The Science of Influence

Thank you all so much. Thank you, Bob, for being here. I think, now my guess is, I first was introduced to Bob's work when I took Psych 101 and was assigned the book Influence. Now, just out of curiosity, how many people in this room have read Influence? It's a lot of hands. It's a lot of hands. Influence, and in fact, it is the only book, not only is it the only book I remember from Psych 101, I think it's pretty much the only book I remember from college. And it's a fantastic book, right? It's a book that teaches us why some tactics and some behaviors are more influential to others. But we're not actually here to talk about Influence today, because you have a new book that has come out since then. It just came out—

In September.

In September, so not even a year, Pre-Suasion. And so tell me, what is the difference between Influence, which has become a Bible for the e-commerce world, and Persuasion? What new thing did you have to say that you felt it was important to write?

That's a great question. I waited 30 years before I thought I had an idea big enough to match the impact that Influence had had. I didn't want to plant a bunch of bushes around the tree that Influence had become. To wait till I had an idea for another tree. And that didn't happen until the idea of influence came— of persuasion came along, which is as follows. Influence was all about what do you put into your message? How do you load your message so that people will resonate with it and want to agree and want to say yes.

Right?

Persuasion is about what you put in the moment before you deliver your message to make people open and receptive to it. There's a piece of persuasive real estate that has gone essentially untended in any systematic way. And it is the moment before we deliver our persuasive appeal.

And so give me an example of this. Like, what's an example of how I would set up the, groom the land before I actually make the appeal?

I'll give you the example that turned my head around. So Influence had been out there, more successful than I could have sensibly imagined. And I was happy with that. And one day there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find a man who was asking me to contribute to a cause. It was after-school programs for young children.

Okay.

He didn't show me any of the principles of influence in his message to me that would lend would lend themselves to a sale.

And this is a hard thing to be the guy who has to like get a donation from the guy who wrote Influence.

So he didn't—

should have brought his A-game, that's all I'm saying.

He didn't give me any credentials. He didn't show me authority. He didn't give me any evidence that other people in my neighborhood had been doing it. He didn't tell me that I had a limited opportunity. He didn't say there was scarcity involved. Those are all the things that that I would have said you build into your message. He didn't do any of those things. And I gave him more money than I normally give to legitimate charity organizations who come to my door, and I felt good about it when I closed the door.

So what had happened?

Yeah, and that's the question that I asked myself. Here's the thing.

Nothing worse than closing that door and saying, what the hell did I just do?

What happened?

I'm the expert.

What just happened there? He got me to say yes. I write books on getting people to say— and he did it for something that had nothing to do with what I claim is necessary.

So what was the secret?

He brought his 7-year-old daughter with him. Before he said a word, he had oriented me to children and children's issues and children's needs. And that's why I not only gave to him, I felt good about it. He brought to consciousness for me, he brought to priority for me, Children. It was an aspect of myself that truly resides in me, a concern for children. It just wasn't prominent until he made it focal in my consciousness, and then it guided my behavior.

And in that moment, are you aware of why you're writing that check or handing over that money? Are you saying to yourself, oh, I see the daughter? Or is it only once you close the door that it's It sort of hits you.

I was not aware of it until I stepped back and analyzed it because it was so out of keeping with everything I had been teaching. There was nothing inside his argument, inside his message, that should have gotten me to say yes at any high levels.

Right.

It was all what happened first.

And what I love about Persuasion, 'cause I've read it a couple times now, I read it actually when it came out, is that it, much like Influence, it actually has these principles, right? These kind of like scientific formulas. If you want to influence this way, you do X and Y and Z. And one of the stories that I love is the one about the FBI interrogator who's working with, and I can't remember the name of the, the Al-Qaeda terrorist. I mean, this is a guy who said, Adhaman al-Qaeda, he was a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, very proud of it. And this guy manages to get him to become an informant to the FBI. Tell us that story a little bit, because I think it's a fascinating case study.

