In One Sentence

How people try to influence you into complying to their requests and how you can defend yourself against their tricks.

Top 3 Takeaways

1. There are lots of human traits that help(ed) us survive from an evolutionary standpoint by automating lots of responses and senses. The bad news is that they can be exploited relatively easy by people who know how to work them, for example salespeople trying to sell you something.
2. These are seven ways in which you can be influenced:
   1. Reciprocation: The rule of reciprocation says that we should try to repay what another person has provided us. Reciprocation can be exploited, because it also works for unrequested favors, we feel obligated to accept gifts.
   2. Liking: You trust people that you like way more than people you think neutrally about or that you dislike. ~90% of the people trust a recommendation from someone they like, the next best-trusted source are online reviews with ~20%.
   3. Social Proof: We determine something to be good/correct/popular by looking what other people think is good/correct/popular.
   4. Authority: We are not limited to real authority, just the symbols of authority suffice to make us do something. If you look and seem important, you are perceived as an important authority and will easily influence people to do as you want.
   5. Scarcity: When something becomes less available, our freedom to have it is limited, and we experience an increased desire for it.
   6. Commitment and Consistency: Once we make a choice or take a stand, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to think and behave consistently with that commitment. People that try to abuse this human trait will use it to get a quick and seemingly small commitment out of you that you will feel obligated to fulfill, even if you change your mind after thinking it through.
   7. Unity: People are inclined to say yes to someone they consider one of them.
3. There is a fine line of ethically trying to get someone to do something you want them to do and straight up manipulation and exploitation of people that don’t know better. If caught, using these levers of influence can quickly backfire on you.

Who Should Read This Book?

The workings of influence are something that every person in the world is affected by all the time. I think this can be an eye-opening read for you, even if you only feel slightly interested when hearing about influence, sales tactics, mental bias and psychology.

At times the examples for each factor of influence can run a bit long and repeat themselves but I like how the book is structured. Each chapter has the needed information with examples, plus a section on how to defend against such psychological tricks. At the end of each chapter there is a built-in summary, which is amazing (should be done for all non-fiction books imho)!

How The Book Impacted Me

First of all, I am just really interested about this kind of topic. I find it very interesting how our brain works and what the effects of using a primitive brain in a sophisticated world are.

This book will hopefully help me in the future to not get scammed so easily and to make me detect various sales tactics that are being used on me. In a more scummy way, it will maybe also help me to influence other people if I need it and will probably be helpful in my professional life.

I already noticed some of these tactics being used on me by insurance salespeople and recruiters, pretty fun to notice these kinds of patterns in real life.

Best Quotes

There is nothing more expensive than that which comes for free.

Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we (sales people) can offer.

[Loss Aversion] Especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty, people are intensely motivated to make choices designed to avoid losing something of value – to a much greater extent than choices designed to obtain that thing.

Persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.

[Isaac Asimov about contests and competition] All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality etc., and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you, and when he or she wins, you win.

Our modern era, often termed the Information Age, has never been called the Knowledge Age. Information does not translate directly into knowledge. It must first be processed – accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.

Summary & Notes

DISCLAIMER:
The following notes are my raw notes for each chapter in the book. Read them as a quick overview and not as fully fleshed-out and thought-out sentences. The titles are the same as the book's chapter titles.

Introduction

This book is about why people say yes to some things but no to others and how we are influenced to more likely say yes.
There are seven basic categories wherein all tactics and tricks to influence someone fall.
This book is organized around these seven categories or principles.

1 – Levers of Influence ((Power) Tools of the Trades)

When asking someone for a favour, you are 30% more likely to succeed if you provide a reason for it. The psychological trigger behind this is often the word because.
«Can you do x for me please, because I (reason).»
Even when people use reasons that do not add information to the situation, the word because often triggers a complying response from the other party.

Example:
«I only have 5 pages can I please skip you in line for the photocopier, because I need to make some copies.»
«needing to make copies» at a photocopier is not really a reason that adds new information, but in an experiment this still worked to make people say yes to the request more than if they did not add a reason.

Judgemental heuristics

Mental shortcuts for everyday decisions and judgements.

