sadism at the hands of drill sergeants, all the claustrophobic and terrifying insults to the spirit which can make an outpost like Quantico or Parris Island one of the closest things in the free world to a concentration camp.” But, in his commentary, Styron does more than recount the misery of this “training nightmare”—he recognizes its intended outcome: “There is no ex-Marine of my acquaintance, regardless of what direction he may have taken spiritually or politically after those callow gung-ho days, who does not view the training as a crucible out of which he emerged in some way more resilient, simply braver and better for the wear.” But why should we believe William Styron, the writer, in such matters? After all, for professional storytellers, the line between truth and fiction is often blurred. Indeed, why should we believe him when he alleges that the “infernal” character of his military training was not only 70 / Influence successful, it was specifically intended, intended to create desired levels of pride and camaraderie among those who endured and survived it? At least one reason to accept his assessment comes from unfictionalized reality—the case of West Point cadet John Edwards, who was expelled from the U.S. Military Academy in 1988 on charges involving the authorized hazing that all first-year cadets experience at the hands of upperclassmen to ensure that the newcomers can withstand the rigors of West Point training. It was not that Mr. Edwards, who ranked academically near the top of his eleven-hundred-member class, had been unable to bear up under the ritual when he was subjected to it. Nor was he expelled because he had been aberrantly cruel in his treatment of the younger cadets. His offense was that he would not expose the newcomers to what he felt was “absurd and dehumanizing” treatment. Once again, then, it appears that, for groups concerned about creating a lasting sense of solidarity and distinction, the hardship of demanding initiation activities provides a valuable advantage that they will not easily surrender—either to aspiring members who are unwilling to take the harshness or to give it out. The Inner Choice Examination of such diverse activities as the indoctrination practices of the Chinese Communists and the initiation rituals of college fraternities has provided some valuable information about commitment. It appears that commitments are most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effortful. But there is another property of effective commitment that is more important than the other three combined. To understand what it is, we first need to solve a pair of puzzles in the actions of Communist interrogators and fraternity brothers. The first puzzle comes from the refusal of fraternity chapters to allow public-service activities to be part of their initiation ceremonies. Recall that one survey showed that community projects, though frequent, were nearly always separated from the membership-induction program. But why? If an effortful commitment is what fraternities are after in their initiation rites, surely they could structure enough distasteful and strenuous civic activities for their pledges; there is plenty of exertion and unpleasantness to be had in the world of old-age-home repairs, mental-health-center yard work, and hospital bedpan duty. Besides, community-spirited endeavors of this sort would do much to improve the highly unfavorable public and media image of fraternity Hell Week rites; a survey showed that for every positive newspaper story concerning Hell Week, there were five negative stories. If only for public-rela- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 71 tions reasons, then, fraternities should want to incorporate communityservice efforts into their initiation practices. But they don’t. To examine the second puzzle, we need to return to the Chinese prison camps of Korea and the regular political essay contests held for American captives. The Chinese wanted as many Americans as possible to enter these contests so that, in the process, they might write things favorable to the Communist view. If, however, the idea was to attract large numbers of entrants, why were the prizes so small? A few extra cigarettes or a little fresh fruit were often all that a contest winner could expect. In the setting, even these prizes were valuable, but still there were much larger rewards—warm clothing, special mail privileges, increased freedom of movement in camp—that the Chinese could have used to increase the number of essay writers. Yet they specifically chose to employ the smaller rather than the larger, more motivating rewards. Although the settings are quite different, the surveyed fraternities refused to allow civic activities into their initiation ceremonies for the same reason that the Chinese withheld large prizes in favor of less powerful inducements: They wanted the men to own what they had done. No excuses, no ways out were allowed. A man who suffered through an arduous hazing could not be given the chance to believe he did so for charitable purposes. A prisoner who salted his political essay with a few anti-American comments could not be permitted to shrug it off as motivated by a big reward. No, the fraternity chapters and Chinese Communists were playing for keeps. It was not enough to wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be made to take inner responsibility for their actions. Given the Chinese Communist government’s affinity for the politicalessay contest as a commitment device, it should come as no surprise that a wave of such contests appeared in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, where pro-democracy protesters were gunned down by government soldiers. In Beijing alone, nine state-run newspapers and television stations sponsored essay competitions on the “quelling of the counterrevolutionary rebellion.” Still acting in accord with its long-standing and insightful de-emphasis of rewards for public commitments, the Beijing government left the contest prizes unspecified. Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment. 72 / Influence All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe in. Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want more than just that, if we want the children to believe in the correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, then we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take. An experiment by Jonathan Freedman gives us some hints about what to do and what not to do in this regard. Freedman wanted to see if he could prevent second- to fourth-grade boys from playing with a fascinating toy, just because he had said that it was wrong to do so some six weeks earlier. Anyone familiar with seven-to-nine-year-old boys must realize the enormity of the task. But Freedman had a plan. If he could first get the boys to convince themselves that it was wrong to play with the forbidden toy, perhaps that belief would keep them from playing with it thereafter. The difficult thing was making the boys believe that it was wrong to amuse themselves with the toy—an extremely expensive, battery-controlled robot. Freedman knew it would be easy enough to have a boy obey temporarily. All he had to do was threaten the boy with severe consequences should he be caught playing with the toy. As long as he was nearby to deal out stiff punishment, Freedman figured that few boys would risk operating the robot. He was right. After showing a boy an array of five toys and warning him, “It is wrong to play with the robot. If you play with the robot, I’ll be very angry and will have to do something about it,” Freedman left the room for a few minutes. During that time, the boy was observed secretly through a one-way mirror. Freedman tried this threat procedure on twenty-two different boys, and twenty-one of them never touched the robot while he was gone. So a strong threat was successful while the boys thought they might be caught and punished. But Freedman had already guessed that. He was really interested in the effectiveness of the threat in guiding the boys’ behavior later on, when he was no longer around. To find out what would happen then, he sent a young woman back to the boys’ school about six weeks after he had been there. She took the boys out of the class one at a time to participate in an experiment. Without ever mentioning any connection with Freedman, she escorted each boy back to the room with the five toys and gave him a drawing test. While she was scoring the test, she told the boy that he was free to play with any toy in the room. Of course, almost all the boys played with a toy. The interesting result was that, of the boys playing with a toy, 77 percent Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 73 chose to play with the robot that had been forbidden to them earlier. Freedman’s severe threat, which had been so successful six weeks before, was almost totally unsuccessful when he was no longer able to back it up with punishment. But Freedman wasn’t finished yet. He changed his procedure slightly with a second sample of boys. These boys, too, were initially shown the array of five toys by Freedman and warned not to play with the robot while he was briefly out of the room because “It is wrong to play with the robot.” But this time, Freedman provided no strong threat to frighten a boy into obedience. He simply left the room and observed through the one-way mirror to see if his instruction against playing with the forbidden toy was enough. It was. Just as with the other sample, only one of the twenty-two boys touched the robot during the short time Freedman was gone. The real difference between the two samples of boys came six weeks later, when they had a chance to play with the toys while Freedman was no longer around. An astonishing thing happened with the boys who had earlier been given no strong threat against playing with the robot: When given the freedom to play with any toy they wished, most avoided the robot, even though it was by far the most attractive of the five toys available (the others were a cheap plastic submarine, a child’s baseball glove without a ball, an unloaded toy rifle, and a toy tractor). When these boys played with one of the five toys, only 33 percent chose the robot. Something dramatic had happened to both groups of boys. For the first group, it was the severe threat they heard from Freedman to back up his statement that playing with the robot was “wrong.” It had been quite effective at first when Freedman could catch them should they violate his rule. Later, though, when he was no longer present to observe the boys’ behavior, his threat was impotent and his rule was, consequently, ignored. It seems clear that the threat had not taught the boys that operating the robot was wrong, only that it was unwise to do so when the possibility of punishment existed. For the other boys, the dramatic event had come from the inside, not the outside. Freedman had instructed them, too, that playing with the robot was wrong, but he had added no threat of punishment should they disobey him. There were two important results. First, Freedman’s instruction alone was enough to prevent the boys from operating the robot while he was briefly out of the room. Second, the boys took personal responsibility for their choice to stay away from the robot during that time. They decided that they hadn’t played with it because they didn’t want to. After all, there were no strong punishments associated with the toy to explain their behavior otherwise. Thus, weeks later, 74 / Influence when Freedman was nowhere around, they still ignored the robot because they had been changed inside to believe that they did not want to play with it.17 Adults facing the child-rearing experience can take a cue from the Freedman study. Suppose a couple wants to impress upon their daughter that lying is wrong. A strong, clear threat (“It’s bad to lie, honey; so if I catch you at it, I’ll cut your tongue out”) might well be effective when the parents are present or when the girl thinks she can be discovered. But it will not achieve the larger goal of convincing her that she does not want to lie because she thinks it’s wrong. To do that, a much subtler approach is required. A reason must be given that is just strong enough to get her to be truthful most of the time but is not so strong that she sees it as the obvious reason for her truthfulness. It’s a tricky business, because exactly what this barely sufficient reason will be changes from child to child. For one little girl, a simple appeal may be enough (“It’s bad to lie, honey; so I hope you won’t do it”); for another child, it may be necessary to add a somewhat stronger reason (“…because if you do, I’ll be disappointed in you”); for a third child, a mild form of warning may be required as well (“…and I’ll probably have to do something I don’t want to do”). Wise parents will know which kind of reason will work on their own children. The important thing is to use a reason that will initially produce the desired behavior and will, at the same time, allow a child to take personal responsibility for that behavior. Thus, the less detectable outside pressure such a reason contains, the better. Selecting just the right reason is not an easy task for parents. But the effort should pay off. It is likely to mean the difference between short-lived compliance and long-term commitment. For a pair of reasons we have already talked about, compliance professionals love commitments that produce inner change. First, that change is not just specific to the situation where it first occurred; it covers a whole range of related situations, too. Second, the effects of the change are lasting. So, once a man has been induced to take action that shifts his self-image to that of, let’s say, a public-spirited citizen, he is likely to be public-spirited in a variety of other circumstances where his compliance may also be desired, and he is likely to continue his public-spirited behavior for as long as his new self-image holds. There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner change—they grow their own legs. There is no need for the compliance professional to undertake a costly and continuing effort to reinforce the change; the pressure for consistency will take care of all that. After our friend comes to view himself as a public-spirited citizen, he will automatically begin to see things differently. He will convince himself that Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 75 it is the correct way to be. He will begin to pay attention to facts he hadn’t noticed before about the value of community service. He will make himself available to hear arguments he hadn’t heard before favoring civic action. And he will find such arguments more persuasive than before. In general, because of the need to be consistent within his system of beliefs, he will assure himself that his choice to take public-spirited action was right. What is important about this process of generating additional reasons to justify the commitment is that the reasons are new. Thus, even if the original reason for the civic-minded behavior was taken away, these newly discovered reasons might be enough by themselves to support his perception that he had behaved correctly. The advantage to an unscrupulous compliance professional is tremendous. Because we build new struts to undergird choices we have committed ourselves to, an exploitative individual can offer us an inducement for making such a choice, and after the decision has been made, can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs. New-car dealers frequently try to benefit from this process through a trick they call “throwing a lowball.” I first encountered the tactic while posing as a sales trainee at a local Chevrolet dealership. After a week of basic instruction, I was allowed to watch the regular salesmen perform. One practice that caught my attention right away was the lowball. For certain customers, a very good price is offered on a car, perhaps as much as four hundred dollars below competitors’ prices. The good deal, however, is not genuine; the dealer never intends it to go through. Its only purpose is to cause a prospect to decide to buy one of the dealership’s cars. Once the decision is made, a number of activities develop the customer’s sense of personal commitment to the car—a raft of purchase forms are filled out, extensive financing terms are arranged, sometimes the customer is encouraged to drive the car for a day before signing the contract “so you can get the feel of it and show it around in the neighborhood and at work.” During this time, the dealer knows, customers automatically develop a range of new reasons to support the choice they have now made. Then something happens. Occasionally an “error” in the calculations is discovered—maybe the salesman forgot to add in the cost of the air conditioner, and if the buyer still requires air conditioning, four hundred dollars must be added to the price. To keep from being suspected of gouging by the customer, some dealers let the bank handling the financing find the mistake. At other times, the deal is disallowed at the last moment when the salesman checks with his boss, who cancels it because “We’d be losing money.” For only another four hundred dollars the car can be had, which, in the context of a multithousand-dollar deal, 76 / Influence doesn’t seem too steep since, as the salesman emphasizes, the cost is equal to competitors’ and “This is the car you chose, right?” Another, even more insidious form of lowballing occurs when the salesman makes an inflated trade-in offer on the prospect’s old car as part of the buy/trade package. The customer recognizes the offer as overly generous and jumps at the deal. Later, before the contract is signed, the usedcar manager says that the salesman’s estimate was four hundred dollars too high and reduces the trade-in allowance to its actual, blue-book level. The customer, realizing that the reduced offer is the fair one, accepts it as appropriate and sometimes feels guilty about trying to take advantage of the salesman’s high estimate. I once witnessed a woman provide an embarrassed apology to a salesman who had used the last version of lowballing on her—this while she was signing a new-car contract giving him a huge commission. He looked hurt but managed a forgiving smile. No matter which variety of lowballing is used, the sequence is the same: An advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase decision; then, sometime after the decision has been made but before the bargain is sealed, the original purchase advantage is deftly removed. It seems almost incredible that a customer would buy a car under these circumstances. Yet it works—not on everybody, of course, but it is effective enough to be a staple compliance procedure in many, many car showrooms. Automobile dealers have come to understand the ability of a personal commitment to build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the commitment. Often these justifications provide so many strong legs for the decision to stand on that when the dealer pulls away only one leg, the original one, there is no collapse. The loss can be shrugged off by the customer who is consoled, even made happy, by the array of other good reasons favoring the choice. It never occurs to the buyer that those additional reasons might never have existed had the choice not been made in the first place.18 The impressive thing about the lowball tactic is its ability to make a person feel pleased with a poor choice. Those who have only poor choices to offer us, then, are especially fond of the technique. We can find them throwing lowballs in business, social, and personal situations. For instance, there’s my neighbor Tim, a true lowball aficionado. Recall that he’s the one who, by promising to change his ways, got his girlfriend, Sara, to cancel her impending marriage to another and to take him back. Since her decision for Tim, Sara has become more devoted to him than ever, even though he has not fulfilled his promises. She explains this by saying that she has allowed herself to see all sorts of positive qualities in Tim she had never recognized before. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 77 I know full well that Sara is a lowball victim. Just as sure as I had watched buyers fall for the give-it-and-take-it-away-later strategy in the car showroom, I watched her fall for the same trick with Tim. For his part, Tim remains the guy he has always been. But because the new attractions Sara has discovered (or created) in him are quite real for her, she now seems satisfied with the same arrangement that was unacceptable before her enormous commitment. The decision to choose Tim, poor as it may have been objectively, has grown its own supports and appears to have made Sara genuinely happy. I have never mentioned to Sara what I know about lowballing. The reason for my silence is not that I think her better off in the dark on the issue. As a general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information. It’s just that, if I said a word, I am confident she would hate me for it. Depending on the motives of the person wishing to use them, any of the compliance techniques discussed in this book can be employed for good or for ill. It should not be surprising, then, that the lowball tactic can be used for more socially beneficial purposes than selling new cars or reestablishing relationships with former lovers. One research project done in Iowa, for example, shows how the lowball procedure can influence homeowners to conserve energy.19 The project, headed by Dr. Michael Pallak, began at the start of the Iowa winter when residents who heated their homes with natural gas were contacted by an interviewer. The interviewer gave them some energy-conservation tips and asked them to try to save fuel in the future. Although they all agreed to try, when the researchers examined the utility records of these families after a month and again at winter’s end, it was clear that no real savings had occurred. The residents who had promised to make a conservation attempt used just as much natural gas as a random sample of their neighbors who had not been contacted by an interviewer. Just good intentions coupled with information about saving fuel, then, were not enough to change habits. Even before the project began, Pallak and his research team had recognized that something more would be needed to shift long-standing energy patterns. So they tried a slightly different procedure on a comparable sample of Iowa natural-gas users. These people, too, were contacted by an interviewer, who provided energy-saving hints and asked them to conserve. But for these families, the interviewer offered something else: Those residents agreeing to save energy would have their names publicized in newspaper articles as public-spirited, fuelconserving citizens. The effect was immediate. One month later, when the utility companies checked their meters, the homeowners in this sample had saved an average of 422 cubic feet of natural gas apiece. The chance to have their names in the paper had motivated these residents to substantial conservation efforts for a period of a month. Then the rug was pulled out. The researchers extracted the reason that had initially caused these people to save fuel. Each family that had been promised publicity received a letter saying it would not be possible to publicize their names after all. At the end of the winter, the research team examined the effect that letter had had on the natural-gas usage of the families. Did they return to their old, wasteful habits when the chance to be in the newspaper was removed? Hardly. For each of the remaining winter months, they actually conserved more fuel than they had during the time they thought they would be publicly celebrated for it! In terms of percentage of energy savings, they had managed a 12.2 percent first-month gas savings be- 84 / Influence clearly recognizing it, without having a massive heart of hearts attack? There is no telling. One thing is certain, however: As time passes, the various alternatives to Tim are disappearing. She had better determine soon whether she is making a mistake. Easier said than done, of course. She must answer an extremely intricate question: “Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?” The problem lies in the “Knowing what I now know” part of the question. Just what does she now know, accurately, about Tim? How much of what she thinks of him is the result of a desperate attempt to justify the commitment she made? She claims that since her decision to take him back, he cares for her more, is trying hard to stop his excessive drinking, has learned to make a wonderful omelet, etc. Having tasted a couple of his omelets, I have my doubts. The important issue, though, is whether she believes these things, not just intellectually—we can play such mind games on ourselves—but in her heart of hearts. There may be a little device Sara can use to find out how much of her current satisfaction with Tim is real and how much is foolish consistency. Accumulating psychological evidence indicates that we experience our feelings toward something a split second before we can intellectualize about it.21 My suspicion is that the message sent by the heart of hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train ourselves to be attentive, we should register it ever so slightly before our cognitive apparatus engages. According to this approach, were Sara to ask herself the crucial “Would I make the same choice again?” question, she would be well advised to look for and trust the first flash of feeling she experienced in response. It would likely be the signal from her heart of hearts, slipping through undistorted just before the means by which she could kid herself flooded in.22 I have begun using the same device myself whenever I even suspect I might be acting in a foolishly consistent manner. One time, for instance, I had stopped at the self-service pump of a filling station advertising a price per gallon a couple of cents below the rate of other stations in the area. But with pump nozzle in hand, I noticed that the price listed on the pump was two cents higher than the display sign price. When I mentioned the difference to a passing attendant, who I later learned was the owner, he mumbled uncon-vincingly that the rates had changed a few days ago but there hadn’t been time to correct the display. I tried to decide what to do. Some reasons for staying came to mind—“I really do need gasoline badly.” “This pump is available, and I am in sort of a hurry.” “I think I remember that my car runs better on this brand of gas.” I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 85 justifications for my decision to stop there. So I asked myself the crucial question, “Knowing what I know about the real price of this gasoline, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice again?” Concentrating on the first burst of impression I sensed, the answer was clear and unqualified. I would have driven right past. I wouldn’t even have slowed down. I knew then that without the price advantage, those other reasons would not have brought me there. They hadn’t created the decision; the decision had created them. That settled, there was another decision to be faced, though. Since I was already there holding the hose, wouldn’t it be better to use it than to suffer the inconvenience of going elsewhere to pay the same price? Fortunately, the station attendant-owner came over and helped me make up my mind. He asked why I wasn’t pumping any gas. I told him I didn’t like the price discrepancy, and he said with a snarl, “Listen, nobody’s gonna tell me how to run my business. If you think I’m cheating you, just put that hose down right now and get off my property as fast as you can do it, bud.” Already certain he was a cheat, I was happy to act consistently with my belief and his wishes. I dropped the hose on the spot…and drove over it on my way to the closest exit. Sometimes consistency can be a marvelously rewarding thing. READER’S REPORT From a Woman Living in Portland, Oregon “I was walking through downtown Portland on my way to a lunch appointment when a young, attractive man stopped me with a friendly smile and a powerful line: ‘Excuse me, I’m involved in a contest and I need a good-looking woman like yourself to help me win.’ I was truly skeptical, since I know there are many more attractive women than myself running around; however, I was caught off guard and was curious to find out what he wanted. He explained that he would receive points for a contest by getting total strangers to give him a kiss. Now I consider myself a fairly level-headed person who shouldn’t have believed his line, but he was quite persistent, and since I was almost late for my lunch appointment, I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll give the guy a kiss and get out of here.’ So I did something totally against my common sense and pecked this total stranger on the cheek in the middle of downtown Portland! “I thought that would be the end of it, but I soon learned that it was just the beginning. Much to my distress, he followed the kiss with the line ‘You are a great kisser, but the real contest I am involved in is to sell magazine subscriptions. You must be an active person. Would any of these magazines interest you?’ At this point I should have slugged 86 / Influence the guy and walked away; but somehow, because I had complied with his initial request, I felt a need to be consistent, and I complied with his second request. Yes, much to my own disbelief, I actually subscribed to SKI magazine (which I occasionally enjoy reading, but had no intention of subscribing to), gave him a five-dollar initial-subscription fee and left as quickly as possible, feeling quite frustrated with what I had just done and not understanding why I had done it. “Although it still pains me to think about it, in reflecting on the incident after reading your book, I’ve now figured out what happened. The reason this tactic worked so effectively is because once small commitments have been made (in this case, giving a kiss), people tend to add justifications to support the commitment and then are willing to commit themselves further. In this situation, I justified complying with the second request because it was consistent with my initial action. If I had only listened to my ‘stomach signs,’ I could have saved myself a lot of humiliation.” By extracting a kiss, the salesman exploited the consistency principle in two ways. First, by the time he asked for her aid in the magazine contest, his prospect had already gone on record—with that kiss—as agreeing to help him win a contest. Second, it seems only natural (i.e., congruent) that if a woman feels positively enough toward a man to kiss him, she should feel positively toward helping him out. Chapter 4 SOCIAL PROOF Truths Are Us Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. —WALTER LIPPMANN , when I I surveyed the people who came into my office one day—several DON’T KNOW ANYONE WHO LIKES CANNED LAUGHTER. IN FACT students, two telephone repairmen, a number of university professors, and the janitor—the reaction was invariably critical. Television, with its incessant system of laugh tracks and technically augmented mirth, received the most heat. The people I questioned hated canned laughter. They called it stupid, phony, and obvious. Although my sample was small, I would bet that it closely reflects the negative feelings of most of the American public toward laugh tracks. Why, then, is canned laughter so popular with television executives? They have won their exalted positions and splendid salaries by knowing how to give the public what it wants. Yet they religiously employ the laugh tracks that their audiences find distasteful. And they do so over the objections of many of their most talented artists. It is not uncommon for acclaimed directors, writers, or actors to demand the elimination of canned responses from the television projects they undertake. These demands are only sometimes successful, and when they are, it is not without a battle. What could it be about canned laughter that is so attractive to television executives? Why would these shrewd and tested businessmen champion a practice that their potential watchers find disagreeable and their most creative talents find personally insulting? The answer is at 88 / Influence once simple and intriguing: They know what the research says. Experiments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented and to rate the material as funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes.1 In the light of these data, the actions of television executives make perfect sense. The introduction of laugh tracks into their comic programming will increase the humorous and appreciative responses of an audience, even—and especially—when the material is of poor quality. Is it any surprise, then, that television, glutted as it is with artless situation-comedy attempts, should be saturated with canned laughter? Those executives know precisely what they are doing. But with the mystery of the widespread use of laugh tracks solved, we are left with a more perplexing question: Why does canned laughter work on us the way it does? It is no longer the television executives who appear peculiar; they are acting logically and in their own interests. Instead, it is the behavior of the audience, of you and me, that seems strange. Why should we laugh more at comedy material afloat in a sea of mechanically fabricated merriment? And why should we think that comic flotsam funnier? The executives aren’t really fooling us. Anyone can recognize dubbed laughter. It is so blatant, so clearly counterfeit, that there could be no confusing it with the real thing. We know full well that the hilarity we hear is irrelevant to the humorous quality of the joke it follows, that it is created not spontaneously by a genuine audience, but artificially by a technician at a control board. Yet, transparent forgery that it is, it works on us! To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining the answer. The tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it normally works quite well. As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do. This feature of the principle of social proof is simultaneously its Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 89 major strength and its major weakness. Like the other weapons of influence, it provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path. In the case of canned laughter, the problem comes when we begin responding to social proof in such a mindless and reflexive fashion that we can be fooled by partial or fake evidence. Our folly is not that we use others’ laughter to help decide what is humorous and when mirth is appropriate; that is in keeping with the well-founded principle of social proof. The folly is that we do so in response to patently fraudulent laughter. Somehow, one disembodied feature of humor—a sound—works like the essence of humor. The example from Chapter 1 of the turkey and the polecat is instructive here. Remember that because the particular “cheep-cheep” of turkey chicks is normally associated with newborn turkeys, their mothers will display or withhold maternal care solely on the basis of that sound? And remember how, consequently, it was possible to trick a female turkey into mothering a stuffed polecat as long as the replica played the recorded “cheep-cheep” of a baby turkey? The simulated chick sound was enough to start the female’s mothering tape whirring. The lesson of the turkey and the polecat illustrates uncomfortably well the relationship between the average viewer and the laugh-trackplaying television executive. We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter that we, too, can be made to respond to the sound and not to the substance of the real thing. Much as a “cheep-cheep” noise removed from the reality of a chick can stimulate a female turkey to mother, so can a recorded “ha-ha” removed from the reality of a genuine audience stimulate us to laugh. The television executives are exploiting our preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react automatically on the basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our tapes. Click, whirr. Television executives are hardly alone in their use of social evidence for profit. Our tendency to assume that an action is more correct if others are doing it is exploited in a variety of settings. Bartenders often “salt” their tip jars with a few dollar bills at the beginning of the evening to simulate tips left by prior customers and thereby to give the impression that tipping with folding money is proper barroom behavior. Church ushers sometimes salt collection baskets for the same reason and with the same positive effect on proceeds. Evangelical preachers are known to seed their audience with “ringers,” who are rehearsed to come forward at a specified time to give witness and donations. For 90 / Influence example, an Arizona State University research team that infiltrated the Billy Graham organization reported on such advance preparations prior to one of his Crusade visits. “By the time Graham arrives in town and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions on when to come forth at varying intervals to create the impression of a spontaneous mass outpouring.”2 Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly that the product is good, they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough. The producers of charity telethons devote inordinate amounts of time to the incessant listing of viewers who have already pledged contributions. The message being communicated to the holdouts is clear: “Look at all the people who have decided to give. It must be the correct thing to do.” At the height of the disco craze, certain discotheque owners manufactured a brand of visible social proof for their clubs’ quality by creating long waiting lines outside when there was plenty of room inside. Salesmen are taught to spice their pitches with numerous accounts of individuals who have purchased the product. Sales and motivation consultant Cavett Robert captures the principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees: “Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.” Researchers, too, have employed procedures based on the principle of social proof—sometimes with astounding results. One psychologist in particular, Albert Bandura, has led the way in developing such procedures for the elimination of undesirable behavior. Bandura and his colleagues have shown how people suffering from phobias can be rid of these extreme fears in an amazingly simple fashion. For instance, in an early study nursery-school-age children chosen because they were terrified of dogs merely watched a little boy playing happily with a dog for twenty minutes a day. This exhibition produced such marked changes in the reactions of the fearful children that after only four days, 67 percent of them were willing to climb into a playpen with a dog and remain confined there, petting and scratching it while everyone else left the room. Moreover, when the researchers tested the children’s fear levels again one month later, they found that the improvement had not evaporated during that time; in fact, the children were more willing than ever to interact with dogs. An important practical discovery was made in a second study of children who were exceptionally afraid of dogs: To reduce their fears, it was not necessary to provide live demonstrations of another child playing with a dog; film clips had the same effect. And the most effective type of clips were those depicting not one but a variety of other children Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 91 interacting with their dogs; apparently the principle of social proof works best when the proof is provided by the actions of a lot of other people.3 The powerful influence of filmed examples in changing the behavior of children can be used as therapy for various problems. Some striking evidence is available in the research of psychologist Robert O’Connor on socially withdrawn preschool children. We have all seen children of this sort, terribly shy, standing alone at the fringes of the games and groupings of their peers. O’Connor worried that a long-term pattern of isolation was forming, even at an early age, that would create persistent difficulties in social comfort and adjustment through adulthood. In an attempt to reverse the pattern, O’Connor made a film containing eleven different scenes in a nursery-school setting. Each scene began by showing a different solitary child watching some ongoing social activity and then actively joining the activity, to everyone’s enjoyment. O’Connor selected a group of the most severely withdrawn children from four preschools and showed them his film. The impact was impressive. The isolates immediately began to interact with their peers at a level equal to that of the normal children in the schools. Even more astonishing was what O’Connor found when he returned to observe six weeks later. While the withdrawn children who had not seen O’Connor’s film remained as isolated as ever, those who had viewed it were now leading their schools in amount of social activity. It seems that this twenty-three-minute movie, viewed just once, was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behavior. Such is the potency of the principle of social proof.4 When it comes to illustrations of the strength of social proof, there is one that is far and away my favorite. Several features account for its appeal: It offers a superb example of the much underused method of participant observation, in which a scientist studies a process by becoming immersed in its natural occurrence; it provides information of interest to such diverse groups as historians, psychologists, and theologians; and, most important, it shows how social evidence can be used on us—not by others, but by ourselves—to assure us that what we prefer to be true will seem to be true. The story is an old one, requiring an examination of ancient data, for the past is dotted with millennial religious movements. Various sects and cults have prophesied that on one or another particular date there would arrive a period of redemption and great happiness for those who believed in the group’s teachings. In each instance it has been predicted that the beginning of the time of salvation would be marked by an important and undeniable event, usually the cataclysmic end of the world. 92 / Influence Of course, these predictions have invariably proved false. To the acute dismay of the members of such groups, the end has never appeared as scheduled. But immediately following the obvious failure of the prophecy, history records an enigmatic pattern. Rather than disbanding in disillusion, the cultists often become strengthened in their convictions. Risking the ridicule of the populace, they take to the streets, publicly asserting their dogma and seeking converts with a fervor that is intensified, not diminished, by the clear disconfirmation of a central belief. So it was with the Montanists of second-century Turkey, with the Anabaptists of sixteenthcentury Holland, with the Sabbataists of seventeenth-century Izmir, with the Millerites of nineteenth-century America. And, thought a trio of interested social scientists, so it might be with a doomsday cult based in modern-day Chicago. The scientists—Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter—who were then colleagues at the University of Minnesota, heard about the Chicago group and felt it worthy of close study. Their decision to investigate by joining the group, incognito, as new believers and by placing additional paid observers among its ranks resulted in a remarkably rich firsthand account of the goings-on before and after the day of predicted catastrophe.5 The cult of believers was small, never numbering more than thirty members. Its leaders were a middle-aged man and woman, whom the researchers renamed, for purposes of publication, Dr. Thomas Armstrong and Mrs. Marian Keech. Dr. Armstrong, a physician on the staff of a college student health service, had a long-held interest in mysticism, the occult, and flying saucers; as such he served as a respected authority on these subjects for the group. Mrs. Keech, though, was the center of attention and activity. Earlier in the year she had begun to receive messages from spiritual beings, whom she called the Guardians, located on other planets. It was these messages, flowing through Marian Keech’s hand via the device of “automatic writing,” that were to form the bulk of the cult’s religious belief system. The teachings of the Guardians were loosely linked to traditional Christian thought. No wonder that one of the Guardians, Sananda, eventually “revealed” himself as the current embodiment of Jesus. The transmissions from the Guardians, always the subjects of much discussion and interpretation among the group, gained new significance when they began to foretell a great impending disaster—a flood that would begin in the Western Hemisphere and eventually engulf the world. Although the cultists were understandably alarmed at first, further messages assured them that they and all those who believed in the Lessons sent through Mrs. Keech would survive. Before the calamity, spacemen were to arrive and carry off the believers in flying saucers to Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 93 a place of safety, presumably on another planet. Very little detail was provided about the rescue except that the believers were to make themselves ready for pickup by rehearsing certain passwords to be exchanged (“I left my hat at home.” “What is your question?” “I am my own porter.”) and by removing all metal from their clothes—because the wearing or carrying of metal made saucer travel “extremely dangerous.” As Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter observed the preparations during the weeks prior to the flood date, they noted with special interest two significant aspects of the members’ behavior. First, the level of commitment to the cult’s belief system was very high. In anticipation of their departure from doomed Earth, irrevocable steps were taken by the group members. Most had incurred the opposition of family and friends to their beliefs but had persisted nonetheless in their convictions, often when it meant losing the affections of these others. In fact, several of the members were threatened by neighbors or family with legal actions designed to have them declared insane. In Dr. Armstrong’s case, a motion was filed by his sister to have his two younger children taken away. Many believers quit their jobs or neglected their studies to devote full time to the movement. Some even gave or threw away their personal belongings, expecting them shortly to be of no use. These were people whose certainty that they had the truth allowed them to withstand enormous social, economic, and legal pressures and whose commitment to their dogma grew as each pressure was resisted. The second significant aspect of the believers’ preflood actions was a curious form of inaction. For individuals so clearly convinced of the validity of their creed, they did surprisingly little to spread the word. Although they did initially make public the news of the coming disaster, there was no attempt to seek converts, to proselyte actively. They were willing to sound the alarm and to counsel those who voluntarily responded to it, but that was all. The group’s distaste for recruitment efforts was evident in various ways besides the lack of personal persuasion attempts. Secrecy was maintained in many matters—extra copies of the Lessons were burned, passwords and secret signs were instituted, the contents of certain private tape recordings were not to be discussed with outsiders (so secret were the tapes that even longtime believers were prohibited from taking notes of them). Publicity was avoided. As the day of disaster approached, increasing numbers of newspaper, television, and radio reporters converged on the group’s headquarters in the Keech house. For the most part, these people were turned away or ignored. The most frequent answer to their questions was, “No comment.” Although discouraged for a time, the media representatives returned with a ven- 94 / Influence geance when Dr. Armstrong’s religious activities caused him to be fired from his post on the college health service staff; one especially persistent newsman had to be threatened with a lawsuit. A similar siege was repelled on the eve of the flood when a swarm of reporters pushed and pestered the believers for information. Afterward, the researchers summarized the group’s preflood stance on public exposure and recruitment in respectful tones: “Exposed to a tremendous burst of publicity, they had made every attempt to dodge fame; given dozens of opportunities to proselyte, they had remained evasive and secretive and behaved with an almost superior indifference.” Eventually, when all the reporters and would-be converts had been cleared from the house, the believers began making their final preparations for the arrival of the spaceship scheduled for midnight that night. The scene, as viewed by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, must have seemed like absurdist theater. Otherwise ordinary people—housewives, college students, a high-school boy, a publisher, an M.D., a hardwarestore clerk and his mother—were participating earnestly in tragic comedy. They took direction from a pair of members who were periodically in touch with the Guardians; Marian Keech’s written messages from Sananda were being supplemented that evening by “the Bertha,” a former beautician through whose tongue the “Creator” gave instruction. They rehearsed their lines diligently, calling out in chorus the responses to be made before entering the rescue saucer, “I am my own porter.” “I am my own pointer.” They discussed seriously whether the message from a caller identifying himself as Captain Video—a TV space character of the time—was properly interpreted as a prank or a coded communication from their rescuers. And they performed in costume. In keeping with the admonition to carry nothing metallic aboard the saucer, the believers wore clothing that had been cut open to allow the metal pieces to be torn out. The metal eyelets in their shoes had been ripped away. The women were braless or wore brassieres whose metal stays had been removed. The men had yanked the zippers out of their pants, which were supported by lengths of rope in place of belts. The group’s fanaticism concerning the removal of all metal was vividly experienced by one of the researchers who remarked, twentyfive minutes before midnight, that he had forgotten to extract the zipper from his trousers. As the observers tell it, “this knowledge produced a near panic reaction. He was rushed into the bedroom where Dr. Armstrong, his hands trembling and his eyes darting to the clock every few seconds, slashed out the zipper with a razor blade and wrenched its clasps free with wire-cutters.” The hurried operation finished, the researcher was returned to the living room a slightly less metallic but, one supposes, much paler man. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 95 As the time appointed for their departure grew very close, the believers settled into a lull of soundless anticipation. With trained scientists on site, we are afforded a detailed account of the events that transpired during this momentous period in the life of the group: The last ten minutes were tense ones for the group in the living room. They had nothing to do but sit and wait, their coats in their laps. In the tense silence two clocks ticked loudly, one about ten minutes faster than the other. When the faster of the two pointed to twelve-five, one of the observers remarked aloud on the fact. A chorus of people replied that midnight had not yet come. Bob Eastman affirmed that the slower clock was correct; he had set it himself only that afternoon. It showed only four minutes before midnight. These four minutes passed in complete silence except for a single utterance. When the [slower] clock on the mantel showed only one minute remaining before the guide to the saucer was due, Marian exclaimed in a strained, high-pitched voice: “And not a plan has gone astray!” The clock chimed twelve, each stroke painfully clear in the expectant hush. The believers sat motionless. One might have expected some visible reaction. Midnight had passed and nothing had happened. The cataclysm itself was less than seven hours away. But there was little to see in the reactions of the people in that room. There was no talking, no sound. People sat stock-still, their faces seemingly frozen and expressionless. Mark Post was the only person who even moved. