Richard R RamosRichard R. Ramos. Founder of Parents on a Mission,Youth on a Mission, and Latino Coalition for Community Leadership

Why Keeping Promises Is Harder Than You Think – A Powerful Story!

27 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

Richard R. Ramos shares a story from Robert Cialdini's Influence about a father who promised his son a toy. A friend convinces him to keep the promise rather than break it, because backing out teaches the child that promises don't matter. Ramos uses it to explain Cialdini's consistency principle and why keeping your word shapes how people trust you.

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And his friend said, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. He said, did you promise your son that you were going to buy him the toy? And he said, yeah. He said, well, if you take it back now, your son's not going to understand why you're doing that. And all he's going to remember is that you didn't keep your promise. And so he, Cialdini, he tells this story in the book, you know, that I told you about. That, that I got these principles from. And so he, you know, wants to be consistent, wants to keep his commitment, he wants to keep his word, he wants to keep his promise to his son. And so he changed his mind and he didn't take the toy back. And that's just one way. In the book, in, in— where do I have it? Here somewhere. Influence the psychology of persuasion