The author calls such automatic responses and behaviours «Click, Run», because it works like clicking on a program which then just runs it’s standard tasks.
We resort to these automated responses when:

• the issue is complicated
• time is an issue
• there are too many distractions
• the issue inflicts a strong emotional arousal
• we are mentally exhausted

Rational and analytic responses are described as «Controlled responding».
To do this, we need the ability and skills to analyse the problem and also the desire, or a certain importance of properly responding to the problem.

Some «Click, Run»-heuristics:

• expensive = good
  • When we don’t know enough about how to measure the quality of a product, we rely on its price to judge the quality. The more expensive the better the product seems to be.
• if an expert said so, it must be true
  • We default on not questioning authority and quickly accept whatever we are presented by it
• the contrast principle
  • if we put something in comparison to something else, its attributes appear different to us than if we would have looked at it in isolation
    • e.g.: telling your parents that you failed a class is less worse if you also told them just before that you survived a car crash with only a broken hand. Or water seems much colder when you’ve just been in much hotter water before
  • in sales this tactic is used to get you used to higher prices and to spend more. They show you the expensive stuff first and when they then show you also highly priced products, in contrast they won’t seem as expensive and you are more likely to buy something

2 – Reciprocation (The Old Give and Take)

The rule of reciprocation says that we should try to repay what another person has provided us.

If you do someone a favour and they thank you for it, we normally react by dismissing and downplaying the favour. «No big deal.» or «Don’t think about it.».
If you instead say something less dismissive such as «My pleasure, I know you would do the same for me.», the reciprocation-force will be much greater and the person will feel much stronger that they owe you.
Watch out, as with all these psychological triggers and tricks, this can be used against you.

Reciprocation is also at play when they give you mints or candy with your bill at the restaurant. It can feel like a small gift so «you owe them» and give a better tip.

Reciprocation can be exploited, because it also works for unrequested favours, we feel obligated to accept gifts:

A responsibility to receive reduces our ability to choose to whom we wish to be indebted and puts the power in the hands of others.

Also, a small initial favour can lead to a much bigger return favour:

One important reason concerns the clearly unpleasant character of the feeling of indebtedness. Most of us find it highly disagreeable to be in a state of obligation. It weighs heavily on us and demands to be removed.

A Japanese proverb says:
«There is nothing more expensive than that which comes for free.»
(Also related to «If it’s free, you are the product»)

Another way for manipulation by reciprocation is by asking for a large unreasonable favour and when that is turned down, to ask for a smaller favour.
Because the original favour is «sacrificed» and taken back we fell obliged to also «sacrifice» our initial reaction (the declination of the first favour) and to compromise by accepting the smaller favour, even if you would not have agreed to the smaller favour if it was presented to you first.
-> Known as the «Door-in-the-face technique»

A surprising side effect for the «victim» that agreed to a smaller request after denying a large one is that the victim feels more satisfied with the dealings than they would have if they were offered the small request outright.
That’s why «victims» will gladly do more such deals again in the future even though they are being tricked. For them it seems like they negotiated the other party down and made a good compromise which is satisfying and makes them feel good.

Also, people are more loyal to services that had a problem and then fixed the problem in a fast and great way rather than to services that have no problems at all.
Example: a hotel with a tennis court has no rackets for your kids, they send someone to quickly buy some rackets and bring them to you (problem solved). Then you have another hotel with a tennis court that has lots of rackets, even some for your kids. There is no problem to be solved and therefore no possibility for the hotel to show its great customer support. If this is the case, you are most likely to recommend and revisit the first hotel with the quickly-solved problem.

Defense

You can defend yourself from being exploited by these reciprocity tricks by knowing about them and recognizing them.
If someone gives you a gift, the reciprocity rule comes into play and you want to give them something back. But if you later figure out that this was just the first step in a sales pitch, you can recognize it as the trick that it is and your mental redefinition of this «gift» will free you from all felt obligation to repay the person.

3 – Liking (The Friendly Thief)

Liking for Profit

«Endless chain» method to gain more customers:

Once a customer admits he or she likes a product, that customer can be pressed for the names of friends who would also appreciate learning about it. The individuals on that list can then be approached for sales and a list of their friends, who can serve as sources for still other potential customers, and so on in an endless chain.
The key to the success of the method is that each new prospect is visited by a salesperson armed with the name of a friend «who suggested I call on you».

If you then reject the salesperson it feels a bit like rejecting your friend who thought about you and referred you.
-> Salespeople turn your liking of your friends into profit

Works a bit like a pyramid scheme.
Seen in Switzerland with insurance sales. Especially popular method for new employees to build up their customer base.

~90% of the people trust a recommendation from someone they like, the next best-trusted source are online reviews with ~20%.
That’s why influencer-marketing has become so important for sales, why Tupperware-Parties were working so well and why every service nowadays has a «refer-a-friend»-program.

Strategic Friendship: Making Friends to Influence People

Reasons to like someone:

• Physical Attractiveness
  • «Halo Effect»: a positive trait of a person makes us believe all other traits of that person are also good. Good-looking = good person. If you look good, you must also be smart, kind, athletic, funny, a good friend etc.
  • That’s why you should dress up and groom yourself for a job interview.
• Similarity
  • We like people who are like us.
  • Similar looks, interests, speech and body-language are often used as a sales tactic.
• Compliments
  • «Flattery is the food of fools»
  • One of the most impactful compliments are «ricochet-compliments» or «second-hand-compliments». It is when you talk well about someone close to the intended recipient that then tells that person that you complimented them. An indirect compliment feels much more meaningful («Wow they talk about me behind my back like that, they must really mean it!»).
• Contact and Cooperation
  • Repeated positive contact and successful mutual cooperation makes us like someone more
• Conditioning and Association
  • «Horns Effect»: opposite of the «Halo Effect» that says that «merely communicating negative news affixes to the communicator a pair of devil’s horns that, in the eyes of recipients, apply to various other characteristics.»
  • «There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news. The simple association is enough to stimulate our dislike.»
  • This can of course also be used to put yourself in a more positive light, when you associate yourself or your product to something good/successful/famous/beautiful/intelligent/etc.
    • Also can backfire if used too often and too extreme. See «superiority complex» in The Courage To Be Disliked:
      • You fabricate feelings of superiority by «giving authority». For example, you show that you are special and «give authority» by:
        • Telling everyone how you are good friends with a powerful person (your boss, the popular friend, famous people)
        • Lying about your work experience
        • Excessive allegiance to particular clothing brands
      • You make yourself look superior by linking yourself to authority.

Defense

Liking someone is often an unconscious working, there is not much to do about this. But we can try to realize and reflect when we might like someone too much in a certain situation. We should notice when we start to blindly follow someone because we see them as a good person or a hero or an expert etc.
Try to mentally separate the product and your buying decision from the situation and the people/company selling it to you.

4 – Social Proof (Truths Are Us)

The principle of social proof says that we determine something to be good/correct/popular by looking what other people think is good/correct/popular.

People Power

Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we (sales people) can offer.

Optimizers

Social proof works even better when:

• … we are uncertain of what is the best thing to do
• … there is a very large number of people agreeing on something
• … the people who seem to know what is best are similar to us

Peer-suasion

Similarity is very important for behavioural changes. You don’t start to behave differently purely because a lot of people do it, but mostly when your peers change, you start to change as well.
For example, if you are a traditional conservative country-side homeowner, you won’t be much swayed by hearing that lots of young urban leftist academics start to go vegetarian or vegan. But when you suddenly hear of your neighbours/friends/family eating less meat, you are more likely to change as well.

If you want to sell something to someone, tell them that someone that is just like them (be specific what they have in common of course) just recently bought your product and liked it.

Sad effect of social proof: publicizing suicides leads to other people imitating the action and killing themselves after reading/hearing/seeing about another troubled person like them decided to end it all.
So when people decide to write an article in the newspaper about a suicide or when Netflix publishes a show like «13 reasons why», they can be partly responsible for deaths that otherwise would not have occurred.

Defense

• Awareness
• Try to turn off the auto-pilot as soon as you recognize that there may be social proof at work
• Know that actions of similar individuals should not form the sole basis for our decisions

5 – Authority (Directed Deference)

We are trained from birth to believe that obedience to proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong. The message fills the parental lesson, schoolhouse rhymes, stories, and songs of our childhood and is carried forward in the legal, military, and political systems we encounter as adults.

We are not limited to real authority, just the symbols of authority work to bring us to do something.
If you look and seem important, you are perceived as an important authority.