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes but did not sleep. Later, when spoken to, he answered monosyllabically but otherwise lay immobile. The others showed nothing on the surface, although it became clear later that they had been hit hard. Gradually, painfully, an atmosphere of despair and confusion settled over the group. They reexamined the prediction and the accompanying messages. Dr. Armstrong and Mrs. Keech reiterated their faith. The believers mulled over their predicament and discarded explanation after explanation as unsatisfactory. At one point, toward 4 A.M., Mrs. Keech broke down and cried bitterly. She knew, she sobbed, that there were some who were beginning to doubt but that the group must beam light to those who needed it most and that the group must hold together. The rest of the believers were losing their composure, too. They were all visibly shaken and many were close to tears. It was now almost 4:30 A.M., and still no way of handling the disconfirmation had been found. By now, too, 96 / Influence most of the group were talking openly about the failure of the escort to come at midnight. The group seemed near dissolution. In the midst of this gathering doubt, as cracks crawled through the believers’ confidence, the researchers witnessed a pair of remarkable incidents, one after another. The first occurred at about 4:45 A.M., when Marian Keech’s hand suddenly leapt to the task of transcribing through “automatic writing” the text of a holy message from above. When read aloud, the communication proved to be an elegant explanation for the events of that night. “The little group, sitting alone all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.” Although neat and efficient, this explanation was not wholly satisfying by itself; for example, after hearing it, one member simply rose, put on his hat and coat, and left. Something additional was needed to restore the believers to their previous levels of faith. It was at this point that the second notable incident occurred to meet that need. Once again, the words of those who were present offer a vivid description: The atmosphere in the group changed abruptly and so did their behavior. Within minutes after she had read the message explaining the disconfirmation, Mrs. Keech received another message instructing her to publicize the explanation. She reached for the telephone and began dialing the number of a newspaper. While she was waiting to be connected, someone asked: “Marian, is this the first time you have called the newspaper yourself?” Her reply was immediate: “Oh, yes, this is the first time I have ever called them. I have never had anything to tell them before, but now I feel it is urgent.” The whole group could have echoed her feelings, for they all felt a sense of urgency. As soon as Marian had finished her call, the other members took turns telephoning newspapers, wire services, radio stations, and national magazines to spread the explanation of the failure of the flood. In their desire to spread the word quickly and resoundingly, the believers now opened for public attention matters that had been thus far utterly secret. Where only hours earlier they had shunned newspaper reporters and felt that the attention they were getting in the press was painful, they now became avid seekers for publicity. Not only had the long-standing policies concerning secrecy and publicity done an about-face, so, too, had the group’s attitude toward potential converts. Whereas likely recruits who previously visited the house had been mostly ignored, turned away, or treated with casual attention, the day following the disconfirmation saw a different story. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 97 All callers were admitted, all questions were answered, attempts were made to proselyte all such visitors. The members’ unprecedented willingness to accommodate possible new recruits was perhaps best demonstrated when nine high-school students arrived on the following night to speak with Mrs. Keech. They found her at the telephone deep in a discussion of flying saucers with a caller whom, it later turned out, she believed to be a spaceman. Eager to continue talking to him and at the same time anxious to keep her new guests, Marian simply included them in the conversation and, for more than an hour, chatted alternately with her guests in the living room and the “spaceman” on the other end of the telephone. So intent was she on proselyting that she seemed unable to let any opportunity go by. To what can we attribute the believers’ radical turnabout? In the space of a few hours, they went from clannish and taciturn hoarders of the Word to expansive and eager disseminators of it. And what could have possessed them to choose such an ill-timed instant—when the failure of the flood was likely to cause nonbelievers to view the group and its dogma as laughable? The crucial event occurred sometime during “the night of the flood,” when it became increasingly clear that the prophecy would not be fulfilled. Oddly, it was not their prior certainty that drove the members to propagate the faith; it was an encroaching sense of uncertainty. It was the dawning realization that if the spaceship and flood predictions were wrong, so might be the entire belief system on which they rested. For those huddled in the Keech living room, that growing possibility must have seemed hideous. The group members had gone too far, given up too much for their beliefs to see them destroyed; the shame, the economic cost, the mockery would be too great to bear. The overarching need of the cultists to cling to those beliefs seeps poignantly from their own words: From a young woman with a three-year-old child: I have to believe the flood is coming on the twenty-first because I’ve spent all my money. I quit my job, I quit computer school…. I have to believe. And from Dr. Armstrong to one of the researchers four hours after the failure of the saucermen to arrive: I’ve had to go a long way. I’ve given up just about everything. I’ve cut every tie. I’ve burned every bridge. I’ve turned my back on the 98 / Influence world. I can’t afford to doubt. I have to believe. And there isn’t any other truth. Imagine the corner in which Dr. Armstrong and his followers found themselves as morning approached. So massive was the commitment to their beliefs that no other truth was tolerable. Yet that set of beliefs had just taken a merciless pounding from physical reality: No saucer had landed, no spacemen had knocked, no flood had come, nothing had happened as prophesied. Since the only acceptable form of truth had been undercut by physical proof, there was but one way out of the corner for the group. They had to establish another type of proof for the validity of their beliefs: social proof. This, then, explains their sudden shift from secretive conspirators to zealous missionaries. And it explains the curious timing of the shift—precisely when a direct disconfirmation of their beliefs had rendered them least convincing to outsiders. It was necessary to risk the scorn and derision of the nonbelievers because publicity and recruitment efforts provided the only remaining hope. If they could spread the Word, if they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and if, by so doing, they could win new converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs would become truer. The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct. The group’s assignment was clear; since the physical evidence could not be changed, the social evidence had to be. Convince and ye shall be convinced!6 CAUSE OF DEATH: UNCERTAIN(TY) All the weapons of influence discussed in this book work better under some conditions than under others. If we are to defend ourselves adequately against any such weapon, it is vital that we know its optimal operating conditions in order to recognize when we are most vulnerable to its influence. In the case of the principle of social proof, we have already had a hint of one time when it works best. Among the Chicago believers, it was a sense of shaken confidence that triggered their craving for converts. In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct. In the process of examining the reactions of other people to resolve our uncertainty, however, we are likely to overlook a subtle but important fact. Those people are probably examining the social evidence, too. Especially in an ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 99 phenomenon called “pluralistic ignorance.” A thorough understanding of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon helps immeasurably to explain a regular occurrence in our country that has been termed both a riddle and a national disgrace: the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in agonizing need of help. The classic example of such bystander inaction and the one that has produced the most debate in journalistic, political, and scientific circles began as an ordinary homicide case in the borough of Queens in New York City. A woman in her late twenties, Catherine Genovese, was killed in a late-night attack on her home street as she returned from work. Murder is never an act to be passed off lightly, but in a city the size and tenor of New York, the Genovese incident warranted no more space than a fraction of a column in The New York Times. Catherine Genovese’s story would have died with her on that day in March 1964 if it hadn’t been for a mistake. The metropolitan editor of the Times, A. M. Rosenthal, happened to be having lunch with the city police commissioner a week later. Rosenthal asked the commissioner about a different Queens-based homicide, and the commissioner, thinking he was being questioned about the Genovese case, revealed something staggering that had been uncovered by the police investigation. It was something that left everyone who heard it, the commissioner included, aghast and grasping for explanations. Catherine Genovese had not experienced a quick, muffled death. It had been a long, loud, tortured, public event. Her assailant had chased and attacked her in the street three times over a period of thirty-five minutes before his knife finally silenced her cries for help. Incredibly, thirty-eight of her neighbors watched the events of her death unfold from the safety of their apartment windows without so much as lifting a finger to call the police. Rosenthal, a former Pulitzer Prize—winning reporter, knew a story when he heard one. On the day of his lunch with the commissioner, he assigned a reporter to investigate the “bystander angle” of the Genovese incident. Within a week, the Times published a long, page 1 article that was to create a swirl of controversy and speculation. The first few paragraphs of that report provide the tone and focus of the burgeoning story: For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person 146 / Influence ative has had nothing to do with advancing the project or has, in some cases, voted against it. While politicians have long strained to associate themselves with the values of motherhood, country, and apple pie, it may be in the last of these connections—to food—that they have been most clever. For instance, it is White House tradition to try to sway the votes of balking legislators over a meal. It can be a picnic lunch, a sumptuous breakfast, or an elegant dinner; but when an important bill is up for grabs, out comes the silverware. And political fund-raising these days regularly involves the presentation of food. Notice, too, that at the typical fundraising dinner the speeches, the appeals for further contributions and heightened effort never come before the meal is served, only during or after. The advantages to this pairing of the affairs of the table with those of the state are several: For example, time is saved and the reciprocity rule is engaged. The least recognized benefit, however, may be the one uncovered in research conducted in the 1930s by the distinguished psychologist Gregory Razran. Using what he termed the “luncheon technique,” he found that his subjects became fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating. In the example most relevant for our purposes, Razran’s subjects were presented with some political statements they had rated once before. At the end of the experiment, after all the political statements had been presented, Razran found that only certain of them had gained in approval—those that had been shown while food was being eaten. And these changes in liking seem to have occurred unconsciously, since the subjects could not remember which of the statements they had seen during the food service. How did Razran come up with the luncheon technique? What made him think it would work? The answer may lie in the dual scholarly roles he played during his career. Not only was he a respected independent researcher, he was also one of the earliest translators into English of the pioneering psychological literature of Russia. It was a literature dedicated to the study of the association principle and dominated by the thinking of a brilliant man, Ivan Pavlov. Although a scientist of varied and elaborated talent—he had, for instance, won a Nobel Prize years earlier for his work on the digestive system—Pavlov’s most important experimental demonstration was simplicity itself. He showed that he could get an animal’s typical response to food (salivation) to be directed toward something irrelevant to food (a bell) merely by connecting the two things in the animal’s mind. If the presentation of food to a dog was always accompanied by the sound of a bell, soon the dog would salivate to the bell alone, even when there was no food to be had. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 147 It is not a long step from Pavlov’s classic demonstration to Razran’s luncheon technique. Obviously, a normal reaction to food can be transferred to some other thing through the process of raw association. Razran’s insight was that there are many normal responses to food besides salivation, one of them being a good and favorable feeling. Therefore, it is possible to attach this pleasant feeling, this positive attitude, to anything (political statements being only an example) that is closely associated with good food. Nor is there a long step from the luncheon technique to the compliance professionals’ realization that all kinds of desirable things can substitute for food in lending their likable qualities to the ideas, products, and people artificially linked to them. In the final analysis, then, that is why those good-looking models are standing around in the magazine ads. And that is why radio programmers are instructed to insert the station’s call-letters jingle immediately before a big hit song is played. And that is even why the women playing Barnyard Bingo at a Tupperware party must yell the word “Tupperware” rather than “Bingo” before they can rush to the center of the floor for a prize. It may be “Tupperware” for the women, but it’s “Bingo” for the company. Just because we are often the unaware victims of compliance practitioners’ use of the association principle doesn’t mean that we don’t understand how it works or don’t use it ourselves. There is ample evidence, for instance, that we understand fully the predicament of a Persian imperial messenger or modern-day weatherman announcing bad news. In fact, we can be counted on to take steps to avoid putting ourselves in any similar positions. Research done at the University of Georgia shows just how we operate when faced with the task of communicating good or bad news. Students waiting for an experiment to begin were given the job of informing a fellow student that an important phone call had come in for him. Half the time the call was supposed to bring good news and half the time, bad news. The researchers found that the students conveyed the information very differently, depending on its quality. When the news was positive, the tellers were sure to mention that feature: “You just got a phone call with great news. Better see the experimenter for the details.” But when the news was unfavorable, they kept themselves apart from it: “You just got a phone call. Better see the experimenter for the details.” Obviously, the students had previously learned that, to be liked, they should connect themselves to good news but not bad news.25 A lot of strange behavior can be explained by the fact that people understand the association principle well enough to strive to link 148 / Influence themselves to positive events and separate themselves from negative events—even when they have not caused the events. Some of the strangest of such behavior takes place in the great arena of sports. The actions of the athletes are not the issue here, though. After all, in the heated contact of the game, they are entitled to an occasional eccentric outburst. Instead, it is the often raging, irrational, boundless fervor of the sports fan that seems, on its face, so puzzling. How can we account for wild sports riots in Europe, or the murder of players and referees by South American soccer crowds gone berserk, or the unnecessary lavishness of the gifts provided by local fans to already wealthy American ballplayers on the special “day” set aside to honor them? Rationally, none of this makes sense. It’s just a game! Isn’t it? Hardly. The relationship between sport and the earnest fan is anything but gamelike. It is serious, intense, and highly personal. An apt illustration comes from one of my favorite anecdotes. It concerns a World War II soldier who returned to his home in the Balkans after the war and shortly thereafter stopped speaking. Medical examinations could find no physical cause for the problem. There was no wound, no brain damage, no vocal impairment. He could read, write, understand a conversation, and follow orders. Yet he would not talk—not for his doctors, not for his friends, not even for his pleading family. Perplexed and exasperated, his doctors moved him to another city and placed him in a veterans’ hospital where he remained for thirty years, never breaking his self-imposed silence and sinking into a life of social isolation. Then one day, a radio in his ward happened to be tuned to a soccer match between his hometown team and a traditional rival. When at a crucial point of play the referee called a foul against a player from the man’s home team, the mute veteran jumped from his chair, glared at the radio, and spoke his first words in more than three decades: “You dumb ass!” he cried. “Are you trying to give them the match?” With that, he returned to his chair and to a silence he never again violated. There are two important lessons to be derived from this true story. The first concerns the sheer power of the phenomenon. The veteran’s desire to have his hometown team succeed was so strong that it alone produced a deviation from his solidly entrenched way of life. Similar effects of sports events on the long-standing habits of fans are far from unique to the back wards of veterans’ hospitals. During the 1980 Winter Olympics, after the U.S. hockey team had upset the vastly favored Soviet team, the teetotaling father of the American goaltender, Jim Craig, was offered a flask. “I’ve never had a drink in my life,” he reported later, “but someone behind me handed me cognac. I drank it. Yes, I did.” Nor was such unusual behavior unique to parents of the players. Fans out- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 149 side the hockey arena were described in news accounts as delirious: “They hugged, sang, and turned somersaults in the snow.” Even those fans not present at Lake Placid exulted in the victory and displayed their pride with bizarre behavior. In Raleigh, North Carolina, a swim meet had to be halted when, after the hockey score was announced, the competitors and audience alike chanted “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” until they were hoarse. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a quiet supermarket erupted at the news into a riot of flying toilet tissue and paper towel streamers. The customers were joined in their spree—and soon led—by the market employees and manager. Without question, the force is deep and sweeping. But if we return to the account of the silent veteran, we can see that something else is revealed about the nature of the union of sports and sports fan, something crucial to its basic character: It is a personal thing. Whatever fragment of an identity that ravaged, mute man still possessed was engaged by soccer play. No matter how weakened his ego may have become after thirty years of wordless stagnation in a hospital ward, it was involved in the outcome of the match. Why? Because he, personally, would be diminished by a hometown defeat. How? Through the principle of association. The mere connection of birthplace hooked him, wrapped him, tied him to the approaching triumph or failure. As distinguished author Isaac Asimov put it in describing our reactions to the contests we view, “All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality…and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he wins, you win.”26 When viewed in this light, the passion of the sports fan begins to make sense. The game is no light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent form and artistry. The self is at stake. That is why hometown crowds are so adoring and, more tellingly, so grateful toward those regularly responsible for home-team victories. That is also why the same crowds are often ferocious in their treatment of players, coaches, and officials implicated in athletic failures. Fans’ intolerance of defeat can shorten the careers of even successful players and coaches. Take the case of Frank Layden, who abruptly quit as coach of the NBA’s Utah Jazz while the team was leading the league’s Midwest Division. Layden’s relative success, warm humor, and widely known charitable activities in the Salt Lake City area were not enough to shield him from the ire of some Jazz supporters after team losses. Citing a brace of incidents with abusive fans, including one in which people waited around for an hour to curse at him following a defeat, Layden explained his decision: “Sometimes in the NBA, you feel like a dog. I’ve had people spit on me. I had a guy come up to me and say, 150 / Influence ‘I’m a lawyer. Hit me, hit me, so I can sue you.’ I think America takes all sports too seriously.” So we want our affiliated sports teams to win to prove our own superiority. But to whom are we trying to prove it? Ourselves, certainly; but to everyone else, too. According to the association principle, if we can surround ourselves with success that we are connected with in even a superficial way (for example, place of residence), our public prestige will rise. Are sports fans right to think that without ever throwing a block, catching a ball, scoring a goal, or perhaps even attending a game, they will receive some of the glory from a hometown championship? I believe so. The evidence is in their favor. Recall that Persia’s messengers did not have to cause the news, my weatherman did not have to cause the weather, and Pavlov’s bell did not have to cause the food for powerful effects to occur. The association was enough. It is for this reason that, were the University of Southern California to win the Rose Bowl, we could expect people with a Southern Cal connection to try to increase the visibility of that connection in any of a variety of ways. In one experiment showing how wearing apparel can serve to proclaim such an association, researchers counted the number of school sweatshirts worn on Monday mornings by students on the campuses of seven prominent football universities: Arizona State, Louisiana State, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, and Southern California. The results showed that many more home-school shirts were worn if the football team had won its game on the prior Saturday. What’s more, the larger the margin of victory, the more such shirts appeared. It wasn’t a close, hard-fought game that caused the students to dress themselves, literally, in success; instead, it was a clear, crushing conquest smacking of indisputable superiority. This tendency to try to bask in reflected glory by publicly trumpeting our connections to successful others has its mirror image in our attempt to avoid being darkened by the shadow of others’ defeat. In an amazing display during the luckless 1980 season, season-ticket-holding fans of the New Orleans Saints football team began to appear at the stadium wearing paper bags to conceal their faces. As their team suffered loss after loss, more and more fans donned the bags until TV cameras were regularly able to record the extraordinary image of gathered masses of people shrouded in brown paper with nothing to identify them but the tips of their noses. I find it instructive that during a late-season contest, when it was clear that the Saints were at last going to win one, the fans discarded their bags and went public once more. All this tells me that we purposefully manipulate the visibility of our connections with winners and losers in order to make ourselves look Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 151 good to anyone who could view these connections. By showcasing the positive associations and burying the negative ones, we are trying to get observers to think more highly of us and to like us more. There are many ways we go about this, but one of the simplest and most pervasive is in the pronouns we use. Have you noticed, for example, how often after a home-team victory fans crowd into the range of a TV camera, thrust their index fingers high, and shout, “We’re number one! We’re number one!” Note that the call is not “They’re number one” or even “Our team is number one.” The pronoun is “we,” designed to imply the closest possible identity with the team. Note also that nothing similar occurs in the case of failure. No television viewer will ever hear the chant, “We’re in last place! We’re in last place!” Home-team defeats are the times for distancing oneself. Here “we” is not nearly as preferred as the insulating pronoun “they.” To prove the point, I once did a small experiment in which students at Arizona State University were phoned and asked to describe the outcome of a football game their school team had played a few weeks earlier. Some of the students were asked the outcome of a certain game their team had lost; the other students were asked the outcome of a different game—one their team had won. My fellow researcher, Avril Thorne, and I simply listened to what was said and recorded the percentage of students who used the word “we” in their descriptions. When the results were tabulated, it was obvious that the students had tried to connect themselves to success by using the pronoun “we” to describe their school-team victory—“We beat Houston, seventeen to fourteen,” or “We won.” In the case of the lost game, however, “we” was rarely used. Instead, the students used terms designed to keep themselves separate from their vanquished team—“They lost to Missouri, thirty to twenty,” or “I don’t know the score, but Arizona State got beat.” Perhaps the twin desires to connect ourselves to winners and to distance ourselves from losers were combined consummately in the remarks of one particular student. After dryly recounting the score of the home-team defeat—“Arizona State lost it, thirty to twenty”—he blurted in anguish, “They threw away our chance for a national championship!”27 If it is true that, to make ourselves look good, we try to bask in the reflected glory of the successes we are even remotely associated with, a provocative implication emerges: We will be most likely to use this approach when we feel that we don’t look so good. When-ever our public image is damaged, we will experience an increased desire to restore that image by trumpeting our ties to successful others. At the same time, we will most scrupulously avoid publicizing our ties to failing 152 / Influence others. Support for these ideas comes from the telephone study of Arizona State University students. Before being asked about the hometeam victory or loss, they were given a test of their general knowledge. The test was rigged so that some of the students would fail badly while the others would do quite well. So at the time they were asked to describe the football score, half of the students had experienced recent image damage from their failure of the test. These students later showed the greatest need to manipulate their connections with the football team to salvage their prestige. If they were asked to describe the team defeat, only 17 percent used the pronoun “we” in so doing. If, however, they were asked to describe the win, 41 percent said “we.” The story was very different, though, for the students who had done well on the general knowledge test. They later used “we” about equally, whether they were describing a home-team victory (25 percent) or defeat (24 percent). These students had bolstered their images through their own achievement and didn’t need to do so through the achievement of others. This finding tells me that it is not when we have a strong feeling of recognized personal accomplishment that we will seek to bask in reflected glory. Instead, it will be when prestige (both public and private) is low that we will be intent upon using the successes of associated others to help restore image. I think it revealing that the remarkable hubbub following the American hockey team victory in the 1980 Olympics came at a time of recently diminished American prestige. The U.S. government had been helpless to prevent both the holding of American hostages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was a time when, as a citizenry, we needed the triumph of that hockey team and we needed to display or even manufacture our connections to it. We should not be surprised to learn, for instance, that outside the hockey arena, in the aftermath of the win over the Soviet team, scalpers were getting a hundred dollars a pair for ticket stubs. Although the desire to bask in reflected glory exists to a degree in all of us, there seems to be something special about people who would wait in the snow to spend fifty dollars apiece for the shreds of tickets to a game they had not attended, presumably to “prove” to friends back home that they had been present at the big victory. Just what kind of people are they? Unless I miss my guess, they are not merely great sports aficionados; they are individuals with a hidden personality flaw—a poor self-concept. Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth that directs them to seek prestige not from the generation or promotion of their own attainments, but from the generation or promotion of their associations with others of attainment. There are several varieties of Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 153 this species that bloom throughout our culture. The persistent namedropper is a classic example. So, too, is the rock-music groupie, who trades sexual favors for the right to tell girlfriends that she was “with” a famous musician for a time. No matter which form it takes, the behavior of such individuals shares a similar theme—the rather tragic view of accomplishment as deriving from outside the self. Certain of these people work the association principle in a slightly different way. Instead of striving to inflate their visible connections to others of success, they strive to inflate the success of others they are visibly connected to. The clearest illustration is the notorious “stage mother,” obsessed with securing stardom for her child. Of course, women are not alone in this regard. In 1991 a Davenport, Iowa, obstetrician cut off service to the wives of three school officials, reportedly because his son had not been given enough playing time in school basketball games. One of the wives was eight months’ pregnant at the time. Physicians’ wives often speak of the pressures to obtain personal prestige by association with their husband’s professional stature. John Pekkanen, who authored the book The Best Doctors in the U.S., reports that many enraged protests to his list came not from the physicians who were omitted but from their wives. In one instance that reveals the extent to which the principle of association dominates the thinking of some of these women, Pekkanen received a letter from a frantic wife along with her proof that her husband deserved to be on the list of best doctors. It was a photograph of the man with Merv Griffin. HOW TO SAY NO Because liking can be increased by many means, a proper consideration of defenses against compliance professionals who employ the liking rule must, oddly enough, be a short one. It would be pointless to construct a horde of specific countertactics to combat each of the myriad versions of the various ways to influence liking. There are simply too many routes to be blocked effectively with such a one-on-one strategy. Besides, several of the factors leading to liking—physical attractiveness, familiarity, association—have been shown to work unconsciously to produce their effects on us, making it unlikely that we could muster a timely protection against them. Instead we need to consider a general approach, one that can be applied to any of the liking-related factors to neutralize their unwelcome influence on our compliance decisions. The secret to such an approach may lie in its timing. Rather than trying to recognize and prevent the action of liking factors before they have a chance to work on us, we might be well advised to let them work. Our vigilance should be directed 154 / Influence not toward the things that may produce undue liking for a compliance practitioner, but toward the fact that undue liking has been produced. The time to react protectively is when we feel ourselves liking the practitioner more than we should under the circumstances. By concentrating our attention on the effect rather than the causes, we can avoid the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many psychological influences on liking. Instead, we have to be sensitive to only one thing related to liking in our contacts with compliance practitioners: the feeling that we have come to like the practitioner more quickly or more deeply than we would have expected. Once we notice this feeling, we will have been tipped off that there is probably some tactic being used, and we can start taking the necessary countermeasures. Note that the strategy I am suggesting borrows much from the jujitsu style favored by the compliance professionals themselves. We don’t attempt to restrain the influence of the factors that cause liking. Quite the contrary. We allow these factors to exert their force, and then we use that force in our campaign against them. The stronger the force, the more conspicuous it becomes and, consequently, the more subject to our alerted defenses. Suppose, for example, we find ourselves bargaining on the price of a new car with Dealin’ Dan, a candidate for Joe Girard’s vacated “greatest car salesman” title. After talking a while and negotiating a bit, Dan wants to close the deal; he wants us to decide to buy the car. Before any such decision is made, it would be important to ask ourselves a crucial question: “In the twenty-five minutes I’ve known this guy, have I come to like him more than I would have expected?” If the answer is yes, we might want to reflect upon whether Dan behaved during those few minutes in ways that we know affect liking. We might recall that he had fed us (coffee and doughnuts) before launching into his pitch, that he had complimented us on our choice of options and color combinations, that he had made us laugh, that he had cooperated with us against the sales manager to get us a better deal. Although such a review of events might be informative, it is not a necessary step in protecting ourselves from the liking rule. Once we discover that we have come to like Dan more than we would have expected to, we don’t have to know why. The simple recognition of unwarranted liking should be enough to get us to react against it. One possible reaction would be to reverse the process and actively dislike Dan. But that might be unfair to him and contrary to our own interests. After all, some individuals are naturally likable, and Dan might just be one of them. It wouldn’t be right to turn automatically against those compliance professionals who happen to be most likable. Besides, for our own sakes, we wouldn’t want to shut ourselves off from business Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 155 interactions with such nice people, especially when they may be offering us the best available deal. I would recommend a different reaction. If our answer to the crucial question is “Yes, under the circumstances, I like this guy peculiarly well,” this should be the signal that the time has come for a quick countermaneuver: Mentally separate Dan from that Chevy or Toyota he’s trying to sell. It is vital to remember at this point that, should we decide for Dan’s car, we will be driving it, not him, off the dealership lot. It is irrelevant to a wise automobile purchase that we find Dan likable because he is good-looking, claims an interest in our favorite hobby, is funny, or has relatives back where we grew up. Our proper response, then, is a conscious effort to concentrate exclusively on the merits of the deal and car Dan has for us. Of course, in making a compliance decision, it is always a good idea to keep separate our feelings about the requester and the request. But once immersed in even a brief personal and sociable contact with a requester, that distinction is easy to forget. In those instances when we don’t care one way or the other about a requester, forgetting to make the distinction won’t steer us very far wrong. The big mistakes are likely to come when we are fond of the person making a request. That’s 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 and to make our decision based on considerations related only to the latter. Were we all to follow this procedure, I am certain we would be much more pleased with the results of our exchanges with compliance professionals—though I suspect that Dealin’ Dan would not. READER’S REPORT From a Chicago Man “Although I’ve never been to a Tupperware party, I recognized the same kind of friendship pressures recently when I got a call from a long-distance-phone-company saleswoman. She told me that one of my buddies had placed my name on something called the MCI Friends and Family Calling Circle. “This friend of mine, Brad, is a guy I grew up with but who moved to New Jersey last year for a job. He still calls me pretty regularly to get the news on the guys we used to hang out with from the neighborhood. The saleswoman told me that he can save twenty percent on all the calls he makes to the people on his Calling Circle list, provided that they are MCI-phone-company subscribers. Then she asked me if I wanted to 156 / Influence switch to MCI to get all the blah, blah, blah benefits of MCI service, and so that Brad could save twenty percent on his calls to me. “Well, I couldn’t have cared less about the benefits of MCI service; I was perfectly happy with the long-distance company I had. But the part about wanting to save Brad money on our calls really got to me. For me to say that I didn’t want to be in his Calling Circle and didn’t care about saving him money would have sounded like a real affront to our friendship when he learned of it. So, to avoid insulting him, I told her to switch me to MCI. “I used to wonder why women would go to a Tupperware party just because a friend was holding it, and then buy stuff they didn’t want once they were there. I don’t wonder anymore.” This reader is not alone in being able to testify to the power of the pressures embodied in MCI’s Calling Circle idea. When Consumer Reports magazine inquired into the practice, the MCI salesperson they interviewed was quite succinct: “It works nine out of ten times,” he said. Chapter 6 AUTHORITY Directed Deference Follow an expert. —VIRGIL S an ad for volunteers to take part in a “study of memory” beingnotice done UPPOSE THAT WHILE LEAFING THROUGH THE NEWSPAPER, YOU in the psychology department of a nearby university. Let’s suppose further that, finding the idea of such an experiment intriguing, you contact the director of the study, a Professor Stanley Milgram, and make arrangements to participate in an hour-long session. When you arrive at the laboratory suite, you meet two men. One is the researcher in charge of the experiment, as is clearly evidenced by the gray lab coat he wears and the clipboard he carries. The other is a volunteer like yourself who seems average in all respects. After initial greetings and pleasantries are exchanged, the researcher begins to explain the procedures to be followed. He says that the experiment is a study of how punishment affects learning and memory. Therefore, one participant will have the task of learning pairs of words in a long list until each pair can be recalled perfectly; this person is to be called the Learner. The other partici-pant’s job will be to test the Learner’s memory and to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks for every mistake; this person will be designated the Teacher. Naturally, you get a bit nervous at this news. And your apprehension increases when, after drawing lots with your partner, you find that you are assigned the Learner role. You hadn’t expected the possibility of pain as part of the study, so you briefly consider leaving. But no, you 158 / Influence think, there’s plenty of time for that if need be and, besides, how strong a shock could it be? After you have had a chance to study the list of word pairs, the researcher straps you into a chair and, with the Teacher looking on, attaches electrodes to your arm. More worried now about the effect of the shock, you inquire into its severity. The researcher’s response is hardly comforting; he says that although the shocks can be extremely painful, they will cause you “no permanent tissue damage.” With that, the researcher and the Teacher leave you alone and go to the next room, where the Teacher asks you the test questions through an intercom system and delivers electric punishment for every wrong response. As the test proceeds, you quickly recognize the pattern that the Teacher follows: He asks the question and waits for your answer over the intercom. Whenever you err, he announces the voltage of the shock you are about to receive and pulls a level to deliver the punishment. The most troubling thing is that with each error you make, the shock increases by 15 volts. The first part of the test progresses smoothly. The shocks are annoying but tolerable. Later on, though, as your mistakes accumulate and the shock voltages climb, the punishment begins to hurt enough to disrupt your concentration, which leads to more errors and ever more disruptive shocks. At the 75-, 90-, and 105-volt levels, the pain makes you grunt audibly. At 120 volts, you exclaim into the intercom that the shocks are really starting to hurt. You take one more punishment with a groan and decide that you can’t take much more pain. After the Teacher delivers the 150-volt shock, you shout back into the intercom, “That’s all! Get me out of here! Get me out of here, please! Let me out!” But instead of the assurance you expect from the Teacher that he and the researcher are coming to release you, the Teacher merely gives you the next test question to answer. Surprised and confused, you mumble the first answer to come into your head. It’s wrong, of course, and the Teacher delivers a 165-volt shock. You scream at the Teacher to stop, to let you out. But he responds only with the next test question—and with the next slashing shock when your frenzied answer is incorrect. You can’t hold down the panic any longer; the shocks are so strong now they make you writhe and shriek. You kick the wall, demand to be released, beg the Teacher to help you. But the test questions continue as before and so do the dreaded shocks—in searing jolts of 195, 210, 225, 240, 255, 270, 285, and 300 volts. You realize that you can’t possibly answer the test correctly now, so you shout to the Teacher that you won’t answer his questions any longer. Nothing changes; the Teacher interprets your failure to respond as an incorrect response and sends another bolt. The ordeal continues in this way until, finally, the power Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 159 of the shocks stuns you into near paralysis. You can no longer cry out, no longer struggle. You can only feel each terrible electric bite. Perhaps, you think, this total inactivity will cause the Teacher to stop. There can be no reason to continue this experiment. But he proceeds relentlessly, calling out the test questions, announcing the horrid shock levels (about 400 volts now), and pulling the levers. What must this man be like? you wonder in confusion. Why doesn’t he help me? Why won’t he stop? For most of us, the above scenario reads like a bad dream. To recognize how nightmarish it is, though, we should understand that in most respects it is real. There was such an experiment—actually, a whole series—run by a psychology professor named Milgram in which participants in the Teacher role were willing to deliver continued, intense, and dangerous levels of shock to a kicking, screeching, pleading other person. Only one major aspect of the experiment was not genuine. No real shock was delivered; the Learner, the victim who repeatedly cried out in agony for mercy and release, was not a true subject but an actor who only pretended to be shocked. The actual purpose of Milgram’s study, then, had nothing to do with the effects of punishment on learning and memory. Rather, it involved an entirely different question: When it is their job, how much suffering will ordinary people be willing to inflict on an entirely innocent other person? The answer is most unsettling. Under circumstances mirroring precisely the features of the “bad dream,” the typical Teacher was willing to deliver as much pain as was available to give. Rather than yield to the pleas of the victim, about two thirds of the subjects in Milgram’s experiment pulled every one of the thirty shock switches in front of them and continued to engage the last switch (450 volts) until the researcher ended the experiment. More alarming still, not one of the forty subjects in this study quit his job as Teacher when the victim first began to demand his release; nor later, when he began to beg for it; nor even later, when his reaction to each shock had become, in Milgram’s words, “definitely an agonized scream.” Not until the 300-volt shock had been sent and the victim had “shouted in desperation that he would no longer provide answers to the memory test” did anyone stop—and even then, it was a distinct minority who did. These results surprised everyone associated with the project, Milgram included. In fact, before the study began, he asked groups of colleagues, graduate students, and psychology majors at Yale University (where the experiment was performed) to read a copy of the experimental procedures and estimate how many subjects would go all the way to the last (450-volt) shock. Invariably, the answers fell in the 1 to 2 percent range. A separate group of thirty-nine psychiatrists predicted that only 160 / Influence about one person in a thousand would be willing to continue to the end. No one, then, was prepared for the behavior patterns that the experiment actually produced. How can we explain those alarming patterns? Perhaps, as some have argued, it has to do with the fact that the subjects were all males who are known as a group for their aggressive tendencies, or that the subjects didn’t recognize the potential harm that such high shock voltages could cause, or that the subjects were a freakish collection of moral cretins who enjoyed the chance to inflict misery. But there is good evidence against each of these possibilities. First, the subjects’ sex was shown by a later experiment to be irrelevant to their willingness to give all the shocks to the victim; female Teachers were just as likely to do so as the males in Milgram’s initial study. The explanation that subjects weren’t aware of the potential physical danger to the victim was also examined in a subsequent experiment and found to be wanting. In that version, when the victim was instructed to announce that he had a heart condition and to declare that his heart was being affected by the shock—“That’s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out”—the results were the same as before; 65 percent of the subjects carried out their duties faithfully through the maximum shock. Finally, the explanation that Milgram’s subjects were a twisted, sadistic bunch not at all representative of the average citizen has proven unsatisfactory as well. The people who answered Milgram’s newspaper ad to participate in his “memory” experiment represented a standard cross section of ages, occupations, and educational levels within our society. What’s more, later on, a battery of personality scales showed these people to be quite normal psychologically, with not a hint of psychosis as a group. They were, in fact, just like you and me; or, as Milgram likes to term it, they are you and me. If he is right that his studies implicate us in their grisly findings, the unanswered question becomes an uncomfortably personal one: What could make us do such things? Milgram is sure he knows the answer. It has to do, he says, with a deep-seated sense of duty to authority within us all. According to Milgram, the real culprit in the experiments was his subject’s inability to defy the wishes of the boss of the study—the lab-coated researcher who urged and, if need be, directed the subjects to perform their duties, despite the emotional and physical mayhem they were causing. The evidence supporting Milgram’s obedience to authority explanation is strong. First, it is clear that, without the researcher’s directives to continue, the subjects would have ended the experiment quickly. They hated what they were doing and agonized over their victim’s Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 161 agony. They implored the researcher to let them stop. When he refused, they went on, but in the process they trembled, they perspired, they shook, they stammered protests and additional pleas for the victim’s release. Their fingernails dug into their own flesh; they bit their lips until they bled; they held their heads in their hands; some fell into fits of uncontrollable nervous laughter. As one outside observer to the experiment wrote: I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within twenty minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his earlobe and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered: “Oh, God, let’s stop it.” And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter and obeyed to the end.1 In addition to these observations, Milgram has provided even more convincing evidence for the obedience-to-authority interpretation of his subjects’ behavior. In a later study, for instance, he had the researcher and the victim switch scripts so that the researcher told the Teacher to stop delivering shocks to the victim, while the victim insisted bravely that the Teacher continue. The result couldn’t have been clearer; 100 percent of the subjects refused to give one additional shock when it was merely the fellow subject who demanded it. The identical finding appeared in another version of the experiment in which the researcher and fellow subject switched roles so that it was the researcher who was strapped into the chair and the fellow subject who ordered the Teacher to continue—over the protests of the researcher. Again, not one subject touched another shock lever. The extreme degree to which subjects in Milgram’s situation were attentive to the wishes of authority was documented in yet another variation of the basic study. In this case, Milgram presented the Teacher with two researchers, who issued contradictory orders; one ordered the Teacher to terminate the shocks when the victim cried out for release, while the other maintained that the experiment should go on. These conflicting instructions reliably produced what may have been the project’s only humor: In tragicomic befuddlement and with eyes darting from one researcher to another, subjects would beseech the pair to agree on a single command they could follow: “Wait, wait. Which is it going to be? One says stop, one says go. Which is it!?” When the researchers remained at loggerheads, the subjects tried frantically to determine who was the bigger boss. Failing this route to obedience with the authority, every subject finally followed his better instincts and Chapter 7 SCARCITY The Rule of the Few The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. —G. K. CHESTERTON where T I live. Perhaps the most notable features of Mesa are its sizable HE CITY OF MESA, ARIZONA, IS A SUBURB IN THE PHOENIX AREA Mormon population—next to that of Salt Lake City, the largest in the world—and a huge Mormon temple located on exquisitely kept grounds in the center of the city. Although I had appreciated the landscaping and architecture from a distance, I had never been interested enough in the temple to go inside until the day I read a newspaper article that told of a special inner sector of Mormon temples to which no one has access but faithful members of the Church. Even potential converts must not see it. There is one exception to the rule, however. For a few days immediately after a temple is newly constructed, nonmembers are allowed to tour the entire structure, including the otherwise restricted section. The newspaper story reported that the Mesa temple had recently been refurbished and that the renovations had been extensive enough to classify it as “new” by Church standards. Thus, for the next several days only, non-Mormon visitors could see the temple area traditionally banned to them. I remember quite well the effect of the article on me: I immediately resolved to take a tour. But when I phoned a friend to ask if he wanted to come along, I came to understand something that changed my decision just as quickly. After declining the invitation, my friend wondered why I seemed so Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 179 intent on a visit. I was forced to admit that, no, I had never been inclined toward the idea of a temple tour before, that I had no questions about the Mormon religion I wanted answered, that I had no general interest in the architecture of houses of worship, and that I expected to find nothing more spectacular or stirring than I might see at a number of other temples, churches, or cathedrals in the area. It became clear as I spoke that the special lure of the temple had a sole cause: If I did not experience the restricted sector shortly, I would never again have the chance. Something that, on its own merits, held little appeal for me had become decidedly more attractive merely because it would soon become unavailable. Since that encounter with the scarcity principle—that opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited—I have begun to notice its influence over a whole range of my actions. For instance, I routinely will interrupt an interesting face-to-face conversation to answer the ring of an unknown caller. In such a situation, the caller has a compelling feature that my face-to-face partner does not: potential unavailability. If I don’t take the call, I might miss it (and the information it carries) for good. Never mind that the ongoing conversation may be highly engaging or important—much more than I could reasonably expect an average phone call to be. With each unanswered ring, the phone interaction becomes less retrievable. For that reason and for that moment, I want it more than the other. The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. For instance, homeowners told how much money they could lose from inadequate insulation are more likely to insulate their homes than those told how much money they could save. Similar results have been obtained by health researchers: Pamphlets urging young women to check for breast cancer through self-examinations are significantly more successful if they state their case in terms of what stands to be lost (e.g., “You can lose several potential health benefits by failing to spend only five minutes each month doing breast self-examination”) rather than gained (e.g., “You can gain several potential health benefits by spending only five minutes each month doing breast self-examination”).1 Collectors of everything from baseball cards to antiques are keenly aware of the influence of the scarcity principle in determining the worth of an item. As a rule, if it is rare or becoming rare, it is more valuable. Especially enlightening as to the importance of scarcity in the collectibles market is the phenomenon of the “precious mistake.” Flawed items—a blurred stamp or a double-struck coin—are sometimes the most valued 180 / Influence of all. Thus a stamp carrying a three-eyed likeness of George Washington is anatomically incorrect, aesthetically unappealing, and yet highly sought after. There is instructive irony here: Imperfections that would otherwise make for rubbish make for prized possessions when they bring along an abiding scarcity. With the scarcity principle operating so powerfully on the worth we assign things, it is natural that compliance professionals will do some related operating of their own. Probably the most straightforward use of the scarcity principle occurs in the “limited-number” tactic, when the customer is informed that a certain product is in short supply that cannot be guaranteed to last long. During the time I was researching compliance strategies by infiltrating various organizations, I saw the limited-number tactic employed repeatedly in a range of situations: “There aren’t more than five convertibles with this engine left in the state. And when they’re gone, that’s it, ’cause we’re not making ’em anymore.” “This is one of only two unsold corner lots in the entire development. You wouldn’t want the other one; it’s got a nasty east-west exposure.” “You may want to think seriously about buying more than one case today because production is backed way up and there’s no telling when we’ll get any more in.” Sometimes the limited-number information was true, sometimes it was wholly false. But in each instance, the intent was to convince customers of an item’s scarcity and thereby increase its immediate value in their eyes. I admit to developing a grudging admiration for the practitioners who made this simple device work in a multitude of ways and styles. I was most impressed, however, with a particular version that extended the basic approach to its logical extreme by selling a piece of merchandise at its scarcest point—when it seemingly could no longer be had. The tactic was played to perfection in one appliance store I investigated, where 30 to 50 percent of the stock was regularly listed as on sale. Suppose a couple in the store seemed from a distance to be moderately interested in a certain sale item. There are all sorts of cues that tip off such interest—closer-than-normal examination of the appliance, a casual look at any instruction booklets associated with the appliance, discussions held in front of the appliance, but no attempt to seek out a salesperson for further information. After observing the couple so engaged, a salesperson might approach and say, “I see you’re interested in this model here, and I can understand why; it’s a great machine at a great price. But, unfortunately, I sold it to another couple not more than twenty minutes ago. And, if I’m not mistaken, it was the last one we had.” The customers’ disappointment registers unmistakably. Because of its lost availability, the appliance jumps suddenly in attractiveness. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 181 Typically, one of the customers asks if there is any chance that an unsold model still exists in the store’s back room, warehouse, or other location. “Well,” the salesperson allows, “that is possible, and I’d be willing to check. But do I understand that this is the model you want and if I can get it for you at this price, you’ll take it?” Therein lies the beauty of the technique. In accord with the scarcity principle, the customers are asked to commit to buying the appliance when it looks least available—and therefore most desirable. Many customers do agree to a purchase at this singularly vulnerable time. Thus, when the salesperson (invariably) returns with the news that an additional supply of the appliance has been found, it is also with a pen and sales contract in hand. The information that the desired model is in good supply may actually make some customers find it less attractive again.2 But by then, the business transaction has progressed too far for most people to renege. The purchase decision made and committed to publicly at an earlier, crucial point still holds. They buy. Related to the limited-number technique is the “deadline” tactic, in which some official time limit is placed on the customer’s opportunity to get what the compliance professional is offering. Much like my experience with the Mormon temple’s inner sanctum, people frequently find themselves doing what they wouldn’t particularly care to do simply because the time to do so is shrinking. The adept merchandiser makes this tendency pay off by arranging and publicizing customer deadlines—witness the collage of such newspaper ads in Figure 7–3—that generate interest where none may have existed before. Concentrated instances of this approach often occur in movie advertising. In fact, I recently noticed that one theater owner, with remarkable singleness of purpose, had managed to invoke the scarcity principle three separate times in just five words that read, “Exclusive, limited engagement ends soon!” Swindled By Peter Kerr New York Times NEW YORK—Daniel Gulban doesn’t remember how his life savings disappeared. He remembers the smooth voice of a salesman on the telephone. He remembers dreaming of a fortune in oil and silver futures. But to this day, the 81-year-old retired utility worker does not understand how swindlers convinced him to part with $18,000. “I just wanted to better my life in my waning days,” said Gulban, a resident of 182 / Influence Holder, Fla. “But when I found out the truth, I couldn’t eat or sleep. I lost 30 pounds. I still can’t believe I would do anything like that.” Gulban was the victim of a what law enforcement officials call a “boiler-room operation,” a ruse that often involves dozens of fast-talking telephone salesmen crammed into a small room where they call thousands of customers each day. The companies snare hundreds of millions of dollars each year from unsuspecting customers, according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee on investigations, which issued a report on the subject last year. “They use an impressive Wall Street address, lies and deception to get individuals to sink their money into various glamorous-sounding schemes,” said Robert Abrams, the New York State attorney general, who has pursued more than a dozen boilerroom cases in the past four years. “The victims are sometimes persuaded to invest the savings of a lifetime.” Orestes J. Mihaly, the New York assistant attorney general in charge of the bureau of investor protection and securities, said the companies often operate in three stages. First, Mihaly said, comes the “opening call,” in which a salesman identifies himself as representing a company with an impressive-sounding name and address. He will simply ask the potential customer to receive the company’s literature. A second call involves a sales pitch, Mihaly said. The salesman first describes the great profits to be made and then tells the customer that it is no longer possible to invest. The third call gives the customer a chance to get in on the deal, he said, and is offered with a great deal of urgency. “The idea is to dangle a carrot in front of the buyer’s face and then take it away,” Mihaly said. “The aim is to get someone to want to buy quickly, without thinking too much about it.” Sometimes, Mihaly said, the salesman will be out of breath on the third call and will tell the customer that he “just came off the trading floor.” Such tactics convinced Gulban to part with his life savings. In 1979, a stranger called him repeatedly and convinced Gulban to wire $1,756 to New York to purchase silver, Gulban said. After another series of telephone calls the salesman cajoled Gulban into wiring more than $6,000 for crude oil. He eventually wired an additional $9,740, but his profits never arrived. “My heart sank,” Gulban recalled. “I was not greedy. I just hoped I would see better days.” Gulban never recouped his losses. FIGURE 7-2 The Scarcity Scam Note how the scarcity principle was employed during the second and third phone calls to cause Mr. Gulban to “buy quickly without thinking too much about it.” Click, blur. (PETER KERR, THE NEW YORK TIMES) A variant of the deadline tactic is much favored by some face-to-face, high-pressure sellers because it carries the purest form of decision deadline: right now. Customers are often told that unless they make an immediate decision to buy, they will have to purchase the item at a higher price or they will be unable to purchase it at all. A prospective health-club member or automobile buyer might learn that the deal offered by the salesperson is good only for that one time; should the customer leave the premises, the deal is off. One large child-portrait photography company urges parents to buy as many poses and copies as they can afford because “stocking limitations force us to burn the unsold pictures of your children within twenty-four hours.” A door-todoor magazine solicitor might say that salespeople are in the customer’s area for just a day; after that, they—and the customer’s chance to buy their magazine package—will be long gone. A home vacuum-cleaner operation I infiltrated instructed its sales trainees to claim, “I have so many other people to see that I have the time to visit a family only once. It’s company policy that even if you decide later that you want this machine, I can’t come back and sell it to you.” This, of course, is nonsense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, sense; the company and its representatives are in the business of make; 272 This, 208 / Influence quickly; we contact more people and have shorter relationships with them; in the supermarket, car showroom, and shopping mall, we are faced with an array of choices among styles and products that were unheard of the previous year and may well be obsolete or forgotten by the next. Novelty, transience, diversity, and acceleration are acknowledged as prime descriptors of civilized existence. This avalanche of information and choices is made possible by burgeoning technological progress. Leading the way are developments in our ability to collect, store, retrieve, and communicate information. At first, the fruits of such advances were limited to large organizations—government agencies or powerful corporations. For example, speaking as chairman of Citicorp, Walter Wriston could say of his company, “We have tied together a data base in the world that is capable of telling almost anyone in the world, almost anything, immediately.”2 But now, with further developments in telecommunication and computer technology, access to such staggering amounts of information is falling within the reach of individual citizens. Extensive cable and satellite television systems provide one route for that information into the average home. The other major route is the personal computer. In 1972, Norman Macrae, an editor of The Economist, speculated prophetically about a time in the future: The prospect is, after all, that we are going to enter an age when any duffer sitting at a computer terminal in his laboratory or office or public library or home can delve through unimaginable increased mountains of information in mass-assembly data banks with mechanical powers of concentration and calculation that will be greater by a factor of tens of thousands than was ever available to the human brain of even an Einstein. One short decade later, Time magazine signaled that Macrae’s future age had arrived by naming a machine, the personal computer, as its Man of the Year. Time’s editors defended their choice by citing the consumer “stampede” to purchase small computers and by arguing that “America [and], in a larger perspective, the entire world will never be the same.” Macrae’s vision is now being realized. Millions of ordinary “duffers” are sitting at machines with the potential to present and analyze enough data to bury an Einstein. Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to process information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the surfeit of change, choice, and challenge that is characteristic of modern life. More and more frequently, we will find ourselves Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 209 in the position of the lower animals—with a mental apparatus that is unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the outside environment. Unlike the animals, whose cognitive powers have always been relatively deficient, we have created our own deficiency by constructing a radically more complex world. But the consequence of our new deficiency is the same as that of the animals’ long-standing one. When making a decision, we will less frequently enjoy the luxury of a fully consid-ered analysis of the total situation but will revert increasingly to a focus on a single, usually reliable feature of it. When those single features are truly reliable, there is nothing inherently wrong with the shortcut approach of narrowed attention and automatic response to a particular piece of information. The problem comes when something causes the normally trustworthy cues to counsel us poorly, to lead us to erroneous actions and wrongheaded decisions. As we have seen, one such cause is the trickery of certain compliance practitioners who seek to profit from the rather mindless and mechanical nature of shortcut response. If, as seems true, the frequency of shortcut response is increasing with the pace and form of modern life, we can be sure that the frequency of this trickery is destined to increase as well. What can we do about the expected intensified attack on our system of shortcuts? More than evasive action, I would urge forceful counterassault. There is an important qualification, however. Compliance professionals who play fairly by the rules of shortcut response are not to be considered the enemy; on the contrary, they are our allies in an efficient and adaptive process of exchange. The proper targets for counteraggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit, or misrepresent the evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses. Let’s take an illustration from what is perhaps our most frequently used shortcut. According to the principle of social proof, we often decide to do what other people like us are doing. It makes all kinds of sense since, most of the time, an action that is popular in a given situation is also functional and appropriate. Thus, an advertiser who, without using deceptive statistics, provides information that a brand of toothpaste is the largest selling or fastest growing has offered us valuable evidence about the quality of the product and the probability that we will like it. Provided that we are in the market for a tube of good toothpaste, we might want to rely on that single piece of information, popularity, to decide to try it. This strategy will likely steer us right, will unlikely steer us far wrong, and will conserve our cognitive energies for dealing with the rest of our increasingly information-laden, decision-overloaded environment. The advertiser who allows us to use effectively this effi- 210 / Influence cient strategy is hardly our antagonist but rather must be considered a cooperating partner. The story becomes quite different, however, should a compliance practitioner try to stimulate a shortcut response by giving us a fraudulent signal for it. The enemy is the advertiser who seeks to create an image of popularity for a brand of toothpaste by, say, constructing a series of staged “unrehearsed-interview” commercials in which an array of actors posing as ordinary citizens praise the product. Here, where the evidence of popularity is counterfeit, we, the principle of social proof, and our shortcut response to it, are all being exploited. In an earlier chapter, I recommended against the purchase of any product featured in a faked “unrehearsed-interview” ad, and I urged that we send the product manufacturers letters detailing the reason and suggesting that they dismiss their advertising agency. I would recommend extending this aggressive stance to any situation in which a compliance professional abuses the principle of social proof (or any other weapon of influence) in this manner. We should refuse to watch TV programs that use canned laughter. If we see a bartender beginning a shift by salting his tip jar with a bill or two of his own, he should get none from us. If, after waiting in line outside a nightclub, we discover from the amount of available space that the wait was designed to impress passersby with false evidence of the club’s popularity, we should leave immediately and announce our reason to those still in line. In short, we should be willing to use boycott, threat, confrontation, censure, tirade, nearly anything, to retaliate. I don’t consider myself pugnacious by nature, but I actively advocate such belligerent actions because in a way I am at war with the exploiters—we all are. It is important to recognize, however, that their motive for profit is not the cause for hostilities; that motive, after all, is something we each share to an extent. The real treachery, and the thing we cannot tolerate, is any attempt to make their profit in a way that threatens the reliability of our shortcuts. The blitz of modern daily life demands that we have faithful shortcuts, sound rules of thumb to handle it all. These are not luxuries any longer; they are out-and-out necessities that figure to become increasingly vital as the pulse of daily life quickens. That is why we should want to retaliate whenever we see someone betraying one of our rules of thumb for profit. We want that rule to be as effective as possible. But to the degree that its fitness for duty is regularly undercut by the tricks of a profiteer, we naturally will use it less and will be less able to cope efficiently with the decisional burdens of our day. We cannot allow that without a fight. The stakes have gotten too high. NOTES CHAPTER 1 (PAGES 1–16) 1. Honest, this animal researcher’s name is Fox. See his 1974 monograph for a complete description of the turkey and polecat experiment. 2. Sources for the robin and bluethroat information are Lack (1943) and Peiponen (1960), respectively. 3. Although several important similarities exist between this kind of automatic responding in humans and lower animals, there are some important differences as well. The automatic behavior sequences of humans tend to be learned rather than inborn, more flexible than the lock-step patterns of the lower animals, and responsive to a larger number of triggers. 4. Perhaps the common “because…just because” response of children asked to explain their behavior can be traced to their shrewd recognition of the unusual amount of power adults appear to assign to the raw word because. The reader who wishes to find a more systematic treatment of Langer’s Xerox study and her conceptualization of it can do so in Langer (1989). 5. Sources for the Photuris and the blenny information are Lloyd (1965) and Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1958), respectively. As exploitative as these creatures seem, they are topped in this respect by an insect known as the rove beetle. By using a variety of triggers involving smell and touch, the rove beetles get two species of ants to protect, groom, and feed them as larvae and to harbor them for the winter as adults. Responding mechanically to the beetles’ trick trigger features, the ants treat the beetles as though they were fellow ants. Inside the ant nests, the beetles respond to their hosts’ hospitality by eating ant eggs and young, yet they are never harmed (Hölldobler, 1971). 6. These studies are reported by Kenrick and Gutierres (1980), who warn that the unrealistically attractive people portrayed in the popular media (for example, actors, actresses, models) may cause us to be less 212 / Influence satisfied with the looks of the genuinely available romantic possibilities around us. More recent work by these authors takes their argument a step farther, showing that exposure to the exaggerated sexual attractiveness of nude pinup bodies (in such magazines as Playboy and Playgirl) causes people to become less pleased with the sexual desirability of their current spouse or live-in mate (Kenrick, Gutierres, and Goldberg, 1989). CHAPTER 2 (PAGES 17–56) 1. A formal description of the greeting-card study is provided in Kunz and Woolcott (1976). 2. Certain societies have formalized the rule into ritual. Consider for example the “Vartan Bhanji,” an institutionalized custom of the gift exchange common to parts of Pakistan and India. In commenting upon the “Vartan Bhanji,” Gouldner (1960) remarks: It is…notable that the system painstakingly prevents the total elimination of outstanding obligations. Thus, on the occasion of a marriage, departing guests are given gifts of sweets. In weighing them out, the hostess may say, “These five are yours,” meaning “These are a repayment for what you formerly gave me,” and then she adds an extra measure, saying, “These are mine.” On the next occasion, she will receive these back along with an additional measure which she later returns, and so on. 3. The quote is from Leakey and Lewin (1978). 4. For a fuller discussion, see Tiger and Fox (1971). 5. The experiment is reported formally in Regan (1971). 6. The statement appears in Mauss (1954). 7. Surprise is an effective compliance producer in its own right. People who are surprised by a request will often comply because they are momentarily unsure of themselves and, consequently, influenced easily. For example, the social psychologists Stanley Milgram and John Sabini (1975) have shown that people riding on the New York subway were twice as likely to give up their seats to a person who surprised them with the request “Excuse me. May I have your seat?” than to one who forewarned them first by mentioning to a fellow passenger that he was thinking of asking for someone’s seat (56 percent vs. 28 percent). 8. It is interesting that a cross-cultural study has shown that those who break the reciprocity rule in the reverse direction—by giving without allowing the recipient an opportunity to repay—are also disliked for it. This result was found to hold for each of the three national- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 213 ities investigated—Americans, Swedes, and Japanese. See Gergen et al. (1975) for an account of the study. 9. The Pittsburgh study was done by Greenberg and Shapiro. The data on women’s sexual obligations were collected by George, Gournic, and McAfee (1988). 10. To convince ourselves that this result was no fluke, we conducted two more experiments testing the effectiveness of the rejection-thenretreat trick. Both showed results similar to the first experiment. See Cialdini et al. (1975) for the details of all three. 11. The Israeli study was conducted in 1979 by Schwartzwald, Raz, and Zvibel. 12. The TV Guide article appeared in December 1978. 13. The source for the quotes is Magruder (1974). 14. Consumer Reports, January 1975, p. 62. 15. Another way of gauging the effectiveness of a request technique is to examine the bottom-line proportion of individuals who, after being asked, complied with the request. Using such a measure, the rejectionthen-retreat procedure was more than four times more effective than the procedure of asking for the smaller request only. See Miller et al. (1976) for a complete description of the study. 16. The blood-donation study was reported by Cialdini and Ascani (1976). 17. The UCLA study was performed by Benton, Kelley, and Liebling in 1972. 18. A variety of other business operations use the no-cost information offer extensively. Pest-exterminator companies, for instance, have found that most people who agree to a free home examination give the extermination job to the examining company, provided they are convinced that it is needed. They apparently feel an obligation to give their business to the firm that rendered the initial, complimentary service. Knowing that such customers are unlikely to comparisonshop for this reason, unscrupulous pest-control operators will take advantage of the situation by citing higher-than-competitive prices for work commissioned in this way. CHAPTER 3 (PAGES 57–113) 1. The racetrack study was done twice, with the same results, by Knox and Inkster (1968). See Rosenfeld, Kennedy, and Giacalone (1986) for evidence that the tendency to believe more strongly in choices, once made, applies to guesses in a lottery game, too. 2. It is important to note that the collaboration was not always intentional. The American investigators defined collaboration as “any kind 214 / Influence of behavior which helped the enemy,” and it thus included such diverse activities as signing peace petitions, running errands, making radio appeals, accepting special favors, making false confessions, informing on fellow prisoners, or divulging military information. 3. The Schein quote comes from his 1956 article “The Chinese Indoctrination Program for Prisoners of War: A Study of Attempted Brainwashing.” 4. See Greene (1965) for the source of this advice. 5. Freedman and Fraser published their data in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in 1966. 6. The quote comes from Freedman and Fraser (1966). 7. See Segal (1954) for the article from which this quote originates. 8. See Jones and Harris (1967). 9. It is noteworthy that the housewives in this study (Kraut, 1973) heard that they were considered charitable at least a full week before they were asked to donate to the Multiple Sclerosis Association. 10. From “How to Begin Retailing,” Amway Corporation. 11. See Deutsch and Gerard (1955) and Kerr and MacCoun (1985) for the details of these studies. 12. From Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony (1958). 13. From Gordon and Gordon (1963). 14. The survey was conducted by Walker (1967). 15. The electric-shock experiment was published seven years after the Aronson and Mills (1959) study by Gerard and Mathewson (1966). 16. Young (1965) conducted this research. 17. The robot study is reported fully in Freedman (1965). 18. The reader who wishes stronger evidence for the action of the lowball tactic than my subjective observations in the car showroom may refer to articles that attest to its effectiveness under controlled, experimental conditions: Cialdini et al. (1978), Burger and Petty (1981), Brownstein and Katzev (1985), and Joule (1987). 19. A formal report of the energy-conservation project appears in Pallak et al. (1980). 