influence - the psychology of persuasion 
by robert cialdini


ROBERT B. CIALDINI PH.D.
This book is dedicated to Chris,
 who glows in his father’s eye
                            

                    INTRODUCTION


I can admit it freely now. All my life I’ve been a patsy. For as long as I
can recall, I’ve been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fund-
raisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some of these
people have had dishonorable motives. The others—representatives of
certain charitable agencies, for instance—have had the best of intentions.
No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I have always found
myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or tickets to
the sanitation workers’ ball. Probably this long-standing status as
sucker accounts for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what
are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? And
which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such
compliance? I wondered why it is that a request stated in a certain way
will be rejected, while a request that asks for the same favor in a slightly
different fashion will be successful.
   So in my role as an experimental social psychologist, I began to do
research into the psychology of compliance. At first the research
vi / Influence


took the form of experiments performed, for the most part, in my
laboratory and on college students. I wanted to find out which psycho-
logical principles influence the tendency to comply with a request. Right
now, psychologists know quite a bit about these principles—what they
are and how they work. I have characterized such principles as weapons
of influence and will report on some of the most important in the up-
coming chapters.
   After a time, though, I began to realize that the experimental work,
while necessary, wasn’t enough. It didn’t allow me to judge the import-
ance of the principles in the world beyond the psychology building and
the campus where I was examining them. It became clear that if I was
to understand fully the psychològy of compliance, I would need to
broaden my scope of investigation. I would need to look to the compli-
ance professionals—the people who had been using the principles on
me all my life. They know what works and what doesn’t; the law of
survival of the fittest assures it. Their business is to make us comply,
and their livelihoods depend on it. Those who don’t know how to get
people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.
   Of course, the compliance professionals aren’t the only ones who
know about and use these principles to help them get their way. We
all employ them and fall victim to them, to some degree, in our daily
interactions with neighbors, friends, lovers, and offspring. But the
compliance practitioners have much more than the vague and amateur-
ish understanding of what works than the rest of us have. As I thought
about it, I knew that they represented the richest vein of information
about compliance available to me. For nearly three years, then, I com-
bined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining
program of systematic immersion into the world of compliance profes-
sionals—sales operators, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers, and others.
   The purpose was to observe, from the inside, the techniques and
strategies most commonly and effectively used by a broad range of
compliance practitioners. That program of observation sometimes took
the form of interviews with the practitioners themselves and sometimes
with the natural enemies (for example, police buncosquad officers,
consumer agencies) of certain of the practitioners. At other times it in-
volved an intensive examination of the written materials by which
compliance techniques are passed down from one generation to anoth-
er—sales manuals and the like.
   Most frequently, though, it has taken the form of participant observa-
tion. Participant observation is a research approach in which the re-
searcher becomes a spy of sorts. With disguised identity and intent, the
investigator infiltrates the setting of interest and becomes a full-fledged
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / vii

participant in the group to be studied. So when I wanted to learn about
the compliance tactics of encyclopedia (or vacuum-cleaner, or portrait-
photography, or dance-lesson) sales organizations, I would answer a
newspaper ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods.
Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate ad-
vertising, public-relations, and fund-raising agencies to examine their
techniques. Much of the evidence presented in this book, then, comes
from my experience posing as a compliance professional, or aspiring
professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to getting us
to say yes.
   One aspect of what I learned in this three-year period of participant
observation was most instructive. Although there are thousands of
different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes,
the majority fall within six basic categories. Each of these categories is
governed by a fundamental psychological principle that directs human
behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power. The book is
organized around these six principles, one to a chapter. The prin-
ciples—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and
scarcity—are each discussed in terms of their function in the society
and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a
compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests
for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, assent, etc. It is worthy of
note that I have not included among the six principles the simple rule
of material self-interest—that people want to get the most and pay the
least for their choices. This omission does not stem from any perception
on my part that the desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs is
unimportant in driving our decisions. Nor does it come from any
evidence I have that compliance professionals ignore the power of this
rule. Quite the opposite: In my investigations, I frequently saw practi-
tioners use (sometimes honestly, sometimes not) the compelling “I can
give you a good deal” approach. I choose not to treat the material self-
interest rule separately in this book because I see it as a motivational
given, as a goes-without-saying factor that deserves acknowledgment
but not extensive description.
   Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct
kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willing-
ness to say yes without thinking first. The evidence suggests that the
ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make
this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent
in the future. It will be increasingly important for the society, therefore,
to understand the how and why of automatic influence.

  It has been some time since the first edition of Influence was published.
viii / Influence

In the interim, some things have happened that I feel deserve a place
in this new edition. First, we now know more about the influence
process than before. The study of persuasion, compliance, and change
has advanced, and the pages that follow have been adapted to reflect
that progress. In addition to an overall update of the material, I have
included a new feature that was stimulated by the responses of prior
readers.
  That new feature highlights the experiences of individuals who have
read Influence, recognized how one of the principles worked on (or for)
them in a particular instance, and wrote to me describing the event.
Their descriptions, which appear in the Reader’s Reports at the end of
each chapter, illustrate how easily and frequently we can fall victim to
the pull of the influence process in our everyday lives.
  I wish to thank the following individuals who—either directly or
through their course instructors—contributed the Reader’s Reports
used in this edition: Pat Bobbs, Mark Hastings, James Michaels, Paul
R. Nail, Alan J. Resnik, Daryl Retzlaff, Dan Swift, and Karla Vasks. In
addition, I would like to invite new readers to submit similar reports
for possible publication in a future edition. They may be sent to me at
the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
85287-1104.

                                                 —ROBERT B. CIALDINI
                             Chapter 1

                       WEAPONS OF
                       INFLUENCE

     Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not sim-
                                pler.
                         —ALBERT EINSTEIN




I opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a
  GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD RECENTLY

curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and
she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her.
The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had
been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the
store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good
quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend
had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving.
She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more
central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to “push” the
items hard, again without success.
   Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she
scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, “Everything in
this display case, price × ½,” hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces,
even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not sur-
prised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though,
to discover that, because the employee had read the “½” in her scrawled
message as a “2,” the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original
price!
2 / Influence

    That’s when she called me. I thought I knew what had happened but
told her that, if I were to explain things properly, she would have to
listen to a story of mine. Actually, it isn’t my story; it’s about mother
turkeys, and it belongs to the relatively new science of ethology—the
study of animals in their natural settings. Turkey mothers are good
mothers—loving, watchful, and protective. They spend much of their
time tending, warming, cleaning, and huddling the young beneath
them. But there is something odd about their method. Virtually all of
this mothering is triggered by one thing: the “cheep-cheep” sound of
young turkey chicks. Other identifying features of the chicks, such as
their smell, touch, or appearance, seem to play minor roles in the
mothering process. If a chick makes the “cheep-cheep” noise, its
mother will care for it; if not, the mother will ignore or sometimes kill
it.
    The extreme reliance of maternal turkeys upon this one sound was
dramatically illustrated by animal behaviorist M. W. Fox in his descrip-
tion of an experiment involving a mother turkey and a stuffed polecat.1
For a mother turkey, a polecat is a natural enemy whose approach is
to be greeted with squawking, pecking, clawing rage. Indeed, the exper-
imenters found that even a stuffed model of a polecat, when drawn by
a string toward a mother turkey, received an immediate and furious
attack. When, however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a small
recorder that played the “cheep-cheep” sound of baby turkeys, the
mother not only accepted the oncoming polecat but gathered it under-
neath her. When the machine was turned off, the polecat model again
drew a vicious attack.

    How ridiculous a female turkey seems under these circumstances:
She will embrace a natural enemy just because it goes “cheep-cheep,”
and she will mistreat or murder one of her own chicks just because it
does not. She looks like an automaton whose maternal instincts are
under the automatic control of that single sound. The ethologists tell
us that this sort of thing is far from unique to the turkey. They have
begun to identify regular, blindly mechanical patterns of action in a
wide variety of species.
    Called fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of
behavior, such as entire courtship or mating rituals. A fundamental
characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviors that compose them
occur in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time.
It is almost as if the patterns were recorded on tapes within the animals.
When the situation calls for courtship, the courtship tape gets played;
when the situation calls for mothering, the maternal-behavior tape gets
                                              Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 3

played. Click and the appropriate tape is activated; whirr and out rolls
the standard sequence of behaviors.
   The most interesting thing about all this is the way the tapes are ac-
tivated. When a male animal acts to defend his territory, for instance,
it is the intrusion of another male of the same species that cues the ter-
ritorial-defense tape of rigid vigilance, threat, and, if need be, combat
behaviors. But there is a quirk in the system. It is not the rival male as
a whole that is the trigger; it is some specific feature of him, the trigger
feature. Often the trigger feature will be just one tiny aspect of the totality
that is the approaching intruder. Sometimes a shade of color is the
trigger feature. The experiments of ethologists have shown, for instance,
that a male robin, acting as if a rival robin had entered its territory, will
vigorously attack nothing more than a clump of robin-redbreast feathers
placed there. At the same time, it will virtually ignore a perfect stuffed
replica of a male robin without red breast feathers; similar results have
been found in another species of bird, the bluethroat, where it appears
that the trigger for territorial defense is a specific shade of blue breast
feathers.2

   Before we enjoy too smugly the ease with which lower animals can
be tricked by trigger features into reacting in ways wholly inappropriate
to the situation, we might realize two things. First, the automatic, fixed-
action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of
the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make
the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys
to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise. By reacting
to just that one stimulus, the average mother turkey will nearly always
behave correctly. It takes a trickster like a scientist to make her tapelike
response seem silly. The second important thing to understand is that
we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they usually
work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can be
used to dupe us into playing them at the wrong times.3
   This parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated
in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A well-
known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone
to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason.
People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demon-
strated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting
in line to use a library copying machine: Excuse me, I have five pages. May
I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? The effectiveness of this
request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked
let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results
when she made the request only: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use
4 / Influence

the Xerox machine? Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those
asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference
between the two requests was the additional information provided by
the words “because I’m in a rush.” But a third type of request tried by
Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the
whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the differ-
ence. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third
type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new,
merely restated the obvious: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the
Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once
again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no
new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the
“cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering
response from maternal turkeys—even when it emanated from a stuffed
polecat—so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compli-
ance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no
subsequent reason to comply. Click, whirr!4

   Although some of Langer’s additional findings show that there are
many situations in which human behavior does not work in a mechan-
ical, tape-activated way, what is astonishing is how often it does. For
instance, consider the strange behavior of those jewelry-store customers
who swooped down on an allotment of turquoise pieces only after the
items had been mistakenly offered at double their original price. I can
make no sense of their behavior, unless it is viewed in click, whirr terms.
   The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge
of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide
their buying: “expensive = good.” Thus the vacationers, who wanted
“good” jewelry, saw the turquoise pieces as decidedly more valuable
and desirable when nothing about them was enhanced but the price.
Price alone had become a trigger feature for quality; and a dramatic
increase in price alone had led to a dramatic increase in sales among
the quality-hungry buyers. Click, whirr!
   It is easy to fault the tourists for their foolish purchase decisions. But
a close look offers a kinder view. These were people who had been
brought up on the rule “You get what you pay for” and who had seen
that rule borne out over and over in their lives. Before long, they had
translated the rule to mean “expensive = good.” The “expensive = good”
stereotype had worked quite well for them in the past, since normally
the price of an item increases along with its worth; a higher price typic-
ally reflects higher quality. So when they found themselves in the pos-
ition of wanting good turquoise jewelry without much knowledge of
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 5

turquoise, they understandably relied on the old standby feature of
cost to determine the jewelry’s merits.
    Although they probably did not realize it, by reacting solely to the
price feature of the turquoise, they were playing a shortcut version of
betting the odds. Instead of stacking all the odds in their favor by trying
painstakingly to master each of the things that indicate the worth of
turquoise jewelry, they were counting on just one—the one they knew
to be usually associated with the quality of any item. They were betting
that price alone would tell them all they needed to know. This time,
because someone mistook a “½” for a “2,” they bet wrong. But in the
long run, over all the past and future situations of their lives, betting
those shortcut odds may represent the most rational approach possible.
    In fact, automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of hu-
man action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behav-
ing, and in other cases it is simply necessary. You and I exist in an ex-
traordinarily complicated stimulus environment, easily the most rapidly
moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet. To deal with
it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all
the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even
one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we
must very often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb to classify
things according to a few key features and then to respond mindlessly
when one or another of these trigger features is present.
    Sometimes the behavior that unrolls will not be appropriate for the
situation, because not even the best stereotypes and trigger features
work every time. But we accept their imperfection, since there is really
no other choice. Without them we would stand frozen—cataloging,
appraising, and calibrating—as the time for action sped by and away.
And from all indications, we will be relying on them to an even greater
extent in the future. As the stimuli saturating our lives continue to grow
more intricate and variable, we will have to depend increasingly on
our shortcuts to handle them all.
    The renowned British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead recog-
nized this inescapable quality of modern life when he asserted that
“civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can
perform without thinking about them.” Take, for example, the “ad-
vance” offered to civilization by the discount coupon, which allows
consumers to assume that they will receive a reduced purchase price
by presenting the coupon. The extent to which we have learned to op-
erate mechanically on that assumption is illustrated in the experience
of one automobile-tire company. Mailed-out coupons that—because of
a printing error—offered no savings to recipients produced just as much
customer response as did error-free coupons that offered substantial
6 / Influence

savings. The obvious but instructive point here is that we expect dis-
count coupons to do double duty. Not only do we expect them to save
us money, we also expect them to save us the time and mental energy
required to think about how to do it. In today’s world, we need the first
advantage to handle pocketbook strain; but we need the second advant-
age to handle something potentially more important—brain strain.
  It is odd that despite their current widespread use and looming future
importance, most of us know very little about our automatic behavior
patterns. Perhaps that is so precisely because of the mechanistic, un-
thinking manner in which they occur. Whatever the reason, it is vital
that we clearly recognize one of their properties: They make us terribly
vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work.

   To understand fully the nature of our vulnerability, another glance
at the work of the ethologists is in order. It turns out that these animal
behaviorists with their recorded “cheep-cheeps” and their clumps of
colored breast feathers are not the only ones who have discovered how
to activate the behavior tapes of various species. There is a group of
organisms, often termed mimics, that copy the trigger features of other
animals in an attempt to trick these animals into mistakenly playing
the right behavior tapes at the wrong times. The mimic will then exploit
this altogether inappropriate action for its own benefit.
   Take, for example, the deadly trick played by the killer females of
one genus of firefly (Photuris) on the males of another firefly genus
(Photinus). Understandably, the Photinus males scrupulously avoid
contact with the bloodthirsty Photuris females. But through centuries
of experience, the female hunters have located a weakness in their
prey—a special blinking courtship code by which members of the vic-
tims’ species tell one another they are ready to mate. Somehow, the
Photuris female has cracked the Photinus courtship code. By mimicking
the flashing mating signals of her prey, the murderess is able to feast
on the bodies of males whose triggered courtship tapes cause them to
fly mechanically into death’s, not love’s, embrace.
   Insects seem to be the most severe exploiters of the automaticity of
their prey; it is not uncommon to find their victims duped to death. But
less uncompromising forms of exploitation occur as well. There is, for
instance, a little fish, the saber-toothed blenny, that takes advantage of
an unusual program of cooperation worked out by members of two
other species of fish. The cooperating fish form a Mutt and Jeff team
consisting of a large grouper fish on the one hand and a much smaller
type of fish on the other. The smaller fish serves as a cleaner to the larger
one, which allows the cleaner to approach it and even enter its mouth
to pick off fungus and other parasites that have attached themselves to
                                             Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 7

the big fish’s teeth or gills. It is a beautiful arrangement: The big grouper
gets cleaned of harmful pests, and the cleaner fish gets an easy dinner.
The larger fish normally devours any other small fish foolish enough
to come close to it. But when the cleaner approaches, the big fish sud-
denly stops all movement and floats open-mouthed and nearly immobile
in response to an undulating dance that the cleaner performs. This
dance appears to be the trigger feature of the cleaner that activates the
dramatic passivity of the big fish. It also provides the saber-toothed
blenny with an angle—a chance to take advantage of the cleaning ritual
of the cooperators. The blenny will approach the large predator, copying
the undulations of the cleaner’s dance and automatically producing the
tranquil, unmoving posture of the big fish. Then, true to its name, it
will quickly rip a mouthful from the larger fish’s flesh and dart away
before its startled victim can recover.5
   There is a strong but sad parallel in the human jungle. We too have
exploiters who mimic trigger features for our own brand of automatic
responding. Unlike the mostly instinctive response sequences of non-
humans, our automatic tapes usually develop from psychological
principles or stereotypes we have learned to accept. Although they vary
in their force, some of these principles possess a tremendous ability to
direct human action. We have been subjected to them from such an
early point in our lives, and they have moved us about so pervasively
since then, that you and I rarely perceive their power. In the eyes of
others, though, each such principle is a detectable and ready weapon—a
weapon of automatic influence.
   There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons
of automatic influence lie and who employ them regularly and expertly
to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter
requesting others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success
is dazzling. The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way they structure
their requests, the way they arm themselves with one or another of the
weapons of influence that exist within the social environment. To do
this may take no more than one correctly chosen word that engages a
strong psychological principle and sets an automatic behavior tape
rolling within us. And trust the human exploiters to learn quickly exactly
how to profit from our tendency to respond mechanically according to
these principles.
   Remember my friend the jewelry-store owner? Although she benefited
by accident the first time, it did not take her long to begin exploiting
the “expensive = good” stereotype regularly and intentionally. Now,
during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that
has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially. She
claims that this is marvelously cost-effective. When it works on the
8 / Influence

unsuspecting vacationers—as it frequently does—it results in an
enormous profit margin. And even when it is not initially successful,
she can mark the article “Reduced from _____” and sell it at its original
price while still taking advantage of the “expensive = good” reaction
to the inflated figure.
   By no means is my friend original in this last use of the “expensive
= good” rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo
Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who
owned a men’s tailor shop in Rosten’s neighborhood while he was
growing up in the 1930s. Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new cus-
tomer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would
admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly
request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had
found a suit he liked and had asked for the price, Sid would call to his
brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for
this suit?” Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the
suit’s true price—Harry would call back, “For that beautiful all-wool
suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his
hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply,
“Forty-two dollars.” At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and
report, “He says twenty-two dollars.” Many a man would hurry to buy
the suit and scramble out of the shop with his “expensive = good”
bargain before Poor Sid discovered the “mistake.”

   There are several components shared by most of the weapons of
automatic influence to be described in this book. We have already dis-
cussed two of them—the nearly mechanical process by which the power
within these weapons can be activated, and the consequent exploitability
of this power by anyone who knows how to trigger them. A third
component involves the way that the weapons of automatic influence
lend their force to those who use them. It’s not that the weapons, like
a set of heavy clubs, provide a conspicuous arsenal to be used by one
person to bludgeon another into submission.
   The process is much more sophisticated and subtle. With proper ex-
ecution, the exploiters need hardly strain a muscle to get their way. All
that is required is to trigger the great stores of influence that already
exist in the situation and direct them toward the intended target. In this
sense, the approach is not unlike that of the Japanese martial-art form
called jujitsu. A woman employing jujitsu would utilize her own
strength only minimally against an opponent. Instead, she would exploit
the power inherent in such naturally present principles as gravity,
leverage, momentum, and inertia. If she knows how and where to en-
gage the action of these principles, she can easily defeat a physically
                                              Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 9

stronger rival. And so it is for the exploiters of the weapons of automatic
influence that exist naturally around us. The exploiters can commission
the power of these weapons for use against their targets while exerting
little personal force. This last feature of the process allows the exploiters
an enormous additional benefit—the ability to manipulate without the
appearance of manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see
their compliance as determined by the action of natural forces rather
than by the designs of the person who profits from that compliance.
   An example is in order. There is a principle in human perception, the
contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between
two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second
item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more dif-
ferent than it actually is. So if we lift a light object first and then lift a
heavy object, we will estimate the second object to be heavier than if
we had lifted it without first trying the light one. The contrast principle
is well established in the field of psychophysics and applies to all sorts
of perceptions besides weight. If we are talking to a beautiful woman
at a cocktail party and are then joined by an unattractive one, the second
woman will strike us as less attractive than she actually is.
   In fact, studies done on the contrast principle at Arizona State and
Montana State universities suggest that we may be less satisfied with
the physical attractiveness of our own lovers because of the way the
popular media bombard us with examples of unrealistically attractive
models. In one study college students rated a picture of an average-
looking member of the opposite sex as less attractive if they had first
looked through the ads in some popular magazines. In another study,
male college-dormitory residents rated the photo of a potential blind
date. Those who did so while watching an episode of the Charlie’s Angels
TV series viewed the blind date as a less attractive woman than those
who rated her while watching a different show. Apparently it was the
uncommon beauty of the Angels female stars that made the blind date
seem less attractive.6
   A nice demonstration of perceptual contrast is sometimes employed
in psychophysics laboratories to introduce students to the principle
firsthand. Each student takes a turn sitting in front of three pails of
water—one cold, one at room temperature, and one hot. After placing
one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, the student is told
to place both in the lukewarm water simultaneously. The look of amused
bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though
both hands are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold
water feels as if it is now in hot water, while the one that was in the hot
water feels as if it is now in cold water. The point is that the same
10 / Influence

thing—in this instance, room-temperature water—can be made to seem
very different, depending on the nature of the event that precedes it.
   Be assured that the nice little weapon of influence provided by the
contrast principle does not go unexploited. The great advantage of this
principle is not only that it works but also that it is virtually undetect-
able. Those who employ it can cash in on its influence without any ap-
pearance of having structured the situation in their favor. Retail clothiers
are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men’s store
and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you
were the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him
likely to spend the most money? Clothing stores instruct their sales
personnel to sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the
reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to purchase a suit, he
may be reluctant to spend very much more on the purchase of a
sweater. But the clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with
what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because
when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices
will not seem as high in comparison. A man might balk at the idea of
spending $95 for a sweater, but if he has just bought a $495 suit, a $95
sweater does not seem excessive. The same principle applies to a man
who wishes to buy the accessories (shirt, shoes, belt) to go along with
his new suit. Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence supports
the contrast-principle prediction. As sales motivation analysts Whitney,
Hubin, and Murphy state, “The interesting thing is that even when a
man enters a clothing store with the express purpose of purchasing a
suit, he will almost always pay more for whatever accessories he buys
if he buys them after the suit purchase than before.”
   It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive
item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the
contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work
actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and fol-
lowing it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem
even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most
sales organizations. So, just as it is possible to make the same bucket of
water appear to be hotter or colder, depending on the temperature of
previously presented water, it is possible to make the price of the same
item seem higher or lower, depending on the price of a previously
presented item.
   Clever use of perceptual contrast is by no means confined to clothiers.
I came across a technique that engaged the contrast principle while I
was investigating, undercover, the compliance tactics of real-estate
companies. To “learn the ropes,” I was accompanying a company realty
salesman on a weekend of showing houses to prospective home buyers.
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 11

The salesman—we can call him Phil—was to give me tips to help me
through my break-in period. One thing I quickly noticed was that
whenever Phil began showing a new set of customers potential buys,
he would start with a couple of undesirable houses. I asked him about
it, and he laughed. They were what he called “setup” properties. The
company maintained a run-down house or two on its lists at inflated
prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but to
be shown to them, so that the genuine properties in the company’s in-
ventory would benefit from the comparison. Not all the sales staff made
use of the setup houses, but Phil did. He said he liked to watch his
prospects’ “eyes light up” when he showed the place he really wanted
to sell them after they had seen the run-down houses. “The house I got
them spotted for looks really great after they’ve first looked at a couple
of dumps.”
   Automobile dealers use the contrast principle by waiting until the
price for a new car has been negotiated before suggesting one option
after another that might be added. In the wake of a fifteen-thousand-
dollar deal, the hundred or so dollars required for a nicety like an FM
radio seems almost trivial in comparison. The same will be true of the
added expense of accessories like tinted windows, dual side-view mir-
rors, whitewall tires, or special trim that the salesman might suggest
in sequence. The trick is to bring up the extras independently of one
another, so that each small price will seem petty when compared to the
already-determined much larger one. As the veteran car buyer can attest,
many a budget-sized final price figure has ballooned from the addition
of all those seemingly little options. While the customer stands, signed
contract in hand, wondering what happened and finding no one to
blame but himself, the car dealer stands smiling the knowing smile of
the jujitsu master.
                           READER’S REPORT
                  From the Parent of a College Coed
     Dear Mother and Dad:
        Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and
     I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written be-
     fore. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on,
     please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you
     are sitting down, okay?
        Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull
     fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out the
     window of my dormitory when it caught on fire shortly after
     my arrival here is pretty well healed now. I only spent two
12 / Influence


    weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and
    only get those sick headaches once a day. Fortunately, the
    fire in the dormitory, and my jump, was witnessed by an at-
    tendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one
    who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also
    visited me in the hospital and since I had nowhere to live
    because of the burntout dormitory, he was kind enough to
    invite me to share his apartment with him. It’s really a base-
    ment room, but it’s kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and
    we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married.
    We haven’t got the exact date yet, but it will be before my
    pregnancy begins to show.
        Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much
    you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know
    you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and
    devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child.
    The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend
    has a minor infection which prevents us from passing our
    pre-marital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him.
        Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you
    that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion
    or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant,
    I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend.
    However, I am getting a “D” in American History, and an
    “F” in Chemistry and I want you to see those marks in their
    proper perspective.