Yeah, it's a guy who was actually the bodyguard of bin Laden for a long time and had been captured. He was in a prison in, Yemen, and nobody could get any access to his information. You would ask him a question, he replied with some screed against the West. And one of the FBI interrogators recognized that when they had these sessions, they weren't torture sessions, they were interrogation sessions, they would serve him tea and a little food. And he never ate the cookies. And the interrogator asked around and turns out that the man was diabetic. So the next time, before asking him any questions, they brought him a separate selection of low-sugar cookies, right? To recognize that he was a diet— they gave him something that was personalized to his situation. He gave up 7 of the 9 9/11 conspirators who flew into, who flew the the flights.

And it's interesting when you just tell that story, you say that this personalization is one of the most important elements of making that— setting up persuasion, making that gift something that makes me more open to your influence. But it's not just personalization, right? It's also— I think there were two other— what were the two?

Yes, it has to be meaningful. You have to give something that's meaningful, and you have to give something that's relatively unexpected. It's not part of what you understand to be the nature of things that you always get. You know, this pen here that you get? When I get a pen like this from one of your companies at a conference or in an exchange, you know where it goes? It goes in a drawer with 50 other pens. But one company put my name on the pen, not their name. It was personalized to me. Now it goes in my pocket, and every time I take it out, I see my name there, and I remember who gave it to me in a personalized, customized way to my situation.

Is it because the sense of surprise and personalization And meaningfulness, I think it's completely intuitive when you say it, right, that we've all gotten gifts like that, and we like the person who does it. And what's interesting, I remember from Influence, you talk about the Hare Krishnas. The Hare Krishnas, they are one of the most effective fundraising forces, 'cause they would force this flower upon you, and then they would ask you for a donation. But it feels manipulative. I hate getting that flower, but somebody giving me a gift that like, It seems like they actually spent some time thinking about it, and it's surprising. It's almost like my defense— I can't be suspicious. I feel bad being suspicious of it.

Exactly. Exactly right. No, and that's why this is so powerful. You don't even recognize that it's happening to you.

So what are the other— in the book, you talk about persuasion in different settings and in different types. Let's talk about the workplace, because if I'm trying to create a work culture where I want people to be more open to my guidance, to my leadership, what do I need in that environment that's gonna persuade them?

One thing you need is the sense of unity, a sense of togetherness, a sense of common goals and purposes, a sense of collaboration. And here's one thing that I learned from reading the research that we can do by changing a single word. Let's say we've got a new initiative, we've got a plan, we want support from someone who's very important to us, we want a collaborator or at least a supporter on this. And we will ask that individual, "Here's my draft, here's my blueprint. Can you give me your opinion on this, what you think of it?" It's a mistake. Because the research shows that when we ask someone for his or her opinion, that person takes a half step back from us psychologically and goes inside. That individual introspects and literally separates from us, creates a distance. If instead we change one word and instead of asking for an opinion, that person's opinion, we ask for that person's advice, on our plan. That individual takes a half step toward us psychologically. It invites partnership. The idea of advice is associated with collaboration and partnership and togetherness. And the research shows if we ask for advice instead of an opinion, we get more support for the idea. You know, there's a saying: when we ask for advice, we're usually looking for an accomplice. Right? Here's what the behavioral science would say. If we get that advice, we usually get that accomplice. And what better partner to have than someone who feels unitized with us, feels an accomplice on the project. That person is going to support it as a consequence.

[Speaker:ROBERT CIALDINI] And I want to go to questions. We will in a minute. Let me ask before we do, what about when I'm doing sales? Because you spend some time talking about not just sort of craft sales, but even the types of sales that all of us have to do. When I'm talking to someone outside of my group, and I'm trying to set up the environment to get them to be more open to my message, what do I do then?

[Speaker:ROBERT CIALDINI] So for example, we have a client that we've had difficulty with negotiating new contracts when we've been in that position, and we would always go to their offices We would go to the meeting room, we would get there early, and we would align ourselves on one side of the table. The other team would come in, align themselves on the other side of the table. It's the psychology of separation. We would have created a geography of opposition. So what I asked my team to do this time was to take every other seat. The other team came in, they were a little shocked, they said, "What are you doing?" But they didn't order us to the other side of the table, and they sat among us. Charles, we had the best negotiation I could have imagined.

And all because you think of how you were sitting?

There were multiple, There were multiple factors, and you can't always isolate it in a natural setting like that, but it was the only thing that was different between in the past and this one. We created a setting of unity, and people went from that to the next place.