20. It is not altogether unusual for even some of our most familiar quotations to be truncated by time in ways that greatly modify their character. For example, it is not money that the Bible claims as the root of all evil, it is the love of money. So as not to be guilty of the same sort of error myself, I should note that the Emerson quote from “Self-Reliance” is somewhat longer and substantially more textured than I have reported. In full, it reads, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines.” 21. See Zajonc (1980) for a summary of this evidence. 22. This is not to say that what we feel about an issue is always differ- Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 215 ent from or always to be trusted more than what we think about it. However, the data are clear that our emotions and beliefs often do not point in the same direction. Therefore, in situations involving a decisional commitment likely to have generated supporting rationalizations, feelings may well provide the truer counsel. This would be especially so when, as in the question of Sara’s happiness, the fundamental issue at hand concerns an emotion (Wilson, 1989). CHAPTER 4 (PAGES 114–166) 1. The general evidence regarding the facilitative effect of canned laughter on responses to humor comes from such studies as Smyth and Fuller (1972), Fuller and Sheehy-Skeffinton (1974), and Nosanchuk and Lightstone the last of which contains the indication that canned laughter is most effective for poor material. 2. The researchers who infiltrated the Graham Crusade and who provided the quote are Altheide and Johnson (1977). 3. See Bandura, Grusec, and Menlove (1967) and Bandura and Menlove (1968) for full descriptions of the dog-phobia treatment. Any reader who doubts that the seeming appropriateness of an action is importantly influenced by the number of others performing it might try a small experiment. Stand on a busy sidewalk, pick out an empty spot in the sky or on a tall building, and stare at it for a full minute. Very little will happen around you during that time—most people will walk past without glancing up, and virtually no one will stop to stare with you. Now, on the next day, go to the same place and bring along four friends to look upward too. Within sixty seconds, a crowd of passersby will have stopped to crane their necks skyward with the group. For those pedestrians who do not join you, the pressure to look up at least briefly will be nearly irresistible; if your experiment brings the same results as the one performed by three New York social psychologists, you and your friends will cause 80 percent of all passersby to lift their gaze to your empty spot (Milgram, Bickman, and Berkowitz, 1967). 4. Other research besides O’Connor’s (1972) suggests that there are two sides to the filmed-social-proof coin, however. The dramatic effect of filmed depictions on what children find appropriate has been a source of great distress for those concerned with frequent instances of violence and aggression on television. Although the consequences of televised violence on the aggressive actions of children are far from simple, the data from a well-controlled experiment by psychologists Robert Liebert and Robert Baron (1972) have an ominous look. Some children were shown excerpts from a television program in which people intentionally 216 / Influence harmed another. Afterward, these children were significantly more harmful toward another child than were children who had watched a nonviolent television program (a horserace). The finding that seeing others perform aggressively led to more aggression on the part of the young viewers held true for the two age groups tested (five-to-six-yearolds and eight-to-nine-year-olds) and for both girls and boys. 5. An engagingly written report of their complete findings is presented in Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter’s (1956) book When Prophecy Fails. 6. Perhaps because of the quality of ragged desperation with which they approached their task, the believers were wholly unsuccessful at enlarging their number. Not a single convert was gained. At that point, in the face of the twin failures of physical and social proof, the cult quickly disintegrated. Less than three weeks after the date of the predicted flood, group members were scattered and maintaining only sporadic communication with one another. In one final—and ironic—disconfirmation of prediction, it was the movement that perished in the flood. Ruin has not always been the fate of doomsday groups whose predictions proved unsound, however. When such groups have been able to build social proof for their beliefs through effective recruitment efforts, they have grown and prospered. For example, when the Dutch Anabaptists saw their prophesied year of destruction, 1533, pass uneventfully, they became rabid seekers after converts, pouring unprecedented amounts of energy into the cause. One extraordinarily eloquent missionary, Jakob van Kampen, is reported to have baptized one hundred persons in a single day. So powerful was the snowballing social evidence in support of the Anabaptist position that it rapidly overwhelmed the disconfirming physical evidence and turned two thirds of the population of Holland’s great cities into adherents. 7. From Rosenthal’s Thirty-eight Witnesses, 1964. 8. This quote comes from Latané and Darley’s award-winning book (1968), where they introduced the concept of pluralistic ignorance. The potentially tragic consequences of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon are starkly illustrated in a UPI news release from Chicago: A university coed was beaten and strangled in daylight hours near one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, police said Saturday. The nude body of Lee Alexis Wilson, 23, was found Friday in dense shrubbery alongside the wall of the Art Institute by a 12year-old boy playing in the bushes. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 217 Police theorized she may have been sitting or standing by a fountain in the Art Institute’s south plaza when she was attacked. The assailant apparently then dragged her into the bushes. She apparently was sexually assaulted, police said. Police said thousands of persons must have passed the site and one man told them he heard a scream about 2 P.M. but did not investigate because no one else seemed to be paying attention. 9. The New York “seizure” and “smoke” emergency studies are reported by Darley and Latané (1968) and Latané and Darley (1968), respectively. The Toronto experiment was performed by Ross (1971). The Florida studies were published by Clark and Word in 1972 and 1974. 10. See a study by Latané and Rodin (1969) showing that groups of strangers help less in an emergency than groups of acquaintances. 11. The wallet study was conducted by Hornstein et al. (1968), the antismoking study by Murray et al. (1984), and the dental anxiety study by Melamed et al. (1978). 12. The sources of these statistics are articles by Phillips in 1979 and 1980. 13. The newspaper story data are reported by Phillips (1974), while the TV story data come from Bollen and Phillips (1982), Gould and Schaffer (1986), Phillips and Carstensen (1986), and Schmidtke and Hafner (1988). 14. These new data appear in Phillips (1983). 15. The quote is from The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 1964, which Sabin edited. 16. From Hornaday (1887). CHAPTER 5 (PAGES 167–207) 1. The Canadian election study was reported by Efran and Patterson (1976). Data of this sort give credence to the claim of some Richard Nixon backers that the failure that contributed most to the loss of the 1960 TV debates with John F. Kennedy—and thereby to the election—was the poor performance of Nixon’s makeup man. 2. See Mack and Rainey (1990). 3. This finding—that attractive defendants, even when they are found guilty, are less likely to be sentenced to prison—helps explain one of the more fascinating experiments in criminology I have heard of (Kurtzburg et al., 1968). Some New York City jail inmates with facial disfigurements were given plastic surgery while incarcerated; others with similar disfigurements were not. Furthermore, some of each of these two groups of criminals were given services (for example, counseling 218 / Influence and training) designed to rehabilitate them to society. One year after their release, a check of the records revealed that (except for heroin addicts) those given the cosmetic surgery were significantly less likely to have returned to jail. The most interesting feature of this finding was that it was equally true for those criminals who had not received the traditional rehabilitative services as for those who had. Apparently, some criminologists then argued, when it comes to ugly inmates, prisons would be better off to abandon the costly rehabilitation treatments they typically provide and offer plastic surgery instead; the surgery seems to be at least as effective and decidedly less expensive. The importance of the newer, Pennsylvania data (Stewart, 1980) is its suggestion that the argument for surgery as a means of rehabilitation may be faulty. Making an ugly criminal more attractive may not reduce the chances that he will commit another crime; it may only reduce his chances of being sent to jail for it. 4. The negligence-award study was done by Kulka and Kessler (1978), the helping study by Benson et al. (1976), and the persuasion study by Chaiken (1979). 5. An excellent review of this research is provided by Eagly et al. (1991). 6. The dime-request experiment was conducted by Emswiller et al. (1971), while the petition-signing experiment was done by Suedfeld et al. (1971). 7. The insurance sales data were reported by Evans (1963). The “mirroring and matching” evidence comes from work by LaFrance (1985), Locke and Horowitz (1990), and Woodside and Davenport (1974). Additional work suggests yet another reason for caution when dealing with similar requesters: We typically underestimate the degree to which similarity affects our liking for another (Gonzales et al., 1983). 8. See Drachman et al. (1978) for a complete description of the findings. 9. Bornstein (1989) summarizes much of this evidence. 10. The mirror study was performed by Mita et al. (1977). 11. For general evidence regarding the positive effect of familiarity on attraction, see Zajonc (1968). For more specific evidence of this effect on our response to politicians, the research of Joseph Grush is enlightening and sobering (Grush et al., 1978; Grush, 1980), in documenting a strong connection between amount of media exposure and a candidate’s chances of winning an election. 12. See Bornstein, Leone, and Galley (1987). 13. For an especially thorough examination of this issue, see Stephan (1978). 14. The evidence of the tendency of ethnic groups to stay with their Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 219 own in school comes from Gerard and Miller (1975). The evidence for the dislike of things repeatedly presented under unpleasant conditions comes from such studies as Burgess and Sales (1971), Zajonc et al. (1974), and Swap (1977). 15. From Aronson (1975). 16. A fascinating description of the entire boys’-camp project, called the “Robbers’ Cave Experiment,” can be found in Sherif et al. (1961). 17. The Carlos example comes once again from Aronson’s initial report in his 1975 article. However, additional reports by Aronson and by others have shown similarly encouraging results. A representative list would include Johnson and Johnson (1983), DeVries and Slavin (1978), Cook (1990), and Aronson, Bridgeman, and Geffner (1978a, b). 18. For a careful examination of the possible pitfalls of cooperative learning approaches, see Rosenfield and Stephan (1981). 19. In truth, little in the way of combat takes place when the salesman enters the manager’s office under such circumstances. Often, because the salesman knows exactly the price below which he cannot go, he and the boss don’t even speak. In one car dealership I infiltrated while researching this book, it was common for a salesman to have a soft drink or cigarette in silence while the boss continued working at his desk. After a seemly time, the salesman would loosen his tie and return to his customers, looking weary but carrying the deal he had just “hammered out” for them—the same deal he had in mind before entering the boss’s office. 20. For experimental evidence of the validity of Shakespeare’s observation, see Manis et al. (1974). 21. A review of research supporting this statement is provided by Lott and Lott (1965). 22. See the study by Miller et al. (1966) for evidence. 23. The study was done by Smith and Engel (1968). 24. The rights to such associations don’t come cheaply. Corporate sponsors spend millions to secure Olympic sponsorships, and they spend many millions more to advertise their connections to the event. Yet it may all be worth the expense. An Advertising Age survey found that one third of all consumers said they would be more likely to purchase a product if it were linked to the Olympics. 25. The Georgia study was done by Rosen and Tesser (1970). 26. From Asimov (1975). 27. Both the sweatshirt and the pronoun experiments are reported fully in Cialdini et al. (1976). 220 / Influence CHAPTER 6 (PAGES 208–236) 1. The quote is from Milgram’s 1963 article in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 2. All of these variations on the basic experiment, as well as several others, are presented in Milgram’s highly readable book Obedience to Authority, 1974. A review of much of the subsequent research on obedience can be found in Blass (1991). 3. In fact, Milgram first began his investigations in an attempt to understand how the German citizenry could have participated in the concentration-camp destruction of millions of innocents during the years of Nazi ascendancy. After testing his experimental procedures in the United States, he had planned to take them to Germany, a country whose populace he was sure would provide enough obedience for a full-blown scientific analysis of the concept. That first eye-opening experiment in New Haven, Connecticut, however, made it clear that he could save his money and stay close to home. “I found so much obedience,” he has said, “I hardly saw the need of taking the experiment to Germany.” More telling evidence, perhaps, of a willingness within the American character to submit to authorized command comes from a national survey taken after the trial of Lieutenant William Calley, who ordered his soldiers to kill the inhabitants—from the infants and toddlers through their parents and grandparents—of My Lai, Vietnam (Kelman and Hamilton, 1989). A majority of Americans (51 percent) responded that, if so ordered, in a similar context, they too would shoot all the residents of a Vietnamese village. But Americans have no monopoly on the need to obey. When Milgram’s basic procedure has been repeated in Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Jordan, the results have been similar. See Meeus and Raaijmakers for a review. 4. We are not the only species to give sometimes wrongheaded deference to those in authority positions. In monkey colonies, where rigid dominance hierarchies exist, beneficial innovations (like learning how to use a stick to bring food into the cage area) do not spread quickly through the group unless they are taught first to a dominant animal. When a lower animal is taught the new concept first, the rest of the colony remains mostly oblivious to its value. One study, cited by Ardry (1970), on the introduction of new food tastes to Japanese monkeys provides a nice illustration. In one troop, a taste for caramels was developed by introducing this new food into the diet of young peripherals, low on the status ladder. The taste for caramels inched slowly up the ranks: A year and a half later, only 51 percent of the colony had acquired Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 221 it, and still none of the leaders. Contrast this with what happened in a second troop where wheat was introduced first to the leader: Wheat eating—to this point unknown to these monkeys—spread through the whole colony within four hours. 5. The experiment was performed by Wilson (1968). 6. The study on children’s judgments of coins was done by Bruner and Goodman (1947). The study on college students’ judgments was done by Dukes and Bevan (1952). In addition to the relationship between importance (status) and perceived size that both of these experiments show, there is even some evidence that the importance we assign to our identity is reflected in the size of a frequent symbol of that identity: our signature. The psychologist Richard Zweigenhaft (1970) has collected data suggesting that as a man’s sense of his own status grows, so does the size of his signature. This finding may give us a secret way of discovering how the people around us view their own status and importance: Simply compare the size of their signature to that of their other handwriting. 7. Subhumans are not alone in this regard, even in modern times. For example, since 1900 the U.S. presidency has been won by the taller of the major-party candidates in twenty-one of the twenty-four elections. 8. From Hofling et al. (1966). 9. Additional data collected in the same study suggest that nurses may not be conscious of the extent to which the title Doctor sways their judgments and actions. A separate group of thirty-three nurses and student nurses were asked what they would have done in the experimental situation. Contrary to the actual findings, only two predicted that they would have given the medication as ordered. 10. See Bickman (1974) for a complete account of this research. Similar results have been obtained when the requester was female (Bushman, 1988). 11. This experiment was conducted by Lefkowitz, Blake, and Mouton (1955). 12. The horn-honking study was published in 1968 by Anthony Doob and Alan Gross. 13. For evidence, see Choo (1964), and McGuinnies and Ward (1980). 14. See Settle and Gorden (1974), Smith and Hunt (1978), and Hunt, Domzal, and Kernan (1981). CHAPTER 7 (PAGES 237–272) 1. The home-insulation study was done by Gonzales, Costanzo, and Aronson (1988) in northern California; the breast-examination work was conducted by Meyerwitz and Chaiken (1987) in New York City. 222 / Influence 2. See Schwartz (1980) for evidence of such a process. 3. See Lynn (1989). Without wishing to minimize the advantages of this type of shortcut or the dangers associated with it, I should note that these advantages and dangers are essentially the same ones we have examined in previous chapters. Accordingly, I will not focus on this theme in the remainder of the present chapter, except to say at this point that the key to using properly the shortcut feature of scarcity is to be alert to the distinction between naturally occurring, honest scarcity and the fabricated variety favored by certain compliance practitioners. 4. The original reactance-theory formulation appeared in Brehm (1966); a subsequent version appears in Brehm and Brehm (1981). 5. Brehm and Weintraub (1977) did the barrier experiment. It should be noted that two-year-old girls in the study did not show the same resistant response to the large barrier as did the boys. This does not seem to be because girls don’t oppose attempts to limit their freedoms. Instead, it appears that they are primarily reactant to restrictions that come from other people rather than from physical barriers (Brehm, 1983). 6. For descriptions of the two-year-old’s change in self-perception, see Mahler et al. (1975), Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979), Brooks-Gun and Lewis (1982), and Levine (1983). 7. The occurrence of the Romeo and Juliet effect should not be interpreted as a warning to parents to be always accepting of their teenagers’ romantic choices. New players at this delicate game are likely to err often and, consequently, would benefit from the direction of an adult with greater perspective and experience. In providing such direction, parents should recognize that teenagers, who see themselves as young adults, will not respond well to control attempts that are typical of parent-child relationships. Especially in the clearly adult arena of mating, adult tools of influence (preference and persuasion) will be more effective than traditional forms of parental control (prohibitions and punishments). Although the experience of the Montague and Capulet families is an extreme example, heavy-handed restrictions on a young romantic alliance may well turn it clandestine, torrid, and sad. A full description of the Colorado couples study can be found in Driscoll et al. (1972). 8. See Mazis (1975) and Mazis et al. (1973) for formal reports of the phosphate study. 9. For evidence, see Ashmore et al. (1971), Wicklund and Brehm (1974), Worchel and Arnold (1973), Worchel et al. (1975), and Worchel (1991). 10. The Purdue study was done by Zellinger et al. (1974). Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 223 11. The University of Chicago jury experiment on inadmissible evidence was reported by Broeder (1959). 12. The initial statements of commodity theory appeared in Brock (1968) and Fromkin and Brock (1971). For an updated statement, see Brock and Bannon (1992). 13. For ethical reasons, the information provided to the customers was always true. There was an impending beef shortage and this news had, indeed, come to the company through its exclusive sources. See Knishinsky (1982) for full details of the project. 14. Worchel et al. (1975). 15. See Davies (1962, 1969). 16. See Lytton (1979), and Rosenthal and Robertson (1959). 17. The quote comes from MacKenzie (1974). EPILOGUE (PAGES 273–280) 1. For evidence of such perceptual and decisional narrowing see Berkowitz (1967), Bodenhausen (1990), Cohen (1978), Easterbrook (1959), Gilbert and Osborn (1989), Hockey and Hamilton (1970), Mackworth (1965), Milgram (1970), and Tversky and Kahnemann (1974). 2. Quoted in the PBS-TV documentary The Information Society. BIBLIOGRAPHY Altheide, D. L., and J. M. Johnson. “Counting Souls: A Study of Counseling at Evangelical Crusades.” Pacific Sociological Review 20 (1977): 323–48. Ardry, R. The Social Contract. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Aronson, E. “The Jigsaw Route to Learning and Liking.” Psychology Today, Feb. 1975. ——, D. L. Bridgeman, and R. Geffner. “The Effects of a Cooperative Classroom Structure on Students’ Behavior and Attitudes.” In Social Psychology of Education: Theory and Research, edited by D. Bar-Tal and L. Saxe. New York: Halstead Press, 1978. ——. “Interdependent Interactions and Prosocial Behavior.” Journal of Research and Development in Education 12 (1978): 16–27. Aronson, E., and D. L. Linder. “Gain and Loss of Esteem as Determinants of Interpersonal Attractiveness.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1 (1965): 156–71. Aronson, E., and J. Mills. “The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59 (1959): 177–81. Aronson, E. et al. The Jigsaw Classroom. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978. Ashmore, R. D., V. Ramchandra, and R. A. Jones. “Censorship as an Attitude Change Induction.” Paper presented at Eastern Psychological Association meetings, New York, April 1971. Asimov, I. “The Miss America Pageant.” TV Guide, Aug. 30, 1975. Bandura, A., J. E. Grusec, and F. L. Menlove. “Vicarious Extinction of Avoidance Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5 (1967): 16–23. Bandura, A., and F. L. Menlove. “Factors Determining Vicarious Extinction of Avoidance Behavior Through Symbolic Modeling.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 8 (1968): 99–108. Benson, P. L., S. A. Karabenic, and R. M. Lerner. “Pretty Pleases: The 226 / Influence Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Race, Sex, and Receiving Help.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 12 (1976): 409–15. Benton, A. A., H. H. Kelley, and B. Liebling. “Effects of Extremity of Offers and Concession Rate on the Outcomes of Bargaining.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 73–83. Berkowitz, L., and R. W. Buck. “Impulsive Aggression: Reactivity to Aggressive Cues Under Emotional Arousal.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1967): 415–24. Berry, S. H., and D. E. Kanouse. “Physician Response to a Mailed Survey: An Experiment in Timing of Payment.” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 102–14. Bickman, L. “The Social Power of a Uniform.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 4 (1974): 47–61. Blass, T. “Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience Experiment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60 (1991): 398–413. Bodenhausen, G. V. “Stereotypes as Judgmental Heuristics: Evidence of Circadian Variations in Discrimination.” Psychological Science 1 (1990): 319–22. Bollen, K. A., and D. P. Phillips. “Imitative Suicides: A National Study of the Effects of Television News Stories.” American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 802–09. Bornstein, R. F. “Exposure and Affect.” Psychological Bulletin 106 (1989): 265–89. ——, D. R. Leone, and D. J. Galley. “The Generalizability of Subliminal Mere Exposure Effects.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (1987): 1070–79. Brehm, J. W. A Theory of Psychological Reactance. New York: Academic Press, 1966. Brehm, S. S. “Psychological Reactance and the Attractiveness of Unattainable Objects: Sex Differences in Children’s Responses to an Elimination of Freedom.” Sex Roles 7 (1981): 937–49. ——, and J. W. Brehm. Psychological Reactance. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Brehm, S. S., and M. Weintraub. “Physical Barriers and Psychological Reactance: Two-year-olds’ Responses to Threats to Freedom.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1977): 830–36. Brock, T. C. “Implications of Commodity Theory for Value Change.” In Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, edited by A. G. Greenwald, T. C. Brock, and T. M. Ostrom. New York: Academic Press, 1968. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 227 ——, and L. A. Brannon. “Liberalization of Commodity Theory.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 13 (1992): 135–43. Broeder, D. “The University of Chicago Jury Project.” Nebraska Law Review 38 (1959): 760–74. Brooks-Gunn, J., and M. Lewis. “The Development of Self-Knowledge.” In The Child, edited by C. B. Kopp and J. B. Krakow. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1982. Brownstein, R., and R. Katzev. “The Relative Effectiveness of Three Compliance Techniques in Eliciting Donations to a Cultural Organization.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 15 (1985): 564–74. Bruner, J. S., and C. C. Goodman. “Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 42 (1947): 33–44. Burger, J. M., and R. E. Petty. “The Low-Ball Compliance Technique: Task or Person Commitment?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40 (1981): 492–500. Burgess, T., and S. Sales. “Attitudinal Effects of ‘Mere Exposure’: A Reevaluation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 7 (1971): 461–72. Bushman, B. A. “The Effects of Apparel on Compliance.