                                   Your loving daughter,
                                   Sharon
Sharon may be failing chemistry, but she gets an “A” in psychology.
                           Chapter 2

                  RECIPROCATION
           The Old Give and Take…and Take

                Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
                     —RALPH WALDO EMERSON




A ment. He sent Christmas cards to a sample of perfect strangers.
    FEW YEARS AGO, A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR TRIED A LITTLE  experi-

Although he expected some reaction, the response he received was
amazing—holiday cards addressed to him came pouring back from the
people who had never met nor heard of him. The great majority of those
who returned a card never inquired into the identity of the unknown
professor. They received his holiday greeting card, click, and, whirr,
they automatically sent one in return. While small in scope, this study
nicely shows the action of one of the most potent of the weapons of in-
fluence around us—the rule for reciprocation.1 The rule says that we
should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If
a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man
sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a
gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to
invite them to one of ours. By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we
are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and
the like. So typical is it for indebtedness to accompany the receipt of
such things that a term like “much obliged” has become a synonym for
“thank you,” not only in the English language but in others as well.
   The impressive aspect of the rule for reciprocation and the sense of
obligation that goes with it is its pervasiveness in human culture. It is
so widespread that after intensive study, sociologists such as Alvin
14 / Influence

Gouldner can report that there is no human society that does not sub-
scribe to the rule.2 And within each society it seems pervasive also; it
permeates exchanges of every kind. Indeed, it may well be that a de-
veloped system of indebtedness flowing from the rule for reciprocation
is a unique property of human culture. The noted archaeologist Richard
Leakey ascribes the essence of what makes us human to the reciprocity
system: “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their
food and their skills in an honored network of obligation,”3 he says.
Cultural anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox view this “web of
indebtedness” as a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, al-
lowing for the division of labor, the exchange of diverse forms of goods,
the exchange of different services (making it possible for experts to
develop), and the creation of a cluster of interdependencies that bind
individuals together into highly efficient units.4
   It is the future orientation inherent in a sense of obligation that is
critical to its ability to produce social advances of the sort described by
Tiger and Fox. A widely shared and strongly held feeling of future ob-
ligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution, be-
cause it meant that one person could give something (for example, food,
energy, care) to another with confidence that it was not being lost. For
the first time in evolutionary history, one individual could give away
any of a variety of resources without actually giving them away. The
result was the lowering of the natural inhibitions against transactions
that must be begun by one person’s providing personal resources to
another. Sophisticated and coordinated systems of aid, gift giving, de-
fense, and trade became possible, bringing immense benefit to the soci-
eties that possessed them. With such clearly adaptive consequences for
the culture, it is not surprising that the rule for reciprocation is so deeply
implanted in us by the process of socialization we all undergo.
   I know of no better illustration of how reciprocal obligations can
reach long and powerfully into the future than the perplexing story of
five thousand dollars of relief aid that was sent in 1985 between Mexico
and the impoverished people of Ethiopia. In 1985 Ethiopia could justly
lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its eco-
nomy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought
and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from
disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have
been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from
Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting
my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted
that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the
Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims
of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City.
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 15

   It is both a personal bane and a professional blessing that whenever
I am confused by some aspect of human behavior, I feel driven to in-
vestigate further. In this instance, I was able to track down a fuller ac-
count of the story. Fortunately a journalist who had been as bewildered
as I was by the Ethiopians’ action had asked for an explanation. The
answer he received offers eloquent validation of the reciprocity rule:
Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was
being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was
invaded by Italy. So informed, I remained awed, but I was no longer
puzzled. The need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural differ-
ences, long distances, acute famine, and immediate self-interest. Quite
simply, a half century later, against all countervailing forces, obligation
triumphed.
   Make no mistake, human societies derive a truly significant compet-
itive advantage from the reciprocity rule, and consequently they make
sure their members are trained to comply with and believe in it. Each
of us has been taught to live up to the rule, and each of us knows about
the social sanctions and derision applied to anyone who violates it. The
labels we assign to such a person are loaded with negativity—moocher,
ingrate, welsher. Because there is general distaste for those who take
and make no effort to give in return, we will often go to great lengths
to avoid being considered one of their number. It is to those lengths
that we will often be taken and, in the process, be “taken” by individuals
who stand to gain from our indebtedness.
   To understand how the rule for reciprocation can be exploited by
one who recognizes it as the source of influence it certainly is, we might
closely examine an experiment performed by Professor Dennis Regan
of Cornell University.5 A subject who participated in the study found
himself rating, along with another subject, the quality of some paintings
as part of an experiment on “art appreciation.” The other rater—we can
call him Joe—was only posing as a fellow subject and was actually Dr.
Regan’s assistant. For our purposes, the experiment took place under
two different conditions. In some cases, Joe did a small, unsolicited favor
for the true subject. During a short rest period, he left the room for a
couple of minutes and returned with two bottles of Coca-Cola, one for
the subject and one for himself, saying, “I asked him [the experimenter]
if I could get myself a Coke, and he said it was okay, so I bought one
for you, too.” In other cases, Joe did not provide the subject with a favor;
he simply returned from the two-minute break empty-handed. In all
other respects, however, Joe behaved identically.
   Later on, after the paintings had all been rated and the experimenter
had momentarily left the room, Joe asked the subject to do him a favor.
He indicated that he was selling raffle tickets for a new car and that if
16 / Influence

he sold the most tickets, he would win a fifty-dollar prize. Joe’s request
was for the subject to buy some raffle tickets at twenty-five cents apiece:
“Any would help, the more the better.” The major finding of the study
concerns the number of tickets subjects purchased from Joe under the
two conditions. Without question, Joe was more successful in selling
his raffle tickets to the subjects who had received his earlier favor. Ap-
parently feeling that they owed him something, these subjects bought
twice as many tickets as the subjects who had not been given the prior
favor. Although the Regan study represents a fairly simple demonstra-
tion of the workings of the rule for reciprocation, it illustrates several
important characteristics of the rule that, upon further consideration,
help us to understand how it may be profitably used.

                    The Rule Is Overpowering
One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device
for gaining another’s compliance is its power. The rule possesses awe-
some strength, often producing a “yes” response to a request that, except
for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused.
Some evidence of how the rule’s force can overpower the influence of
other factors that normally determine whether a request will be com-
plied with can be seen in a second result of the Regan study. Besides
his interest in the impact of the reciprocity rule on compliance, Regan
was also interested in how liking for a person affects the tendency to
comply with that person’s request. To measure how liking toward Joe
affected the subjects’ decisions to buy his raffle tickets, Regan had them
fill out several rating scales indicating how much they liked Joe. He
then compared their liking responses with the number of tickets they
had purchased from Joe. There was a significant tendency for subjects
to buy more raffle tickets from Joe the more they liked him. But this
alone is hardly a startling finding. Most of us would have guessed that
people are more willing to do a favor for someone they like.
   The interesting thing about the Regan experiment, however, is that
the relationship between liking and compliance was completely wiped
out in the condition under which subjects had been given a Coke by
Joe. For those who owed him a favor, it made no difference whether
they liked him or not; they felt a sense of obligation to repay him, and
they did. The subjects in that condition who indicated that they disliked
Joe bought just as many of his tickets as did those who indicated that
they liked him. The rule for reciprocity was so strong that it simply
overwhelmed the influence of a factor—liking for the requester—that
normally affects the decision to comply.
   Think of the implications. People we might ordinarily dislike—unsa-
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 17

vory or unwelcome sales operators, disagreeable acquaintances, repres-
entatives of strange or unpopular organizations—can greatly increase
the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with
a small favor prior to their requests. Let’s take an example that by now
many of us have encountered. The Hare Krishna Society is an Eastern
religious sect with centuries-old roots traceable to the Indian city of
Calcutta. But its spectacular modern-day story occurred in the 1970s,
when it experienced a remarkable growth not only in followers but also
in wealth and property. The economic growth was funded through a
variety of activities, the principal and still most visible of which is the
request for donations by Society members from passersby in public
places. During the early history of the group in this country, the solicit-
ation for contributions was attempted in a fashion memorable for anyone
who saw it. Groups of Krishna devotees—often with shaved heads,
and wearing ill-fitting robes, leg wrappings, beads, and bells—would
canvass a city street, chanting and bobbing in unison while begging for
funds.
   Although highly effective as a technique for gaining attention, this
form of fund-raising did not work especially well. The average Amer-
ican considered the Krishnas weird, to say the least, and was reluctant
to provide money to support them. It quickly became clear to the Society
that it had a considerable public-relations problem. The people being
asked for contributions did not like the way the members looked,
dressed, or acted. Had the Society been an ordinary commercial organ-
ization, the solution would have been simple—change the things the
public does not like. But the Krishnas are a religious organization; and
the way members look, dress, and act is partially tied to religious factors.
Because, in any denomination, religious factors are typically resistant
to change because of worldly considerations, the Krishna leadership
was faced with a real dilemma. On the one hand were beliefs, modes
of dress, and hairstyles that had religious significance. On the other
hand, threatening the organization’s financial welfare, were the less-
than-positive feelings of the American public toward these things.
What’s a sect to do?
   The Krishnas’ resolution was brilliant. They switched to a fund-raising
tactic that made it unnecessary for target persons to have positive feel-
ings toward the fund-raisers. They began to employ a donation-request
procedure that engaged the rule for reciprocation, which, as demon-
strated by the Regan study, is strong enough to overcome the factor of
dislike for the requester. The new strategy still involves the solicitation
of contributions in public places with much pedestrian traffic (airports
are a favorite), but now, before a donation is requested, the target person
is given a “gift”—a book (usually the Bhagavad Gita), the Back to Godhead
18 / Influence

magazine of the Society, or, in the most cost-effective version, a flower.
The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into
his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to
give it back, even if he asserts that he does not want it. “No, it is our
gift to you,” says the solicitor, refusing to accept it. Only after the
Krishna member has thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to
bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution to the
Society. This benefactor-before-beggar strategy has been wildly success-
ful for the Hare Krishna Society, producing large-scale economic gains
and funding the ownership of temples, businesses, houses, and property
in 321 centers in the United States and overseas.
   As an aside, it is instructive that the reciprocation rule has begun to
outlive its usefulness for the Krishnas, not because the rule itself is any
less potent societally, but because we have found ways to prevent the
Krishnas from using it on us. After once falling victim to their tactic,
many travelers are now alert to the presence of robed Krishna Society
solicitors in airports and train stations, adjusting their paths to avoid
an encounter and preparing beforehand to ward off a solicitor’s “gift.”
Although the Society has tried to counter this increased vigilance by
instructing members to be dressed and groomed in modern styles to
avoid immediate recognition when soliciting (some actually carry flight
bags or suitcases), even disguise has not worked especially well for
the Krishnas. Too many individuals now know better than to accept
unrequested offerings in public places like airports. Furthermore,
airport administrators have initiated a number of procedures designed
to forewarn us of the Krishnas’ true identity and intent. Thus, it is now
common airport practice to restrict the Krishnas’ soliciting activity to
certain areas of the airport and to announce through signs and the
public address system that the Krishnas are soliciting there. It is a test-
ament to the societal value of reciprocation that we have chosen to fight
the Krishnas mostly by seeking to avoid rather than to withstand the
force of their gift giving. The reciprocity rule that empowers their tactic
is too strong—and socially beneficial—for us to want to violate it.
   Politics is another arena in which the power of the reciprocity rule
shows itself. Reciprocation tactics appear at every level:

• At the top, elected officials engage in “logrolling” and the exchange
  of favors that makes politics the place of strange bedfellows, indeed.
  The out-of-character vote of one of our elected representatives on a
  bill or measure can often be understood as a favor returned to the
  bill’s sponsor. Political analysts were amazed at Lyndon Johnson’s
  ability to get so many of his programs through Congress during his
  early administration. Even members of congress who were thought
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 19

  to be strongly opposed to the proposals were voting for them. Close
  examination by political scientists has found the cause to be not so
  much Johnson’s political savvy as the large score of favors he had
  been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of
  power in the House and Senate. As President, he was able to produce
  a truly remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in
  those favors. It is interesting that this same process may account for
  the problems Jimmy Carter had in getting his programs through
  Congress during his early administration, despite heavy Democratic
  majorities in both House and Senate. Carter came to the presidency
  from outside the Capitol Hill establishment. He campaigned on his
  outside-Washington identity, saying that he was indebted to no one
  there. Much of his legislative difficulty upon arriving may be traced
  to the fact that no one there was indebted to him.
• At another level, we can see the recognized strength of the reciprocity
  rule in the desire of corporations and individuals to provide judicial
  and legislative officials with gifts and favors, and in the series of
  legal restrictions against such gifts and favors. Even with legitimate
  political contributions, the stockpiling of obligations often underlies
  the stated purpose of supporting a favorite candidate. One look at
  the lists of companies and organizations that contribute to the cam-
  paigns of both major candidates in important elections gives evidence
  of such motives. A skeptic, requiring direct evidence of the quid pro
  quo expected by political contributors, might look to the remarkably
  bald-faced admission by Charles H. Keating, Jr., who was later con-
  victed on multiple counts of fraud in this country’s savings and loan
  disaster. Addressing the question of whether a connection existed
  between the $1.3 million he had contributed to the campaigns of five
  U.S. senators and their subsequent actions in his behalf against federal
  regulators, he asserted, “I want to say in the most forceful way I can:
  I certainly hope so.”
• At the grass-roots level, local political organizations have learned
  that the principal way to keep their candidates in office is to make
  sure they provide a wide range of little favors to the voters. The “ward
  heelers” of many cities still operate effectively in this fashion. But
  ordinary citizens are not alone in trading political support for small
  personal favors. During the 1992 presidential primary campaign,
  actress Sally Kellerman was asked why she was lending her name
  and efforts to the candidacy of Democratic hopeful Jerry Brown. Her
  reply: “Twenty years ago, I asked ten friends to help me move. He
  was the only one who showed up.”

  Of course, the power of reciprocity can be found in the merchandising
20 / Influence

field as well. Although the number of possible examples is large, let’s
examine a pair of familiar ones deriving from the “free sample.” As a
marketing technique, the free sample has a long and effective history.
In most instances, a small amount of the relevant product is provided
to potential customers for the stated purpose of allowing them to try it
to see if they like it. And certainly this is a legitimate desire of the
manufacturer—to expose the public to the qualities of the product. The
beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such,
can engage the reciprocity rule. In true jujitsu fashion, the promoter
who gives free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent
in a gift while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.
A favorite place for free samples is the supermarket, where customers
are frequently provided with small cubes of a certain variety of cheese
or meat to try. Many people find it difficult to accept a sample from the
always-smiling attendant, return only the toothpick, and walk away.
Instead, they buy some of the product, even if they might not have liked
it especially well. A highly effective variation on this marketing proced-
ure is illustrated in the case, cited by Vance Packard in The Hidden Per-
suaders, of the Indiana supermarket operator who sold an astounding
one thousand pounds of cheese in a few hours one day by putting out
the cheese and inviting customers to cut off slivers for themselves as
free samples.
   A different version of the free-sample tactic is used by the Amway
Corporation, a rapid-growth company that manufactures and distributes
household and personal-care products in a vast national network of
door-to-door neighborhood sales. The company, which has grown from
a basement-run operation a few years ago to a one-and-a-half-billion-
dollar-yearly-sales business, makes use of the free sample in a device
called the BUG. The BUG consists of a collection of Amway
products—bottles of furniture polish, detergent, or shampoo, spray
containers of deodorizers, insect killers, or window cleaners—carried
to the customer’s home in a specially designed tray or just a polyethyl-
ene bag. The confidential Amway Career Manual then instructs the
salesperson to leave the BUG with the customer “for 24, 48, or 72 hours,
at no cost or obligation to her. Just tell her you would like her to try the
products…. That’s an offer no one can refuse.” At the end of the trial
period, the Amway representative returns and picks up orders for those
of the products the customer wishes to purchase. Since few customers
use up the entire contents of even one of the product containers in such
a short time, the salesperson may then take the remaining product
portions in the BUG to the next potential customer down the line or
across the street and start the process again. Many Amway representat-
ives have several BUGs circulating in their districts at one time.
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 21

   Of course, by now you and I know that the customer who has accep-
ted and used the BUG products has been trapped into facing the influ-
ence of the reciprocity rule. Many such customers yield to a sense of
obligation to order those of the salesperson’s products that they have
tried and thereby partially consumed. And, of course, by now the Am-
way Corporation knows that to be the case. Even in a company with
as excellent a growth record as Amway, the BUG device has created a
big stir. Reports by state distributors to the parent company record a
remarkable effect:
  Unbelievable! We’ve never seen such excitement. Product is
  moving at an unbelievable rate, and we’ve only just begun….
  [Local] distributors took the BUGS, and we’ve had an unbelievable
  increase in sales [from Illinois distributor]. The most fantastic retail
  idea we’ve ever had!…On the average, customers purchased about
  half the total amount of the BUG when it is picked up…. In one
  word, tremendous! We’ve never seen a response within our entire
  organization like this [from Massachusetts distributor].
   The Amway distributors appear to be bewildered—happily so, but
nonetheless bewildered—by the startling power of the BUG. Of course,
by now you and I should not be.
   The reciprocity rule governs many situations of a purely interpersonal
nature where neither money nor commercial exchange is at issue. Per-
haps my favorite illustration of the enormous force available from the
reciprocation weapon of influence comes from such a situation. The
European scientist, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, provides the account of a German
soldier during World War I whose job was to capture enemy soldiers
for interrogation. Because of the nature of the trench warfare at that
time, it was extremely difficult for armies to cross the no-man’s-land
between opposing front lines; but it was not so difficult for a single
soldier to crawl across and slip into an enemy trench position. The
armies of the Great War had experts who regularly did so to capture
an enemy soldier, who would then be brought back for questioning.
The German expert of our account had often successfully completed
such missions in the past and was sent on another. Once again, he
skillfully negotiated the area between fronts and surprised a lone enemy
soldier in his trench. The unsuspecting soldier, who had been eating at
the time, was easily disarmed. The frightened captive with only a piece
of bread in his hand then performed what may have been the most
important act of his life. He gave his enemy some of the bread. So af-
fected was the German by this gift that he could not complete his mis-
sion. He turned from his benefactor and recrossed the no-man’s-land
empty-handed to face the wrath of his superiors.
22 / Influence

   An equally compelling point regarding the power of reciprocity comes
from an account of a woman who saved her life not by giving a gift as
did the captured soldier, but by refusing a gift and the powerful obliga-
tions that went with it. The woman, Diane Louie, was an inhabitant of
Jonestown, Guyana, in November of 1978 when its leader, Jim Jones,
called for the mass suicide of all residents, most of whom compliantly
drank and died from a vat of poison-laced Kool-Aid. Diane Louie,
however, rejected Jones’s command and made her way out of Jonestown
and into the jungle. She attributes her willingness to do so to her earlier
refusal to accept special favors from him when she was in need. She
turned down his offer of special food while she was ill because “I knew
once he gave me those privileges, he’d have me. I didn’t want to owe
him nothin’.”

               The Rule Enforces Uninvited Debts
Earlier we suggested that the power of the reciprocity rule is such that
by first doing us a favor, strange, disliked, or unwelcome others can
enhance the chance that we will comply with one of their requests.
However, there is another aspect of the rule, besides its power, that al-
lows this phenomenon to occur. Another person can trigger a feeling
of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor. Recall that the rule
only states that we should provide to others the kind of actions they
have provided us; it does not require us to have asked for what we have
received in order to feel obligated to repay. For instance, the Disabled
American Veterans organization reports that its simple mail appeal for
donations produces a response rate of about 18 percent. But when the
mailing also includes an unsolicited gift (gummed, individualized ad-
dress labels), the success rate nearly doubles to 35 percent. This is not
to say that we might not feel a stronger sense of obligation to return a
favor we have requested, only that such a request is not necessary to
produce our indebtedness.
   If we reflect for a moment about the social purpose of the reciprocity
rule, we can see why this should be so. The rule was established to
promote the development of reciprocal relationships between individu-
als so that one person could initiate such a relationship without the fear
of loss. If the rule is to serve that purpose, then, an uninvited first favor
must have the ability to create an obligation. Recall, also, that reciprocal
relationships confer an extraordinary advantage upon cultures that
foster them and that, consequently, there will be strong pressures to
ensure that the rule does serve its purpose. Little wonder, then, that
the influential French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in describing the
social pressures surrounding the gift-giving process in human culture,
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 23

can state, “There is an obligation to give, an obligation to receive, and
an obligation to repay.”6
   Although the obligation to repay constitutes the essence of the reci-
procity rule, it is the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy
to exploit. The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom
we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.
Let’s reexamine a pair of earlier examples to get a sense of how the
process works. First, let’s return to the Regan study, where we find that
the favor causing subjects to double the number of raffle tickets pur-
chased from Joe was not one they had requested. Joe had voluntarily
left the room and returned with one Coke for himself and one for the
subject. There was not a single subject who refused the Coke. It is easy
to see why it would have been awkward to turn down Joe’s favor: Joe
had already spent his money; a soft drink was an appropriate favor in
the situation, especially since Joe had one himself; it would have been
considered impolite to reject Joe’s thoughtful action. Nevertheless, re-
ceipt of that Coke produced an indebtedness that manifested itself
clearly when Joe announced his desire to sell some raffle tickets. Notice
the important asymmetry here—all the genuinely free choices were
Joe’s. He chose the form of the initial favor, and he chose the form of
the return favor. Of course, one could say that the subject had the choice
of saying no to both of Joe’s offers. But those would have been tough
choices. To have said no at either point would have required the subject
to go against the natural cultural forces favoring reciprocation arrange-
ments that Jujitsu Joe had aligned himself with.
   The extent to which even an unwanted favor, once received, can
produce indebtedness is aptly illustrated in the soliciting technique of
the Hare Krishna Society. During systematic observation of the airport
soliciting strategy of the Krishnas, I have recorded a variety of responses
from target persons. One of the most regular occurs as follows. An air-
port visitor—a businessman, let’s say—is hurriedly walking along
through a densely peopled area. The Krishna solicitor steps in front of
him and hands him a flower. The man, reacting with surprise, takes it.7
Almost immediately, he tries to give it back, saying that he does not
want the flower. The Krishna member responds that it is a gift from the
Krishna Society and that it is the man’s to keep…however, a donation
to further the Society’s good works would be appreciated. Again the
target protests, “I don’t want this flower. Here, take it.” And again the
solicitor refuses, “It’s our gift to you, sir.” There is visible conflict on
the businessman’s face. Should he keep the flower and walk away
without giving anything in return, or should he yield to the pressure
of the deeply ingrained reciprocity rule and provide a contribution? By
now, the conflict has spread from his face to his posture. He leans away
24 / Influence

from his benefactor, seemingly about to break free, only to be drawn
back again by the pull of the rule. Once more his body tilts away, but
it’s no use; he cannot disengage. With a nod of resignation, he fishes in
his pocket and comes up with a dollar or two that is graciously accepted.
Now he can walk away freely, and he does, “gift” in hand, until he en-
counters a waste container—where he throws the flower.
   Purely by accident, I happened to witness a scene that demonstrates
that the Krishnas know very well how frequently their gifts are un-
wanted by the people who receive them. While spending a day ob-
serving a soliciting Krishna group at Chicago’s O’Hare International
Airport a few years ago, I noticed that one of the group members would
frequently leave the central area and return with more flowers to resup-
ply her companions. As it happened, I had decided to take a break just
as she was leaving on one of her supply missions. Having nowhere to
go, I followed. Her journey turned out to be a garbage route. She went
from trash can to trash can beyond the immediate area to retrieve all
the flowers that had been discarded by Krishna targets. She then re-
turned with the cache of recovered flowers (some that had been recycled
who knows how many times) and distributed them to be profitably
cycled through the reciprocation process once more. The thing that
really impressed me about all this was that most of the discarded flowers
had brought donations from the people who had cast them away. The
nature of the reciprocity rule is such that a gift so unwanted that it was
jettisoned at the first opportunity had nonetheless been effective and
exploitable.
   The ability of uninvited gifts to produce feelings of obligation is re-
cognized by a variety of organizations besides the Krishnas. How many
times have each of us received small gifts through the mail—personal-
ized address labels, greeting cards, key rings—from charity agencies
that ask for funds in an accompanying note? I have received five in just
the past year, two from disabled veterans’ groups and the others from
missionary schools or hospitals. In each case, there was a common
thread in the accompanying message. The goods that were enclosed
were to be considered a gift from the organization; and any money I
wished to send should not be regarded as payment but rather as a return
offering. As the letter from one of the missionary programs stated, the
packet of greeting cards I had been sent was not to be directly paid for,
but was designed “to encourage your kindness.” If we look past the
obvious tax advantage, we can see a reason why it would be beneficial
for the organization to have the cards viewed as a gift instead of mer-
chandise: There is a strong cultural pressure to reciprocate a gift, even
an unwanted one; but there is no such pressure to purchase an unwanted
commercial product.
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 25


            The Rule Can Trigger Unfair Exchanges
There is yet one other feature of the reciprocity rule that allows it to be
exploited for profit. Paradoxically, the rule developed to promote equal
exchanges between partners, yet it can be used to bring about decidedly
unequal results. The rule demands that one sort of action be reciprocated
with a similar sort of action. A favor is to be met with another favor; it
is not to be met with neglect, and certainly not with attack. But within
the similar-action boundaries, considerable flexibility is allowed. A
small initial favor can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a sub-
stantially larger return favor. Since, as we have already seen, the rule
allows one person to choose the nature of the indebting first favor and
the nature of the debt-canceling return favor, we could easily be manip-
ulated into an unfair exchange by those who might wish to exploit the
rule.
   Once again, we can turn to the Regan experiment for evidence. Re-
member in that study that Joe gave one group of subjects a bottle of
Coca-Cola as an initiating gift and later asked all subjects to buy some
of his raffle tickets at twenty-five cents apiece. What I have so far neg-
lected to mention is that the study was done in the late 1960s, when the
price of a Coke was a dime. The average subject who had been given a
ten-cent drink bought two of Joe’s raffle tickets, although some bought
as many as seven. Even if we look just at the average subject, though,
we can tell that Joe made quite a deal. A 500 percent return on invest-
ment is respectable indeed!
   But in Joe’s case, even a 500 percent return amounted to only fifty
cents. Can the reciprocity rule produce meaningfully large differences
in the sizes of the exchanged favors? Under the right circumstances, it
certainly can. Take, for instance, the account of a student of mine con-
cerning a day she remembers ruefully:
  About one year ago, I couldn’t start my car. As I was sitting there,
  a guy in the parking lot came over and eventually jump-started
  the car. I said thanks, and he said you’re welcome; as he was
  leaving, I said that if he ever needed a favor to stop by. About a
  month later, the guy knocked on my door and asked to borrow
  my car for two hours as his was in the shop. I felt somewhat oblig-
  ated but uncertain, since the car was pretty new and he looked
  very young. Later, I found out that he was underage and had no
  insurance. Anyway, I lent him the car. He totaled it.
   How could it happen that an intelligent young woman would agree
to turn over her new car to a virtual stranger (and a youngster at that)
26 / Influence

because he had done her a small favor a month earlier? Or, more gen-
erally, why should it be that small first favors often stimulate larger
return favors? One important reason concerns the clearly unpleasant
character of the feeling of indebtedness. Most of us find it highly dis-
agreeable to be in a state of obligation. It weighs heavily on us and de-
mands to be removed. It is not difficult to trace the source of this feeling.
Because reciprocal arrangements are so vital in human social systems,
we have been conditioned to be uncomfortable when beholden. If we
were to ignore breezily the need to return another’s initial favor, we
would stop one reciprocal sequence dead and would make it less likely
that our benefactor would do such favors in the future. Neither event
is in the best interests of society. Consequently, we are trained from
childhood to chafe, emotionally, under the saddle of obligation. For
this reason alone, then, we may be willing to agree to perform a larger
favor than we received, merely to relieve ourselves of the psychological
burden of debt.
   But there is another reason as well. A person who violates the reci-
procity rule by accepting without attempting to return the good acts of
others is actively disliked by the social group. The exception, of course,
is when the person is prevented from repayment by reasons of circum-
stance or ability. For the most part, however, there is a genuine distaste
for individuals who fail to conform to the dictates of the reciprocity
rule.8 Moocher and welsher are unsavory labels to be scrupulously
shunned. So undesirable are they that we will sometimes agree to an
unequal exchange in order to dodge them.
   In combination, the reality of internal discomfort and the possibility
of external shame can produce a heavy psychological cost. When seen
in the light of this cost, it is not so puzzling that we will often give back
more than we have received in the name of reciprocity. Neither is it so
odd that, as was shown in an experiment conducted at the University
of Pittsburgh, people will often avoid asking for a needed favor if they
will not be in a position to repay it. The psychological cost may simply
outweigh the material loss.
   The risk of still other kinds of losses may also persuade people to
decline certain gifts and benefits. Women frequently comment on the
uncomfortable sense of obligation they can feel to return the favors of
a man who has given them an expensive present or paid for a costly
evening out. Even something as small as the price of a drink can produce
a feeling of debt. A student in one of my classes expressed it quite
plainly in a paper she wrote: “After learning the hard way, I no longer
let a guy I meet in a club buy my drinks because I don’t want either of
us to feel that I am obligated sexually.” Research suggests that there is
a basis for her concern. If, instead of paying for them herself, a woman
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 27

allows a man to buy her drinks, she is immediately judged (by both
men and women) as more sexually available to him.9

                 RECIPROCAL CONCESSIONS
There is a second way to employ the reciprocity rule to get someone to
comply with a request. It is more subtle than the direct route of
providing that person with a favor and then asking for one in return;
yet in some ways it is more devastatingly effective than the straightfor-
ward approach. A personal experience I had a few years ago gave me
firsthand evidence of just how well this compliance technique works.
   I was walking down the street when I was approached by an eleven-
or twelve-year-old boy. He introduced himself and said that he was
selling tickets to the annual Boy Scouts circus to be held on the upcoming
Saturday night. He asked if I wished to buy any at five dollars apiece.
Since one of the last places I wanted to spend Saturday evening was
with the Boy Scouts, I declined. “Well,” he said, “if you don’t want to
buy any tickets, how about buying some of our big chocolate bars?
They’re only a dollar each.” I bought a couple and, right away, realized
that something noteworthy had happened. I knew that to be the case
because: (a) I do not like chocolate bars; (b) I do like dollars; (c) I was
standing there with two of his chocolate bars; and (d) he was walking
away with two of my dollars.
   To try to understand precisely what had happened, I went to my office
and called a meeting of my research assistants. In discussing the situ-
ation, we began to see how the reciprocity rule was implicated in my
compliance with the request to buy the candy bars. The general rule
says that a person who acts in a certain way toward us is entitled to a
similar return action. We have already seen that one consequence of
the rule is an obligation to repay favors we have received. Another
consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession
to someone who has made a concession to us. As my research group
thought about it, we realized that was exactly the position the Boy Scout
had put me in. His request that I purchase some one-dollar chocolate
bars had been put in the form of a concession on his part; it was
presented as a retreat from his request that I buy some five-dollar tickets.
If I were to live up to the dictates of the reciprocation rule, there had to
be a concession on my part. As we have seen, there was such a conces-
sion: I changed from noncompliant to compliant when he changed from
a larger to a smaller request, even though I was not really interested in
either of the things he offered.
   It was a classic example of how a weapon of automatic influence can
infuse a compliance request with its power. I had been moved to buy
28 / Influence

something not because of any favorable feelings toward the item, but
because the purchase request had been presented in a way that drew
force from the reciprocity rule. It had not mattered that I do not like
chocolate bars; the Boy Scout had made a concession to me, click, and,
whirr, I responded with a concession of my own. Of course, the tendency
to reciprocate a concession is not so strong that it will invariably work
in all instances on all people; none of the weapons of influence con-
sidered in this book is that strong. However, in my exchange with the
Boy Scout, the tendency had been sufficiently potent to leave me in
mystified possession of a pair of unwanted and overpriced candy bars.
   Why should I feel a strain to reciprocate a concession? The answer
rests once again in the benefit of such a tendency to the society. It is in
the interests of any human group to have its members working together
toward the achievement of common goals. However, in many social
interactions the participants begin with requirements and demands
that are unacceptable to one another. Thus the society must arrange to
have these initial, incompatible desires set aside for the sake of socially
beneficial cooperation. This is accomplished through procedures that
promote compromise. Mutual concession is one important such proced-
ure.
   The reciprocation rule brings about mutual concession in two ways.
The first is obvious. It pressures the recipient of an already-made con-
cession to respond in kind. The second, while not so obvious, is pivotally
important. Just as in the case of favors, gifts, or aid, the obligation to
reciprocate a concession encourages the creation of socially desirable
arrangements by ensuring that anyone seeking to start such an arrange-
ment will not be exploited. After all, if there were no social obligation
to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice?
To do so would be to risk giving up something and getting nothing
back. However, with the rule in effect, we can feel safe making the first
sacrifice to our partner, who is obligated to offer a return sacrifice.

   Because the rule for reciprocation governs the compromise process,
it is possible to 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. Suppose you want me to agree to
a certain request. 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,
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 29

the only one I would have immediately open to me—compliance with
your second request.
   Was that how the Boy Scout got me to buy his candy bars? Was his
retreat from the five-dollar request to the one-dollar request an artificial
one that was intentionally designed to sell candy bars? As one who has
still refused to discard even his first Scout merit badge, I genuinely
hope not. But whether or not the large-request-then-smaller-request
sequence was planned, its effect was the same, It worked. And because
it works, the rejection-then-retreat technique can and will be used pur-
posely by certain people to get their way. First let’s examine how this
tactic can be used as a reliable compliance device. Later we will see how
it is already being used. Finally we can turn to a pair of little-known
features of the technique that make it one of the most pervasively influ-
ential compliance tactics available.
   Remember that after my encounter with the Boy Scout, I called my
research assistants together to try to understand what had happened
to me and, as it turned out, to eat the evidence. Actually, we did more
than that. We designed an experiment to test the effectiveness of the
procedure of moving to a desired request after a larger preliminary re-
quest had been refused. We had two primary purposes in conducting
the experiment. First, we wanted to see whether this procedure worked
on people besides myself. That is, it certainly seemed that the tactic had
been effective when tried on me earlier in the day; but then, I have a
history of falling for compliance tricks of all sorts. So the question re-
mained, Does the rejection-then-retreat technique work on enough
people to make it a useful procedure for gaining compliance? If so, it
would definitely be something to be aware of in the future.
   Our second reason for doing the study was to determine how
powerful a compliance device the technique was. Could it bring about
compliance with a genuinely sizable request? In other words, did the
smaller request to which the requester retreated have to be a small re-
quest? If our thinking about what caused the technique to be effective
was correct, the second request did not actually have to be small; it only
had to be smaller than the initial one. It was our suspicion that the
critical thing about a requester’s retreat from a larger to a smaller favor
was its appearance as a concession. So the second request could be an
objectively large one—as long as it was smaller than the first re-
quest—and the technique would still work.
   After a bit of thought, we decided to try the technique on a request
that we felt few people would agree to perform. Posing as representat-
ives of the “County Youth Counseling Program,” we approached college
students walking on campus and asked if they would be willing to
chaperon a group of juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo. The
30 / Influence

idea of being responsible for a group of juvenile delinquents of unspe-
cified age for hours in a public place without pay was hardly an inviting
one for these students. As we expected, the great majority (83 percent)
refused. Yet we obtained very different results from a similar sample
of college students who were asked the very same question with one
difference. Before we invited them to serve as unpaid chaperons on the
zoo trip, we asked them for an even larger favor—to spend two hours
per week as a counselor to a juvenile delinquent for a minimum of two
years. It was only after they refused this extreme request, as all did,
that we made the smaller, zoo-trip request. By presenting the zoo trip
as a retreat from our initial request, our success rate increased dramat-
ically. Three times as many of the students approached in this manner
volunteered to serve as zoo chaperons.10
   Be assured that any strategy able to triple the percentage of compli-
ance with a substantial request (from 17 percent to 50 percent in our
experiment) will be frequently employed in a variety of natural settings.
Labor negotiators, for instance, often use the tactic of beginning with
extreme demands that they do not actually expect to win but from
which they can retreat in a series of seeming concessions designed to
draw real concessions from the opposing side. It would appear, then,
that the larger the initial request, the more effective the procedure, since
there would be more room available for illusory concessions. This is
true only up to a point, however. Research conducted at Bar-Ilan Uni-
versity in Israel on the rejection-then-retreat technique shows that if
the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the
tactic backfires.11 In such cases, the party who has made the extreme
first request is not seen to be bargaining in good faith. Any subsequent
retreat from that wholly unrealistic initial position is not viewed as a
genuine concession and thus is not reciprocated. The truly gifted nego-
tiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow
for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer
from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate
from the start.
   It seems that certain of the most successful television producers, such
as Grant Tinker and Gary Marshall, are masters of this art in their nego-
tiations with network censors. In a candid interview with TV Guide
writer Dick Russell, both admitted to “deliberately inserting lines into
scripts that a censor’s sure to ax” so that they could then retreat to the
lines they really wanted included. Marshall appears especially active
in this regard. Consider, for example, the following quotes from Russell’s
article:
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 31


  But Marshall…not only admits his tricks…he seems to revel in
  them. On one episode of his [then] top-rated Laverne and Shirley
  series, for example, he says, “We had a situation where Squiggy’s
  in a rush to get out of his apartment and meet some girls upstairs.
  He says: ‘Will you hurry up before I lose my lust?’ But in the script
  we put something even stronger, knowing the censors would cut
  it. They did; so we asked innocently, well, how about ‘lose my
  lust’? ‘That’s good,’ they said. Sometimes you gotta go at ’em
  backward.”
     On the Happy Days series, the biggest censorship fight was over
  the word “virgin.” That time, says Marshall, “I knew we’d have
  trouble, so we put the word in seven times, hoping they’d cut six
  and keep one. It worked. We used the same pattern again with
  the word ‘pregnant.’”12
   I witnessed another form of the rejection-then-retreat technique in
my investigations of door-to-door sales operations. These organizations
used a less engineered, more opportunistic version of the tactic. Of
course, the most important goal for a door-to-door salesperson is to
make the sale. However, the training programs of each of the companies
I investigated emphasized that a second important goal was to obtain
from prospects the names of referrals—friends, relatives, or neighbors
on whom we could call. For a variety of reasons we will discuss in
Chapter 5, the percentage of successful door-to-door sales increases
impressively when the sales operator is able to mention the name of a
familiar person who “recommended” the sales visit.
   Never as a sales trainee was I taught to get the sales pitch refused so
that I could then retreat to a request for referrals. In several such pro-
grams, though, I was trained to take advantage of the opportunity to
secure referrals offered by a customer’s purchase refusal: “Well, if it is
your feeling that a fine set of encyclopedias is not right for you at this
time, perhaps you could help me by giving me the names of some others
who might wish to take advantage of our company’s great offer. What
would be the names of some of these people you know?” Many indi-
viduals who would not otherwise subject their friends to a high-pressure
sales presentation do agree to supply referrals when the request is
presented as a concession from a purchase request they have just re-
fused.

   We have already discussed one reason for the success of the rejection-
then-retreat technique—its incorporation of the reciprocity rule. This
larger-then-smaller-request strategy is effective for a pair of other
reasons as well. The first concerns the perceptual contrast principle we
32 / Influence

encountered in Chapter 1. That principle accounted for, among other
things, the tendency of a man to spend more money on a sweater fol-
lowing his purchase of a suit than before: After being exposed to the
price of the large item, the price of the less expensive one appears smaller
by comparison. In the same way, the larger-then-smaller-request pro-
cedure makes use of the contrast principle by making the smaller request
look even smaller by comparison with the larger one. If I want you to
lend me five dollars, I can make it seem like a smaller request by first
asking you to lend me ten dollars. One of the beauties of this tactic is
that by first requesting ten dollars and then retreating to five dollars, I
will have simultaneously engaged the force of the reciprocity rule and
the contrast principle. Not only will my five-dollar request be viewed
as a concession to be reciprocated, it will also look to you like a smaller
request than if I had just asked for it straightaway.
   In combination, the influences of reciprocity and perceptual contrast
can present a fearsomely powerful force. Embodied in the rejection-
then-retreat sequence, their conjoined energies are capable of genuinely
astonishing effects. It is my feeling that they provide the only really
plausible explanation of one of the most baffling political actions of our
time: the decision to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic
National Committee that led to the ruin of Richard Nixon’s presidency.
One of the participants in that decision, Jeb Stuart Magruder, upon first
hearing that the Watergate burglars had been caught, responded with
appropriate bewilderment, “How could we have been so stupid?” In-
deed, how?
   To understand how enormously ill conceived an idea it was for the
Nixon administration to undertake the break-in, it is necessary to review
a few facts:

• The idea was that of G. Gordon Liddy, who was in charge of intelli-
  gence-gathering operations for the Committee to Re-elect the Presid-
  ent (CRP). Liddy had gained a reputation among administration
  higher-ups as something of a flake, and there were questions about
  his stability and judgment.
• Liddy’s proposal was extremely costly, requiring a budget of $250,000
  in untraceable cash.
• In late March, when the proposal was approved in a meeting of the
  CRP director, John Mitchell, and his assistants Magruder and Freder-
  ick LaRue, the outlook for a Nixon victory in the November election
  could not have been brighter. Edmund Muskie, the only announced
  candidate the early polls had given a chance of unseating the Presid-
  ent, had done poorly in the primaries. It looked very much as though
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 33

  the most defeatable candidate, George McGovern, would win his
  party’s nomination. A Republican victory seemed assured.
• The break-in plan itself was a highly risky operation requiring the
  participation and discretion of ten men.
• The Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Lawrence
  O’Brien, whose Watergate office was to be burglarized and bugged,
  had no information damaging enough to defeat the incumbent Pres-
  ident. Nor were they likely to get any, unless the administration did
  something very, very foolish.

