Influence Flashcards
Rule of reciprocity posesses awesome strength, often producing a “yes” response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness
would have surely been refused. ”
A small initial favor can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a substantially larger return favor.”
use an initial concession as part of a highly effective compliance technique. The technique is a simple one that we can call the rejection-then-retreat technique.
One way to increase your chances would be first to make a larger request of me, one that I will most likely turn down. Then, after I have refused, you would make the smaller request that you were really interested in all along. Provided that you have structured your requests skillfully, I should view your second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of my own, the only one I would have immediately“open to me—compliance with your second request
little-known pair of positive by-products of the act of concession:
feelings of greater responsibility for, and satisfaction with, the arrangement.”
What produces the click that activates the whirr of the powerful consistency tape? Social psychologists think they know the answer: commitment.
If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand,“to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.”
the evidence is clear that the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater is its ability to influence the attitudes of the person who made it.
We can find that evidence quite close to home or as far away as the back regions of the primitive world.
Initiation Ceremony Involving some discomfort, to give up something to show your authority to the group.
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.
a personal commitment to build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the commitment.
Often these justifications provide so many strong legs for the decision to stand on that when the dealer pulls away only one leg, the original one, there is no collapse.
Especially when we are uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd.
Second, quite frequently the crowd is mistaken because they are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof
Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence.
Furthermore, we make these judgments without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process.
By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then
be“more believable when stressing the important aspects of their argument.”
Less blatant in its connotation than a uniform, but nonetheless effective, is another kind of attire that has traditionally bespoken authority status in our culture:
the well-tailored business suit. It, too, can evoke a telling form of deference from total strangers.