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 14 (1988): 459–67. Chaiken, S. “Communicator Physical Attractiveness and Persuasion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979): 1387–97. ——, and C. Stangor. “Attitudes and Attitude Change.” Annual Review of Psychology 38 (1987): 575–630. Choo, T. “Communicator Credibility and Communication Discrepancy as Determinants of Opinion Change.” Journal of Social Psychology 64 (1964): 1–20. Cialdini, R. B. “Full Cycle Social Psychology,” Applied Social Psychology Annual, Vol. 1, ed. L. Beckman. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980. ——, and K. Ascani. “Test of a Concession Procedure for Inducing Verbal, Behavioral, and Further Compliance with a Request to Give Blood.” Journal of Applied Psychology 61 (1976): 295–300. Cialdini, R. B., R. R. Reno, and C. A. Kallgren. “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58 (1990): 1015–26. Cialdini, R. B. et al. “Basking in Reflected Glory: Three (Football) Field Studies.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34 (1976): 366–75. 228 / Influence Cialdini, R. B. et al. “The Low-Ball Procedure for Producing Compliance: Commitment, Then Cost.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 463–76. Cialdini, R. B. et al. “Reciprocal Concessions Procedure for Inducing Compliance: The Door-in-the-Face Technique.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975): 206–15. ——. “Why Don’t Bystanders Help? Because of Ambiguity?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 392–400. Clark, M. S., J. R. Mills, and D. M. Corcoran. “Keeping Track of Needs and Inputs of Friends and Strangers.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 15 (1989): 533–42. Clark, R. D. III, and L. E. Word. “Where Is the Apathetic Bystander? Situational Characteristics of the Emergency.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29 (1974): 279–87. Cohen, M., and N. Davis. Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention. Philadelphia: G. F. Stickley, 1981. Cohen, S. “Environmental Load and the Allocation of Attention,” Advances in Environmental Psychology, Vol. 1, ed. A. Baum, J. E. Singer, and S. Valins. New York: Halstead Press, 1978. Cook, S. W. “Interpersonal and Attitudinal Outcomes in Cooperating Interracial Groups.” Journal of Research and Development in Education 12 (1978): 97–113. ——. “Toward a Psychology of Improving Justice.” Journal of Social Issues 46 (1990): 147–61. Crane, D. Invisible Colleges. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Darley, J. M., and B. Latané. “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 8 (1968): 377–83. Davies, J. C. “The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion.” In Violence in America, edited by H. D. Graham and T. R. Gurr. New York: Signet Books, 1969. ——. “Toward a Theory of Revolution.” American Sociological Review 27 (1962): 5–19. Deutsch, M., and H. B. Gerard, “A Study of Normative and Informational Social Influences upon Individual Judgment.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51 (1955): 629–36. De Vries, D. L., and R. E. Slavin. “Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT): Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 229 Review of Ten Classroom Experiments.” Journal of Research and Development in Education 12 (1978): 28–38. Dion, K. K. “Physical Attractiveness and Evaluation of Children’s Transgressions.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 207–13. Doob, A. N., and A. E. Gross. “Status of Frustrator as an Inhibitor of Horn-Honking Responses.” Journal of Social Psychology 76 (1968): 213–18. Drachman, D., A. deCarufel, and C. A. Inkso. “The Extra Credit Effect in Interpersonal Attraction.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 14 (1978): 458–67. Driscoll, R., K. E. Davies, and M. E. Lipetz. “Parental Interference and Romantic Love: The Romeo and Juliet Effect.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 1–10. Dukes, W. F., and W. Bevan. “Accentuation and Response Variability in the Perception of Personally Relevant Objects.” Journal of Personality 20 (1952): 457–65. Eagly, A. H., et al. “What Is Beautiful Is Good, but…: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype.” Psychological Bulletin 110 (1990): 109–28. Easterbrook, J. A. “The Effects of Emotion on Cue Utilization and the Organization of Behavior.” Psychological Review 66 (1959): 183–201. Efran, M. G., and E.W.J. Patterson. “The Politics of Appearance.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Toronto, 1976. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. “Der Fisch Aspidontus taeniatus als Machahmer des Putzers Labroides dimidiatus.” Zeitschrift fuer Tierpsychologie 16 (1959): 19–25. Emswiller, T., K. Deaux, and J. E. Willits. “Similarity, Sex, and Requests for Small Favors.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology (1971): 284–91. Evans, F. B. American Behavioral Scientist 6:7 (1963): 76–79. Festinger, L., H. W. Riecken, and S. Schachter. When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956. Fox, M. W. Concepts in Ethology: Animal and Human Behavior. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974. Freedman, J. L. “Long-term Behavioral Effects of Cognitive Dissonance.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 4 (1966): 195–203. ——, and S. C. Fraser. “Compliance Without Pressure: The Foot-in-theDoor Technique.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 4 (1966): 195–203. 230 / Influence Fromkin, H. L., and T. C. Brock. “A Commodity Theory Analysis of Persuasion.” Representative Research in Social Psychology 2 (1971): 47–57. Fuller, R.G.C., and A. Sheehy-Skeffinton. “Effects of Group Laughter on Responses to Humorous Materials: A Replication and Extension.” Psychological Reports 35 (1974): 531–34. George, W. H., S. J. Gournic, and M. P. McAfee “Perceptions of Postdrinking Female Sexuality.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 18 (1988): 1295–1317. Gerard, H. B., and G. C. Mathewson. “The Effects of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group: A Replication.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2 (1966): 278–87. Gerard, H. B., and N. Miller. School Desegregation. New York: Plenum, 1975. Gergen, K. et al. “Obligation, Donor Resources, and Reactions to Aid in Three Cultures.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975): 390–400. Gilbert, D. T., and R. E. Osborne. “Thinking Backward: Some Curable and Incurable Consequences of Cognitive Busyness.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57 (1989): 940–49. Gonzales, M. H., E. Aronson, and M. Costanzo. “Increasing the Effectiveness of Energy Auditors: A Field Experiment.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 18 (1988): 1046–66. Gonzales, M. H. et al. “Interactional Approach to Interpersonal Attraction.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44 (1983): 1192–97. Gordon, R. E., and K. Gordon. The Blight on the Ivy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Gould, M. S., and D. Schaffer. “The Impact of Suicide in Television Movies.” The New England Journal of Medicine 315 (1986): 690–94. Gouldner, A. W. “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement.” American Sociological Review 25 (1960): 161–78. Green, F. “The ‘Foot-in-the-Door’ Technique.” American Salesman 10 (1965): 14–16. Greenberg, M. S., and S. P. Shapiro. “Indebtedness: An Adverse Aspect of Asking for and Receiving Help.” Sociometry 34 (1971): 290–301. Greenwald, A. F. et al. “Increasing Voting Behavior by Asking People if They Expect to Vote.” Journal of Applied Psychology 72 (1987): 315–318. Grush, J. E. “Impact of Candidate Expenditures, Regionality, and Prior Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 231 Outcomes on the 1976 Democratic Presidential Primaries.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (1980): 337–47. ——, K. L. McKeough, and R. F. Ahlering. “Extrapolating Laboratory Exposure Experiments to Actual Political Elections.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 257–70. Hockey, G.R.J., and P. Hamilton. “Arousal and Information Selection in Short-term Memory.” Nature 226 (1970): 866–67. Hofling, C. K. et al. “An Experimental Study of Nurse-Physician Relationships.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 143 (1966): 171–80. Hölldobler, B. “Communication Between Ants and Their Guests.” Scientific American 198 (Jan.) (1971): 68–76. Hornaday, W. T. “The Extermination of the American Bison, with a Sketch of Its Discovery and Life History.” Smithsonian Report, 1887, Part II, 367–548. Hornstein, H. A., E. Fisch, and M. Holmes. “Influence of a Model’s Feeling About His Behavior and His Relevance as a Comparison Other on Observers’ Helping Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 10 (1968): 222–26. Howard, D. J. “The Influence of Verbal Responses to Common Greetings on Compliance Behavior: The Foot-in-the-Mouth Effect.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 20 (1990): 1185–96. Hunt, J. M., T.J. Domzal, and J. B. Kernan. “Causal Attribution and Persuasion: The Case of Disconfirmed Expectancies,” Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 9, ed. A. Mitchell. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Consumer Research, 1981. Johnson, D. W., and R. T. Johnson. Learning Together and Learning Alone. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. ——. “The Socialization and Achievement Crisis: Are Cooperative Learning Experiences the Solution?” Applied Social Psychology Annual, Vol. 4, ed. L. Bickman. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983. Jones, E. E., and V. E. Harris. “The Attribution of Attitudes.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 3 (1967): 1–24. Jones, E. E., and C. Wortman. Ingratiation: An Attributional Approach. Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Corp., 1973. Joule, R. V. “Tobacco Deprivation: The Foot-in-the-Door Technique Versus the Low-Ball Technique.” European Journal of Social Psychology 17 (1987): 361–65. Kelman, H. C., and V. L. Hamilton. Crimes of Obedience. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989. 232 / Influence Kelman, J., and L. Lawrence. “Assignment of Responsibility in the Case of Lt. Calley: Preliminary Report on a National Survey.” Journal of Social Issues 28:1 (1978). Kenrick, D. T., and S. E. Gutierres. “Contrast Effects in Judgments of Attractiveness: When Beauty Becomes a Social Problem.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (1980): 131–40. ——, and L. L. Goldberg. “Influence of Popular Erotica on Judgments of Strangers and Mates.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 25 (1989): 159–67. Kerr, N. L., and R. J. MacCoun. “The Effects of Jury Size and Polling Method on the Process and Product of Jury Deliberation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (1985): 349–63. Knishinsky, A. “The Effects of Scarcity of Material and Exclusivity of Information on Industrial Buyer Perceived Risk in Provoking a Purchase Decision.” Doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University, 1982. Knox, R. E., and J. A. Inkster. “Postdecisional Dissonance at Post Time.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 8 (1968): 319–23. Kraut, R. E. “Effects of Social Labeling on Giving to Charity.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 9 (1973): 551–62. Kulka, R. A., and J. R. Kessler. “Is Justice Really Blind? The Effect of Litigant Physical Attractiveness on Judicial Judgment.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 4 (1978): 336–81. Kunz, P. R., and M. Woolcott. “Season’s Greetings: From My Status to Yours.” Social Science Research, 5 (1976): 269–78. Kurtzburg, R. L., H. Safar, and N. Cavior. “Surgical and Social Rehabilitation of Adult Offenders.” Proceedings of the 76th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 3 (1968): 649–50. Lack, D. The Life of the Robin. London: Cambridge University Press, 1943. LaFrance, M. “Postural Mirroring and Intergroup Relations.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 11 (1985): 207–17. Langer, E. J. “Rethinking the Role of Thought in Social Interaction,” New Directions in Attribution Research, Vol. 2., ed., Harvey, Ickes, and Kidd. Potomac, Md.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978. ——. “Minding Matters,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 22, ed. L. Berkowitz. New York: Academic Press, 1989. Latané, B., and J. M. Darley. “Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 10 (1968): 215–21. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 233 ——. The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968. Latané, B., and J. Rodin. “A Lady in Distress: Inhibiting Effects of Friends and Strangers on Bystander Intervention.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 5 (1969): 189–202. Leakey, R., and R. Lewin. People of the Lake. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978. Lefkowitz, M., R. R. Blake, and J. S. Mouton. “Status Factors in Pedestrian Violation of Traffic Signals.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51 (1955): 704–06. Levine, L. E. “Mine: Self-Definition in Two-Year-Old Boys.” Developmental Psychology 19 (1983): 544–49. Lewis, M., and J. Brooks-Gunn. Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self. New York: Plenum, 1979. Liebert, R., and R. A. Baron. “Some Immediate Effects of Televised Violence on Children’s Behavior.” Developmental Psychology 6 (1972): 469–75. Lloyd, J. E. “Aggressive Mimicry in Photuris: Firefly Femme Fatales.” Science 149 (1965): 653–54. Locke, K. S., and L. M. Horowitz. “Satisfaction in Interpersonal Interactions as a Function of Similarity in Level of Dysphoria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58 (1990): 823–31. Lott, A. J., and B. E. Lott. “Group Cohesiveness as Interpersonal Attraction: A Review of Relationships with Antecedent and Consequent Variables.” Psychological Bulletin 64 (1965): 259–309. Lytton, J. “Correlates of Compliance and the Rudiments of Conscience in Two-Year-Old Boys.” Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science 9 (1979): 242–51. McGuinnies, E., and C. D. Ward. “Better Liked Than Right: Trustworthiness and Expertise as Factors in Credibility.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 6 (1980): 467–72. Mack, D., and D. Rainey. “Female Applicants’ Grooming and Personnel Selection.” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 5 (1990): 399–407. MacKenzie, B. “When Sober Executives Went on a Bidding Binge.” TV Guide, June 22, 1974. Mackworth, N. H. “Visual Noise Causes Tunnel Vision.” Psychonomic Science 3 (1965): 67–68. Macrae, N. “Multinational Business.” The Economist (London), Jan. 22, 1972. 234 / Influence Magruder, J. S. An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate. New York: Atheneum, 1974. Mahler, M. S., F. Pine, and A. Bergman. The Psychological Birth of the Infant. New York: Basic Books, 1975. Manis, M., S. D. Cornell, and J. C. Moore. “Transmission of Attitude Relevant Information Through a Communication Chain.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30 (1974): 81–94. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift, trans. I. G. Cunnison. London: Cohen and West, 1954. Mazis, M. B. “Antipollution Measures and Psychological Reactance Theory: A Field Experiment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975): 654–66. ——, R. B. Settle, and D. C. Leslie. “Elimination of Phosphate Detergents and Psychological Reactance.” Journal of Marketing Research 10 (1973): 390–95. Meeus, W.H.J., and Q.A.W. Raaijmakers. “Administrative Obedience: Carrying Out Orders to Use Psychological-Administrative Violence.” European Journal of Social Psychology 16 (1986): 311–24. Melamed, B. F. et al. “The Effects of Film Modeling on the Reduction of Anxiety-related Behaviors.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 46 (1978): 1357–74. Milgram, S. “Behavorial Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963): 371–78. ——. “The Experience of Living in Cities.” Science 13 (1970): 1461–68. ——. Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. ——, L. Bickman, and O. Berkowitz. “Note on the Drawing Power of Crowds of Different Size.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 13 (1969): 79–82. Milgram, S., and J. Sabini. “On Maintaining Norms: A Field Experiment in the Subway.” Unpublished manuscript, City University of New York, 1975. Miller, N. et al. “Similarity, Contrast, and Complementarity in Friendship Choice.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3 (1966): 3–12. Miller, R. L. et al. “Perceptual Contrast Versus Reciprocal Concession as Mediators of Induced Compliance.” Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science 8 (1976): 401–09. Mita, T. H., M. Dermer, and J. Knight. “Reversed Facial Images and the Mere Exposure Hypothesis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1977): 597–601. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 235 Monahan, F. Women in Crime. New York: Ives Washburn, 1941. Moriarty, T. “Crime, Commitment, and the Responsive Bystander.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31 (1975): 370–76. Murray, D. A. et al. “The Prevention of Cigarette Smoking in Children: A Comparison of Four Strategies.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 14 (1984): 274–88. Nosanchuk, T. A., and J. Lightstone. “Canned Laughter and Public and Private Conformity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 29 (1974): 153–56. O’Connor, R. D. “Relative Efficacy of Modeling, Shaping, and the Combined Procedures for Modification of Social Withdrawal.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 79 (1972): 327–34. Packard, V. The Hidden Persuaders. New York: D. McKay Co., 1957. Pallak, M. S., D. A. Cook, and J. J. Sullivan. “Commitment and Energy Conservation.” Applied Social Psychology Annual 1 (1980): 235–53. Peiponen, V. A. “Verhaltensstudien am blaukehlchen.” Ornis Fennica 37 (1960): 69–83. Pekkanen, J. The Best Doctors in the U.S. New York: Seaview Books, 1971. Pennebaker, J. W. et al. “Don’t the Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 5 (1979): 122–25. Phillips, D. P. “Airplane Accidents, Murder, and the Mass Media: Towards a Theory of Imitation and Suggestion.” Social Forces 58 (1980): 1001–24. ——. “The Impact of Mass Media Violence on U.S. Homicides.” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 560–68. ——. “The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect.” American Sociological Review 39 (1974): 340–54. ——. “Suicide, Motor Vehicle Fatalities, and the Mass Media: Evidence Toward a Theory of Suggestion.” American Journal of Sociology 84 (1979): 1150–74. ——, and L. L. Carstensen. “The Effect of Suicide Stories on Various Demographic Groups, 1968–1985.” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 18 (1988): 100–14. Razran, G.H.S. “Conditioned Response Changes in Rating and Appraising Sociopolitical Slogans.” Psychological Bulletin 37 (1940): 481. ——. “Conditioning Away Social Bias by the Luncheon Technique.” Psychological Bulletin 35 (1938): 693. 236 / Influence Regan, D. T. “Effects of a Favor and Liking on Compliance.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 7 (1971): 627–39. Rich, J. “Effects of Children’s Physical Attractiveness on Teachers’ Evaluations.” Journal of Educational Psychology 67 (1975): 599–609. Rosen, S., and A. Tesser. “On the Reluctance to Communicate Undesirable Information: The MUM Effect.” Sociometry 33 (1970): 253–63. Rosenfeld, P., J. G. Kennedy, and R. A. Giacalone. “Decision Making: A Demonstration of the Postdecision Dissonance Effect.” Journal of Social Psychology 126 (1986): 663–65. Rosenfield, D., and W. G. Stephan. “Intergroup Relations Among Children.” In Developmental Social Psychology, edited by S. Brehm, S. Kassin, and F. Gibbons. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Rosenthal, A. M. Thirty-eight Witnesses. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Rosenthal, M. J., E. Ni, and R. E. Robertson. “A Study of Mother-Child Relationships in the Emotional Disorders of Children.” Genetic Psychology Monographs 60 (1959): 65–116. Ross, A. S. “Effect of Increased Responsibility on Bystander Intervention: The Presence of Children.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 19 (1971): 306–10. Russell, D. “Leave It to the Merry Prankster, the Artful Dodger, and the Body Puncher,” TV Guide, Dec. 16, 1978. Sabin, R. The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964. Schein, E. “The Chinese Indoctrination Program for Prisoners of War: A Study of Attempted ‘Brainwashing.’” Psychiatry 19 (1956): 149–72. Schmidtke, A., and H. Hafner. “The Werther Effect After Television Films: New Evidence for an Old Hypothesis.” Psychological Medicine 18 (1988): 665–76. Schwarz, N. “Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Reduktion durch Freiheitswerderstellung.” Doctoral dissertation, Universität Mannheim, 1980. Schwarzwald, J., M. Raz, and M. Zvibel. “The Efficacy of the Door-inthe-Face Technique When Established Behavioral Customs Exist.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 9 (1979): 576–86. Segal, H. A. “Initial Psychiatric Findings of Recently Repatriated Prisoners of War.” American Journal of Psychiatry 61 (1954): 358–63. Settle, R. B., and L. L. Gorden. “Attribution Theory and Advertiser Credibility.” Journal of Marketing Research 11 (1974): 181–85. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 237 Sherif, M. et al. Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers’ Cave Experiment. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Institute of Intergroup Relations, 1961. Sherman, S. J. “On the Self-Erasing Nature of Errors of Prediction.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980): 211–21. Smith, G. H., and R. Engel. “Influence of a Female Model on Perceived Characteristics of an Automobile.” Proceedings of the 76th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 3 (1968): 681–82. Smith, M. M., and R.G.C. Fuller. “Effects of Group Laughter on Responses to Humorous Materials.” Psychological Reports 30 (1972): 132–34. Smith, R. E., and S. D. Hunt. “Attributional Processes in Promotional Situations.” Journal of Consumer Research 5 (1978): 149–58. Stephan, W. G. “School Desegregation: An Evaluation of Predictions Made in Brown v. Board of Education.” Psychological Bulletin 85 (1978): 217–38. Stewart, J. E., II. “Defendant’s Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Trials.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 10 (1980): 348–61. Styron, W. “A Farewell to Arms.” New York Review of Books 24 (1977): 3–4. Suedfeld, P., S. Bochner, and C. Matas. “Petitioner’s Attire and Petition Signing by Peace Demonstrators: A Field Experiment.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 1 (1971): 278–8. Swap, W. C. “Interpersonal Attraction and Repeated Exposure to Rewards and Punishers.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 3 (1977): 248–51. Tiger, L., and R. Fox. The Imperial Animal. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. Toffler, A. Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970. Tversky, A., and D. Kahnemann. “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185 (1974): 1124–31. Walker, M. G. “Organizational Type, Rites of Incorporation, and Group Solidarity: A Study of Fraternity Hell Week.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, 1967. West, C. K. The Social and Psychological Distortion of Information. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981. Whiting, J.W.M., R. Klukhohn, and A. Anthony. “The Function of Male Initiation Cermonies at Puberty.” In Readings in Social Psychology, 238 / Influence edited by E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, and E. L. Hartley. New York: Holt, 1958. Whitney, R. A., T. Hubin, and J. D. Murphy. The New Psychology of Persuasion and Motivation in Selling. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Wicklund, R. A., and J. C. Brehm. Cited in Wicklund, R. A., Freedom and Reactance. Potomac, Md.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1974. Wilson, P. R., “The Perceptual Distortion of Height as a Function of Ascribed Academic Status.” Journal of Social Psychology 74 (1968): 97–102. Wilson, T. D. et al. “Introspection, Attitude Change, and Behavior Consistency,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 22, ed. L. Berkowitz. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989. Wilson, W. R. “Feeling More Than We Can Know: Exposure Effects Without Learning.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979): 811–21. Woodside, A. G., and J. W. Davenport. “Effects of Salesman Similarity and Expertise on Consumer Purchasing Behavior.” Journal of Marketing Research 11 (1974): 198–202. Worchel, S. “Beyond a Commodity Theory Analysis of Censorship: When Abundance and Personalism Enhance Scarcity Effects.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 13 (1992): 79–90. ——, and S. E. Arnold. “The Effects of Censorship and the Attractiveness of the Censor on Attitude Change.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 9 (1973): 365–77. ——, and M. Baker. “The Effect of Censorship on Attitude Change: The Influence of Censor and Communicator Characteristics.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 5 (1975): 222–39. Worchel, S., J. Lee, and A. Adewole. “Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (1975): 906–14. Young, F. W. Initiation Ceremonies. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Zajonc, R. B. “The Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monographs 9:2 (part 2) (1968). ——. “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences.” American Psychologist 35 (1980): 151–75. ——, H. Markus, and W. R. Wilson. “Exposure Effects and Associative Learning.