   Despite the obvious counsel of the above reasons, the expensive,
chancy, pointless, and potentially calamitous proposal of a man whose
judgment was known to be questionable was approved. How could it
be that intelligent men of the attainment of Mitchell and Magruder
would do something so very, very foolish? Perhaps the answer lies in a
little-discussed fact: The $250,000 plan they approved was not Liddy’s
first proposal. In fact, it represented a significant concession on his part
from two earlier proposals, of immense proportions. The first of these
plans, made two months earlier in a meeting with Mitchell, Magruder,
and John Dean, described a $I million program that included (in addition
to the bugging of the Watergate) a specially equipped communications
“chase plane,” break-ins, kidnapping and mugging squads, and a yacht
featuring “high-class call girls” to blackmail Democratic politicians. A
second Liddy plan, presented a week later to the same group of Mitchell,
Magruder, and Dean, eliminated some of the program and reduced the
cost to $500,000. It was only after these initial proposals had been rejec-
ted by Mitchell that Liddy submitted his “bare-bones” $250,000 plan,
in this instance to Mitchell, Magruder, and Frederick LaRue. This time
the plan, still stupid but less so than the previous ones, was approved.
   Could it be that I, a longtime patsy, and John Mitchell, a hardened
and canny politician, might both have been so easily maneuvered into
bad deals by the same compliance tactic—I by a Boy Scout selling candy,
and he by a man selling political disaster?
   If we examine the testimony of Jeb Magruder, considered by most
Watergate investigators to provide the most faithful account of the
crucial meeting at which Liddy’s plan was finally accepted, there are
some instructive clues. First, Magruder reports that “no one was partic-
ularly overwhelmed with the project”; but “after starting at the grandi-
ose sum of $1 million, we thought that probably $250,000 would be an
acceptable figure…. We were reluctant to send him away with nothing.”
Mitchell, caught up in the “feeling that we should leave Liddy a little
something…signed off on it in the sense of saying, ‘Okay, let’s give him
a quarter of a million dollars and let’s see what he can come up with.’”
34 / Influence

   In the context of Liddy’s initial extreme requests, it seems that “a
quarter of a million dollars” had come to be “a little something” to be
left as a return concession. With the clarity afforded by hindsight, Ma-
gruder has recalled Liddy’s approach in as succinct an illustration of
the rejection-then-retreat technique as I have ever heard. “If he had
come to us at the outset and said, ‘I have a plan to burglarize and
wiretap Larry O’Brien’s office,’ we might have rejected the idea out of
hand. Instead he came to us with his elaborate call-girl/kidnap-
ping/mugging/sabotage/wiretapping scheme…. He had asked for the
whole loaf when he was quite content to settle for half or even a
quarter.”13
   It is also instructive that, although he finally deferred to his boss’s
decision, only one member of the group, Frederick LaRue, expressed
any direct opposition to the proposal. Saying with obvious common
sense, “I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” he must have wondered why
his colleagues Mitchell and Magruder did not share his perspective. Of
course, there could be many differences between LaRue and the other
two men that may have accounted for their differing opinions regarding
the advisability of Liddy’s plan. But one stands out: Of the three, only
LaRue had not been present at the prior two meetings, where Liddy
had outlined his much more ambitious programs. Perhaps, then, only
LaRue was able to see the third proposal for the clunker that it was and
to react to it objectively, uninfluenced by the reciprocity and perceptual
contrast forces acting upon the others.
   A bit earlier we said that the rejection-then-retreat technique had, in
addition to the reciprocity rule, a pair of other factors working in its
favor. We have already discussed the first of those factors, the percep-
tual contrast principle. The additional advantage of the technique is
not really a psychological principle, as in the case of the other two
factors; it is more of a purely structural feature of the request sequence.
Let’s once again say that I wish to borrow five dollars from you. By
beginning with a ten-dollar request, I really can’t lose. If you agree to
it, I will have gotten twice the amount from you I would have settled
for. If, on the other hand, you turn down my initial request, I can retreat
to the five-dollar favor that I desired from the outset and, through the
action of the reciprocity and contrast principles, greatly enhance my
likelihood of success. Either way, I benefit; it’s a case of heads I win,
tails you lose.
   The clearest utilization of this aspect of the larger-then-smaller-request
sequence occurs in the retail-store sales practice of “talking the top of
the line.” Here the prospect is invariably shown the deluxe model first.
If the customer buys, there is frosting on the store’s cake. However, if
the customer declines, the salesperson effectively counteroffers with a
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 35

more reasonably priced model. Some proof of the effectiveness of this
procedure comes from a report in Sales Management magazine, reprinted
without comment in Consumer Reports:
  If you were a billiard-table dealer, which would you advertise—the
  $329 model or the $3,000 model? The chances are you would pro-
  mote the low-priced item and hope to trade the customer up when
  he comes to buy. But G. Warren Kelley, new business promotion
  manager at Brunswick, says you could be wrong…. To prove his
  point, Kelley has actual sales figures from a representative store….
  During the first week, customers…were shown the low end of the
  line…and then encouraged to consider more expensive mod-
  els—the traditional trading-up approach…. The average table sale
  that week was $550…. However, during the second week, custom-
  ers…were led instantly to a $3,000 table, regardless of what they
  wanted to see…and then allowed to shop the rest of the line, in
  declining order of price and quality. The result of selling down
  was an average sale of over $1,000.14
   Given the remarkable effectiveness of the rejection-then-retreat
technique, one might think that there could be a substantial disadvant-
age as well. The victims of the strategy might resent having been
cornered into compliance. The resentment could show itself in a couple
of ways. First, the victim might decide not to live up to the verbal
agreement made with the requester. Second, the victim might come to
distrust the manipulative requester, deciding never to deal with him
again. If either or both of these events occurred with any frequency, a
requester would want to give serious second thought to the use of the
rejection-then-retreat procedure. Research indicates, however, that these
victim reactions do not occur with increased frequency when the rejec-
tion-then-retreat technique is used. Somewhat astonishingly, it appears
that they actually occur less frequently! Before trying to understand
why this is the case, let’s first look at the evidence.
   A study published in Canada throws light on the question of
whether a victim of the rejection-then-retreat tactic will follow through
with the agreement to perform the requester’s second favor. In addition
to recording whether target persons said yes or no to the desired request
(to work for two unpaid hours one day in a community mental-health
agency), this experiment also recorded whether they showed up to
perform their duties as promised. As usual, the procedure of starting
with a larger request (to volunteer for two hours of work per week in
the agency for at least two years) produced more verbal agreement to
the smaller retreat request (76 percent) than did the procedure of asking
for the smaller request alone (29 percent). The important result, though,
36 / Influence

concerned the show-up rate of those who volunteered; and, again, the re-
jection-then-retreat procedure was the more effective one (85 percent
vs. 50 percent).15
   A different experiment examined whether the rejection-then-retreat
sequence caused victims to feel so manipulated that they would refuse
any further requests. In this study, the targets were college students
who were each asked to give a pint of blood as part of the annual cam-
pus blood drive. One group of targets was first asked to give a pint of
blood every six weeks for a minimum of three years. The other targets
were asked only to give the single pint of blood. Those of both groups
who agreed to give a pint of blood and who later appeared at the blood
center were then asked if they would be willing to give their phone
numbers so they could be called upon to donate again in the future.
Nearly all the students who were about to give a pint of blood as a
result of the rejection-then-retreat technique agreed to donate again
later (84 percent), while less than half of the other students who ap-
peared at the blood center did so (43 percent). Even for future favors,
the rejection-then-retreat strategy proved superior.16

   Strangely enough, then, it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic
spurs people not only to agree to a desired request but actually to carry
out the request and, finally, to volunteer to perform further requests.
What could there be about the technique that makes people who have
been duped into compliance so bewilderingly likely to continue to
comply? For an answer, we might look at the requester’s act of conces-
sion, which is the heart of the procedure. We have already seen that as
long as it is not viewed to be a transparent trick, the concession will
likely stimulate a return concession. But what we have not yet examined
is a little-known pair of positive by-products of the act of concession:
feelings of greater responsibility for, and satisfaction with, the arrange-
ment. It is this set of sweet side effects that enables the technique to
move its victims to fulfill their agreements and to engage in further
such agreements.
   The desirable side effects of making a concession during an interaction
with another person are nicely shown in studies of the way people
bargain with each other. One experiment, conducted by social psycho-
logists at UCLA, offers an especially apt demonstration.17 A subject in
that study faced a “negotiation opponent” and was told to bargain with
the opponent concerning how to divide between themselves a certain
amount of money provided by the experimenters. The subject was also
informed that if no mutual agreement could be reached after a certain
period of bargaining, no one would get any money. Unknown to the
subjects, the opponent was really an experimental assistant who had
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 37

been previously instructed to bargain with the subject in one of three
ways. With some of the subjects, the opponent made an extreme first
demand, assigning virtually all of the money to himself, and stubbornly
persisted in that demand throughout the negotiations. With another
group of subjects, the opponent began with a demand that was moder-
ately favorable to himself; he, too, steadfastly refused to move from
that position during the negotiations. With a third group, the opponent
began with the extreme demand and then gradually retreated to the
more moderate one during the course of the bargaining.
   There were three important findings in this experiment that help us
to understand why the rejection-then-retreat technique is so effective.
First, compared to the two other approaches, the strategy of starting
with an extreme demand and then retreating to the more moderate one
produced the most money for the person using it. But this result is not
very surprising in light of the previous evidence we have seen of the
power of larger-then-smaller-request tactics to bring about profitable
agreements. It is the two additional findings of the study that are more
striking.
   Responsibility. Those subjects facing the opponent who used the re-
treating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal. Much more
than the subjects who faced a nonchanging negotiation opponent, these
subjects reported that they had successfully influenced the opponent
to take less money for himself. Of course, we know that they hadn’t
done any such thing. The experimenter had instructed their opponent
to retreat gradually from his initial demand no matter what the subjects
did. But it appeared to these subjects that they had made the opponent
change, that they had produced his concessions. The result was that they
felt more responsible for the final outcome of the negotiations. It does
not require much of a leap from this finding to clarify the previous
mystery of why the rejection-then-retreat technique causes its targets
to live up to their agreements with such astounding frequency. The re-
quester’s concession within the technique not only causes targets to say
yes more often, it also causes them to feel more responsible for having
“dictated” the final agreement. Thus the uncanny ability of the rejection-
then-retreat technique to make its targets meet their commitments be-
comes understandable: A person who feels responsible for the terms
of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.
   Satisfaction. Even though, on the average, they gave the most money
to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who
were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final
arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has been forged through
the concessions of one’s opponent is quite satisfying. With this in mind,
we can begin to explain the second previously puzzling feature of the
38 / Influence

rejection-then-retreat tactic—the ability to prompt its victims to agree
to further requests. Since the tactic uses a concession to bring about
compliance, the victim is likely to feel more satisfied with the arrange-
ment as a result. And it stands to reason that people who are satisfied
with a given arrangement are more likely to be willing to agree to further
such arrangements.

                          HOW TO SAY NO
When up against a requester who employs the rule for reciprocation,
you and I face a formidable foe. Whether by presenting us with an initial
favor or initial concession, the requester will have enlisted a powerful
ally in the campaign for our compliance. At first glance, our fortunes
in such a situation would appear dismal. We could comply with the
requester’s wish and, in so doing, succumb to the reciprocity rule. Or,
we could refuse to comply and thereby suffer the brunt of the rule’s
force upon our deeply conditioned feelings of fairness and obligation.
Surrender or suffer heavy casualties. Cheerless prospects indeed.
   Fortunately, these are not our only choices. With the proper under-
standing of the nature of our opponent, we can come away from the
compliance battlefield unhurt and sometimes even better off than before.
It is essential to recognize that the requester who invokes the reciproc-
ation rule (or any other weapon of influence) to gain our compliance is
not the real opponent. Such a requester has chosen to become a jujitsu
warrior who aligns himself with the sweeping power of reciprocation
and then merely releases that power by providing a first favor or con-
cession. The real opponent is the rule. If we are not to be abused by it,
we must take steps to defuse its energy.
   But how does one go about neutralizing the effect of a social rule like
that for reciprocation? It seems too widespread to escape and too strong
to overpower once it is activated. Perhaps the answer, then, is to prevent
its activation. Perhaps we can avoid a confrontation with the rule by
refusing to allow the requester to commission its force against us in the
first place. Perhaps by rejecting the requester’s initial favor or concession
to us, we can evade the problem. Perhaps; but then, perhaps not. Invari-
ably declining the requester’s initial offer of a favor or sacrifice works
better in theory than in practice. The major problem is that when it is
first presented, it is difficult to know whether such an offer is honest
or whether it is the initial step in an exploitation attempt. If we always
assume the worst, it would not be possible to receive the benefits of
any legitimate favors or concessions offered by individuals who had
no intention of exploiting the reciprocity rule.
   I have a colleague who remembers with anger how his ten-year-old
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 39

daughter’s feelings were terribly hurt by a man whose method of
avoiding the jaws of the reciprocity rule was to refuse abruptly her
kindness. The children of her class were hosting an open house at school
for their grandparents, and her job was to give a flower to each visitor
entering the school grounds. But the first man she approached with a
flower growled at her, “Keep it.” Not knowing what to do, she extended
it toward him again only to have him demand to know what he had to
give in return. When she replied weakly, “Nothing. It’s a gift,” he fixed
her with a disbelieving glare, insisted that he recognized “her game,”
and brushed on past. The girl was so stung by the experience that she
could not approach anyone else and had to be removed from her assign-
ment—one she had anticipated fondly. It is hard to know whom to
blame more here, the insensitive man or the exploiters who had abused
his mechanical tendency to reciprocate a gift until his response had
soured to a mechanical refusal. No matter whom you find more
blameworthy, the lesson is clear. We will always encounter authentically
generous individuals as well as many people who try to play fairly by
the reciprocity rule rather than to exploit it. They will doubtless become
insulted by someone who consistently rejects their efforts; social friction
and isolation could well result. A policy of blanket rejection, then, seems
ill advised.
    Another solution holds more promise. It advises us to accept the de-
sirable first offers of others but to accept those offers only for what they
fundamentally are, not for what they are represented to be. If a person
offers us a nice favor, let’s say, we might well accept, recognizing that
we have obligated ourselves to a return favor sometime in the future.
To engage in this sort of arrangement with another is not to be exploited
by that person through the rule for reciprocation. Quite the contrary;
it is to participate fairly in the “honored network of obligation” that
has served us so well, both individually and societally, from the dawn
of humanity. However, if the initial favor turns out to be a device, a
trick, an artifice designed specifically to stimulate our compliance with
a larger return favor, that is a different story. Here our partner is not a
benefactor but a profiteer. And it is here that we should respond to his
action on precisely those terms. Once we have determined that his initial
offer was not a favor but a compliance tactic, we need only react to it
accordingly to be free of its influence. As long as we perceive and define
his action as a compliance device instead of a favor, he no longer has
the reciprocation rule as an ally: The rule says that favors are to be met
with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors.

  A practical example may make things more concrete. Let’s suppose
that a woman phoned one day and introduced herself as a member of
40 / Influence

the Home Fire Safety Association in your town. Suppose she then asked
if you would be interested in learning about home fire safety, having
your house checked for fire hazards, and receiving a home fire extin-
guisher, all free of charge. Let’s suppose further that you were interested
in these things and made an evening appointment to have one of the
Association’s inspectors come over to provide them. When he arrived,
he gave you a small hand extinguisher and began examining the possible
fire hazards of your home. Afterward, he gave you some interesting,
though frightening, information about general fire dangers, along with
an assessment of your home’s vulnerability. Finally, he suggested that
you get a home fire-warning system and left.
   Such a set of events is not implausible. Various cities and towns have
nonprofit associations, usually made up of Fire Department personnel
working on their own time, that provide free home fire-safety inspec-
tions of this sort. Were these events to occur, you would clearly have
been done a favor by the inspector. In accordance with the reciprocation
rule, you should stand more ready to provide a return favor if you were
to see him in need of aid at some point in the future. An exchange of
favors of this kind would be in the best tradition of the reciprocity rule.
   A similar set of events with, however, a different ending would also
be possible—in fact, more likely. Rather than leaving after recommend-
ing a fire-alarm system, the inspector would launch into a sales
presentation intended to persuade you to buy an expensive, heat-
triggered alarm system manufactured by the company he represented.
Door-to-door home fire-alarm companies will frequently use this ap-
proach. Typically, their product, while effective enough, will be over-
priced. Trusting that you will not be familiar with the retail costs of
such a system and that, if you decide to buy one, you will feel obligated
to the company that provided you with a free extinguisher and home
inspection, these companies will pressure you for an immediate sale.
Using this free-information-and-inspection gambit, fire-protection sales
organizations have flourished around the country.18
   If you were to find yourself in such a situation with the realization
that the primary motive of the inspector’s visit was to sell you a costly
alarm system, your most effective next action would be a simple, private
maneuver. It would involve the mental act of redefinition. Merely define
whatever you have received from the inspector—extinguisher, safety
information, hazard inspection—not as gifts, but as sales devices, and
you will be free to decline (or accept) his purchase offer without even
a tug from the reciprocity rule: A favor rightly follows a favor—not a
piece of sales strategy. And if he subsequently responds to your refusal
by proposing that you, at least, give him the names of some friends he
might call on, use your mental maneuver on him again. Define his retreat
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 41

to this smaller request as what (it is hoped after reading this chapter)
you recognize it to be—a compliance tactic. Once done, there would be
no pressure to offer the names as a return concession, since his reduced
request would not be viewed as a real concession. At this point, un-
hampered by an inappropriately triggered sense of obligation, you may
once again be as compliant or noncompliant as you wish.
  Provided you are so inclined, you might even turn his own weapon
of influence against him. Recall that the rule for reciprocation entitles
a person who has acted in a certain way to a dose of the same thing. If
you have determined that the “fire inspector’s” gifts were used, not as
genuine gifts, but to make a profit from you, then you might want to
use them to make a profit of your own. Simply take whatever the in-
spector is willing to provide—safety information, home extinguish-
er—thank him politely, and show him out the door. After all, the reci-
procity rule asserts that if justice is to be done, exploitation attempts
should be exploited.

                          READER’S REPORT
          From a Former TV and Stereo Salesperson
“For quite a while, I worked for a major retailer in their Television and
Stereo Department. Salespeople in this department are paid on a com-
mission basis; however, continued employment was, and still is, based
on the ability to sell service contracts rather than merchandise. Company
policy was that, for every ten sales you made, you had to sell at least
four service contracts. Failure to bring your service-contract sales up
to expected levels for two consecutive months resulted in threats, relo-
cation, or termination.
   “Once I recognized the importance of meeting my sales-contract
quota, I devised a plan that used the rejection-then-retreat technique,
although I didn’t know its name at the time: A customer had the oppor-
tunity to buy from one to three years’ worth of service-contract coverage
at the time of the sale. Most of the sales staff attempted just to sell a
single-year policy. That was my intention as well, since a one-year
contract counted just as much toward my quota as a three-year contract
did. Initially, however, when making my sales pitch, I would advocate
the longest and most expensive plan, realizing that most people would
not be willing to spend that much (about $140). But this gave me an
excellent opportunity later, after being rejected in my sincere attempt
to sell the three-year plan, to retreat to the one-year extension and its
relatively small $34.95 price, which I was thrilled to get. This proved
highly effective, as I sold sales contracts to an average of seventy percent
of my customers, who seemed very satisfied with the purchase while
42 / Influence

others in my department clustered around forty percent. I never told
anyone how I did it until now.”
 Notice how, as is usually the case, use of the rejection-then-retreat
tactic engages the action of the contrast principle as well. Not only did
the $140 initial request make the $34.95 request seem like a retreat, it
             made that second request seem smaller too.
                            Chapter 3

               COMMITMENT AND
                 CONSISTENCY
                   Hobgoblins of the Mind

          It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
                          —LEONARDO DA VINCI




A something fascinating about people at the racetrack: Just after
     STUDY DONE BY A PAIR OF CANADIAN PSYCHOLOGISTS UNCOVERED

placing a bet, they are much more confident of their horse’s chances of
winning than they are immediately before laying down that bet.1 Of
course, nothing about the horse’s chances actually shifts; it’s the same
horse, on the same track, in the same field; but in the minds of those
bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased.
Although a bit puzzling at first glance, the reason for the dramatic
change has to do with a common weapon of social influence. Like the
other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our
actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire
to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once
we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal
and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commit-
ment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our
earlier decision.
   Take the bettors in the racetrack experiment. Thirty seconds before
putting down their money, they had been tentative and uncertain; thirty
seconds after the deed, they were significantly more optimistic and self-
assured. The act of making a final decision—in this case, of buying a
44 / Influence

ticket—had been the critical factor. Once a stand had been taken, the
need for consistency pressured these people to bring what they felt and
believed into line with what they had already done. They simply con-
vinced themselves that they had made the right choice and, no doubt,
felt better about it all.
   Before we see such self-delusion as unique to racetrack habitués, we
should examine the story of my neighbor Sara and her live-in boyfriend,
Tim. They met at a hospital where he worked as an X-ray technician
and she as a nutritionist. They dated for a while, even after Tim lost his
job, and eventually they moved in together. Things were never perfect
for Sara: She wanted Tim to marry her and to stop his heavy drinking;
Tim resisted both ideas. After an especially difficult period of conflict,
Sara broke off the relationship, and Tim moved out. At the same time,
an old boyfriend of Sara’s returned to town after years away and called
her. They started seeing each other socially and quickly became serious
enough to plan a wedding. They had gone so far as to set a date and
issue invitations when Tim called. He had repented and wanted to
move back in. When Sara told him her marriage plans, he begged her
to change her mind; he wanted to be together with her as before. But
Sara refused, saying she didn’t want to live like that again. Tim even
offered to marry her, but she still said she preferred the other boyfriend.
Finally, Tim volunteered to quit drinking if she would only relent.
Feeling that under those conditions Tim had the edge, Sara decided to
break her engagement, cancel the wedding, retract the invitations, and
let Tim move back in with her.
   Within a month, Tim informed Sara that he didn’t think he needed
to stop his drinking after all; a month later, he had decided that they
should “wait and see” before getting married. Two years have since
passed; Tim and Sara continue to live together exactly as before. He
still drinks, there are still no marriage plans, yet Sara is more devoted
to Tim than she ever was. She says that being forced to choose taught
her that Tim really is number one in her heart. So, after choosing Tim
over her other boyfriend, Sara became happier with him, even though
the conditions under which she had made her choice have never been
fulfilled. Obviously, horse-race bettors are not alone in their willingness
to believe in the correctness of a difficult choice, once made. Indeed,
we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts
and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.

