The key ideas

Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini, 2021

The jewelry wouldn't sell at its normal price, but it sold out when it was mistakenly priced at double. A social psychologist spent years studying salespeople, advertisers, and fundraisers and described the principles that trigger our agreement almost automatically. This book teaches you to spot them before they work on you.

Who it is for

For anyone who buys, sells, negotiates, and wants to understand why they sometimes say “yes” faster than they can think.

We most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like.

What the book is about

A friend of Robert Cialdini's owned a jewelry store in Arizona. A batch of turquoise just wouldn't sell. Before leaving town, the owner left the saleswoman a note: sell everything in this display case at half price. The saleswoman read it as “at double the price.” When the owner came back, the turquoise was gone.

Why were customers more willing to buy the same stones once they cost more? The answer to that question is what this book is about.

Cialdini is a social psychologist. Besides running experiments, he spent several years watching, from the inside, the people who make a living from getting a yes: he trained alongside salespeople, advertisers, and fundraisers. That's how he came to describe the principles that often nudge us to say “yes.” In the new edition, he added a seventh to the original six.

If you're opening a book like this, you're curious about how your own decisions work. That alone is good protection.

Idea 1. The cheep that switches on caring

A mother turkey cares for her chicks by recognizing them from a single sound: their “cheep-cheep.” Researchers brought a stuffed polecat, her natural enemy, up to her, and she attacked it furiously. But if a recording of the cheep played inside the stuffed polecat, the turkey took it under her wing. When the recording was switched off, she attacked again.

Cialdini believes people have mental shortcuts too: “expensive means good,” “the expert knows best.” Most of the time they're useful: the world is too complex to weigh everything every time. In the turquoise story, the high price seems to have worked as just such a “cheep.”

A shelf tag says “bestseller,” and your hand reaches for the product before you've read the ingredients.

Quick rules save effort and usually don't let us down. The weak spot appears when someone deliberately sends the signal that triggers such a rule.

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About the author

Robert Cialdini is an American social psychologist and professor emeritus at Arizona State University. For decades he has studied how people persuade one another and why they say yes.

All books by this author: Robert Cialdini

Terms from the book

  • social proof
  • Unity
  • Rule of reciprocation: The tendency to try to repay what we've received: a gift, a favor, or a concession. According to Cialdini, it is one of the most widespread rules in human societies.
  • Rejection-then-retreat: A technique in which a large request comes first and, after it is turned down, a smaller one follows. The smaller request can feel like a concession you want to return.
  • Reactance: A reaction to having our freedom of choice limited: what is forbidden or slipping away can become more desirable.

All terms

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