Influence

Sorry, could not find a Cover to image and I am too lazy to use my camera and post that picture of the books cover jacket.
Influence (How and Why People Agree To Things), by Robert B. Cialdini, PH.D, William Morrow & Co., N.Y. 1984, 268 Pages.

The author in 1984 was a full professor of psychology at Arizona State University. This book is well documented and easily read by laymen such as myself. I also have his most recent book on order: “Influence: science & practice” C2009. I probably could have skipped this book and went straight to the most recent edition, but—I was half through this book (on my way to Damascus?) when I became aware. Anyway, that book is now on order.

Cialdini’s discovery is that there are six fundamental patterns underlying the thousands of individual tactics that successful persuaders use to get us to say yes. These six items are six of the eight chapters of the book: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Each of these items (principles) is discussed in terms of their function in the society and in terms of how their force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, assent, etc. 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.

Pg. 30: Reciprocation: the sense of indebtedness we get when given something (wanted or not) is pervasive throughout human culture. There is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule. It may be that this web of indebtedness began as a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for the division of labor. The Hare Krishnia sect took advantage of this principle when pushing their “gifts of flowers” on people and then asking for donations.

Pg. 66: Commitment and consistency: Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision. During the Korean War it is estimated that nearly all American prisoners in the Chinese camps collaborated with the enemy in one form or another by the Chinese expert use of this principle. The prisoners were desperate to get word to their families that they were alive so were easily enticed into making statements so mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential (e.g. “The U.S. is not perfect.”). But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. The major intent of the Chinese was not simply to extract information from their prisoners. It was to indoctrinate them, to change their attitudes and perceptions of themselves, of their political system, of their country’s role in the war, and of communism. And there is evidence that the program often worked alarmingly well.

Social proof: 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 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. In March of 1964 a woman in her late twenties was killed in Queens, a borough of New York City. The attack went on for over a half hour and thirty-eight citizens in Queens watched the killer stalk and stab this woman in three separate attacks. At the time, the newspapers attributed the behavior of the witnesses as not caring enough to get involved. Later studies found these people were no different than any of us. Many of them thought someone else had called, many were not sure just what was going on, etc.

Pg. 138: Your best strategy when in need of emergency help is to reduce the uncertainties of those around you concerning your condition and their responsibilities. Be as precise as possible about your need for aid. Request assistance from a single individual in a group and assign a task: “Call an ambulance.”. Do not try to engage the group as a whole or the consequent pluralistic ignorance effect might well cause them to view your situation as a nonemenrgency.

Pg. 163: Liking: Anybody familiar with the workings of a Tupperware party will recognize the use of the various weapons of influence examined so far: reciprocity (to start, games are played and prizes won by the partygoers; anyone who doesn’t win a prize gets to reach into a grab bag for hers so that everyone has received a gift from the Tupperware Lady before the buying begins), commitment (each participant is urged to describe publicly the uses and benefits she has found in the Tupperware she already owns), social proof (once the buying begins, each purchase builds the idea that other, similar people want the product; therefore, it must be good).

Attractive defendants are twice as likely to avoid jail as the unattractive ones. Good looking people enjoy an enormous social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently helped, and seen as possessing better personality traits and intellectual capacities. Also, we tend to like people who are similar to us. This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background, or life-style. We also tend to believe praise (compliments) and to like those who provide it, oftentimes when it is clearly false.

Pg. 218: Authority: An example of unthinking response to authority is illustrated by a study made when twenty-two separate nurses’ stations on various surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric wards, were called by a researcher in which he identified himself as a hospital physican and directed the answering nurse to give twenty milligrams of a drug (Astrogen) to a specific ward patient. There were four excellent reasons for a nurse’s caution in response to this order: (1) The prescription was transmitted by phone, in direct violation of hospital policy. (2) The medication itself was unauthorized; Astrogen had not been cleared for use nor placed on the ward stock list. (3) The prescribed dosage was obviously and dangerously excessive. The medication containers clearly stated that the “maximum daily dose” was only ten milligrams, half of what had been ordered. (4) The directive was given by a man the nurse had never met, seen, or even talked with before on the phone. Yet, in 95 percent of the instances, the nurses went straightway to the ward medicine cabinet, where they secured the ordered dosage and started for the patient’s room to administer it. It seems that, in the face of a physician’s directives, the nurses unhooked their “professional intelligences.”

Trappings of authority: diplomas, cars, clothes, fame in most anything, etc.

Scarcity: Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited. Notice how people will almost always answer a phone no matter how many people they are in a discussion with. They do not want to miss that rare opportunity the phone call may represent. When I was a beginning supervisor, we were required to line-up with the general supervisor prior to the shift. Rather than get in line, I would go to a phone and call him. I did not over-do this but in each instance “the last shall be first”, occurred.

How about selling your used car by arranging to have all interested parties make an appointment—then give each of them the same time to show up.

Social scientist have determined that scarcity of a special kind is a primary cause of political turmoil and violence. The most prominent proponent of this argument is James C. Davies, who states that we are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions. Thus it is not the traditionally most downtrodden people—who have come to see their deprivation as part of the natural order of things—who are especially liable to revolt. Instead, revolutionaries are more likely to be those who have been given at least some taste of a better life. When the economic and social improvements they have experienced and come to expect suddenly become less available, they desire them more than ever and often rise up violently to secure them. Nowadays this makes me think of China, India, and Russia. Maybe Mexico, especially with the pandemic apparently griping Mexico City.