  Psychologists have long understood the power of the consistency
principle to direct human action. Prominent theorists such as Leon
Festinger, Fritz Hieder, and Theodore Newcomb have viewed the desire
for consistency as a central motivator of our behavior. But is this tend-
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 45

ency to be consistent really strong enough to compel us to do what we
ordinarily would not want to do? There is no question about it. The
drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of
social influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary
to our own best interests.
    Take, as proof, what happened when psychologist Thomas Moriarty
staged thefts on a New York City beach to see if onlookers would risk
personal harm to halt the crime. In the study, a research accomplice
would put a beach blanket down five feet from the blanket of a ran-
domly chosen individual—the experimental subject. After a couple of
minutes on the blanket spent relaxing and listening to music from a
portable radio, the accomplice would stand up and leave the blanket
to stroll down the beach. A few minutes later, a second researcher,
pretending to be a thief, would approach, grab the radio, and try to
hurry away with it. As you might guess, under normal conditions,
subjects were very reluctant to put themselves in harm’s way by chal-
lenging the thief—only four people did so in the twenty times, that the
theft was staged. But when the same procedure was tried another twenty
times, with a slight twist, the results were drastically different. In these
incidents, before taking his stroll, the accomplice would simply ask the
subject to please “watch my things,” which each of them agreed to do.
Now, propelled by the rule for consistency, nineteen of the twenty
subjects became virtual vigilantes, running after and stopping the thief,
demanding an explanation, and often restraining the thief physically
or snatching the radio away.
    To understand why consistency is so powerful a motive, it is import-
ant to recognize that in most circumstances consistency is valued and
adaptive. Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable
personality trait. The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t
match may be seen as indecisive, confused, two-faced, or even mentally
ill. On the other side, a high degree of consistency is normally associated
with personal and intellectual strength. It is at the heart of logic, ration-
ality, stability, and honesty. A quote attributed to the great British
chemist Michael Faraday suggests the extent to which being consistent
is approved—sometimes more than being right. When asked after a
lecture if he meant to imply that a hated academic rival was always
wrong, Faraday glowered at the questioner and replied, “He’s not that
consistent.”
    Certainly, then, good personal consistency is highly valued in our
culture. And well it should be. It provides us with a reasonable and
gainful orientation to the world. Most of the time we will be better off
if our approach to things is well laced with consistency. Without it our
lives would be difficult, erratic, and disjointed.
46 / Influence


   But because it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we
easily fall into the habit of being automatically so, even in situations
where it is not the sensible way to be. When it occurs unthinkingly,
consistency can be disastrous. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has
its attractions.
   First, like most other forms of automatic responding, it offers a
shortcut through the density of modern life. Once we have made up
our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us a very appeal-
ing luxury: We really don’t have to think hard about the issue anymore.
We don’t have to sift through the blizzard of information we encounter
every day to identify relevant facts; we don’t have to expend the mental
energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don’t have to make any further
tough decisions. Instead, all we have to do when confronted with the
issue is to turn on our consistency tape, whirr, and we know just what
to believe, say, or do. We need only believe, say, or do whatever is
consistent with our earlier decision.
   The allure of such a luxury is not to be minimized. It allows us a
convenient, relatively effortless, and efficient method for dealing with
complex daily environments that make severe demands on our mental
energies and capacities. It is not hard to understand, then, why automat-
ic consistency is a difficult reaction to curb. It offers us a way to evade
the rigors of continuing thought. And as Sir Joshua Reynolds noted,
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real
labor of thinking.” With our consistency tapes operating, then, we can
go about our business happily excused from the toil of having to think
too much.

    There is a second, more perverse attraction of mechanical consistency
as well. Sometimes it is not the effort of hard, cognitive work that makes
us shirk thoughtful activity, but the harsh consequences of that activity.
Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers
provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers. There are
certain disturbing things we simply would rather not realize. Because
it is a preprogrammed and mindless method of responding, automatic
consistency can supply a safe hiding place from those troubling realiz-
ations. Sealed within the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be
impervious to the sieges of reason.
    One night at an introductory lecture given by the transcendental
meditation (TM) program, I witnessed a nice illustration of how people
will hide inside the walls of consistency to protect themselves from the
troublesome consequences of thought. The lecture itself was presided
over by two earnest young men and was designed to recruit new
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 47

members into the program. The program claimed it could teach a unique
brand of meditation that would allow us to achieve all manner of desir-
able things, ranging from simple inner peace to the more spectacular
abilities to fly and pass through walls at the program’s advanced (and
more expensive) stages.
   I had decided to attend the meeting to observe the kind of compliance
tactics used in recruitment lectures of this sort and had brought along
an interested friend, a university professor whose areas of specialization
were statistics and symbolic logic. As the meeting progressed and the
lecturers explained the theory behind TM, I noticed my logician friend
becoming increasingly restless. Looking more and more pained and
shifting about constantly in his seat, he was finally unable to resist.
When the leaders called for questions at the completion of the lecture,
he raised his hand and gently but surely demolished the presentation
we had just heard. In less than two minutes, he pointed out precisely
where and why the lecturers’ complex argument was contradictory, il-
logical, and unsupportable. The effect on the discussion leaders was
devastating. After a confused silence, each attempted a weak reply only
to halt midway to confer with his partner and finally to admit that my
colleague’s points were good ones “requiring further study.”
   More interesting to me, though, was the effect upon the rest of the
audience. At the end of the question period, the two recruiters were
faced with a crush of audience members submitting their seventy-five-
dollar down payments for admission to the TM program. Nudging,
shrugging, and chuckling to one another as they took in the payments,
the recruiters betrayed signs of giddy bewilderment. After what ap-
peared to have been an embarrassingly clear collapse of their presenta-
tion, the meeting had somehow turned into a great success, generating
mystifyingly high levels of compliance from the audience. Although
more than a bit puzzled, I chalked up the audience response to a failure
to understand the logic of my colleague’s arguments. As it turned out,
however, just the reverse was the case.
   Outside the lecture room after the meeting, we were approached by
three members of the audience, each of whom had given a down pay-
ment immediately after the lecture. They wanted to know why we had
come to the session. We explained, and we asked the same question of
them. One was an aspiring actor who wanted desperately to succeed
at his craft and had come to the meeting to learn if TM would allow
him to achieve the necessary self-control to master the art; the recruiters
had assured him that it would. The second described herself as a severe
insomniac who had hopes that TM would provide her with a way to
relax and fall asleep easily at night. The third served as unofficial
spokesman. He also had a sleep-related problem. He was failing college
48 / Influence

because there didn’t seem to be enough time to study. He had come to
the meeting to find out if TM could help by training him to need fewer
hours of sleep each night; the additional time could then be used for
study. It is interesting to note that the recruiters informed him as well
as the insomniac that Transcendental Meditation techniques could solve
their respective, though opposite, problems.
   Still thinking that the three must have signed up because they hadn’t
understood the points made by my logician friend, I began to question
them about aspects of his argument. To my surprise, I found that they
had understood his comments quite well; in fact, all too well. It was
precisely the cogency of his argument that drove them to sign up for
the program on the spot. The spokesman put it best: “Well, I wasn’t
going to put down any money tonight because I’m really quite broke
right now; I was going to wait until the next meeting. But when your
buddy started talking, I knew I’d better give them my money now, or
I’d go home and start thinking about what he said and never sign up.”
   All at once, things began to make sense. These were people with real
problems; and they were somewhat desperately searching for a way to
solve those problems. They were seekers who, if our discussion leaders
were to be believed, had found a potential solution in TM. Driven by
their needs, they very much wanted to believe that TM was their answer.
   Now, in the form of my colleague, intrudes the voice of reason,
showing the theory underlying their newfound solution to be unsound.
Panic! Something must be done at once before logic takes its toll and
leaves them without hope again. Quickly, quickly, walls against reason
are needed; and it doesn’t matter that the fortress to be erected is a
foolish one. “Quick, a hiding place from thought! Here, take this money.
Whew, safe in the nick of time. No need to think about the issues any
longer. The decision has been made, and from now on the consistency
tape can be played whenever necessary: ‘TM? Certainly I think it will
help me; certainly I expect to continue; certainly I believe in TM. I
already put my money down for it, didn’t I?’ Ah, the comforts of
mindless consistency. I’ll just rest right here for a while. It’s so much
nicer than the worry and strain of that hard, hard search.”

   If, as it appears, automatic consistency functions as a shield against
thought, it should not be surprising that such consistency can also be
exploited by those who would prefer that we not think too much in
response to their requests for our compliance. For the exploiters, whose
interest will be served by an unthinking, mechanical reaction to their
requests, our tendency for automatic consistency is a gold mine. So
clever are they at arranging to have us play our consistency tapes when
it profits them that we seldom realize we have been taken. In fine jujitsu
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 49

fashion, they structure their interactions with us so that our own need
to be consistent will lead directly to their benefit.
   Certain large toy manufacturers use just such an approach to reduce
a problem caused by seasonal buying patterns. Of course, the boom
time for toy sales occurs before and during the Christmas holiday sea-
son. The toy companies make fat profits during this period. Their
problem is that toy sales then go into a terrible slump for the next couple
of months. Their customers have already spent the full amount in their
toy budgets and are stiffly resistant to their children’s pleas for more.
Even those children whose birthdays fall soon after the holidays receive
fewer toys because of the recent Christmas spree.
   So the toy manufacturers are faced with a dilemma: how to keep sales
high during the peak season and, at the same time, retain a healthy
demand for toys in the immediately following months. Their difficulty
certainly doesn’t lie in convincing our naturally insatiable offspring to
want a continuous flow of new amusements. A series of flashy television
commercials placed among the Saturday morning cartoon shows will
produce the usual amounts of begging, whining, and wheedling no
matter when it appears during the year. No, the problem is not in mo-
tivating kids to want more toys after Christmas.
   The problem is in motivating postholiday spent-out parents to reach
down for the price of yet another plaything for their already toy-glutted
children. What could the toy companies possibly do to produce that
unlikely behavior? Some have tried a greatly increased advertising
campaign, others have reduced prices during the slack period, but
neither of those standard sales devices has proved successful. Not only
are both tactics costly, but both have also been ineffective in increasing
sales to desired levels. Parents are simply not in a toy-buying mood,
and the influences of advertising or reduced expense are not enough
to shake that stony resistance.
   Certain large toy manufacturers, however, think they have found a
solution. It’s an ingenious one, involving no more than a normal advert-
ising expense and an understanding of the powerful pull of the need
for consistency. My first hint of how the toy companies’ strategy worked
came after I fell for it and then, in true patsy form, fell for it again.
   It was January, and I was in the town’s largest toy store. After pur-
chasing all too many gifts there for my son a month before, I had sworn
not to enter that place or any like it for a long, long time. Yet there I
was, not only in the diabolic place but also in the process of buying my
son another expensive toy—a big, electric road-race set. In front of the
road-race display, I happened to meet a former neighbor who was
buying his son the same toy. The odd thing was that we almost never
saw each other anymore. In fact, the last time was a year earlier in that
50 / Influence

same store where we were both buying our sons an expensive post-
Christmas gift—that time a robot that walked, talked, and laid waste.
We laughed about our strange pattern of seeing each other only once
a year at the same time, in the same place, while doing the same thing.
Later that day, I mentioned the coincidence to a friend who, it turned
out, had once worked in the toy business.
  “No coincidence,” he said knowingly.
  “What do you mean, ‘No coincidence’?”
  “Look,” he said, “let me ask you a couple of questions about the road-
race set you bought this year. First, did you promise your son that he’d
get one for Christmas?”
  “Well, yes, I did. Christopher had seen a bunch of ads for them on
the Saturday morning cartoon shows and said that was what he wanted
for Christmas. I saw a couple of the ads myself and it looked like fun,
so I said okay.”
  “Strike one,” he announced. “Now for my second question. When
you went to buy one, did you find all the stores sold out?”
  “That’s right, I did! The stores said they’d ordered some but didn’t
know when they’d get any more in. So I had to buy Christopher some
other toys to make up for the road-race set. But how did you know?”
  “Strike two,” he said. “Just let me ask one more question. Didn’t this
same sort of thing happen the year before with the robot toy?”
  “Wait a minute…you’re right. That’s just what happened. This is in-
credible. How did you know?”
  “No psychic powers; I just happen to know how several of the big
toy companies jack up their January and February sales. They start
prior to Christmas with attractive TV ads for certain special toys. The
kids, naturally, want what they see and extract Christmas promises for
these items from their parents. Now here’s where the genius of the
companies’ plan comes in: They undersupply the stores with the toys
they’ve gotten the parents to promise. Most parents find those things
sold out and are forced to substitute other toys of equal value. The toy
manufacturers, of course, make a point of supplying the stores with
plenty of these substitutes. Then, after Christmas, the companies start
running the ads again for the other, special toys. That juices up the kids
to want those toys more than ever. They go running to their parents
whining, ‘You promised, you promised,’ and the adults go trudging
off to the store to live up dutifully to their words.”
  “Where,” I said, beginning to seethe now, “they meet other parents
they haven’t seen for a year, falling for the same trick, right?”
  “Right. Uh, where are you going?”
  “I’m going to take that road-race set right back to the store.” I was
so angry I was nearly shouting.
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 51

   “Wait. Think for a minute first. Why did you buy it this morning?”
   “Because I didn’t want to let Christopher down and because I wanted
to teach him that promises are to be lived up to.”
   “Well, has any of that changed? Look, if you take his toy away now,
he won’t understand why. He’ll just know that his father broke a
promise to him. Is that what you want?”
   “No,” I said, sighing, “I guess not. So, you’re telling me that they
doubled their profit on me for the past two years, and I never even
knew it; and now that I do, I’m still trapped—by my own words. So,
what you’re really telling me is, ‘Strike three.’”
   He nodded, “And you’re out.”

                  COMMITMENT IS THE KEY
Once we realize that the power of consistency is formidable in directing
human action, an important practical question immediately arises: How
is that force engaged? 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.
   As we’ve already seen, social psychologists are not the only ones who
understand the connection between commitment and consistency.
Commitment strategies are aimed at us by compliance professionals of
nearly every sort. Each of the strategies is intended to get us to take
some action or make some statement that will trap us into later compli-
ance through consistency pressures. Procedures designed to create
commitment take various forms. Some are fairly straightforward; others
are among the most subtle compliance tactics we will encounter.
   For instance, suppose you wanted to increase the number of people
in your area who would agree to go door-to-door collecting donations
for your favorite charity. You would be wise to study the approach
taken by social psychologist Steven J. Sherman. He simply called a
sample of Bloomington, Indiana, residents as part of a survey he was
taking and asked them to predict what they would say if asked to spend
three hours collecting money for the American Cancer Society. Of
course, not wanting to seem uncharitable to the survey taker or to
themselves, many of these people said that they would volunteer. The
consequence of this sly commitment procedure was a 700 percent in-
crease in volunteers when, a few days later, a representative of the
American Cancer Society did call and ask for neighborhood canvassers.
52 / Influence

Using the same strategy, but this time asking Columbus, Ohio, residents
to predict whether they would vote on Election Day, a team of research-
ers led by Anthony Greenwald were able to increase significantly the
turnout in a U.S. presidential election among those called.
   Perhaps an even more crafty commitment technique has been de-
veloped recently by telephone solicitors for charity. Have you noticed
that callers asking you to contribute to some cause or another these
days seem to begin things by inquiring about your current health and
well-being? “Hello Mr./Ms. Targetperson,” they say. “How are you
feeling this evening?” Or, “How are you doing today?” The caller’s in-
tent with this sort of introduction is not merely to seem friendly and
caring. It is to get you to respond—as you normally do to such polite,
superficial inquiries—with a polite, superficial comment of your own:
“Just fine” or “Real good” or “I’m doing great, thanks.” Once you have
publicly stated that all is well, it becomes much easier for the solicitor
to corner you into aiding those for whom all is not well: “I’m glad to
hear that, because I’m calling to ask if you’d be willing to make a
donation to help out the unfortunate victims of…”
   The theory behind this tactic is that people who have just asserted
that they are doing/feeling fine—even as a routine part of a sociable
exchange—will consequently find it awkward to appear stingy in the
context of their own admittedly favored circumstances. If all this sounds
a bit farfetched, consider the findings of consumer researcher Daniel
Howard, who put the theory to test. Dallas, Texas, residents were called
on the phone and asked if they would agree to allow a representative
of the Hunger Relief Committee to come to their homes to sell them
cookies, the proceeds from which would be used to supply meals for
the needy. When tried alone, that request (labeled the “standard solicit-
ation approach”) produced only 18 percent agreement. However, if the
caller initially asked, “How are you feeling this evening?” and waited
for a reply before proceeding to the standard approach, several note-
worthy things happened. First, of the 120 individuals called, most (108)
gave the customary favorable reply (“Good,” “Fine,” “Real well,” etc.).
Second, 32 percent of the people who got the “How are you feeling to-
night” question agreed to receive the cookie seller at their homes, nearly
twice the success rate of the standard solicitation approach. Third, true
to the consistency principle, almost everyone who agreed to such a
visit did, in fact, make a cookie purchase when contacted at home (89
percent).
   To make sure that this tactic doesn’t generate its successes simply
because a solicitor who uses it seems more concerned and courteous
than one who doesn’t use it, Howard conducted another study. This
time callers began either with the question “How are you feeling this
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 53

evening?” (and waited for a response before proceeding) or with the
statement “I hope you are feeling well this evening” and then proceeded
to the standard solicitation approach. Despite the fact that the caller
started each type of interaction with a warm and friendly comment,
the “How are you feeling” technique was, by far, superior to its rival
(33 percent vs. 15 percent compliance), because it alone drew an exploit-
able public commitment from its targets. Note that the commitment
was able to get twice as much compliance from those targets even
though at the time it occurred it must have seemed to them an altogether
inconsequential reply to an altogether superficial question—yet another
fine example of social jujitsu at work.

   The question of what makes a commitment effective has a number
of answers. A variety of factors affect the ability of a commitment to
constrain our future behavior. One large-scale program designed to
produce compliance illustrates nicely how several of the factors work.
The remarkable thing about this program is that it was systematically
employing these factors decades ago, well before scientific research had
identified them.
   During the Korean War, many captured American soldiers found
themselves in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps run by the Chinese Com-
munists. It became clear early in the conflict that the Chinese treated
captives quite differently than did their allies, the North Koreans, who
favored savagery and harsh punishment to gain compliance. Specifically
avoiding the appearance of brutality, the Red Chinese engaged in what
they termed their “lenient policy,” which was in reality a concerted and
sophisticated psychological assault on their captives. After the war,
American psychologists questioned the returning prisoners intensively
to determine what had occurred. The intensive psychological investig-
ation took place, in part, because of the unsettling success of some as-
pects of the Chinese program. For example, the Chinese were very ef-
fective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in striking con-
trast to the behavior of American POWs in World War II. For this
reason, among others, escape plans were quickly uncovered and the
escape attempts themselves almost always unsuccessful. “When an es-
cape did occur,” wrote Dr. Edgar Schein, a principal American invest-
igator of the Chinese indoctrination program in Korea, “the Chinese
usually recovered the man easily by offering a bag of rice to anyone
turning him in.” In fact, nearly all American prisoners in the Chinese
camps are said to have collaborated with the enemy in one form or an-
other.2
   An examination of the Chinese prison-camp program shows that its
personnel relied heavily on commitment and consistency pressures to
54 / Influence

gain the desired compliance from prisoners. Of course, the first problem
facing the Chinese was how to get any collaboration at all from the
Americans. These were men who were trained to provide nothing but
name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization, how
could the captors hope to get such men to give military information,
turn in fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The
Chinese answer was elementary: Start small and build.
   For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements so
mildly anti-American or pro-Communist as to seem inconsequential
(“The United States is not perfect.” “In a Communist country, unem-
ployment is not a problem.”). But once these minor requests were
complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related
yet more substantive requests. A man who had just agreed with his
Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be
asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the
case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a
list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later
he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other
prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe, isn’t it?” Still later he
might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing
these problems in greater detail.
   The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti-
American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to
other POW camps in North Korea, as well as to American forces in
South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator,” having
given aid to the enemy. Aware that he had written the essay without
any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his
image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new “col-
laborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collabor-
ation. Thus, while “only a few men were able to avoid collaboration
altogether,” according to Dr. Schein, “the majority collaborated at one
time or another by doing things which seemed to them trivial but which
the Chinese were able to turn to their own advantage…. This was par-
ticularly effective in eliciting confessions, self-criticism, and information
during interrogation.”3

   If the Chinese know about the subtle power of this approach, it should
not be surprising that another group of people interested in compliance
is also aware of its usefulness. Many business organizations employ it
regularly.
   For the salesperson, the strategy is to obtain a large purchase by
starting with a small one. Almost any small sale will do, because the
purpose of that small transaction is not profit. It is commitment. Further
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 55

purchases, even much larger ones, are expected to flow naturally from
the commitment. An article in the trade magazine American Salesman
put it succinctly:
  The general idea is to pave the way for full-line distribution by
  starting with a small order…. Look at it this way—when a person
  has signed an order for your merchandise, even though the profit
  is so small it hardly compensates for the time and effort of making
  the call, he is no longer a prospect—he is a customer.4
   The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual
compliance with related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-
door technique. Social scientists first became aware of its effectiveness
in the mid-1960s when psychologists Jonathan Freedman and Scott
Fraser published an astonishing set of data.5 They reported the results
of an experiment in which a researcher, posing as a volunteer worker,
had gone door to door in a residential California neighborhood making
a preposterous request of homeowners. The homeowners were asked
to allow a public-service billboard to be installed on their front lawns.
To get an idea of just how the sign would look, they were shown a
photograph depicting an attractive house, the view of which was almost
completely obscured by a very large, poorly lettered sign reading DRIVE
CAREFULLY. Although the request was normally and understandably
refused by the great majority (83 percent) of the other residents in the
area, this particular group of people reacted quite favorably. A full 76
percent of them offered the use of their front yards.
   The prime reason for their startling compliance has to do with
something that had happened to them about two weeks earlier: They
had made a small commitment to driver safety. A different volunteer
worker had come to their doors and asked them to accept and display
a little three-inch-square sign that read BE A SAFE DRIVER. It was such a
trifling request that nearly all of them had agreed to it. But the effects
of that request were enormous. Because they had innocently complied
with a trivial safe-driving request a couple of weeks before, these
homeowners became remarkably willing to comply with another such
request that was massive in size.
   Freedman and Fraser didn’t stop there. They tried a slightly different
procedure on another sample of homeowners. These people first re-
ceived a request to sign a petition that favored “keeping California
beautiful.” Of course, nearly everyone signed, since state beauty, like
efficiency in government or sound prenatal care, is one of those issues
almost no one is against. After waiting about two weeks, Freedman
and Fraser sent a new “volunteer worker” to these same homes to ask
the residents to allow the big DRIVE CAREFULLY sign to be erected on
56 / Influence

their lawns. In some ways, their response was the most astounding of
any of the homeowners in the study. Approximately half of these people
consented to the installation of the DRIVE CAREFULLY billboard, even
though the small commitment they had made weeks earlier was not to
driver safety but to an entirely different public-service topic, state
beautification.
   At first, even Freedman and Fraser were bewildered by their findings.
Why should the little act of signing a petition supporting state beauti-
fication cause people to be so willing to perform a different and much
larger favor? After considering and discarding other explanations,
Freedman and Fraser came upon one that offered a solution to the
puzzle: Signing the beautification petition changed the view these people
had of themselves. They saw themselves as public-spirited citizens who
acted on their civic principles. When, two weeks later, they were asked
to perform another public service by displaying the DRIVE CAREFULLY
sign, they complied in order to be consistent with their newly formed
self-images. According to Freedman and Fraser,
  What may occur is a change in the person’s feelings about getting
  involved or taking action. Once he has agreed to a request, his at-
  titude may change, he may become, in his own eyes, the kind of
  person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made
  by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who co-
  operates with good causes.6
   What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very
careful about agreeing to trivial requests. Such an agreement can not
only increase our compliance with very similar, much larger re-quests,
it can also make us more willing to perform a variety of larger favors
that are only remotely connected to the little one we did earlier. It’s this
second, general kind of influence concealed within small commitments
that scares me.
   It scares me enough that I am rarely willing to sign a petition any-
more, even for a position I support. Such an action has the potential to
influence not only my future behavior but also my self-image in ways
I may not want. And once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of
subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit
that new image.
   Who among Freedman and Fraser’s homeowners would have thought
that the “volunteer worker” who asked them to sign a state beautifica-
tion petition was really interested in having them display a safe-driving
billboard two weeks later? And who among them could have suspected
that their decision to display the billboard was largely due to the act of
signing the petition? No one, I’d guess. If there were any regrets after
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 57

the billboard went up, who could they conceivably hold responsible
but themselves and their own damnably strong civic spirit? They probably
never even considered the guy with the “keeping California beautiful”
petition and all that knowledge of jujitsu.

