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, fundraisers, and operators of one sort or another. True, only some have had dishonorable motives. The others—representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance—have had the best 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? And which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about compliance? I have wondered why it is that a request stated in a certain way will be rejected, but a request asking for the same favor in a slightly different fashion will be successful.
So in my role as an experimental social psychologist, I began to research the psychology of compliance. At first the research took the form of experiments performed, for the most part, in my laboratory and on college students. I wanted to find out which psychological principles influenced 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 levers of influence and will be discussing some of the most important in this book.
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 importance of the principles in the world beyond the psychology building and the campus where I was examining them. It became clear that if I were to understand fully the psychology of compliance, I would need to broaden my scope of investigation. I would need to look to the compliance 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 family. But the compliance practitioners have much more than the vague and amateurish understanding of what works than the rest of us do. As I thought about it, I knew they represented the richest vein of information about compliance available to me. For nearly three years, then, I combined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining program: I systematically immersed myself in the world of compliance professionals—salespeople, fundraisers, marketers, recruiters, and others.
My 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 and sometimes with the natural enemies (for example, police fraud-squad officers, investigative reporters, consumer-protection agencies) of certain of the practitioners. At other times, it involved an intensive examination of the written materials by which compliance techniques are passed down from one generation to another—sales manuals and the like.
Most frequently, though, it took the form of participant observation—a research approach in which the investigator becomes a spy of sorts. With disguised identity and intent, the researcher infiltrates the setting of interest and becomes a full-fledged participant in the group to be studied. So when I wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of magazine (or vacuum-cleaner or portrait-photograph or health-supplement) sales organizations, I would answer an ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public-relations, and fundraising 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 seven 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. This book is organized around these seven principles, one to a chapter. The principles—reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment and consistency, and unity—are discussed both in terms of their function in 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, or assent.1
Each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people: a willingness 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 society, therefore, to understand the how and why of automatic influence.
Finally, in this edition, I’ve sequenced the chapters to fit with the insights of my colleague Dr. Gregory Neidert regarding how certain principles are more useful than others, depending on which persuasive goal the communicator wishes to achieve with a message. Of course, any would-be influencer wants to create change in others; but, according to Dr. Neidert’s Core Motives Model of Social Influence, the communicator’s prime goal at the time affects which influence principles the communicator should prioritize. For instance, the model asserts that one of the main motives (goals) of a persuader involves cultivating a positive relationship. Research shows that messages are more likely to be successful if recipients can first be made to feel positively toward the messenger. Three of the seven principles of influence—reciprocation, liking, and unity—seem particularly appropriate to the task.
In other situations, perhaps when a good relationship is already in place, the goal of reducing uncertainty may be a priority. After all, having a positive relationship with a communicator doesn’t necessarily mean message recipients will be persuaded. Before they are likely to change their minds, people want to be assured any decision they are being urged to make is wise. Under these circumstances, according to the model, the principles of social proof and authority should never be ignored—because evidence that a choice is well regarded by peers or by experts makes it, indeed, appear prudent.
But even with a positive relationship cultivated and uncertainty reduction accomplished, a remaining goal needs to be achieved to boost the likelihood of behavioral change. In such a situation, the goal of motivating action becomes the main objective. That is, a well-liked friend may show me sufficient proof that almost everyone believes that daily exercise is a good thing and that leading medical experts overwhelmingly support its health benefits, but that proof may not be enough to get me to do it. The friend would do well to include in any appeal the principles of consistency and scarcity. The friend could do so by reminding me, for example, of what I’ve said publicly in the past about the importance of my health (consistency) and about the unique enjoyments I would miss if I lost it (scarcity). That’s the message that would most likely move me from a mere decision to act to steps based on that decision. Consequently, it’s the message with the best chance to get me up in the morning and off to the gym.
Thus, the arrangement of the chapters takes into account which principles are particularly suited to achieving these three motives of persuaders: reciprocation, liking, and unity for when relationship cultivation is primary; followed by social proof and authority for when reducing uncertainty is foremost; followed in turn by consistency and scarcity for when motivating action is the principle objective. It is important to recognize that I am not suggesting these associated principles are the sole options for achieving their respective goals. Rather, I am only suggesting that if they are available for accomplishing an aligned goal, failing to employ them would be a considerable mistake.