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Influence
What Is It About?
The seven principles that quietly shape every yes you give: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity, and unity. Robert Cialdini's classic study of human compliance, backed by decades of psychology research. Read it once and you'll spot the moves everywhere, in marketing, in negotiations, even in friends' favors.
The Three Key Ideas
Seven Compliance Shortcuts
Every successful persuasion tactic falls into one of seven psychological principles that the human brain uses as decision-making shortcuts.
Click-and-Whirr Automaticity
Like animals responding to trigger features, humans comply automatically when the right cue fires, even when they consciously know they are being manipulated.
Defense Through Recognition
Naming the principle being used against you in real time is the single most reliable way to interrupt the automatic compliance response.
Read a Sample
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini (1984; expanded 2007; New and Expanded 2021)
A jewelry store, a misread note, and a price that doubled
A friend of Cialdini's once opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona, and she'd gotten stuck with a batch of turquoise pieces that just wouldn't sell. It was peak tourist season. Foot traffic was heavy, the prices were fair, the quality was decent, and still the jewelry sat there. She tried the usual tricks. She moved the case to a more visible spot. She told her staff to push harder. Nothing worked.
The night before she left on a buying trip, she scrawled a note to her head saleswoman: "Everything in this display case, price × ½." She wanted the stuff gone, even if she'd take a loss on it. When she got back a few days later, every piece had sold. That part wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the saleswoman had misread the smudged scribble and doubled the price instead of halving it. Jewelry nobody would buy at the original price flew out of the case at twice that price.
Who Is It For?
- Anyone who wants to understand why they keep saying yes to requests they later regret.
- Anyone who works in sales, marketing, or product design and wants to use persuasion techniques honestly.
- Anyone who manages a team or negotiates deals and needs to recognize manipulation before it costs them.
- Anyone who has read about cognitive biases and wants a field-tested, example-rich companion to that theory.
About the Author: Robert B. Cialdini
Robert B. Cialdini is Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. His career has focused on the science of compliance, specifically what causes people to say yes to requests.
What sets his research apart is his fieldwork method. For nearly three years he went undercover inside sales training programs, fundraising organizations, and advertising agencies to observe compliance tactics in practice. The first edition of Influence appeared in 1984. The 2021 New and Expanded edition added a seventh principle, Unity, drawn from his later research on shared identity and in-group belonging.