   Notice that all of the foot-in-the-door experts seem to be excited about
the same thing: You can use small commitments to manipulate a per-
son’s self-image; you can use them to turn citizens into “public ser-
vants,” prospects into “customers,” prisoners into “collaborators.” And
once you’ve got a man’s self-image where you want it, he should comply
naturally with a whole range of your requests that are consistent with
this view of himself.
   Not all commitments affect self-image, however. There are certain
conditions that should be present for a commitment to be effective in
this way. To discover what they are, we can once again look to the
American experience in the Chinese prison camps of Korea. It is import-
ant to understand that the major intent of the Chinese was not simply
to extract information from their prisoners. It was to indoctrinate them,
to change their attitudes and percep-tions of themselves, of their polit-
ical system, of their country’s role in the war, and of communism. And
there is evidence that the program often worked alarmingly well.
   Dr. Henry Segal, chief of the neuropsychiatric evaluation team that
examined returning POWs at the war’s end, reported that war-related
beliefs had been substantially shifted. The majority of the men believed
the Chinese story that the United States had used germ warfare, and
many felt that their own forces had been the initial aggressors in starting
the war. Similar inroads had been made in the political attitudes of the
men:
  Many expressed antipathy toward the Chinese Communists but
  at the same time praised them for “the fine job they have done in
  China.” Others stated that “although communism won’t work in
  America, I think it’s a good thing for Asia.”7
   It appears that the real goal of the Chinese was to modify, at least for
a time, the hearts and minds of their captives. If we measure their
achievement in terms of “defection, disloyalty, changed attitudes and
beliefs, poor discipline, poor morale, poor esprit, and doubts as to
America’s role,” Dr. Segal concluded that “their efforts were highly
successful.” Because commitment tactics were so much a part of the
effective Chinese assault on hearts and minds, it is quite informative
to examine the specific features of the tactics they used.
58 / Influence


                           The Magic Act
Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from
their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what a
man is like look closely at his actions. What the Chinese have discovered
is that the man himself uses this same evidence to decide what he is
like. His behavior tells him about himself; it is a primary source of in-
formation about his beliefs and values and attitudes. Understanding
fully this important principle of self-perception, the Chinese set about
arranging the prison-camp experience so that their captives would
consistently act in desired ways. Before long, the Chinese knew, these
actions would begin to take their toll, causing the men to change their
views of themselves to align with what they had done.
   Writing was one sort of confirming action that the Chinese urged
incessantly upon the men. It was never enough for the prisoners to
listen quietly or even to agree verbally with the Chinese line; they were
always pushed to write it down as well. So intent were the Chinese on
securing a written statement that if a prisoner was not willing to write
a desired response freely, he was prevailed upon to copy it. The
American psychologist Edgar Schein describes a standard indoctrination
session tactic of the Chinese in these terms:
  A further technique was to have the man write out the question
  and then the [pro-Communist] answer. If he refused to write it
  voluntarily, he was asked to copy it from the notebooks, which
  must have seemed like a harmless enough concession.
   But, oh, those “harmless” concessions. We’ve already seen how ap-
parently trifling commitments can lead to extraordinary further beha-
vior. And the Chinese knew that, as a commitment device, a written
declaration has some great advantages. First, it provides physical
evidence that the act occurred. Once a man wrote what the Chinese
wanted, it was very difficult for him to believe that he had not done so.
The opportunities to forget or to deny to himself what he had done
were not available, as they are for purely verbal statements. No; there
it was in his own handwriting, an irrevocably documented act driving
him to make his beliefs and his self-image consistent with what he had
undeniably done.
   A second advantage of a written testament is that it can be shown to
other people. Of course, that means it can be used to persuade those
people. It can persuade them to change their own attitudes in the direc-
tion of the statement. But more important for the purpose of commit-
ment, it can persuade them that the author genuinely believes what
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 59

was written. People have a natural tendency to think that a statement
reflects the true attitude of the person who made it. What is surprising
is that they continue to think so even when they know that the person
did not freely choose to make the statement.
   Some scientific evidence that this is the case comes from a study by
psychologists Edward Jones and James Harris, who showed people an
essay that was favorable to Fidel Castro and asked them to guess the
true feelings of its author.8 Jones and Harris told some of these people
that the author had chosen to write a pro-Castro essay; and they told
the other people that the author had been required to write in favor of
Castro. The strange thing was that even those people who knew that
the author had been assigned to do a pro-Castro essay guessed that he
liked Castro. It seems that a statement of belief produces a click, whirr
response in those who view it. Unless there is strong evidence to the
contrary, observers automatically assume that someone who makes
such a statement means it.
   Think of the double-barreled effects on the self-image of a prisoner
who wrote a pro-Chinese or anti-American statement. Not only was it
a lasting personal reminder of his action, it was also likely to persuade
those around him that the statement reflected his actual beliefs. And,
as we will see in Chapter 4, what those around us think is true of us is
enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true.
For example, one study found that after hearing that they were con-
sidered charitable people, New Haven, Connecticut, housewives gave
much more money to a canvasser from the Multiple Sclerosis Associ-
ation.9 Apparently the mere knowledge that someone viewed them as
charitable caused these women to make their actions consistent with
another’s perception of them.
   Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed
from both sides by consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a
pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside,
there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to adjust this image according
to the way others perceive us. And because others see us as believing
what we have written (even when we’ve had little choice in the matter),
we will once again experience a pull to bring self-image into line with
the written statement.
   In Korea, several subtle devices were used to get the prisoners to
write, without direct coercion, what the Chinese wanted. For example,
the Chinese knew that many prisoners were eager to let their families
know that they were alive. At the same time, the men knew that their
captors were censoring the mails and that only some letters were being
allowed out of camp. To ensure that their own letters would be released,
some prisoners began including in their messages peace appeals, claims
60 / Influence

of kind treatment, and statements sympathetic to communism. The
hope was that the Chinese would want such letters to surface and
would, therefore, allow their delivery. Of course, the Chinese were
happy to cooperate because those letters served their interests mar-
velously. First, their worldwide propaganda effort benefited greatly
from the appearance of pro-Communist statements by American ser-
vicemen. Second, in the service of prisoner indoctrination, they had,
without raising a finger of physical force, gotten many men to go on
record as supporting the Chinese cause.
   A similar technique involved political essay contests that were regu-
larly held in camp. The prizes for winning were invariably small—a
few cigarettes or a bit of fruit—but were sufficiently scarce that they
generated a lot of interest from the men. Usually the winning essay was
one that took a solidly pro-Communist stand…but not always. The
Chinese were wise enough to realize that most of the prisoners would
not enter a contest that they could win only by writing a Communist
tract. And the Chinese were clever enough to know how to plant small
commitments to communism in the men that could be nurtured into
later bloom. So the prize was occasionally given to an essay that gener-
ally supported the United States but that bowed once or twice to the
Chinese view. The effects of this strategy were exactly what the Chinese
wanted. The men continued to participate voluntarily in the contests
because they saw that they could win with an essay highly favorable
to their own country. But perhaps without realizing it, they began to
shade their essays a bit toward communism in order to have a better
chance of winning. The Chinese were ready to pounce on any concession
to Communist dogma and to bring consistency pressures to bear upon
it. In the case of a written declaration within a voluntary essay, they
had a perfect commitment from which to build toward collaboration
and conversion.

   Other compliance professionals also know about the committing
power of written statements. The enormously successful Amway Cor-
poration, for instance, has hit upon a way to spur their sales personnel
to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of the staff are asked
to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to those goals by
personally recording them on paper:
  One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down.
  Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve
  got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. There
  is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 61


  write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write
  that down. You’ll be off and running.10
    If the Amway people have found “something magical about writing
things down,” so have other business organizations. Some door-to-door
sales companies use the magic of written commitments to battle the
“cooling-off” laws recently passed in many states. The laws are designed
to allow customers a few days after purchasing an item to cancel the
sale and receive a full refund. At first this legislation hurt the hard-sell
companies deeply. Because they emphasize high-pressure tactics, their
customers often buy, not because they want the product but because
they are duped or intimidated into the sale. When the new laws went
into effect, these customers began canceling in droves.
    The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts
the number of such cancellations drastically. They merely have the
customer, rather than the salesman, fill out the sales agreement. Accord-
ing to the sales-training program of a prominent encyclopedia company,
that personal commitment alone has proved to be “a very important
psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their
contracts.” Like the Amway Corporation, then, these organizations
have found that something special happens when people personally
put their commitments on paper: They live up to what they have written
down.
    Another common way for businesses to cash in on the “magic” of
written declarations occurs through the use of an innocent-looking
promotional device. Before I began to study weapons of social influence,
I used to wonder why big companies such as Procter & Gamble and
General Foods are always running those “25-, 50-, or 100 words or less”
testimonial contests. They all seem to be alike. The contestant is to
compose a short personal statement that begins with the words, “Why
I like…” and goes on to laud the features of whatever cake mix or floor
wax happens to be at issue. The company judges the entries and awards
some stunningly large prizes to the winners. What had puzzled me was
what the companies got out of the deal. Often the contest requires no
purchase; anyone submitting an entry is eligible. Yet, the companies
appear to be strangely willing to incur the huge costs of contest after
contest.
    I am no longer puzzled. The purpose behind the testimonial contests
is the same as the purpose behind the political essay contests of the
Chinese Communists. In both instances, the aim is to get as many people
as possible to go on record as liking the product. In Korea, the product
was a brand of Chinese communism; in the United States, it might be
a brand of cuticle remover. The type of product doesn’t matter; the
62 / Influence

process is the same. Participants voluntarily write essays for attractive
prizes that they have only a small chance to win. But they know that
for an essay to have any chance of winning at all, it must include praise
for the product. So they find praiseworthy features of the product and
describe them in their essays. The result is hundreds of men in Korea
or hundreds of thousands of people in America who testify in writing
to the product’s appeal and who, consequently, experience that “magic-
al” pull to believe what they have written.

                           The Public Eye
One reason that written testaments are effective in bringing about
genuine personal change is that they can so easily be made public. The
prisoner experience in Korea showed the Chinese to be quite aware of
an important psychological principle: Public commitments tend to be
lasting commitments. The Chinese constantly arranged to have the pro-
Communist statements of their captives seen by others. A man who
had written a political essay the Chinese liked, for example, might find
copies of it posted around camp, or might be asked to read it to a pris-
oner discussion group, or even to read it on the camp radio broadcast.
As far as the Chinese were concerned, the more public the better. Why?
   Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a
drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.
Remember that earlier in this chapter we described how desirable good
personal consistency is as a trait; how someone without it could be
judged as fickle, uncertain, pliant, scatterbrained, or unstable; how
someone with it is viewed as rational, assured, trustworthy, and sound.
Given this context, it is hardly surprising that people try to avoid the
look of inconsistency. For appearances’ sake, then, the more public a
stand, the more reluctant we will be to change it.
   An illustration of how public commitments can lead to doggedly
consistent further action is provided in a famous experiment performed
by a pair of prominent social psychologists, Morton Deutsch and Harold
Gerard. The basic procedure was to have college students first estimate
in their own minds the length of lines they were shown. At this point,
one sample of the students had to commit themselves publicly to their
initial judgments by writing them down, signing their names to them,
and turning them in to the experimenter. A second sample of students
also committed themselves to their first estimates, but they did so
privately by putting them on a Magic Writing Pad and then erasing
them by lifting the Magic Pad’s plastic cover before anyone could see
what they had written. A third set of students did not commit them-
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 63

selves to their initial estimates at all; they just kept the estimates in mind
privately.
   In these ways, Deutsch and Gerard had cleverly arranged for some
students to commit themselves publicly, some privately, and some not
at all to their initial decisions. What Deutsch and Gerard wanted to find
out was which of the three types of students would be most inclined
to stick with their first judgments after receiving information that those
judgments were incorrect. So all of the students were given new evid-
ence suggesting that their initial estimates were wrong, and they were
then given the chance to change their estimates.
   The results were quite clear. The students who had never written
down their first choices were the least loyal to those choices. When new
evidence was presented that questioned the wisdom of decisions that
had never left their heads, these students were the most influenced by
the new information to change what they had viewed as the “correct”
decision. Compared to these uncommitted students, those who had
merely written their decisions for a moment on a Magic Pad were sig-
nificantly less willing to change their minds when given the chance.
Even though they had committed themselves under the most anonym-
ous of circumstances, the act of writing down their first judgments
caused them to resist the influence of contradictory new data and to
remain consistent with the preliminary choices. But Deutsch and Gerard
found that, by far, it was the students who had publicly recorded their
initial positions who most resolutely refused to shift from those positions
later. Public commitment had hardened them into the most stubborn
of all.
   This sort of stubbornness can occur even in situations where accuracy
should be more important than consistency. In one study, when six- or
twelve-person experimental juries were deciding a close case, hung
juries were significantly more frequent if the jurors had to express their
opinions with a visible show of hands rather than by secret ballot. Once
jurors had stated their initial views publicly, they were reluctant to allow
themselves to change publicly, either. Should you ever find yourself as
the foreperson of a jury under these conditions, then, you could reduce
the risk of a hung jury by choosing a secret rather than public balloting
technique.11
   The Deutsch and Gerard finding that we are truest to our decisions
if we have bound ourselves to them publicly can be put to good use.
Consider the organizations dedicated to helping people rid themselves
of bad habits. Many weight-reduction clinics, for instance, understand
that often a person’s private decision to lose weight will be too weak
to withstand the blandishments of bakery windows, wafting cooking
scents, and late-night Sara Lee commercials. So they see to it that the
64 / Influence

decision is buttressed by the pillars of public commitment. They require
their clients to write down an immediate weight-loss goal and show that
goal to as many friends, relatives, and neighbors as possible. Clinic
operators report that frequently this simple technique works where all
else has failed.
   Of course, there’s no need to pay a special clinic in order to engage
a visible commitment as an ally. One San Diego woman described to
me how she employed a public promise to help herself finally stop
smoking:
  I remember it was after I heard about another scientific study
  showing that smoking causes cancer. Every time one of those
  things came out, I used to get determined to quit, but I never could.
  This time, though, I decided I had to do something. I’m a proud
  person. It matters to me if other people see me in a bad light. So I
  thought, “Maybe I can use that pride to help me dump this damn
  habit.” So I made a list of all the people who I really wanted to
  respect me. Then I went out and got some blank business cards
  and I wrote on the back of each card, “I promise you that I will
  never smoke another cigarette.”
   Within a week, I had given or sent a signed card to everybody on the
list—my dad, my brother back East, my boss, my best girlfriend, my
ex-husband, everybody but one—the guy I was dating then. I was just
crazy about him, and I really wanted him to value me as a person. Be-
lieve me, I thought twice about giving him a card because I knew that
if I couldn’t keep my promise to him I’d die. But one day at the of-
fice—he worked in the same building as I did—I just walked up to him,
handed him the card, and walked away without saying anything.
   Quitting “cold turkey” was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There
must have been a thousand times when I thought I had to have a smoke.
But whenever that happened, I’d just picture how all of the people on
my list, especially this one guy, would think less of me if I couldn’t stick
to my guns. And that’s all it took. I’ve never taken another puff.
   You know, the interesting thing is the guy turned out to be a real
schmuck. I can’t figure out what I saw in him back then. But at the time,
without knowing it, he helped me get through the toughest part of the
toughest thing I’ve ever had to do. I don’t even like him anymore. Still,
I do feel grateful in a way because I think he saved my life.

                           The Effort Extra
Yet another reason that written commitments are so effective is that
they require more work than verbal ones. And the evidence is clear that
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 65

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. For example, there is a tribe in southern Africa, the
Thonga, that requires each of its boys to go through an elaborate initi-
ation ceremony before he can be counted a man of the tribe. As with
many other primitive peoples, a Thonga boy endures a great deal before
he is admitted to adult membership in the group. Anthropologists
Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony have described this three-month
ordeal in brief but vivid terms:
  When a boy is somewhere between 10 and 16 years of age, he is
  sent by his parents to “circumcision school,” which is held every
  4 or 5 years. Here in company with his age-mates he undergoes
  severe hazing by the adult males of the society. The initiation be-
  gins when each boy runs the gauntlet between two rows of men
  who beat him with clubs. At the end of this experience he is
  stripped of his clothes and his hair is cut. He is next met by a man
  covered with lion manes and is seated upon a stone facing this
  “lion man.” Someone then strikes him from behind and when he
  turns his head to see who has struck him, his foreskin is seized
  and in two movements cut off by the “lion man.” Afterward he is
  secluded for three months in the “yard of mysteries,” where he
  can be seen only by the initiated.
     During the course of his initiation, the boy undergoes six major
  trials: beatings, exposure to cold, thirst, eating of unsavory foods,
  punishment, and the threat of death. On the slightest pretext, he
  may be beaten by one of the newly initiated men, who is assigned
  to the task by the older men of the tribe. He sleeps without cover-
  ing and suffers bitterly from the winter cold. He is forbidden to
  drink a drop of water during the whole three months. Meals are
  often made nauseating by the half-digested grass from the stomach
  of an antelope, which is poured over his food. If he is caught
  breaking any important rule governing the ceremony, he is severe-
  ly punished. For example, in one of these punishments, sticks are
  placed between the fingers of the offender, then a strong man
  closes his hand around that of the novice, practically crushing his
  fingers. He is frightened into submission by being told that in
  former times boys who had tried to escape or who had revealed
  the secrets to women or to the uninitiated were hanged and their
  bodies burned to ashes.12
  On the face of it, these rites seem extraordinary and bizarre. Yet, at
the same time, they can be seen to be remarkably similar in principle
66 / Influence

and even in detail to the common initiation ceremonies of school fra-
ternities. During the traditional “Hell Week” held yearly on college
campuses, fraternity pledges must persevere through a variety of
activities designed by the older members to test the limits of physical
exertion, psychological strain, and social embarrassment. At week’s
end, the boys who have persisted through the ordeal are accepted for
full group membership. Mostly their tribulations have left them no
more than greatly tired and a bit shaky, although sometimes the negative
effects are more serious.
   What is interesting is how closely the particular features of Hell Week
tasks match those of the tribal initiation rites. Recall that anthropologists
identified six major trials to be endured by a Thonga initiate during his
stay in the “yard of mysteries.” A scan of newspaper reports shows
that each trial also has its place in the hazing rituals of Greek-letter so-
cieties:

• Beatings. Fourteen-year-old Michael Kalogris spent three weeks in a
  Long Island hospital recovering from internal injuries suffered during
  a Hell Night initiation ceremony of his high-school fraternity, Omega
  Gamma Delta. He had been administered the “atomic bomb” by his
  prospective brothers, who told him to hold his hands over his head
  and keep them there while they gathered around to slam fists into
  his stomach and back simultaneously and repeatedly.
• Exposure to cold. On a winter night, Frederick Bronner, a California
  junior-college student, was taken three thousand feet up and ten
  miles into the hills of a national forest by his prospective fraternity
  brothers. Left to find his way home wearing only a thin sweatshirt
  and slacks, Fat Freddy, as he was called, shivered in a frigid wind
  until he tumbled down a steep ravine, fracturing bones and hurting
  his head. Prevented by his injuries from going on, he huddled there
  against the cold until he died of exposure.
• Thirst. Two Ohio State University freshmen found themselves in the
  “dungeon” of their prospective fraternity house after breaking the
  rule requiring all pledges to crawl into the dining area prior to Hell
  Week meals. Once locked in the house storage closet, they were given
  only salty foods to eat for nearly two days. Nothing was provided
  for drinking purposes except a pair of plastic cups in which they
  could catch their own urine.
• Eating of unsavory foods. At Kappa Sigma house on the campus of the
  University of Southern California, the eyes of eleven pledges bulged
  when they saw the sickening task before them. Eleven quarter-pound
  slabs of raw liver lay on a tray. Cut thick and soaked in oil, each was
  to be swallowed whole, one to a boy. Gagging and choking re-
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 67

  peatedly, young Richard Swanson failed three times to down his
  piece. Determined to succeed, he finally got the oil-soaked meat into
  his throat where it lodged and, despite all efforts to remove it, killed
  him.
• Punishment. In Wisconsin, a pledge who forgot one section of a ritual
  incantation to be memorized by all initiates was punished for his er-
  ror. He was required to keep his feet under the rear legs of a folding
  chair while the heaviest of his fraternity brothers sat down and drank
  a beer. Although the pledge did not cry out during the punishment,
  a bone in each of his feet was broken.
• Threats of death. A pledge of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was taken to a
  beach area of New Jersey and told to dig his “own grave.” Seconds
  after he complied with orders to lie flat in the finished hole, the sides
  collapsed, suffocating him before his prospective fraternity brothers
  could dig him out.

