Influence - psychology of persuasion - R. Cialdini

We all know all that influencing is something that every one of us want to know about.In this blog from the section learn from book we are going to provide you with the principles of influencing derived from the book.

5 PRINCIPLES OF INFLUENCING ARE AS FOLLOWS :

1] ASK FOR FAVOUR WITH A REASON

An experiment was conducted by the author where he went to photo copy shop.He just ask the person standing in front of him to let him go before the person. Only 30% of people allowed him to do so.

He went to another photo copy shop, here also he did the same thing but this time he gave a reason that he has an emergency.Here he mentioned his reason why the person standing in front of him should let him go first.To the surprise 82% of people agreed to let him go first.

So by this experiment we can conclude that when we ask a favour with a reason , there is a very high probability of getting your things done without getting them know that they are been influenced by us.

2]CONTRAST PRINCIPLE

An experiment was conducted by a salesman of a clothing shop.A customer approached him and ask him to show a suit.(His budget was 2200 only). The salesman at first show a very costly suit costing around 16000 INR.

It was obvious that the customer won't buy such an expensive suit.Then the salesman show him a suit costing 8000 INR and at last he show a suit costing 3000 INR. The customer was willing to buy a suit costing 3000 INR. 

Guess why he was convinced?

Yes, you guessed it right it was because of the contrast principle.The contrast principle says first show your customer a costly product then a cheaper product.Due to the contrast principle the buyer will buy the cheaper one.

3] RECIPROCITY

The principle of Reciprocity talks about the relation of give and get.To understand it in a better way take a look at a real life example of the company Amway.

As most of know Amway used to give a basket of different products to customer for trial basis for around 1-2 days & on the 3rd day the customers were asked do they want to buy it? & to the surprise more than 50% product from that basket were purchased by the customer.

Here the company Amway used the principle of reciprocity to sell their products.

4] COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY

This principle talks about asking for small favour/ do small sales and then ask for a big favour/sales.According to research it is likely that they will do that.To make you believe in this principle we have another real life case study.

In Jan 1954 when Korean War ended.China gave chance to American captured soldiers a chance to go back to their country but to the surprise they refused to go back.

Reason ?

Commitment and consistency principle.Soldiers were told to write few negative statements about the USA and positive statements about the China & the communism.This was a small favour asked by the Chinese.

And because of this small favour asked by the Chinese, their minds were  manipulated and they started believing that USA is not a good country and communism is best, china is best.And due to this they refused to go back to their country.

I am feeling bad for the soldiers they were not knowing that they were influenced by the Chinese using the principle of commitment and consistency.

5] SOCIAL PROOF

This is most used principle by the T.V shows.Whenever we watch a comedy show, the show makers run the sound of laughter in the background and sometimes we also tend to laugh even though we didn't like that joke.This happens because unknowingly we are getting influenced by the show makers using the principle of social proof.

Another interesting example is , suppose you went on a trip and you are in search of a restaurant. You found 2 restaurant one where you saw a number of cars parked in front of it and another with only 2 cars parked in front of it.Which one will you choose? 

Its obvious you will choose the one with a number of cars parked in front of it.
And hence many restaurant park their own cars in front of the restaurant to attract the crowd.

Hope you learnt a lot from this and if you found this helpful share this with all yours friends and family on various social media platform.

Thanks & Regards.
Shubham Shah,
Founder- knowledge mania