Psychology of persuasion. How to convince others and be able to recognize the manipulation

This article is a brief summary of the book “The Psychology of Persuasion ” by Robert Cialdini. It will be useful to everyone who deals with people, sales and business. The book is so useful that it should be on everyone's shelf. Besides the fact that we want to influence others, it is very useful to know when others are trying to influence us. Inside you will find many ways to persuade and, immediately after reading, you will easily notice when you are trying to manipulate.

1. Create difficulties for the audience

Change the phrase: "Operators are waiting, call right now" to this: "If the operators are busy, please call back." In this way, you will create a sense of scarcity: since operators are often busy, it means they take the goods well. In fact, you use social proof, telling potential buyers that your product has already been tested and enjoyed by many people.

Well, when you address a message to a specific audience. For example, guests of a particular hotel room or residents of their homes. Write on the door of the entrance: “We have the most non-smoking entrance in the house and we always smell good. Welcome!".

2. Social proof

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Social proof you can achieve the opposite effect in advertising. For example, when you show the audience unacceptable behavior and what many people do, the audience will think like this: “since many people do this, then I will be.” When in one of the parks of the United States installed a sign with the inscription: "Many visitors to the park carried away pieces of petrified wood, which changes the natural state of the forest," the number of thefts increased compared to the state when there were no signs at all. Use positive social evidence.

3. The smaller the selection, the better.

Instead of a line of 20 similar products, offer five or three. It will be easier for people to choose. When the Head & Shoulders shampoo line was reduced from 26 varieties to 15, sales increased to 15 percent.

Homework: if you translate the name “Head & Shoulders” into Russian, you’ll have a highly idiotic name. Use the dictionary.

4. A gift in the form of your product hurts the product.

Duty-free often sell smelly harmful liquids in bottles. These are whiskey, cognac and other rubbish. If as a gift to an expensive stinky bottle you will be given a bracelet with pearls, your assessment of the value of this bracelet will fall by 35%, than if you would evaluate it separately.

Never give your service a bonus to something else. This reduces its cost in the eyes of the consumer. Stop giving free advice so that your opinion does not depreciate. One hour of my working time costs 750 rubles, and when I spend free classes in schools, I always talk about the cost. Thus, schoolchildren begin to appreciate more the information that I give them.

5. Three products for sales compromise

If you have only one product, your consumers have no choice. If a second, higher-quality product appears, its mere presence will increase sales of the first. When a client asks you to develop software, calculate three options: minimum, medium and maximum. The minimum option you can do is obviously unacceptable due to the lack of key functions. The average will be the option that you want to sell. And the maximum is an option with whistles, without which you can do the first year of operation of your product. You do not expect to sell the maximum option, but if suddenly a client buys it you will not be offended.

6. Fear with instructions to overcome the danger positively motivates

Scare people and suggest a solution. If a solution is not proposed, you will simply drive people into a stupor. Tell the children a couple of scary stories about how bad alcohol is and offer an alternative: what to do in your free time with friends. Important: it only works if you do not drink at all and are socially active.

Security guards and antivirus programs often use this technique. They talk about how everything around is bad and unobtrusively report on how to counter threats.
Reporting problems to management, think up an action plan to neutralize. Telling the patient about the dangers of excess weight, give a set of exercises and three cans of herbalife.

7. The principle of reciprocity

Do something for a person, and he will most likely respond to you in the same way. Start a dialogue with a gift. A gift may be a kind word or a small service. Recently, I called by phone in one of the camp sites and, as a gift, told them how much they are losing, that they are absent on booking.com and how they should be. As a result, the head of the tourist center prepared to buy anything from me =)

When SberTech came to Cherepovets and sucked out all the developers, we had to open a Programmers javiste school. The result was a free service that we provide to candidates, and thanks to which some students have a feeling of gratitude and remain with us to work.

8. Write personally and by hand.

The language of robots gives you headlong: “Dear Vladimir Nikolayevich! We ask you…". It looks ugly and extremely stupid.

When I do a newsletter about events through Vkontakte, I do three different ways of addressing for different groups: those with whom I am on “you”, those with whom I am on “you” and those with whom I communicate quite closely. Each message, if possible, supplement with personal details: “Hello! I remember that you liked the previous Vedafest. This Saturday will be ... ".

A message taped to the keyboard and handwritten works better than an electric letter. People see the extra effort and appreciate it. At the same time, the study showed that the request is more qualitative if you use the personal approach.