Con-artists try to give themselves authority with:

• … titles
  • Someone with a title such as doctor or professor is instantly regarded as an authority figure, no matter if they have that title or not, if you don’t check and just believe, they are authority
• … clothes
  • A uniform is a sign for authority, but how often do you check if the person actually is what their uniform suggests?
  • A suit is one of the easiest but most powerful signs of authority
• … trappings
  • Expensive clothing and accessories symbol wealth, and money is power so we give authority to seemingly wealthy people

Another impactful way to gain influence through authority is by being a trustworthy expert.
Normally, trust takes time to develop. But by showing vulnerability (admitting something negative) or pointing out a weakness in the product early in a sales pitch, you appear a lot more trustworthy very quickly.

The tactic can be particularly successful when the audience is already aware of the weakness; thus, when a communicator mentions it, little additional damage is done, as no new information is added – except, crucially, that the communicator is an honest individual.
A job candidate might say to an interviewer holding her résumé, «Although I am not experienced in this field, I am a very fast learner.»

It’s important that you are seen as an authority and not just in authority. No one likes to take orders from someone who happens to be in command but has no idea what he is doing and who is not trustworthy.

Defense

The problem is, that authorities are frequently actual experts who offer excellent knowledge and judgement, so you don’t want to question every single authority that is presented to you just because there might be a faker.

But be aware and ask yourself these questions:

• Is this authority truly an expert? Is there evidence?
• If the answer to the expert question is yes: How truthful can I expect the expert to be? What would they gain from my compliance?

6 – Scarcity (The Rule of the Few)

Online shops will use the scarcity principle on you by stating on their products that there are only a few left, that they are a one-time-thing (uniqueness) or that there is a deadline for the purchase.

The core principle on which the effectiveness of scarcity builds is «Loss Aversion»:

Especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty, people are intensely motivated to make choices designed to avoid losing something of value – to a much greater extent than choices designed to obtain that thing.

Things that are rare and difficult to get are typically better than those that are easy to get.
That’s why stores with luxury products are mostly empty space and a few items available, but a cheap discounter has the same item displayed multiple time.

When something becomes less available, our freedom to have it is limited, and we experience an increased desire for it.

-> «Streisand Effect»

Things that were widely available and suddenly become scarce are even more desirable than things that were always scarce.

Defense

Bad news:

Knowing the causes and workings of scarcity pressures may not be sufficient to protect us from them because knowing is a cognitive act, and cognitive processes are suppressed by our emotional reaction to scarcity pressures.

Good news:
Scarcity does not affect the utility of an item. If you want to possess an item for status, scarcity may be important. But if you want to actually use an item, an item is not automatically better just because it is scarce.
Try to think of this whenever you catch yourself being rushed into a decision.

7 – Commitment and Consistency (Hobgoblins of the Mind)

Once we make a choice or take a stand, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to think and behave consistently with that commitment.

The good thing about this is that it saves (mental) energy. You don’t have to newly decide every time what to do, you just do what you always do. It’s a comfortable automatism.

Sales people try to get any sort of commitment out of you to behave in a way that is consistent to this commitment and that leads to an action that is profitable for them.

Small commitments are used to manipulate your self-image

Once you agree to even a small trivial favour, it can lead to a change in how you perceive yourself (self-image). It builds the foundation of a belief in whatever you just (casually) did. Suddenly you are a person that agrees/does the kind of things you just did.

Once you’ve got a person’s self-image where you want it, that person should comply naturally with a whole range of requests aligned with this new self-view.

Tricking yourself into positive compliance

You can also use this commitment-approach for yourself. By publicly committing to something, you are more likely to follow through with whatever you are claiming. I, for example, list my values publicly on my blog with explanations. Even if no one reads it or cares about it, it feels to me as if I have to be consistent with what I’ve put out there in the world (which is great because I want to be as consistent with my values as possible!).

Positively influence your interviewers in a job interview

Before a job interview starts, ask:
«I wonder if you could answer a question for me. I’m curious, what was it about my background that attracted you to my candidacy?»

Your interviewers will most likely start to list positive things about your qualifications and commit themselves to reasons to hire you before you even had to make a case for yourself.
That’s a bit similar to a company asking you why you chose to apply to them and why you want to work with them.

Sales strategies

• Foot-in-the-door technique: Giving you gifts or discounts and getting you to purchase or sign-up for something very small. It makes you a customer and paves the way for you to purchase something bigger or even become a regular customer
• A commitment is most effective if it is active, public, effortful and freely chosen.
• In surveys, registration process and other forms, the first page should have as few fields as possible to not make it seem tedious. Once you’ve started the process and go on to the next pages, you are more likely to follow through because you feel a sense of commitment.
• As a commitment device, a written declaration is very powerful
  • it is physical and exists for others to see
  • the act of writing further solidifies the idea/commitment/belief/etc. in your brain (Writing is believing)
• Giving someone a reputation to live up to
  • First you tell someone how helpful and generous and cooperative they are (in the eye of others, how they are perceived, their reputation)
  • Second you use this established reputation by making a request that is in line with this reputation. The «victim» will most likely try to honour this given reputation (if it’s a positive one)
• Low-balling
  • Making an offer that seems to good to be true, for example with a really good price. The buyer makes a buying decision based on the low price and starts to justify his purchase in his mind. Then just before the sale is through, «unexpected» things happen. There was a mistake in the system, the product is actually more expensive, or there is some tax and service fees added to the final price or a crucial feature of the product has to be paid additionally etc. Because the buyer already made a decision, she will probably accept this unforeseen increase in price even though the deal is not that good anymore.

Pain, reward, inner responsibility

Persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.

We accept inner responsibility for a behaviour when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressure

–> intrinsic motivation is stronger than a nice outside reward

That’s why you shouldn’t heavily bribe or threaten your kids to do something that yo want them to truly believe in:

Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want more than that, if we want our children to believe in the correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the desired behaviour when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take.

–> same concept as the non-intruding of life tasks in The Courage To Be Disliked

Defense

1. Stomach Signs : you often feel when a situation is getting fishy and a looming decision feels awkward, your stomach will often tell you. Try to listen to this signal and use it as a cue to snap out of automated consistency and into thinking.
2. If you notice someone using the consistency principle against you, use it against them. Point it out that you notice what they are trying to do.
3. Heart-of-Heart Signs: try to be your own best friend by trying to think what advice you would give your best friend in the same situation and then follow that advice yourself.

8 – Unity (The «We» is the Shared Me)

Since forever we humans try to put people into baskets of «us» and «them». Everything influence-related works better in a tribe context.
People in your group get more agreement, trust, help, liking, cooperation, emotional support, and forgiveness.

«We» relationships are not those that allow people to say «Oh, that person is like us.» They are the ones that allow people to say, «Oh, that person is one of us.»

Unity rule:

People are inclined to say yes to someone they consider one of them.

Isaac Asimov about contests and competition:

All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality … and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he or she wins, you win.

Fun fact:
Yawning is more contagious the closer connected a person is to the yawner.
You don’t yawn when a stranger yawns, but you have a high chance of yawning when your best friend yawns.

Mirroring

Acting together – in motoric, vocal, or cognitive ways – can serve as a surrogate for belonging together in a kinship unit.
If you dance or sing or work together, it makes you feel closer to one another.

We tend to mirror the body-language and movement-quirks of people of our group and deliberately do not mirror people that don’t belong to our group or that we do not like.
Salespeople use this by mirroring your movements and how you speak to make them seem more like you.

Shared pain and suffering is also a great way to bond with someone.

9 – Instant Influence

We fall back to the mental shortcuts discussed in the previous chapters when we don’t have the inclination, time, energy, or cognitive resources to undertake a complete analysis of the situation.

The informational power of a single cell phone exceeds that of entire universities of only a few years ago. But notice something telling: our modern era, often termed the Information Age, has never been called the Knowledge Age. Information does not translate directly into knowledge. It must first be processed – accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.

Unlike the lower animals, whose cognitive powers have always been relatively deficient, we have created our own deficiency by constructing a radically more complex world. The consequence is the same as that of the animals’ long-standing one: when making a decision, we will less frequently engage in a fully considered analysis of the total situation. In response to this «paralysis of analysis», we revert increasingly to focusing on a single, usually reliable feature of the situation.

And this single feature can be set up for us as a trap to influence us.