   There is another striking similarity between the initiation rites of tribal
and fraternal societies: They simply will not die. Resisting all attempts
to eliminate or suppress them, such hazing practices have been phenom-
enally resilient. Authorities, in the form of colonial governments or
university administrations, have tried threats, social pressures, legal
actions, banishments, bribes, and bans to persuade the groups to remove
the hazards and humiliations from their initiation ceremonies. None
has been successful. Oh, there may be a change while the authority is
watching closely. But this is usually more apparent than real, the
harsher trials occurring under more secret circumstances until the
pressure is off and they can surface again.
   On some college campuses, officials have tried to eliminate dangerous
hazing practices by substituting a “Help Week” of civic service or by
taking direct control of the initiation rituals. When such attempts are
not slyly circumvented by fraternities, they are met with outright
physical resistance. For example, in the aftermath of Richard Swanson’s
choking death at USC, the university president issued new rules requir-
ing that all pledging activities be reviewed by school authorities before
going into effect and that adult advisers be present during initiation
ceremonies. According to one national magazine, “The new ‘code’ set
off a riot so violent that city police and fire detachments were afraid to
enter campus.”
   Resigning themselves to the inevitable, other college representatives
have given up on the possibility of abolishing the degradations of Hell
Week. “If hazing is a universal human activity, and every bit of evidence
points to this conclusion, you most likely won’t be able to ban it effect-
ively. Refuse to allow it openly and it will go underground. You can’t
68 / Influence

ban sex, you can’t prohibit alcohol, and you probably can’t eliminate
hazing!”13
   What is it about hazing practices that make them so precious to these
societies? What could make the groups want to evade, undermine, or
contest any effort to ban the degrading and perilous features of their
initiation rites? Some have argued that the groups themselves are
composed of psychological or social miscreants whose twisted needs
demand that others be harmed and humiliated. But the evidence does
not support such a view. Studies done on the personality traits of fra-
ternity members, for instance, show them to be, if anything, slightly
healthier than other college students in their psychological adjustment.
Similarly, fraternities are known for their willingness to engage in be-
neficial community projects for the general social good. What they are
not willing to do, however, is substitute these projects for their initiation
ceremonies. One survey at the University of Washington found that,
of the fraternity chapters examined, most had a type of Help Week
tradition but that this community service was in addition to Hell Week.
In only one case was such service directly related to initiation proced-
ures.14
   The picture that emerges of the perpetrators of hazing practices is of
normal individuals who tend to be psychologically stable and socially
concerned but who become aberrantly harsh as a group at only one
time—immediately before the admission of new members to the society.
The evidence, then, points to the ceremony as the culprit. There must
be something about its rigors that is vital to the group. There must be
some function to its harshness that the group will fight relentlessly to
maintain. What?
   My own view is that the answer appeared in 1959 in the results of a
study little known outside of social psychology. A pair of young re-
searchers, Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills, decided to test their obser-
vation that “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.” The real stroke of inspiration
came in their choice of the initiation ceremony as the best place to ex-
amine this possibility. They found that college women who had to en-
dure a severely embarrassing initiation ceremony in order to gain access
to a sex discussion group convinced themselves that their new group
and its discussions were extremely valuable, even though Aronson and
Mills had previously rehearsed the other group members to be as
“worthless and uninteresting” as possible. Different coeds, who went
through a much milder initiation ceremony or went through no initiation
at all, were decidedly less positive about the “worthless” new group
they had joined. Additional research showed the same results when
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 69

coeds were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to get
into a group. The more electric shock a woman received as part of the
initiation ceremony, the more she later persuaded herself that her new
group and its activities were interesting, intelligent, and desirable.15
   Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation
rituals begin to make sense. The Thonga tribesman watching, with tears
in his eyes, his ten-year-old son tremble through a night on the cold
ground of the “yard of mysteries,” the college sophomore punctuating
his Hell Night paddling of his fraternity “little brother” with bursts of
nervous laughter—these are not acts of sadism. They are acts of group
survival. They function, oddly enough, to spur future society members
to find the group more attractive and worthwhile. As long as it is the
case that people like and believe in what they have struggled to get,
these groups will continue to arrange effortful and troublesome initiation
rites. The loyalty and dedication of those who emerge will increase to
a great degree the chances of group cohesiveness and survival. Indeed,
one study of fifty-four tribal cultures found that those with the most
dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest
group solidarity.16 Given Aronson and Mills’s demonstration that the
severity of an initiation ceremony significantly heightens the newcomer’s
commitment to the group, it is hardly surprising that groups will oppose
all attempts to eliminate this crucial link to their future strength.
   Military groups and organizations are by no means exempt from
these same processes. The agonies of “boot camp” initiations to the
armed services are legendary. The novelist William Styron, a former
Marine, catalogs his own experiences in language we could easily apply
to the Thongas (or, for that matter, to the Kappas or Betas or Alphas):
“the remorseless close-order drill hour after hour in the burning sun,
the mental and physical abuse, the humiliations, the frequent sadism
at the hands of drill sergeants, all the claustrophobic and terrifying in-
sults to the spirit which can make an outpost like Quantico or Parris
Island one of the closest things in the free world to a concentration
camp.” But, in his commentary, Styron does more than recount the
misery of this “training nightmare”—he recognizes its intended out-
come: “There is no ex-Marine of my acquaintance, regardless of what
direction he may have taken spiritually or politically after those callow
gung-ho days, who does not view the training as a crucible out of which
he emerged in some way more resilient, simply braver and better for
the wear.”
   But why should we believe William Styron, the writer, in such mat-
ters? After all, for professional storytellers, the line between truth and
fiction is often blurred. Indeed, why should we believe him when he
alleges that the “infernal” character of his military training was not only
70 / Influence

successful, it was specifically intended, intended to create desired levels
of pride and camaraderie among those who endured and survived it?
At least one reason to accept his assessment comes from unfictionalized
reality—the case of West Point cadet John Edwards, who was expelled
from the U.S. Military Academy in 1988 on charges involving the au-
thorized hazing that all first-year cadets experience at the hands of
upperclassmen to ensure that the newcomers can withstand the rigors
of West Point training. It was not that Mr. Edwards, who ranked aca-
demically near the top of his eleven-hundred-member class, had been
unable to bear up under the ritual when he was subjected to it. Nor was
he expelled because he had been aberrantly cruel in his treatment of
the younger cadets. His offense was that he would not expose the
newcomers to what he felt was “absurd and dehumanizing” treatment.
Once again, then, it appears that, for groups concerned about creating
a lasting sense of solidarity and distinction, the hardship of demanding
initiation activities provides a valuable advantage that they will not
easily surrender—either to aspiring members who are unwilling to take
the harshness or to give it out.

                          The Inner Choice
Examination of such diverse activities as the indoctrination practices
of the Chinese Communists and the initiation rituals of college fratern-
ities has provided some valuable information about commitment. It
appears that commitments are most effective in changing a person’s
self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effort-
ful. But there is another property of effective commitment that is more
important than the other three combined. To understand what it is, we
first need to solve a pair of puzzles in the actions of Communist inter-
rogators and fraternity brothers.
   The first puzzle comes from the refusal of fraternity chapters to allow
public-service activities to be part of their initiation ceremonies. Recall
that one survey showed that community projects, though frequent,
were nearly always separated from the membership-induction program.
But why? If an effortful commitment is what fraternities are after in
their initiation rites, surely they could structure enough distasteful and
strenuous civic activities for their pledges; there is plenty of exertion
and unpleasantness to be had in the world of old-age-home repairs,
mental-health-center yard work, and hospital bedpan duty. Besides,
community-spirited endeavors of this sort would do much to improve
the highly unfavorable public and media image of fraternity Hell Week
rites; a survey showed that for every positive newspaper story concern-
ing Hell Week, there were five negative stories. If only for public-rela-
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 71

tions reasons, then, fraternities should want to incorporate community-
service efforts into their initiation practices. But they don’t.
   To examine the second puzzle, we need to return to the Chinese
prison camps of Korea and the regular political essay contests held for
American captives. The Chinese wanted as many Americans as possible
to enter these contests so that, in the process, they might write things
favorable to the Communist view. If, however, the idea was to attract
large numbers of entrants, why were the prizes so small? A few extra
cigarettes or a little fresh fruit were often all that a contest winner could
expect. In the setting, even these prizes were valuable, but still there
were much larger rewards—warm clothing, special mail privileges,
increased freedom of movement in camp—that the Chinese could have
used to increase the number of essay writers. Yet they specifically chose
to employ the smaller rather than the larger, more motivating rewards.
   Although the settings are quite different, the surveyed fraternities
refused to allow civic activities into their initiation ceremonies for the
same reason that the Chinese withheld large prizes in favor of less
powerful inducements: They wanted the men to own what they had
done. No excuses, no ways out were allowed. A man who suffered
through an arduous hazing could not be given the chance to believe he
did so for charitable purposes. A prisoner who salted his political essay
with a few anti-American comments could not be permitted to shrug
it off as motivated by a big reward. No, the fraternity chapters and
Chinese Communists were playing for keeps. It was not enough to
wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be made to take
inner responsibility for their actions.
   Given the Chinese Communist government’s affinity for the political-
essay contest as a commitment device, it should come as no surprise
that a wave of such contests appeared in the aftermath of the 1989
massacre in Tiananmen Square, where pro-democracy protesters were
gunned down by government soldiers. In Beijing alone, nine state-run
newspapers and television stations sponsored essay competitions on
the “quelling of the counterrevolutionary rebellion.” Still acting in accord
with its long-standing and insightful de-emphasis of rewards for public
commitments, the Beijing government left the contest prizes unspecified.
   Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility
for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the ab-
sence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external
pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us
to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel
committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate
immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commit-
ment.
72 / Influence

   All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests
that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the
things we want them truly to believe in. Such pressures will probably
produce temporary compliance with our wishes. However, if we want
more than just that, if we want the children to believe in the correctness
of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the
desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pres-
sures, then we must somehow arrange for them to accept inner respons-
ibility for the actions we want them to take. An experiment by Jonathan
Freedman gives us some hints about what to do and what not to do in
this regard.
   Freedman wanted to see if he could prevent second- to fourth-grade
boys from playing with a fascinating toy, just because he had said that
it was wrong to do so some six weeks earlier. Anyone familiar with
seven-to-nine-year-old boys must realize the enormity of the task. But
Freedman had a plan. If he could first get the boys to convince them-
selves that it was wrong to play with the forbidden toy, perhaps that
belief would keep them from playing with it thereafter. The difficult
thing was making the boys believe that it was wrong to amuse them-
selves with the toy—an extremely expensive, battery-controlled robot.
   Freedman knew it would be easy enough to have a boy obey tempo-
rarily. All he had to do was threaten the boy with severe consequences
should he be caught playing with the toy. As long as he was nearby to
deal out stiff punishment, Freedman figured that few boys would risk
operating the robot. He was right. After showing a boy an array of five
toys and warning him, “It is wrong to play with the robot. If you play
with the robot, I’ll be very angry and will have to do something about
it,” Freedman left the room for a few minutes. During that time, the
boy was observed secretly through a one-way mirror. Freedman tried
this threat procedure on twenty-two different boys, and twenty-one of
them never touched the robot while he was gone.
   So a strong threat was successful while the boys thought they might
be caught and punished. But Freedman had already guessed that. He
was really interested in the effectiveness of the threat in guiding the
boys’ behavior later on, when he was no longer around. To find out
what would happen then, he sent a young woman back to the boys’
school about six weeks after he had been there. She took the boys out
of the class one at a time to participate in an experiment. Without ever
mentioning any connection with Freedman, she escorted each boy back
to the room with the five toys and gave him a drawing test. While she
was scoring the test, she told the boy that he was free to play with any
toy in the room. Of course, almost all the boys played with a toy. The
interesting result was that, of the boys playing with a toy, 77 percent
                                          Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 73

chose to play with the robot that had been forbidden to them earlier.
Freedman’s severe threat, which had been so successful six weeks before,
was almost totally unsuccessful when he was no longer able to back it
up with punishment.
   But Freedman wasn’t finished yet. He changed his procedure slightly
with a second sample of boys. These boys, too, were initially shown the
array of five toys by Freedman and warned not to play with the robot
while he was briefly out of the room because “It is wrong to play with
the robot.” But this time, Freedman provided no strong threat to
frighten a boy into obedience. He simply left the room and observed
through the one-way mirror to see if his instruction against playing
with the forbidden toy was enough. It was. Just as with the other sample,
only one of the twenty-two boys touched the robot during the short
time Freedman was gone.
   The real difference between the two samples of boys came six weeks
later, when they had a chance to play with the toys while Freedman
was no longer around. An astonishing thing happened with the boys
who had earlier been given no strong threat against playing with the
robot: When given the freedom to play with any toy they wished, most
avoided the robot, even though it was by far the most attractive of the
five toys available (the others were a cheap plastic submarine, a child’s
baseball glove without a ball, an unloaded toy rifle, and a toy tractor).
When these boys played with one of the five toys, only 33 percent chose
the robot.
   Something dramatic had happened to both groups of boys. For the
first group, it was the severe threat they heard from Freedman to back
up his statement that playing with the robot was “wrong.” It had been
quite effective at first when Freedman could catch them should they
violate his rule. Later, though, when he was no longer present to observe
the boys’ behavior, his threat was impotent and his rule was, con-
sequently, ignored. It seems clear that the threat had not taught the
boys that operating the robot was wrong, only that it was unwise to do
so when the possibility of punishment existed.
   For the other boys, the dramatic event had come from the inside, not
the outside. Freedman had instructed them, too, that playing with the
robot was wrong, but he had added no threat of punishment should
they disobey him. There were two important results. First, Freedman’s
instruction alone was enough to prevent the boys from operating the
robot while he was briefly out of the room. Second, the boys took per-
sonal responsibility for their choice to stay away from the robot during
that time. They decided that they hadn’t played with it because they
didn’t want to. After all, there were no strong punishments associated
with the toy to explain their behavior otherwise. Thus, weeks later,
74 / Influence

when Freedman was nowhere around, they still ignored the robot be-
cause they had been changed inside to believe that they did not want
to play with it.17
   Adults facing the child-rearing experience can take a cue from the
Freedman study. Suppose a couple wants to impress upon their
daughter that lying is wrong. A strong, clear threat (“It’s bad to lie,
honey; so if I catch you at it, I’ll cut your tongue out”) might well be
effective when the parents are present or when the girl thinks she can
be discovered. But it will not achieve the larger goal of convincing her
that she does not want to lie because she thinks it’s wrong. To do that,
a much subtler approach is required. A reason must be given that is
just strong enough to get her to be truthful most of the time but is not
so strong that she sees it as the obvious reason for her truthfulness. It’s
a tricky business, because exactly what this barely sufficient reason will
be changes from child to child. For one little girl, a simple appeal may
be enough (“It’s bad to lie, honey; so I hope you won’t do it”); for an-
other child, it may be necessary to add a somewhat stronger reason
(“…because if you do, I’ll be disappointed in you”); for a third child, a
mild form of warning may be required as well (“…and I’ll probably
have to do something I don’t want to do”). Wise parents will know
which kind of reason will work on their own children. The important
thing is to use a reason that will initially produce the desired behavior
and will, at the same time, allow a child to take personal responsibility
for that behavior. Thus, the less detectable outside pressure such a
reason contains, the better. Selecting just the right reason is not an easy
task for parents. But the effort should pay off. It is likely to mean the
difference between short-lived compliance and long-term commitment.

   For a pair of reasons we have already talked about, compliance pro-
fessionals love commitments that produce inner change. First, that
change is not just specific to the situation where it first occurred; it
covers a whole range of related situations, too. Second, the effects of
the change are lasting. So, once a man has been induced to take action
that shifts his self-image to that of, let’s say, a public-spirited citizen,
he is likely to be public-spirited in a variety of other circumstances
where his compliance may also be desired, and he is likely to continue
his public-spirited behavior for as long as his new self-image holds.
   There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner
change—they grow their own legs. There is no need for the compliance
professional to undertake a costly and continuing effort to reinforce the
change; the pressure for consistency will take care of all that. After our
friend comes to view himself as a public-spirited citizen, he will auto-
matically begin to see things differently. He will convince himself that
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 75

it is the correct way to be. He will begin to pay attention to facts he
hadn’t noticed before about the value of community service. He will
make himself available to hear arguments he hadn’t heard before favor-
ing civic action. And he will find such arguments more persuasive than
before. In general, because of the need to be consistent within his system
of beliefs, he will assure himself that his choice to take public-spirited
action was right. What is important about this process of generating
additional reasons to justify the commitment is that the reasons are new.
Thus, even if the original reason for the civic-minded behavior was
taken away, these newly discovered reasons might be enough by
themselves to support his perception that he had behaved correctly.
   The advantage to an unscrupulous compliance professional is tre-
mendous. Because we build new struts to undergird choices we have
committed ourselves to, an exploitative individual can offer us an in-
ducement for making such a choice, and after the decision has been
made, can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will
probably stand on its own newly created legs. New-car dealers fre-
quently try to benefit from this process through a trick they call
“throwing a lowball.” I first encountered the tactic while posing as a
sales trainee at a local Chevrolet dealership. After a week of basic in-
struction, I was allowed to watch the regular salesmen perform. One
practice that caught my attention right away was the lowball.
   For certain customers, a very good price is offered on a car, perhaps
as much as four hundred dollars below competitors’ prices. The good
deal, however, is not genuine; the dealer never intends it to go through.
Its only purpose is to cause a prospect to decide to buy one of the deal-
ership’s cars. Once the decision is made, a number of activities develop
the customer’s sense of personal commitment to the car—a raft of pur-
chase forms are filled out, extensive financing terms are arranged,
sometimes the customer is encouraged to drive the car for a day before
signing the contract “so you can get the feel of it and show it around
in the neighborhood and at work.” During this time, the dealer knows,
customers automatically develop a range of new reasons to support the
choice they have now made.
   Then something happens. Occasionally an “error” in the calculations
is discovered—maybe the salesman forgot to add in the cost of the air
conditioner, and if the buyer still requires air conditioning, four hundred
dollars must be added to the price. To keep from being suspected of
gouging by the customer, some dealers let the bank handling the finan-
cing find the mistake. At other times, the deal is disallowed at the last
moment when the salesman checks with his boss, who cancels it because
“We’d be losing money.” For only another four hundred dollars the
car can be had, which, in the context of a multithousand-dollar deal,
76 / Influence

doesn’t seem too steep since, as the salesman emphasizes, the cost is
equal to competitors’ and “This is the car you chose, right?” Another,
even more insidious form of lowballing occurs when the salesman
makes an inflated trade-in offer on the prospect’s old car as part of the
buy/trade package. The customer recognizes the offer as overly gener-
ous and jumps at the deal. Later, before the contract is signed, the used-
car manager says that the salesman’s estimate was four hundred dollars
too high and reduces the trade-in allowance to its actual, blue-book
level. The customer, realizing that the reduced offer is the fair one, ac-
cepts it as appropriate and sometimes feels guilty about trying to take
advantage of the salesman’s high estimate. I once witnessed a woman
provide an embarrassed apology to a salesman who had used the last
version of lowballing on her—this while she was signing a new-car
contract giving him a huge commission. He looked hurt but managed
a forgiving smile.
   No matter which variety of lowballing is used, the sequence is the
same: An advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase de-
cision; then, sometime after the decision has been made but before the
bargain is sealed, the original purchase advantage is deftly removed.
It seems almost incredible that a customer would buy a car under these
circumstances. Yet it works—not on everybody, of course, but it is ef-
fective enough to be a staple compliance procedure in many, many car
showrooms. Automobile dealers have come to understand the ability
of a personal commitment to build its own support system, a support
system of new justifications for the commitment. Often these justifica-
tions 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.
The loss can be shrugged off by the customer who is consoled, even
made happy, by the array of other good reasons favoring the choice. It
never occurs to the buyer that those additional reasons might never
have existed had the choice not been made in the first place.18

   The impressive thing about the lowball tactic is its ability to make a
person feel pleased with a poor choice. Those who have only poor
choices to offer us, then, are especially fond of the technique. We can
find them throwing lowballs in business, social, and personal situations.
For instance, there’s my neighbor Tim, a true lowball aficionado. Recall
that he’s the one who, by promising to change his ways, got his girl-
friend, Sara, to cancel her impending marriage to another and to take
him back. Since her decision for Tim, Sara has become more devoted
to him than ever, even though he has not fulfilled his promises. She
explains this by saying that she has allowed herself to see all sorts of
positive qualities in Tim she had never recognized before.
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 77

   I know full well that Sara is a lowball victim. Just as sure as I had
watched buyers fall for the give-it-and-take-it-away-later strategy in
the car showroom, I watched her fall for the same trick with Tim. For
his part, Tim remains the guy he has always been. But because the new
attractions Sara has discovered (or created) in him are quite real for her,
she now seems satisfied with the same arrangement that was unaccept-
able before her enormous commitment. The decision to choose Tim,
poor as it may have been objectively, has grown its own supports and
appears to have made Sara genuinely happy. I have never mentioned
to Sara what I know about lowballing. The reason for my silence is not
that I think her better off in the dark on the issue. As a general guiding
principle, more information is always better than less information. It’s
just that, if I said a word, I am confident she would hate me for it.

   Depending on the motives of the person wishing to use them, any of
the compliance techniques discussed in this book can be employed for
good or for ill. It should not be surprising, then, that the lowball tactic
can be used for more socially beneficial purposes than selling new cars
or reestablishing relationships with former lovers. One research project
done in Iowa, for example, shows how the lowball procedure can influ-
ence homeowners to conserve energy.19 The project, headed by Dr.
Michael Pallak, began at the start of the Iowa winter when residents
who heated their homes with natural gas were contacted by an inter-
viewer. The interviewer gave them some energy-conservation tips and
asked them to try to save fuel in the future. Although they all agreed
to try, when the researchers examined the utility records of these fam-
ilies after a month and again at winter’s end, it was clear that no real
savings had occurred. The residents who had promised to make a
conservation attempt used just as much natural gas as a random sample
of their neighbors who had not been contacted by an interviewer. Just
good intentions coupled with information about saving fuel, then, were
not enough to change habits.
   Even before the project began, Pallak and his research team had re-
cognized that something more would be needed to shift long-standing
energy patterns. So they tried a slightly different procedure on a com-
parable sample of Iowa natural-gas users. These people, too, were
contacted by an interviewer, who provided energy-saving hints and
asked them to conserve. But for these families, the interviewer offered
something else: Those residents agreeing to save energy would have
their names publicized in newspaper articles as public-spirited, fuel-
conserving citizens. The effect was immediate. One month later, when
the utility companies checked their meters, the homeowners in this
sample had saved an average of 422 cubic feet of natural gas apiece.
78 / Influence

The chance to have their names in the paper had motivated these resid-
ents to substantial conservation efforts for a period of a month.
   Then the rug was pulled out. The researchers extracted the reason
that had initially caused these people to save fuel. Each family that had
been promised publicity received a letter saying it would not be possible
to publicize their names after all.
   At the end of the winter, the research team examined the effect that
letter had had on the natural-gas usage of the families. Did they return
to their old, wasteful habits when the chance to be in the newspaper
was removed? Hardly. For each of the remaining winter months, they
actually conserved more fuel than they had during the time they thought
they would be publicly celebrated for it! In terms of percentage of energy
savings, they had managed a 12.2 percent first-month gas savings be-
cause they expected to see themselves lauded in the paper. But after
the letter arrived informing them to the contrary, they did not return
to their previous energy-use levels; instead, they increased their savings
to a 15.5 percent level for the rest of the winter.
   Although we can never be completely sure of such things, one explan-
ation for their persistent behavior presents itself immediately. These
people had been lowballed into a conservation commitment through a
promise of newspaper publicity. Once made, that commitment started
generating its own support: The homeowners began acquiring new
energy habits, began feeling good about their public-spirited efforts,
began convincing themselves of the vital need to reduce American de-
pendence on foreign fuel, began appreciating the monetary savings in
their utility bills, began feeling proud of their capacity for self-denial,
and, most important, began viewing themselves as conservation-
minded. With all these new reasons present to justify the commitment
to use less energy, it is no wonder that the commitment remained firm
even after the original reason, newspaper publicity, had been kicked
away.
   But strangely enough, when the publicity factor was no longer a
possibility, these families did not merely maintain their fuel-saving ef-
fort, they heightened it. Any of a number of interpretations could be
offered for that still stronger effort, but I have a favorite. In a way, the
opportunity to receive newspaper publicity had prevented the
homeowners from fully owning their commitment to conservation. Of
all the reasons supporting the decision to try to save fuel, it was the
only one that had come from the outside; it was the only one preventing
the homeowners from thinking that they were conserving gas because
they believed in it. So when the letter arrived canceling the publicity
agreement, it removed the only impediment to these residents’ images
of themselves as fully concerned, energy-conscious citizens. This un-
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 79

qualified, new self-image then pushed them to even greater heights of
conservation. Whether or not such an explanation is correct, a repeat
study done by Pallak indicates that this hidden benefit of the lowball
tactic is no fluke.
  The experiment was done in summer on Iowans whose homes were
cooled by central air-conditioning. Those homeowners who were
promised newspaper publicity decreased their electricity use by 27.8
percent during July, as compared to similar homeowners who were not
promised any coverage or who were not contacted at all. At the end of
July, a letter was sent canceling the publicity promise. Rather than re-
verting to their old habits, the lowballed residents increased their August
energy savings to a stunning 41.6 percent. Much like Sara, they appeared
to have become committed to a choice through an initial inducement
and were still more dedicated to it after the inducement had been re-
moved.