9. First present

Restaurants put the bowl with candy at the exit and, probably, it is good. But much better bonus works at the entrance. In the Cherepovets cafe "bon-appetite" together with Koporsky tea they serve cookies with jam. It costs almost nothing for an institution, but it pleases visitors and increases the size of the tip. This is all the same principle of reciprocity: you have already taken the first step and you are paid the same.

10. The value of the service rendered decreases with time.

If you helped a friend to transport furniture, - the greatest desire to reciprocate it will be experienced in a short time. And, on the contrary, you will remember well about the service rendered for a long time. Moreover, the first feeling of gratitude from your friend will weaken and in the end the importance of the service rendered will disappear. You, on the contrary, will increase the feeling of significance of your unprecedented feat.

Remember this when asking for help. If a quarter-century has passed since the move, your friend may have forgotten about it already.

11. Ask for a little first, then a lot

This strategy is called foot in the door. Ask first for a small service that is easy to provide. Then you can ask for something more.

The book describes a study where homeowners were asked to hoist a ugly banner on road safety onto their beautiful lawn. In the first sample, 17% agreed, and in the second 76%. What's the Difference? A week before the second sample, people came and asked to stick a small sticker on the glass with the same message. People during this time felt responsible for road safety.

In sales, this means that a large order is preceded by a small one. Sell ​​the candy first, and then you can sell the box.

12. Praise the person

It is useful to glorify a person a little. Think of him well and say something like: "you have all the abilities to cope with this unconditionally difficult task." If you call a man a pig, he, sooner or later, grunts. If you do the opposite and speak of him as a good person (although he may not correspond), he will strive to justify your trust and begin to conform to opinion.

13. Ask a preliminary question and get a positive answer.

Example. I first call and ask: “How do you feel about online orders via the Internet? Will their share in your industry decrease or increase? ”. If you call the same people and make a personal offer to create an online store, the probability of agreeing to a meeting will be 25% higher.

The key point is precisely the positive answer to the first question. “Will you be able to call if you need to cancel the table reservation?”. If the client answers “Yes”, the number of non-appearances in your restaurant will decrease from 30 to 10 percent. When your interlocutor says “yes”, he accepts the commitment and seeks to fulfill it.

14. Active commitments

Write down your goal and do it in a prominent place. If you want to get the child to achieve something, find out his goal and write it down too. This is an active commitment that can become a measure: useful / harmful, necessary / not necessary.

A hand-filled questionnaire works better than an automatic one.

TASK ON THINKING: The applicant orally expressed a desire to undergo training in the "Programmatiki". How to increase the likelihood of his participation and successful completion of the course? What techniques from this article can be applied? Write about it in the comments.

15. Ask for a favor

The one who did you a favor once, with great pleasure will do it again. Franklin asked his opponent for a rare book and this man became his friend.

The favor should be small. And this system works well in the field of charity. Tell, for the needs of the orphanage any contribution will do, and even 50 rubles will be by the way. So you gather more.

16. Low auction starting price

The ebay experience and their statistics suggest that a low starting price allows you to sell a product more expensive. People are drawn into the auction and immediately tied to the goods. If your product can be put up for auction - good. This strategy works for those goods for which there will be a competitive demand. If a lot of demand is not expected, immediately put a normal price.

17. Let them introduce you

When you praise yourself, it looks immodest and ugly. Instead, ask a good man to introduce you. Let him, not you, tell about your experience and qualities. Confirmed by research: a well-prepared third party acting on your behalf can be very productive.

The volume of sales in your office will increase if you represent your employees to customers: “Do you need to buy bricks? Andrei knows all about brick and even visited all the brick factories of the region. Now I will invite him. ”

18. Know that you know nothing.

If you consider yourself the smartest, you rarely listen to advice. This will lead to isolation and limitation. If you listen to everyone around and are determined that everyone can give you something useful, most likely, sooner or later, you will do something good. This does not mean that you make collective decisions. But this means that you listen to different opinions and independently draw a conclusion.

An important point: if you are the smartest, you may not be told about your mistake and this will lead to a catastrophe. For example, if you are a first pilot and the second pilot thinks that “it is necessary”, you can kill the plane and passengers. Your duty is to get rid of the halo of infallibility around your person so that anyone can question your decision.

19. Get rid of group thinking

Many disasters happened because people cared more about preserving relationships than about opening problems. Encourage criticism and skepticism. Especially to those points of view that support the leaders of the group. Otherwise, the alarm may not reach the addressee. Include in the nonconformist group.

