Influence
Robert Cialdini · 1984
Six universal principles explain why we say yes — and how to spot them.
Read the real book ↗12 cards
Psychology & BehaviorDo this 
Do this30 secIn a crowd, pick a face and give it a job
Alone with a stranger having a seizure, 85% of people helped. With four others watching, 31% did — everyone reading everyone else's calm. So if you are the one on the ground, do not shout at the air. Lock eyes with one person and be exact: "You in the blue jacket, call an ambulance." That turns a crowd into one responsible human.
Psychology & BehaviorDo this 
Do this1 minTime your own warmth, not the seller's
The world-record car salesman mailed all 13,000 past customers a card a month. Same three words inside: I like you. It worked, and everyone knew it was mass-mailed. So the defense is not distrusting warm people — it is timing them. The second you like a seller faster than the situation earned, ask: would I buy this from someone I could not stand?
Psychology & BehaviorStart here 
The man who wrote the book on persuasion opens it by calling himself a lifelong easy mark.
So he went undercover for three years — answering ads, training on sales floors, in fundraising rooms and ad agencies, learning which moves actually separate people from their money. Six levers kept working: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity. Each is a shortcut that is usually right, which is exactly why it pays to counterfeit one. The result is a defense manual, not a playbook: every principle arrives with the tell that its trigger is fake.
Read ifYou have walked out of a sale, a donation or a meeting thinking: I never actually decided to say yes to that.
Influence
Robert Cialdini
Psychology & BehaviorDiagram Click, whirr: the automatic yes
The loop comes from ethology: a mother turkey will mother anything that cheeps, including a stuffed polecat with a recorder inside. Attack the counterfeit trigger, never the shortcut.
Psychology & BehaviorFramework 
The commitment ladder
Cold ask to plant a billboard-sized DRIVE CAREFULLY sign on the lawn: 17% agree. Ask the people who accepted a 3-inch safe-driver sticker two weeks earlier: 76%. The climb has rules.
Start with something trivial
The first yes is not the prize. Nudging your self-image one inch is.
Get it written down
Written positions are hard to disown. Amway had sellers write their own targets.
Make it public
Once people watched you take the stand, stepping off it costs face.
Leave it freely chosen
Big bribes and threats hand you an excuse. A token prize leaves you owning it.
Your way back down
Ask: knowing what I know now, would I make this commitment again?
Psychology & BehaviorBig idea 
A favor cancels whether you like the person
In Regan's experiment a stranger slips out during a break and comes back with a Coke for you, unasked. Later he asks you to buy raffle tickets. You buy about twice as many as people who got no Coke — and here is the part that should worry you: how much you liked him stopped predicting anything at all. The debt overrode the man. That is why the sample is handed to you and never sold to you.
Psychology & BehaviorBig idea 
21 nurses out of 22 did what the phone said
A stranger rings a hospital ward, says he is a doctor, and orders 20 milligrams of a drug for a patient: double the stated maximum, from a bottle not on the ward list, by phone, against every rule. In Hofling's study 95% of nurses had the pills in hand and were walking to the room before they were stopped. Nobody checked. Symbols get obeyed; evidence does not. Ask what this person's authority actually covers.
Psychology & BehaviorBig idea 
Scarce information beats scarce goods
Beef buyers were warned an import shortage was coming, and orders doubled. A third group got the identical warning plus one extra fact — the news was exclusive, not yet public. Their orders ran about six times normal. Nothing about the beef had changed. What got scarce was knowing it. That is what the leaked deal and the invite-only drop are really selling. Feel the rush, then ask what you wanted the thing for.
Psychology & BehaviorTry it Test the claim
Spot the tactic
Swipe right for true, left for false — or use the buttons.
0 / 5Canned laughter still works on people who know it is fake.Call it
Psychology & BehaviorQuiz 
Recall check
Chinese camps in Korea ran essay contests for American POWs. The prize for a mildly pro-Communist essay was a few cigarettes. Why deliberately keep the reward that small?
Psychology & BehaviorQuiz 
Recall check
Cialdini asked students to chaperone juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo. 17% agreed. One change pushed it to 50%. What did he change?
Psychology & BehaviorQuote 
People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
Langer's copier study: a cold ask got 60% yes. Because I'm in a rush got 94%. Because I have to make copies — a non-reason — got 93%.