                         HOW TO SAY NO
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Or, at least, so goes a
frequently heard quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. But
what a very odd thing to say. Looking around, it is obvious that, quite
contrary to what Emerson seems to have suggested, internal consistency
is a hallmark of logic and intellectual strength, while its lack character-
izes the intellectually scattered and limited among us. What, then, could
a thinker of Emerson’s caliber have meant when he assigned the trait
of consistency to the small-minded? I was sufficiently intrigued to go
back to the original source of his statement, the essay “Self-Reliance,”
where it was clear that the problem lay not in Emerson, but in the
popular version of what he had said. Actually he wrote, “A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” For some obscure reason,
a central distinction had been lost as the years eroded the accurate
version of his statement to mean something entirely different and, upon
close inspection, entirely silly.20
   That distinction should not be lost on us, however, because it is vital
to the only effective defense I know against the weapons of influence
embodied in the combined principles of commitment and consistency.
Although consistency is generally good, even vital, there is a foolish,
rigid variety to be shunned. It is this tendency to be automatically and
unthinkingly consistent that Emerson referred to. And it is this tendency
that we must be wary of, for it lays us open to the maneuvers of those
who want to exploit the mechanical commitment              consistency se-
quence for profit.
   But since automatic consistency is so useful in allowing us an econom-
80 / Influence

ical and appropriate way of behaving most of the time, we can’t decide
merely to eliminate it from our lives altogether. The results would be
disastrous. If, rather than whirring along in accordance with our prior
decisions and deeds, we stopped to think through the merits of every
new action before performing it, we would never have time to accom-
plish anything significant. We need even that dangerous, mechanical
brand of consistency. The only way out of the dilemma is to know when
such consistency is likely to lead to a poor choice. There are certain
signals—two separate kinds of signals, in fact—to tip us off. We register
each type in a different part of our bodies.

   The first sort of signal is easy to recognize. It occurs right in the pit
of our stomachs when we realize we are trapped into complying with
a request we know we don’t want to perform. It has happened to me a
hundred times. An especially memorable instance, though, took place
on a summer evening well before I began to study compliance tactics.
I answered my doorbell to find a stunning young woman dressed in
shorts and a revealing halter top. I noticed, nonetheless, that she was
carrying a clipboard and was asking me to participate in a survey.
Wanting to make a favorable impression, I agreed and, I do admit,
stretched the truth in my interview answers so as to present myself in
the most positive light. Our conversation went as follows:

STUNNING YOUNG WOMAN: Hello, I’m doing a survey on the entertain-
ment habits of city residents, and I wonder if you could answer a few
questions for me.

CIALDINI:   Do come in.

SYW: Thank you. I’ll just sit right here and begin. How many times per
week would you say that you go out to dinner?

C: Oh, probably three, maybe four times a week. Whenever I can, really;
I love fine restaurants.

SYW:   How nice. And do you usually order wine with your dinner?

C:   Only if it’s imported.

SYW:   I see. What about movies? Do you go to the movies much?

C:   The cinema? I can’t get enough of good films. I especially like the
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 81

sophisticated kind with the words on the bottom of the screen. How
about you? Do you like to see films?

SYW:Uh…yes, I do. But let’s get back to the interview. Do you go to
many concerts?

C:Definitely. The symphonic stuff mostly, of course; but I do enjoy a
quality pop group as well.

SYW (writing rapidly): Great! Just one more question. What about touring
performances by theatrical or ballet companies? Do you see them when
they’re in town?

 Ah, the ballet—the movement, the grace, the form—I love it. Mark
C:
me down as loving the ballet. See it every chance I get.

SYW: Fine. Just let me recheck my figures here for a moment, Mr.
Cialdini.

C: Actually, it’s Dr. Cialdini. But that sounds so formal; why don’t you
call me Bob?

SYW: All right, Bob. From the information you’ve already given me, I’m
pleased to say that you could save up to twelve hundred dollars a year
by joining Clubamerica! A small membership fee entitles you to dis-
counts on most of the activities you’ve mentioned. Surely someone as
socially vigorous as yourself would want to take advantage of the tre-
mendous savings our company can offer on all the things you’ve already
told me you do.

C    (trapped like a rat): Well…uh…I…uh…I guess so.

  I remember quite well feeling my stomach tighten as I stammered
my agreement. It was a clear call to my brain, “Hey, you’re being taken
here!” But I couldn’t see a way out. I had been cornered by my own
words. To decline her offer at that point would have meant facing a
pair of distasteful alternatives: If I tried to back out by protesting that
I was not actually the man-about-town I had claimed to be during the
interview, I would come off a liar; but trying to refuse without that
protest would make me come off a fool for not wanting to save twelve
hundred dollars. So I bought the entertainment package, even though
82 / Influence

I knew I had been set up so that the need to be consistent with what I
had already said would snare me.
   No more, though. I listen to my stomach these days. And I have dis-
covered a way to handle people who try to use the consistency principle
on me. I just tell them exactly what they are doing. It works beautifully.
Most of the time, they don’t understand me; they just become sufficiently
confused to want to leave me alone. I think they suspect lunacy in
anyone who responds to their requests by explaining what Ralph Waldo
Emerson meant in distinguishing between consistency and foolish
consistency. Usually they have already begun edging away by the time
I have mentioned “hobgoblins of the mind” and are gone long before
I have described the click, whirr character of commitment and consist-
ency. Occasionally, though, they realize that I am on to their game. I
always know when that happens—it’s as clear as the egg on their faces.
They invariably become flustered, bumble through a hasty exit line,
and go for the door.
   This tactic has become the perfect counterattack for me. Whenever
my stomach tells me I would be a sucker to comply with a request
merely because doing so would be consistent with some prior commit-
ment I was tricked into, I relay that message to the requester. I don’t
try to deny the importance of consistency; I just point out the absurdity
of foolish consistency. Whether, in response, the requester shrinks away
guiltily or retreats in bewilderment, I am content. I have won; an ex-
ploiter has lost.
   I sometimes think about how it would be if that stunning young
woman of years ago were to try to sell me an entertainment-club
membership now. I have it all worked out. The entire interaction would
be the same, except for the end:

SYW:…Surely    someone as socially vigorous as yourself would want to
take advantage of the tremendous savings our company can offer on
all the things you’ve already told me you do.

C (with great self-assurance): Quite wrong. You see, I recognize what has
gone on here. I know that your story about doing a survey was just a
pretext for getting people to tell you how often they go out and that,
under those circumstances, there is a natural tendency to exaggerate. I
also realize that your bosses selected you for this job because of your
physical attractiveness and told you to wear clothes showing a lot of
your resilient body tissue because a pretty, scantily clad woman is likely
to get men to brag about what swingers they are in order to impress
her. So I’m not interested in your entertainment club because of what
Emerson said about foolish consistency and hobgoblins of the mind.
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 83


SYW    (staring blankly): Huh?

C: Look. What I told you during your fake survey doesn’t matter. I refuse
to allow myself to be locked into a mechanical sequence of commitment
and consistency when I know it’s wrongheaded. No click, whirr for me.

SYW:   Huh?

C:Okay, let me put it this way: (1) It would be stupid of me to spend
money on something I don’t want. (2) I have it on excellent author-ity,
direct from my stomach, that I don’t want your entertainment plan. (3)
Therefore, if you still believe that I will buy it, you probably also still
believe in the Tooth Fairy. Surely, someone as intelligent as yourself
would be able to understand that.

SYW    (trapped like a stunning young rat): Well…uh…I…uh…I guess so.

   Stomachs are not especially perceptive or subtle organs. Only when
it is obvious that we are about to be conned are they likely to register
and transmit that message. At other times, when it is not clear that we
are being taken, our stomachs may never catch on. Under those circum-
stances we have to look elsewhere for a clue. The situation of my
neighbor Sara provides a good illustration. She made an important
commitment to Tim by canceling her prior marriage plans. That com-
mitment has grown its own supports, so that even though the original
reasons for the commitment are gone, she remains in harmony with it.
She has convinced herself with newly formed reasons that she did the
right thing, so she stays with Tim. It is not difficult to see why there
would be no tightening in Sara’s stomach as a result. Stomachs tell us
when we are doing something we think is wrong for us. Sara thinks no
such thing. To her mind, she has chosen correctly and is behaving
consistently with that choice.
   Yet, unless I badly miss my guess, there is a part of Sara that recog-
nizes her choice as a mistake and her current living arrangement as a
brand of foolish consistency. Where, exactly, that part of Sara is located
we can’t be sure. But our language does give it a name: heart of hearts.
It is, by definition, the one place where we cannot fool ourselves. It is
the place where none of our justifications, none of our rationalizations
penetrate. Sara has the truth there, although, right now, she can’t hear
its signal clearly through the noise and static of the new support appar-
atus she has erected.
   If Sara has erred in her choice of Tim, how long could she go without
84 / Influence

clearly recognizing it, without having a massive heart of hearts attack?
There is no telling. One thing is certain, however: As time passes, the
various alternatives to Tim are disappearing. She had better determine
soon whether she is making a mistake.
   Easier said than done, of course. She must answer an extremely in-
tricate question: “Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time,
would I make the same choice?” The problem lies in the “Knowing
what I now know” part of the question. Just what does she now know,
accurately, about Tim? How much of what she thinks of him is the
result of a desperate attempt to justify the commitment she made? She
claims that since her decision to take him back, he cares for her more,
is trying hard to stop his excessive drinking, has learned to make a
wonderful omelet, etc. Having tasted a couple of his omelets, I have
my doubts. The important issue, though, is whether she believes these
things, not just intellectually—we can play such mind games on
ourselves—but in her heart of hearts.
   There may be a little device Sara can use to find out how much of her
current satisfaction with Tim is real and how much is foolish consist-
ency. Accumulating psychological evidence indicates that we experience
our feelings toward something a split second before we can intellectu-
alize about it.21 My suspicion is that the message sent by the heart of
hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train ourselves to be at-
tentive, we should register it ever so slightly before our cognitive appar-
atus engages. According to this approach, were Sara to ask herself the
crucial “Would I make the same choice again?” question, she would be
well advised to look for and trust the first flash of feeling she experi-
enced in response. It would likely be the signal from her heart of hearts,
slipping through undistorted just before the means by which she could
kid herself flooded in.22
   I have begun using the same device myself whenever I even suspect
I might be acting in a foolishly consistent manner. One time, for instance,
I had stopped at the self-service pump of a filling station advertising a
price per gallon a couple of cents below the rate of other stations in the
area. But with pump nozzle in hand, I noticed that the price listed on
the pump was two cents higher than the display sign price. When I
mentioned the difference to a passing attendant, who I later learned
was the owner, he mumbled uncon-vincingly that the rates had changed
a few days ago but there hadn’t been time to correct the display. I tried
to decide what to do. Some reasons for staying came to mind—“I really
do need gasoline badly.” “This pump is available, and I am in sort of
a hurry.” “I think I remember that my car runs better on this brand of
gas.”
   I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere
                                           Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 85

justifications for my decision to stop there. So I asked myself the crucial
question, “Knowing what I know about the real price of this gasoline,
if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice again?” Con-
centrating on the first burst of impression I sensed, the answer was
clear and unqualified. I would have driven right past. I wouldn’t even
have slowed down. I knew then that without the price advantage, those
other reasons would not have brought me there. They hadn’t created
the decision; the decision had created them.
   That settled, there was another decision to be faced, though. Since I
was already there holding the hose, wouldn’t it be better to use it than
to suffer the inconvenience of going elsewhere to pay the same price?
Fortunately, the station attendant-owner came over and helped me
make up my mind. He asked why I wasn’t pumping any gas. I told him
I didn’t like the price discrepancy, and he said with a snarl, “Listen,
nobody’s gonna tell me how to run my business. If you think I’m
cheating you, just put that hose down right now and get off my property
as fast as you can do it, bud.” Already certain he was a cheat, I was
happy to act consistently with my belief and his wishes. I dropped the
hose on the spot…and drove over it on my way to the closest exit.
Sometimes consistency can be a marvelously rewarding thing.

                          READER’S REPORT
          From a Woman Living in Portland, Oregon
“I was walking through downtown Portland on my way to a lunch
appointment when a young, attractive man stopped me with a friendly
smile and a powerful line: ‘Excuse me, I’m involved in a contest and I
need a good-looking woman like yourself to help me win.’ I was truly
skeptical, since I know there are many more attractive women than
myself running around; however, I was caught off guard and was
curious to find out what he wanted. He explained that he would receive
points for a contest by getting total strangers to give him a kiss. Now I
consider myself a fairly level-headed person who shouldn’t have be-
lieved his line, but he was quite persistent, and since I was almost late
for my lunch appointment, I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll give the guy
a kiss and get out of here.’ So I did something totally against my com-
mon sense and pecked this total stranger on the cheek in the middle of
downtown Portland!
   “I thought that would be the end of it, but I soon learned that it was
just the beginning. Much to my distress, he followed the kiss with the
line ‘You are a great kisser, but the real contest I am involved in is to
sell magazine subscriptions. You must be an active person. Would any
of these magazines interest you?’ At this point I should have slugged
86 / Influence

the guy and walked away; but somehow, because I had complied with
his initial request, I felt a need to be consistent, and I complied with his
second request. Yes, much to my own disbelief, I actually subscribed
to SKI magazine (which I occasionally enjoy reading, but had no inten-
tion of subscribing to), gave him a five-dollar initial-subscription fee
and left as quickly as possible, feeling quite frustrated with what I had
just done and not understanding why I had done it.
   “Although it still pains me to think about it, in reflecting on the incid-
ent after reading your book, I’ve now figured out what happened. The
reason this tactic worked so effectively is because once small commit-
ments have been made (in this case, giving a kiss), people tend to add
justifications to support the commitment and then are willing to commit
themselves further. In this situation, I justified complying with the
second request because it was consistent with my initial action. If I had
only listened to my ‘stomach signs,’ I could have saved myself a lot of
humiliation.”
By extracting a kiss, the salesman exploited the consistency principle
  in two ways. First, by the time he asked for her aid in the magazine
 contest, his prospect had already gone on record—with that kiss—as
agreeing to help him win a contest. Second, it seems only natural (i.e.,
 congruent) that if a woman feels positively enough toward a man to
      kiss him, she should feel positively toward helping him out.
                            Chapter 4

                     SOCIAL PROOF
                          Truths Are Us

             Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
                         —WALTER LIPPMANN




I I surveyed the people who came into my office one day—several
  DON’T KNOW ANYONE WHO LIKES CANNED LAUGHTER. IN FACT   , when

students, two telephone repairmen, a number of university professors,
and the janitor—the reaction was invariably critical. Television, with
its incessant system of laugh tracks and technically augmented mirth,
received the most heat. The people I questioned hated canned laughter.
They called it stupid, phony, and obvious. Although my sample was
small, I would bet that it closely reflects the negative feelings of most
of the American public toward laugh tracks.
   Why, then, is canned laughter so popular with television executives?
They have won their exalted positions and splendid salaries by knowing
how to give the public what it wants. Yet they religiously employ the
laugh tracks that their audiences find distasteful. And they do so over
the objections of many of their most talented artists. It is not uncommon
for acclaimed directors, writers, or actors to demand the elimination of
canned responses from the television projects they undertake. These
demands are only sometimes successful, and when they are, it is not
without a battle.
   What could it be about canned laughter that is so attractive to televi-
sion executives? Why would these shrewd and tested businessmen
champion a practice that their potential watchers find disagreeable and
their most creative talents find personally insulting? The answer is at
88 / Influence

once simple and intriguing: They know what the research says. Exper-
iments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience
to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented
and to rate the material as funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates
that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes.1
   In the light of these data, the actions of television executives make
perfect sense. The introduction of laugh tracks into their comic program-
ming will increase the humorous and appreciative responses of an
audience, even—and especially—when the material is of poor quality.
Is it any surprise, then, that television, glutted as it is with artless situ-
ation-comedy attempts, should be saturated with canned laughter?
Those executives know precisely what they are doing.

   But with the mystery of the widespread use of laugh tracks solved,
we are left with a more perplexing question: Why does canned laughter
work on us the way it does? It is no longer the television executives
who appear peculiar; they are acting logically and in their own interests.
Instead, it is the behavior of the audience, of you and me, that seems
strange. Why should we laugh more at comedy material afloat in a sea
of mechanically fabricated merriment? And why should we think that
comic flotsam funnier? The executives aren’t really fooling us. Anyone
can recognize dubbed laughter. It is so blatant, so clearly counterfeit,
that there could be no confusing it with the real thing. We know full
well that the hilarity we hear is irrelevant to the humorous quality of
the joke it follows, that it is created not spontaneously by a genuine
audience, but artificially by a technician at a control board. Yet, trans-
parent forgery that it is, it works on us!
   To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to un-
derstand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the
principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine
what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The
principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes cor-
rect behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation
to the degree that we see others performing it. Whether the question is
what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to
drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat the chicken at a
dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important in defining
the answer.
   The tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are
doing it normally works quite well. As a rule, we will make fewer
mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it.
Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing
to do. This feature of the principle of social proof is simultaneously its
                                            Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 89

major strength and its major weakness. Like the other weapons of influ-
ence, it provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave
but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to
the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path.
   In the case of canned laughter, the problem comes when we begin
responding to social proof in such a mindless and reflexive fashion that
we can be fooled by partial or fake evidence. Our folly is not that we
use others’ laughter to help decide what is humorous and when mirth
is appropriate; that is in keeping with the well-founded principle of
social proof. The folly is that we do so in response to patently fraudulent
laughter. Somehow, one disembodied feature of humor—a
sound—works like the essence of humor. The example from Chapter
1 of the turkey and the polecat is instructive here. Remember that be-
cause the particular “cheep-cheep” of turkey chicks is normally associ-
ated with newborn turkeys, their mothers will display or withhold
maternal care solely on the basis of that sound? And remember how,
consequently, it was possible to trick a female turkey into mothering a
stuffed polecat as long as the replica played the recorded “cheep-cheep”
of a baby turkey? The simulated chick sound was enough to start the
female’s mothering tape whirring.
   The lesson of the turkey and the polecat illustrates uncomfortably
well the relationship between the average viewer and the laugh-track-
playing television executive. We have become so accustomed to taking
the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter
that we, too, can be made to respond to the sound and not to the sub-
stance of the real thing. Much as a “cheep-cheep” noise removed from
the reality of a chick can stimulate a female turkey to mother, so can a
recorded “ha-ha” removed from the reality of a genuine audience
stimulate us to laugh. The television executives are exploiting our
preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react automatically on the
basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our tapes.
Click, whirr.

   Television executives are hardly alone in their use of social evidence
for profit. Our tendency to assume that an action is more correct if
others are doing it is exploited in a variety of settings. Bartenders often
“salt” their tip jars with a few dollar bills at the beginning of the evening
to simulate tips left by prior customers and thereby to give the impres-
sion that tipping with folding money is proper barroom behavior.
Church ushers sometimes salt collection baskets for the same reason
and with the same positive effect on proceeds. Evangelical preachers
are known to seed their audience with “ringers,” who are rehearsed to
come forward at a specified time to give witness and donations. For
90 / Influence

example, an Arizona State University research team that infiltrated the
Billy Graham organization reported on such advance preparations
prior to one of his Crusade visits. “By the time Graham arrives in town
and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions
on when to come forth at varying intervals to create the impression of
a spontaneous mass outpouring.”2
   Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the “fastest-growing”
or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly that
the product is good, they need only say that many others think so,
which seems proof enough. The producers of charity telethons devote
inordinate amounts of time to the incessant listing of viewers who have
already pledged contributions. The message being communicated to
the holdouts is clear: “Look at all the people who have decided to give.
It must be the correct thing to do.” At the height of the disco craze, cer-
tain discotheque owners manufactured a brand of visible social proof
for their clubs’ quality by creating long waiting lines outside when there
was plenty of room inside. Salesmen are taught to spice their pitches
with numerous accounts of individuals who have purchased the
product. Sales and motivation consultant Cavett Robert captures the
principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees: “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 can offer.”
   Researchers, too, have employed procedures based on the principle
of social proof—sometimes with astounding results. One psychologist
in particular, Albert Bandura, has led the way in developing such pro-
cedures for the elimination of undesirable behavior. Bandura and his
colleagues have shown how people suffering from phobias can be rid
of these extreme fears in an amazingly simple fashion. For instance, in
an early study nursery-school-age children chosen because they were
terrified of dogs merely watched a little boy playing happily with a dog
for twenty minutes a day. This exhibition produced such marked
changes in the reactions of the fearful children that after only four days,
67 percent of them were willing to climb into a playpen with a dog and
remain confined there, petting and scratching it while everyone else
left the room. Moreover, when the researchers tested the children’s fear
levels again one month later, they found that the improvement had not
evaporated during that time; in fact, the children were more willing
than ever to interact with dogs.
   An important practical discovery was made in a second study of
children who were exceptionally afraid of dogs: To reduce their fea
Influent - The psychology of Persuasion - Robert B.Cialdini.txt
Displaying Influent - The psychology of Persuasion - Robert B.Cialdini.txt.