20. Learn from mistakes

Research shows that when a group learns from mistakes, the quality of learning becomes higher than when a group learns from success. If you build employee training only on how to make the right decisions, it will not have the desired effect. Try to explain to children that not smoking is good. In this case, you yourself smoke, your mother does not smoke and you tell on her positive example. Now get your medical card with a cancer diagnosis out of the box and tell the child about it. The second option will work better.

21. Tell us about the shortcomings and go to the benefit

Tell us about the shortcomings of your product. When Volkswagen launched its own “beetle” to the US market, they wrote in the headlines like this: “Ugly just outside”. A lawyer may mention in advance the weak points of his position even before the prosecutor repeats the same thing.
When selling a car, you can mention minor flaws: sometimes the right brake light does not come in contact. This will create trust and the buyer will be more trusting about the rest of your words. The shortcomings should be quite small. For example, if you lay out to the buyer that the engine is wedged in the engine and the brake fails once a week, most likely you will not sell such a car (but it’s better not to try and repair it immediately).

“We have little space, but it creates a cozy atmosphere,” “This course is not suitable for everyone: only diligent and meticulous people can reach the end,” parts and fuel. "

22. Admit that you were wrong

If you screwed up - apologize and tell about it. Organizations that attribute failures to internal causes will not only benefit society, but will also profit. If you get wet in the rain, blame yourself, not Zeus. When you constantly blame the circumstances, it gives the impression that you are not in control of the situation. If you accept responsibility for what happened, there is a chance that people will think like this: “This guy, of course, is a goat, but he understood his mistakes and would not commit them in the future. And he seems to be an honest man. ”

23. Similarity adds influence

When I was completely stupid and, living in St. Petersburg, I went into one fraudulent office, the girl manager, asking me where I was from, exclaimed: “Oh! It's great! My grandmother lives in Cherepovets. ” At that moment, the scale of scales weighed in her direction, and I thought that in front of me was a living person who also had a grandmother.

Coincidence of names, cities, similarity of last name, birthday, height, weight, school: all this will help to establish a connection. If you know about such a coincidence, use it.

24. Mirror and repeat

A man sits across from you, his legs crossed. Do the same. Does the client twirl a pencil in his hand? Turn the handle. It should not be like a mockery and a caricature: imperceptibly and unobtrusively.

When the waiter repeats the speech of the client, the profit of the establishment increases by 70%. The client said: "This is the fried crap." Repeat exactly for him, but in the form of a question. An example from IT: “So, you want the site to be light: let a baby elephant fly through the sky and spew concrete out of its trunk. Right?". Then the client will have a chain: you_ repeat → you_ understand → you_ will.

25. Rare things are of great value.

We want more if we know about the exclusivity of the product. In the mint, a limited party minted a coin, on which, instead of a double-headed eagle, happened to be the head of Ksenia Sobchak? - Well! This coin will become a numismatic rarity.

Provide consumers with information on what is truly rare in your products and services. “You can order special tea from us. This is Ivan-tea, which we collected and processed by hand. Try it. This is used by the owners of online stores, who write that there are “few” goods left. A sense of loss works: what if I don’t have enough?

26. Cause a sense of loss.

When Coca-Cola changed the formula, there was a wave of protests around the United States. People demanded the return of the old cola. When Vkontakte changed the behavior of the wall, many users began to cry out that they needed to return the old wall. This is due to a sense of loss. In a normal situation, we do not pay attention either to the taste of the cola or to the wall of VKontakte. However, as soon as there is a threat of loss, we begin to appreciate the lost.

Inexperienced investors sell stocks early because they are afraid of losing their “earned” money. On GeekBrains they say that only during GeekConf you can purchase a course with a 30% discount (I was led =).

If you want to convince employees that you need to participate in your super startup, let them know that they will lose in case of failure. Calculate the economic benefits of the option in the company after two years and tell the guys.

The message “In case of refusal, you will lose 50 cents a day” works three times better than “if you agree, you will save 50 cents a day”.

27. Say “Because”

It is the turn to the copier. A man comes up and says: “Excuse me, can I get through the line?” I have only five pages. ” 60% of people agreed to skip it. Probably, they thought that impudence is the second happiness. But when a peasant reformulated the request, 94% of people missed it. He began to say this: "Can I pass without a queue, because I am in a hurry very much." Further, the same man reformulated the question in such a way that it turned out to be utter nonsense: "Can I pass without a queue, because I need to make copies?" It is clear that he did not come to breakfast to the copier, however, 93% missed him.

The power of two words works: “because” and for small requests it is almost not important what you say after these words. However, if the request is more substantial (20 copies), few will be led to the pseudo-cause.