And it's interesting, and this actually ties a little bit into I think what Ray was just talking about in the last panel, which is that we tend— there has been an explosion in social science on this topic, right? Priming behaviors, how our environment influences us. We've all read the books about it, we've all heard about it, and as we're reading articles. But what's interesting is how frequently we actually don't think about it, right? We don't have a negotiation that way, we don't change how we talk, and I think it's because intellectually it makes sense, but we're kind of unwilling to believe that emotionally we are so malleable, that just where you sit determines what that negotiation is like. That I am so feeble-minded that if you ask for my advice or my opinion, I'm going to treat you differently based on that. But we know from the science that it's true.

The evidence is there. There's just really no question about it.

Let's go to questions. Anyone in the audience? Yes.

John, I'm the president of CogMotion. So we do sort of cinematic training for the healthcare space. And one of the things we always talk about is trying to create emotional receptivity in the learner. What have you done to get somebody at the point where they would actually be receptive to a quality intervention? I wondered if you had any insight from your research into what creates emotional receptivity for Learning. To— excuse me, for learning, or for changing, or for cooperation, or for safety? What— that's the key. You have to identify receptivity to what? To adherence to a process that's actually better for the person in there and the patient. So quality, let's say, as opposed to price. Here's a study. It was done by some researchers who looked at visitors to an online furniture store. Half of them were sent to a landing page that has its background wallpaper depicted fluffy clouds. The other half were sent to a —whose background wallpaper depicted pennies. Those who encountered the clouds then purchased softer furniture when they went through the site. Those who encountered pennies purchased less expensive furniture when they went through the site. And not one of them recognized that the clouds or coins had had any impact on their behavior. They laughed. They said, "I'm a freestanding entity. I make my decisions based on my internal preferences." What they didn't recognize is that their internal preferences were shaped in that moment by the first thing they saw. Top of mind. What's top of mind guides our behavior thereafter. So the question is, what's on your website? What's the first thing that people see on the landing page of your website? Does it reflect the idea of quality as opposed to price? Does it reflect the idea of reliability? What's your strength? What's the central element of this appeal, of this message that you want to send, right, that's going to put that concept to top of mind, that when people then encounter your material, they will be biased, they will be channeled toward that particular dimension that you want to elevate in Is that also true for how I start a meeting?

If I start a meeting by having everyone go around and talk about their weekend versus starting a meeting by getting down to work, am I sending, am I creating a pre-suasion environment that's going to influence? You are.

In fact, a lot of people say, what should I put on my first slide, my first PowerPoint slide? What should you put on the slide before your first slide. What's the slide that introduces the concept? [Speaker] That's interesting. [Speaker] For persuasion, when I do a program, I have a door that's open in the corner of each of my slides. And the very first slide has an opening door. Before I even get to my message, because the idea is persuasion is going to allow us into a particular, arena that we haven't explored before. We haven't really cultivated the earth that persuasion allows us to cultivate in order to accelerate our impact.

I think we have time for one more question. Ma'am up here.

Hello, I'm Sylvie. You gave the first example about the man ringing at your door and asking you to contribute. And I was thinking about, I don't know if you, I'm sure you have that also in the States, but in Europe we have beggars in the streets and you have women, they beg and they have, they're always their children also. And I don't think in in Europe at least, it will influence us or persuade us to give money. So how do you explain this difference? It worked with you at your doorstep, but in the streets, I'm not sure it works.

Or the 7th guy who shows up with that same kid who's collecting $5 on the corner. At some point, you probably say, you know.

This is a device. This is an artifice. This is a trick. Is what, it didn't, not that first time. Not that first time. This was something that channeled my attention to children's issues. That little girl was hiding behind her father's pants leg. There was this vulnerability there, and I recognized it and was happy to support the idea [INAUDIBLE] Yes, you see it, but after how many times have you seen it? And then you recognize it as a trick.

So maybe it's a surprising element.

Yes, the first time I'll bet it did make a difference for you.

Well, we're unfortunately out of time. I apologize. But Bob will be here all day. I'm sure that he— He'd love to answer more questions. Bob, thank you so much. This is a fascinating topic. Great. You're going to get inundated.