Influence Science and Practice: Encyclopedia - Influence Science and Practice

Influence Science and Practice

Influence Science and Practice (ISBN 0321188950) is a Psychology book examining the key ways people can be influenced by "Compliance Professionals". The book's author is Robert B. Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. The key premise of the book is that, in a complex world, where people are overloaded with more information than they can deal with, people fall back on a decision making approach based on generalizations. These generalizitions developed because they usually allow us to act in a correct manner with a limited amount of thought. However, they can be exploited, and effectively turned into weapons, by those who know them to influence others in to acting certain ways.

The findings in the book are backed up by numerous Empirical studies conducted in the fields of Psychology, Marketing, Economics, Anthropology and Social Science.

The author also worked undercover in many Compliance fields such as car sales and door-to-door sales.

The key "Weapons of Influence" outlined are:

Influence Science and Practice - Reciprocation

People generally feel obliged to return favours offered to them. This trait is embodied in all human cultures, and is one of the human characteristics that allow us to live as a society.

Compliance Professionals often play on this trait by offering a small gift to potential customers. Studies have shown that even if the gift is unwanted, it will influence the recipient to reciprocate.

A variation on this theme is to ask for a particularly big favour. When this is turned down, a smaller favour is asked for. This is likely to be successful because a concession on one side (the downscaling of the favour) will be reciprocated by a consession by the other party (agreement to the smaller favour).

Reciprocation is an application of Reciprocity (social psychology).

Influence Science and Practice - Commitment and Consistency

People have a general desire to appear consistent in their behaviour. People generally also value consistency in others.

Compliance Professionals can exploit our desire to be consistent by having someone make an initial, often small, commitment. Requests can then be made that are in keeping with this initial commitment.

People also have a strong desire to stand by commitments that they have made, by providing further justification and reasons for supporting them. This pattern of behaviour toward or resulting in a negative outcome is called Escalation of commitment.

Influence Science and Practice - Social Proof

People generally look to other people similar to themselves when making decisions. This is particularly noticeable in situations of uncertainty or ambiguity.

This trait has led Compliance Professionals to provide fake information on what others are doing. Examples of this are staged interviews on television adverts or "infomercials".

Influence Science and Practice - Liking

People are more likely to agree to offers from people that they like.

There are several factors that can influence people to like some people more than others:

• One major factor is physical attractiveness. This can give people a "halo" effect whereby others are more likely to trust them, and think of them as smarter and more talented.

• People tend to like people who are most like themselves.

• People tend to like those who pay them compliments.

• People who they are forced to cooperate with to achieve a common goal.

• People tend to like people that make them laugh. For example, think about how many lectures start with a joke.

Any one of the above methods may not help influence people, but used in combination, their effects can be magnified.

Influence Science and Practice - Authority

The studies of Stanley Milgram provide some of the most stunning insights into how influencial authority can be over others.

People often act in an automated fashion to commands from authority, even if their instincts suggest the commands should not be followed.

Influence Science and Practice - Scarcity

People tend to want things as they become less available. This has led advertisers to promote goods as "Limited Availability", or "Short time only".

It has also been shown that when information is restricted (such as through Censorship), people want the information more, and will hold that information in higher regard.

Scarce items are also given a higher value when they were once in high supply, but have now become scarce.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Influence Science and Practice", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki