Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Book Notes

Robert B. Cialdini

Published: 2006

Persuasion vs. Coercion

Persuasion:

• communicators try to convince other people to change their own attitudes/behaviours about an issue through transmission of message with free choice
• people must change their own attitudes based on arguments or baits from persuasive messages

Coercion:

• Freedom of choice is removed

Click-Whirr

Fixed-Action Patterns

• all of us have it
• are initiated with trigger features

Why We Have It

• automatic, fixed-action pattern of response is efficient most of the time
• though trigger features can cause us to activate it at the wrong time

Weapon of Influence #1: Reciprocity

Rule of reciprocation: we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.

• there is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule
• a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for division of labour, exchange of…