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 10 (1974): 248–63. Zellinger, D. A. et al. “A Commodity Theory Analysis of the Effects of Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 239 Age Restrictions on Pornographic Materials.” Institute for Research in the Behavioral, Economic and Management Sciences, Purdue University, Paper No. 440, 1974. Zweigenhaft, R. L. “Signature Size: A Key to Status Awareness.” Journal of Social Psychology 81 (1970): 49–54. INDEX Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader. Abrams, Robert, 243 advertising: age restrictions in, 252–253 association and, 191 average-person testimonials in, 140, 160–161 of claqueurs, 159 health authority in, 220, 221, 230–231 social proof and, 117, 140, 159, 160–161 toy, 65, 66 Advertising Age, 289n aggression: physical attractiveness and, 172 similarity and, 151 aid, see favors, gifts, and aid airline crashes, suicide and, 144–147, 149–151 Allen, Irwin, 264 Ambrose, Mike, 190 American Broadcasting Company (ABC), 264–265 American Cancer Society, 68 American Salesman, 72 Amway Corporation, 27–29, 79 Anabaptists, 286n animal behavior: authority and, 223, 290n competition and, 262–263 trigger features and, 2–4, 8–9, 273, 281n Anthony, A., 85–86 anthropology, rule of reciprocation in, 18 antiphosphate ordinance, psychological reactance and, 250–251 antismoking study, 142, 287n anxiety: dental, 142, 287n 242 / Influence swimming, 142–143 Ardry, R., 290n Arizona State University, 117, 200, 201 Armstrong, Thomas, 121–125, 127–128 Aronson, Elliot, 89–90, 178–179, 182–184 Asimov, Isaac, 197–198 association, see conditioning and association Assurance des Succès Dramatiques, L’, 158 auctions, movie, 264–265 Australia, size-status study in, 222–223 authority, 208–236 clothes and, 226–229 connotation and, 220–229 health and, 219–220, 221, 224–226, 290n Milgram study and, 208–215, 217, 218, 289n–290n obedience to, 213–218, 224–226 reader’s report on, 235–236 reciprocity and, 234 saying no and, 230–235 titles and, 222–226 trappings of, 228–229 automobile accidents: Chicago jury project and, 254–255 social proof and, 139–140, 144–147, 149–151, 162–163 suicide and, 144–147, 149–151 automobiles: authority and, 229, 235–236 unfair exchanges and, 34 automobile sales: advertising and, 191 authority and, 235–236 contrast principle and, 14 liking and, 170, 173, 174–175, 185, 205–206, 289n lowball tactic and, 98–99, 284n scarcity and, 268–270 similarity and, 173 autonomy, development of, 247 Bandura, Albert, 118 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 243 bank-examiner scheme, 227–228 bargaining, UCLA study of, 49–50 Bar-Ilan University, 40 Baron, Robert, 286n bartenders, tipping of, 117 beatings, initiations and, 85, 86–87 beautification petitions, 73–74 beef, scarcity of, 255–256, 292n beetles, rove, 282n “bereavement” account of suicide-crash connection, 144–145 Berry, Dave, 161 “Bertha, the,” 123 Best Doctors in the U.S., The (Pekkanen), 203–204 betting, 57–58, 164–166, 283n Bible, authority and, 217–218 Bickman, Leonard, 226–227 billboards, public-service, 72–74 blennies, saber-toothed, exploitative behavior of, 8–9, 282n blood donation, rejection-then-retreat strategy and, 48, 283n Bloomington, Ind., volunteers in, 68 bluethroats, trigger features and, 3, 281n Bollen, Kenneth, 148 Bonner, Tom, 190 boyfriends: commitment and consistency and, 58–59 Romeo and Juliet effect and, 247–250, 271, 291n–292n Boy Scouts, reciprocal concessions and, 36–39 breast-examination study, 239, 291n Brehm, Jack, 245, 291n Brock, Timothy, 255 Bronner, Frederick, 87 Brown, Jerry, 27 buffalo hunting, 163–164 BUG device, 28–29 business suits, authority and, 227 bystander aid, bystanders, 129–140 apathy theory of, 131–132 conditions that cause decrease in, 136 devictimizing yourself and, 136–140 244 / Influence in emergencies, 133–136, 138–139, 286n–287n Genovese case and, 129–132 Latané-Darley view of, 132–133 pluralistic ignorance and, 129, 132–135, 139, 162, 286n–287n single, 133–135 California, University of, at Los Angeles (UCLA), bargaining study at, 49–50, 283n Calley, William, 290n camp, contact and cooperation at, 179–182, 288n Canada: election study in, 171, 287n rejection-then-retreat tactic in, 48 Carlos study, 183–184, 288n Carter, Jimmy, 26 Castro, Fidel, 77 CBS Television, 266 celebrity endorsements, 192, 220 censorship: scarcity and, 252–256 TV, 40–41 charity: commitment and, 67–68 liking and, 169–170 self-image and, 77 social proof and, 117–118 uninvited gifts from, 33 Charlie’s Angels (TV show), 12 Chesterton, G. K., 237 Chevrolet sales, liking and, 170 Chicago, University of, Law School, 255–256, 292n child rearing: authority and, 216 personal responsibility and, 94–97 scarcity and, 261 children: aggressive, 172 coin sizes and, 223, 290n with dog phobia, 118 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 245 psychological reactance in, 246–247, 291n social proof and, 118–119, 285n–286n withdrawn, 119 Chinese prisoner-of-war (POW) camps, 70–71, 74–82 altered self-images and, 75–80 collaboration in, 70–71, 284n political essay contests of, 78–79, 92–93 written statements in, 76–82 Christmas, toy purchases and, 64–66 Christmas cards, reciprocation and, 17 church collections, 117 Cialdini, Richard, 268–270 circumcision, 85 claquing, 158–159 clothing, clothing stores: authority and, 226–229 contrast principle and, 13–14 “expensive = good” stereotype and, 10–11 similarity and, 173 trappings and, 228–229 Cohen, Michael, 219–220 coins, size vs. value of, 223, 290n collectibles, scarcity and, 239, 240 college students: authority influence and, 222–223, 229, 290n censorship and, 252–253 contrast principle used by, 15–16 in Deutsch-Gerard commitment experiment, 82–83 in perceptions-of-size experiments, 222–223, 290n rejection-then-retreat technique and, 39–40, 48 similarity and, 173 Colorado, study of couples in, 248, 292n Columbia University, wallet study of, 140–142 Columbus, Ohio, voter turnout in, 68 commitment, 57–58, 67–103 altered self-images and, 73–75 effective, 69–71 foot-in-the-door technique and, 71–74 initiations and, 85–92 246 / Influence inner choice and, 92–103 lowball tactic and, 98–103 public, 81–85 strategies for, 67–69 Tupperware party and, 167 written, 76–81, 85 Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), 43 commodity theory, 255–256, 292n competition, scarcity and, 262–266, 268–270 compliments, liking and, 174–176, 288n computers, 276 con artists, 221, 226 concessions, reciprocal, 36–51 see also rejection-then-retreat technique Concord (Calif.) Naval Weapons Station protest, 215–216, 217 conditioning and association: advertising and, 191 food and, 193–194 good news vs. bad news and, 194–195 liking and, 188–204, 289n mother’s role and, 190 politics and, 191–193 sports and, 195–203 weathermen and, 188–190 Congress, U.S., 25–26 consistency, 57–113, 283n–285n automatic, 60–67, 103, 105–111 being right vs., 60 exploitation of, 64–67, 98–100 “Knowing what I now know” question and, 110–111 psychological view of, 59–60 reader’s report on, 111–113 saying no and, 103–111 stomach signal and, 105–109 thinking vs., 61–64 as valued and adaptive, 60, 82 see also commitment Constitution, U.S., 256 Consumer Reports, 47, 283n Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 247 Consumers From Mars, 161 contact and cooperation, 176–187, 288n–289n automobile sales and, 185, 289n at camp, 179–182, 288n crime and, 185–187 politics and, 176–177, 288n race relations and, 177–185 contests: political essay, 78–79, 92–93 testimonial, 80 contrast principle, 11–16 physical attractiveness and, 12, 282n reciprocity rule and, 42–45 contributions, political, 26 cookie study, scarcity and, 256–257, 261–262, 267 cooperation: between fish, 8–9 see also contact and cooperation Cornell University, reciprocity experiment at, 20–21 correct behavior, social proof and, 116–119, 140, 155–156 Coué, Emile, 272 courtship behavior, 3, 8 Craig, Jim, 196 crime: consistency and, 59–60 contact and cooperation and, 185–187 physical attractiveness and, 171–172, 287n–288n see also murder cults: mass suicide and, 29–30, 152–156 social proof and, 119–128, 152–156, 286n Dade County antiphosphate ordinance, 250–251 Darley, John, 132–133, 286n–287n Darrow, Clarence, 167 Davies, James C., 257–259 Davis, Neil, 219–220 deadline tactic, 242–244 Dealin’ Dan, 205–206 248 / Influence Dean, John, 44 death threats, initiations and, 86, 88 Democratic National Committee, break-in at, 42–45 dental anxiety study, 142, 287n Deutsch, Morton, 82–83 Diller, Barry, 264–266 dime-request experiment, 173, 288n Disabled American Veterans, 30 discotheques, social proof and, 118 discount coupons, 7–8 dog-phobia treatment, 118, 285n door-to-door sales: consistency and, 105–109 rejection-then-retreat technique and, 41–42 scarcity and, 244 written commitments and, 79 driver safety, public-service billboards and, 72–74 Drubeck, Harry, 10 Drubeck, Sid, 10–11 earache, “rectal,” 219–220 education, contact and cooperation and, 177–179, 182–185 Edwards, John, 91 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1., 29 Einstein, Albert, 1 elections: candidate size and, 290n familiarity and, 176–177, 288n physical attractiveness and, 171, 287n electric shock: initiation and, 90, 284n in Milgram study, 209–215 Eliot, Sonny, 190 emergencies, bystander aid in, 133–136, 138–139, 286n–287n Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 17, 103, 105, 107, 285n endorsements, celebrity, 192, 220 energy conservation, 100–104, 284n Ethiopia, Mexican relief aid from, 19 ethology, 2–3, 8–9 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 249 evangelical preachers, 117 “expensive = good” stereotype, 5–6, 10–11 exploitation: of consistency, 64–67, 98–100 lowball tactic and, 98–100 of reciprocation, 31–36 of scarcity, 242–244 of weapons of influence, 8–11, 282n exposure to cold, initiations and, 85–86, 87 Faintich, Barry, 240 Faraday, Michael, 60 fathers, association and, 203 favors, gifts, and aid: asking for, 137–138, 139 physical attractiveness and, 172, 288n reciprocation and, 17–30, 52–53, 282n refusal of, 29–30, 52 unfair exchanges and, 33–36 unwanted, 30–33, 52 feelings, intellect vs., 110, 285n Festinger, Leon, 59, 121–128, 286n films: auctions and, 264–265 social proof and, 118–119, 285n–286n First Amendment, 252 fish: competition and, 262–264 cooperating, 8–9 fixed-action patterns, 3–4 flawed items, scarcity and, 239, 240 Florida, study of bystander aid in, 135, 287n food: association and, 193–194 authority and, 290n initiations and, 86, 87 foot-in-the-door technique, 71–74 Fox, M. W., 2 Fox, Robin, 18 250 / Influence Fraser, Scott, 72–74 fraternal societies, initiation ceremonies of, 86–90, 92, 93 freedom: autonomy and, 247 scarcity and, 245–251, 291n Freeman, Jonathan, 72–74, 94–96, 284n free samples, 27–29 Frenzer and Davis, 168 Fromkin, Howard, 255 fund-raising, food and, 193 Future Shock (Toffler), 275 gas prices, consistency and, 110–111 General Foods, 80 Genovese, Catherine, 129–132 Georgia, University of, 194–195 Gerard, Harold, 82–83 gifts, see favors, gifts, and aid Girard, Joe, 170, 174–175 Goethe, Johann von, 145 Good Cop/Bad Cop, 186–187 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 259–260 Gouldner, Alvin, 18, 282n Graham, Billy, 117, 285n Green, Donna, 250 Greenwald, Anthony, 68 greeting cards: liking and, 174–175 from strangers, 17, 282n Gregory, Bob, 189 Griffin, Merv, 204 Grush, Joseph, 288n Guardians, 121, 123 Gulban, Daniel, 242–243 gun law, psychological reactance and, 249, 250 Guyana, mass suicide in, 29–30, 152–156 halo effects, 171–172 Happy Days (TV show), 41 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 251 Hare Krishna Society, 22–24, 31–33 Harris, James, 77 Harvard University, 219 hazing, initiation ceremonies and, 85–93 health: authority and, 219–220, 221, 224–226, 290n scarcity and, 239 Health Care Financing Administration, U.S., 219, 225 Hell Week, 86–90, 92 help, see favors, gifts, and aid Help Week, 88, 89 herd, cult as, 156 Hidden Persuaders, The (Packard), 27 Hieder, Fritz, 59 hiring, physical attractiveness and, 171 Hobbes, Thomas, 216 home-fire-safety inspections, 53–55 home-insulation study, 238, 291n homicide, see murder Howard, Daniel, 68–69 “How are you feeling” technique, 68, 69 hunting, of buffalo, 163–164 image, see self-image inconsistency, as undesirable personality trait, 60, 82 indebtedness, feeling of: uninvited favors and, 30–33 unpleasant character of, 34–35 influence, weapons of, 1–16, 281n–282n exploitability of, 8–11, 282n force lent to user by, 11–16 reader’s report and, 15–16 see also authority; commitment; consistency; liking; reciprocation; scarcity; social proof information, 273–277 psychological reactance and, 251–256 technology and, 275–276 initiations, 85–93 Aronson-Mills study of, 89–90 252 / Influence of fraternal societies, 86–90, 92, 93 military, 90–92 tribal, 85–86, 90 insurance sales, similarity and, 174, 288n intellect, feelings vs., 110, 285n interpersonal relations: foolish consistency and, 109–110 lowball tactic and, 100–104, 284n reciprocity and, 29–30 see also boyfriends Iowa energy research, 100–104, 284n Israel, study of rejection-then-retreat technique in, 40, 283n jewelry, weapons of influence in sale of, 1–2, 5–6, 10 Johnson, Lyndon B., 25–26 Jolls, Tom, 190 Jones, Edward, 77 Jones, Jim, 29–30, 152–156 Jonestown mass suicide, 29–30, 152–156 juries, jury trials: censorship in, 253–255, 292n hung, 83 Kalogris, Michael, 86–87 Keating, Charles H., Jr., 26 Keech, Marian, 121, 123–127 Kellerman, Sally, 27 Kelley, G. Warren, 47 Kennedy, John F., 287n Kennesaw gun law, 249, 250 Kluckhohn, R., 85–86 Korean War, see Chinese prisoner-of-war (POW) camps labor negotiations, rejection-then-retreat technique in, 40 Langer, Ellen, 4–5, 281n Langford, David L., 189–190 Lansbury, Angela, 160–161 LaRue, Frederick, 43–45 Latané, Bibb, 132–133, 286n–287n Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 253 laughter, canned, 114–117, 158, 159, 285n Laverne and Shirley (TV show), 41 Layden, Frank, 198 Leakey, Richard, 18 legal system: physical attractiveness and, 171–172, 287n–288n see also juries, jury trials Leiden des jungen Werthers, Die (The Sorrows of Young Werther) (Goethe), 145 Liddy, G. Gordon, 43–45 Liebert, Robert, 286n liking, 167–207, 287n–289n automobile sales and, 170, 173, 174–175, 185, 205–206, 289n compliments and, 174–176, 288n conditioning, association and, 188–204, 289n contact, cooperation and, 176–187, 288n–289n Joe Girard formula and, 170 physical attractiveness and, 171–172, 287n–288n reader’s report on, 206–207 saying no and, 204–206 similarity and, 173–174, 288n Tupperware party and, 167–169 limited-number tactic, 239, 241–242 Lippmann, Walter, 114 loss, potential, as motivation, 238–239 lottery games, 284n Louie, Diane, 29–30 love, interference and, 248–249, 291n–292n lowball tactic, 98–104, 284n energy conservation and, 100–104, 284n luncheon technique, 193–194 Lussen, Frederick M., 130 lying, discouragement of, 96–97 McGovern, George, 43 MacKenzie, Bob, 265 Macrae, Norman, 276 Magruder, Jeb Stuart, 42–45 Marshall, Garry, 40–41 254 / Influence Mauss, Marcel, 31 MCI Calling Circle, 207 Medication Errors (Cohen and Davis), 219–220 meditation, transcendental (TM), 61–64 merchandising, reciprocity and, 27–29 Mesa temple, 237–238 Mexico, Ethiopia’s aid to, 19 Mihaly, Orestes J., 243 Milgram, Stanley, 208–215, 217, 218, 282n–283n, 289n–290n military, initiations and, 90–92 Mill, John Stuart, 274–275 Mills, Judson, 89–90 mimics, 8–9 minorities, see race relations “mirroring and matching” evidence, similarity and, 174, 288n mirror study, liking and, 176, 288n Mitchell, John, 43–45 models, association and, 191 monkeys, authority and, 290n Moriarty, Thomas, 59 Mormons, 237–238 Morrow, Lance, 260 mothers: negative associations and, 190 stage, 203 Multiple Sclerosis Association, 77, 284n murder: bystander inaction and, 129–132, 286n–287n similarity and, 151 Muskie, Edmund, 43 My Lai massacre, 290n Nazi Germany, 289n negligence-award study, 172, 288n Newcomb, Theodore, 59 New Orleans Saints, 199 news, good vs. bad, 194–195 New York, studies of bystander aid in, 133–135, 287n New York Times, 129–131 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 255 Nixon, Richard, 287n Nixon administration, Watergate and, 42–45 no, saying: authority and, 230–235 consistency and, 103–111 liking and, 204–206 reciprocation and, 51–55 scarcity and, 267–271 social proof and, 157–164 no-cost information offer, 53–55, 283n North Carolina, experiment on compliments in, 176 North Carolina, University of, 253 nurses, authority and, 219–220, 224–226, 290n obligation, reciprocation and, 17–19, 21, 31, 33–37, 53 O’Brien, Lawrence, 43, 45 O’Connor, Robert, 119 Ohio State University, 87 Olympics, association and, 191, 196, 201, 289n opera, claquing and, 158–159 Packard, Vance, 27 Pallak, Michael, 100–103, 284n participant observation method, social proof and, 119–128 parties, Tupperware, 167–169, 194 Pavlov, Ivan, 193–194 Pekkanen, John, 203–204 Pennsylvania, study of physical attractiveness of criminals in, 171–172, 288n People’s Temple, Jonestown mass suicide and, 29–30, 152–156 perceptions of size, authority and, 222–224, 290n perceptual contrast principle, 11–16, 282n reciprocity rule and, 42–45 persuasion study, liking and, 172, 288n pest-exterminator companies, 283n petitions, signing of: altered self-image and, 73–74 similarity and, 173, 288n Philadelphia Phillies, 202 256 / Influence Phillips, David, 145–149, 151–152 phobias, social proof and, 118 Photuris, 8, 282n physical attractiveness: association and, 191 contrast principle and, 12, 282n liking and, 171–172, 191, 287n–288n Pittsburgh, University of, 35, 283n plastic surgery, rehabilitation vs., 287n–288n pluralistic ignorance phenomenon: bystander behavior and, 129, 132–135, 139, 162, 286n–287n Jonestown mass suicide and, 155–156 politics: association principle and, 191–193 censorship and, 252 familiarity and, 176–177, 288n physical attractiveness and, 171, 287n POW essay contests and, 78–79, 92–93 reciprocity and, 24–27 scarcity and, 257–261 Porcher (opera-house habitué), 158–159 Poseidon Adventure, The (movie), 264–266 praise, liking and, 174–176, 288n prisoner-of-war camps, see Chinese prisoner-of-war (POW) camps prize fights, homicide rates and, 151 Procter & Gamble, 80 psychological reactance: censorship and, 251–255 in children, 246–247, 291n Dade County antiphosphate ordinance and, 251–252 free choice and, 245–252 information restrictions and, 252–257 Kennesaw gun law and, 249, 251 Romeo and Juliet effect and, 247–250, 272, 291n–292n scarcity and, 244–257 public-service billboards, 72–74 punishment: child rearing and, 94–96 initiations and, 86, 87–88 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 257 in Milgram study, 208–211 Purdue University study, 253–254, 292n Pyne, Joe, 273–274 race relations: contact-cooperation approach to, 177–185 scarcity and, 259 racetracks, betting behavior at, 57–58, 164–166, 283n raffle tickets, reciprocation and, 20–21, 31, 34 Razran, Gregory, 193–194 real estate, contrast principle and, 14 reasons, providing: automatic compliance and, 4–5 child rearing and, 96–97 reciprocation, 17–56, 282n–283n authority and, 234 concessions and, 36–51; see also rejection-then-retreat technique exploitation of, 33–36 fund-raising dinners and, 193 obligation and, 17–19, 21, 31, 33–36, 53 power of, 21–30 prevention of repayment and, 35, 283n reader’s report and, 55–56 saying no and, 51–56 Tupperware parties and, 167 unfair exchanges and, 33–36 uninvited debts and, 30–33 violation of, 19–20, 35 “rectal earache,” 219–220 Regan, Dennis, 20–21, 23, 31, 34 rehabilitation, plastic surgery vs., 287n–288n rejection-then-retreat technique, 36–51, 283n Israeli study of, 40, 283n perceptual contrast rule and, 42–45 responsibility and, 50 satisfaction and, 50–51 victim reactions and, 47–48 religion: authority and, 217 258 / Influence social proof and, 119–128, 286n responsibility: bystander aid and, 132, 136, 138 commitment and, 92–97 rejection-then-retreat tactic and, 50 restaurants, tipping in, 232–235 revolution, scarcity and, 257, 259 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 61 Riecken, Henry, 121–128, 286n Robert, Cavett, 118 robins, trigger features and, 3, 281n robot study, 94–96, 284n Romeo and Juliet effect, 247–250, 271, 291n–292n Rosenthal, A. M., 129–132 Rosten, Leo, 10 Russell, Dick, 40–41 Ryan, Leo J., 152 Sabin, Robert, 158 Sabini, John, 282n–283n sales agreements, customer’s filling out of, 79–80 Sales Management, 47 sales operations and strategies: commitment and, 71–72 commitment to goals as, 79 liking and, 167–169, 172–175, 185, 205–207, 289n lowball tactic and, 98–99 rejection-then-retreat technique and, 41–42 scarcity and, 239–244, 255–256, 262, 263 social proof and, 118 see also automobile sales; door-to-door sales Sananda, 121, 123 Sanka coffee ad, 220, 221 satisfaction, rejection-then-retreat tactic and, 50–51 Sauton (opera-house habitué), 158–159 scarcity, 237–271, 291n–292n collectibles and, 239, 240 competition and, 262–266, 268–270 deadline tactic and, 242–244 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 259 experiencing vs. possessing and, 267–268 free choice and, 245–251, 291n limited-number tactic and, 239, 241–242 optimal conditions and, 256–266 psychological reactance and, 244–256; see also psychological reactance reader’s report on, 250, 271 sales and, 239–244, 255–256, 262, 263 saying no and, 266–270 shortcuts and, 244–245, 291n violence and political turmoil and, 257–261 Schachter, Stanley, 121–128, 286n Schein, Edgar, 70–71, 76, 284n school desegregation: liking and, 177–179, 182–185 scarcity and, 258 Segal, Henry, 75 Self, William, 264 self-image: altering of, 73–75 association and, 201, 203 behavior and, 75–76 thoughts of others as factor in, 77 “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 103, 105, 285n sex, censorship and, 252–253 sexual obligation, 35–36, 283n Shakespeare, William, 188, 253, 289n Shaklee Corporation, 169 Sherif, Muzafer, 180–182, 288n Sherman, Steven J., 67–68 similarity: homicides and, 151 liking and, 173–174, 288n social proof and, 140–156 suicide and, 144–156 wallet study and, 140–142, 149, 287n size, perceptions of, authority and, 222–224 smoking: psychological reactance and, 249 quitting, 84–85 260 / Influence “social conditions” interpretation of suicide-crash connection, 144, 145 social proof, 114–166, 278–279, 285n–287n advertising and, 117, 140, 159, 160–161 as automatic-pilot device, 157, 159–160, 163 automobile accidents and, 139–140, 144–147, 149–151, 162–163 bystander behavior and, see bystander aid, bystanders canned laughter and, 114–117, 158, 159, 285n claquing and, 158–159 correct behavior and, 116–119, 140, 155–156 cults and, 119–128, 152–156, 286n falsified social evidence and, 158–162 influence of number of others and, 118, 285n pluralistic ignorance and, 129, 132–135, 139, 155–156, 162, 286n–287n reader’s report on, 164–166 religious movements and, 119–128 saying no and, 157–164 similarity and, 140–156; see also similarity Tupperware parties and, 167–168 uncertainty and, 128–140, 153–154, 156 Sorrows of Young Werther, The (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) (Goethe), 145 Southern California, University of (USC), 87, 88 Soviet Union, scarcity and, 259–260 sports, association and, 195–203 stage mothers, 203 standard solicitation approach, 69 status: clothing and, 229 size and, 222–224, 290n see also authority stereotypes, 7, 9 “expensive = good,” 5–6, 10–11 Stevenson, McLean, 174 Storke, Bill, 264 Styron, William, 91 subway experiment, 283n success, association and, 198–204 suicide: auto and plane accidents and, 144–147, 149–151 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 261 Jonestown mass, 29–30, 152–156 similarity and, 144–156 Werther effect and, 145–147 Supreme Court, U.S., 258 surgery, plastic, 287n–288n surprise, compliance and, 32, 282n–283n Swanson, Richard, 87, 88 swimming anxiety, 142–143 technology, information and, 275–276 teenagers: psychological reactance in, 247–250, 291n–292n suicides of, 148 telephone solicitations: charitable, 68–69 liking and, 206–207 television: canned laughter on, 114–117, 285n Nixon-Kennedy debates on, 287n rejection-then-retreat technique and, 40–41 suicide and, 148 violence on, 285n–286n “terrible twos,” 246–247, 291n territorial defense, 3 thinking, consistency vs., 61–64 thirst, initiation and, 86, 87 Thonga, initiation ceremony of, 85–86, 90 Thorne, Avril, 200 threat, commitment and, 94–96 Tiananmen Square massacre, 93 Tiger, Lionel, 18 Time, 276 Tinker, Grant, 40–41 tips, increasing the size of, 117, 232–235 titles, 222–226 Toffler, Alvin, 275 Toronto, study of bystander aid in, 135, 287n toy manufacturers, consistency and, 64–67 transcendental meditation (TM), consistency and, 61–64 trappings, of authority, 228–229 262 / Influence tribal behavior: buffalo hunting and, 163–164 initiations and, 85–86, 90 trigger features, 2–5, 7, 273, 281n mimicking of, 8–9 Tupperware Home Parties Corporation, 168 Tupperware parties, 167–169, 194 turkey experiment, 2–3, 4, 116–117, 273, 281n TV Guide, 40–41, 283n uncertainty, social proof and, 128–140, 153–154, 156 uniforms, authority and, 226–227 urban environments, bystander aid discouraged by, 136 van Kampen, Jakob, 286n “Vartan Bhanji,” 282n Vinci, Leonardo da, 57 violence: security and, 257–261 televised, 285n–286n Virgil, 208 volunteer work: commitment and, 67–68 rejection-then-retreat tactic and, 39–40, 48 voter turnout, 68 wallet study, 140–142, 149, 287n Watergate break-in, 42–45 water temperature, contrast principle and, 12 weathermen, association and, 188–190 weight reduction, commitment to, 83–84 Werther effect, 145–147 West, Louis Jolyon, 153 Whitaker, Chuck, 190 Whitehead, Alfred North, 7 Whiting, J.W.M., 85–86 Willson, S. Brian, 215–216, 217 Wilson, Lee Alexis, 286n–287n withdrawn children, social proof and, 119 women, reciprocation and, 35–36 Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 263 Wood, Robert, 265, 266 Worchel, Stephen, 256 World War I, 29 World War II, 70 Wriston, Walter, 275 written testaments: publicizing of, 81–82 self-image and, 76–80 Xerox study, 4–5, 281n Yale University, 211 Young, Robert, 220, 221, 230–231 Zappa, Frank, 272–273 Zweigenhaft, Richard, 290n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An array of people deserve and have my appreciation for their aid in making this book possible. Several of my academic colleagues read and provided perceptive comments on the entire manuscript in its initial draft form, greatly strengthening the subsequent version. They are Gus Levine, Doug Kenrick, Art Beaman, and Mark Zanna. In addition, the first draft was read by a few family members and friends—Richard and Gloria Cialdini, Bobette Gorden, and Ted Hall—who offered not only much-needed emotional support but insightful substantive commentary as well. A second, larger group provided helpful suggestions for selected chapters or groups of chapters: Todd Anderson, Sandy Braver, Catherine Chambers, Judy Cialdini, Nancy Eisenberg, Larry Ettkin, Joanne Gersten, Jeff Goldstein, Betsy Hans, Valerie Hans, Joe Hepworth, Holly Hunt, Ann Inskeep, Barry Leshowitz, Darwyn Linder, Debbie Littler, John Mowen, Igor Pavlov, Janis Posner, Trish Puryear, Marilyn Rall, John Reich, Peter Reingen, Diane Ruble, Phyllis Sensenig, Roman Sherman, and Henry Wellman. Certain people were instrumental at the beginning stages. John Staley was the first publishing professional to recognize the project’s potential. Jim Sherman, Al Goethals, John Keating, and Dan Wegner provided early, positive reviews that encouraged author and editors alike. William Morrow and Company’s then president, Larry Hughes, sent a small but enthusiastic note that fortified me importantly for the task that lay ahead. Last and hardly least, Maria Guarnaschelli believed with me from the start in the book I wanted to write. It is to her editorial credit that the finished product remains that book, much improved. For her insightful direction and her potent efforts in the book’s behalf, I am most grateful. In addition, I would be remiss if I did not recognize the skill and efficiency of Sally Carney at manuscript preparation and the sound counsel of my attorney, Robert Brandes. Finally, throughout the project, no one was more on my side than Bobette Gorden, who lived every word with me. About the Author Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D. holds dual appointments at Arizona State Univercity. He is a W. P. Carey Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Regents’ Professor of Psychology, and has been named Distinguished Graduate Research Professor. Dr. Cialdini is also president of INFLUENCE AT WORK (www.influenceatwork.com), an international training, speaking and consulting company based on his groundbreaking body of research on the ethical business applications of the science of influence. 480-967-6070. Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author. Copyright Some images not available for electronic edition. INFLUENCE. Copyright © 1984, 1994, 2007 by Robert Cialdini. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-189990-4 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com