This principle has an additional effect. When you ask to name a reason, your interlocutor begins to believe more in this cause and will remember it well. His opinion of you will improve: “Name two reasons why you like working with us.” However, do not overdo it. If you ask for ten reasons, it will create the opposite effect.

28. Use simple words.

People become attached to simple pronunciations. If your company is called PromGrazdanRemStroy-3 - this is kapets. Research on the NYSE shows that companies with simple names earn more.

Using too complex a language has the opposite effect. Assess: “We are strengthening our assets and creating strategic alliances to form a center of reliable knowledge with a customer-driven business structure and using leading technologies to maximize the functioning of the human factor.” This is a publication from the NY Post, however, such garbage is often found on the “About the Company” pages of bad websites.

You can use poems as simple words. Poems in advertising promote memorization. Practice shows that rhymed slogans of some commercials are remembered by the audience for 30 years. What can not be said about the usual advertising messages. They even say that the rhymed message looks more truthful. I internally disagree with this statement, but it’s written that way in the book.

29. Use profitable comparison.

If you first lift a weight to 24 kilograms, and then lift a weight to 16 kg, you will feel how light it is. On the other hand, if you first lift 8 kg, and then 16 kg, then the same weight will seem heavier to you. The point here is not in weight, but in perception.

First tell a little about some other product or object, and then go on to the description of the target product. There are cases when we cannot change our product or our idea, but if we give an advantageous comparison for us, it will help us to be more convincing.

30. Let's get ahead

In car washes customers often issue cards. They are stamped on each visit. After 10 visits the eleventh is free. If you put down two stamps at once, the number of those that have come to the end will double. This is because the visitors had the impression that they had already done something and the path to the end of the quest was not so difficult.

This applies in everyday life. When you ask a person for help, tell him what steps he has already taken. For example, that he already has the necessary experience, that he has ready-made research and thoughts on the desired topic. If the project has already been started by you - inform that the project has already been done by 30 percent.

31. Suggest original title

Colored pencils with strange color names sell better. For example, instead of green, they write a frog-green. Or instead of simple orange - millennium orange. It seems silly, but it works effectively. Unexpected names act as a sort of puzzle: the buyer should think and the solution of this little puzzle will make the product be remembered.

The same method will work with children: prepare for dinner "Negrit-style zucchini" or let you have on the table "upma", "kichri", "subji" and "caramel burfi" This is better than porridge, rice, baked vegetables and sweets.

32. Hang a mirror

Mirror stimulates honesty. The children were offered to take one candy from the basket and left. The child remained one-on-one with a basket of chocolates and resisted the temptation to take more than one. As a result, 33% of children took more than one candy. When a mirror was hung near the basket, the number of dishonest children was reduced to 8%.

When a person sees his reflection, he tries to behave in accordance with accepted social norms. Properly placed mirrors help children to behave better towards each other.

Are your store employees stealing? Put more mirrors in stock.

33. Control emotions

Sad buyers are ready to buy goods at 30% more expensive. Sad sellers are ready to sell goods at 33% cheaper than emotionally neutral. After watching a sad movie, people become more wasteful than after watching a neutral movie.

Before you enter into important negotiations, make sure that you are in a psychologically neutral state. Do not plan to meet one by one, so that emotions have time to subside.
As a seller, you can try to cause sadness and offer a profitable deal. However, the decision your buyer will make will later be regrettable. If you are looking for a long-term relationship, do not use this trick.

34. Rest and do not get distracted.

A tired person makes decisions thoughtlessly. Usually, when we hear a statement, we first try to interpret it as true, but after a moment we turn on the critic and check if this is so. When a person is tired, the critic may not turn on. Do not listen and do not read any rubbish at night. It is better to read the scriptures: it will strengthen your faith =)

Approximately the same effect occurs when we are distracted. If at the time of the negotiations you are distracted by something else or your interlocutor deliberately distracts you, there is a possibility of a bad deal. The phone, non-standard units of measure in the contract, the bird outside the window and the cleavage of the interlocutor can divert. If it is impossible to remove the distraction, postpone the decision.

35. Caffeine helps to convince

Drink a person a glass of coffee and start to convince. The fact is that caffeine reduces the ability to resist convictions. However, this only works when the statement is well founded. With bad arguments, not even a liter of coffee will help you.

- There is no God, because I do not see him (bad argument).
- You have no brains, because I do not see them either (caffeine did not help).

Invite the persuaded to a cup of coffee, well prepared.

36. Meet in person or call

Studies show that talking to a person personally is much more effective than e-mail. Especially if we are dealing with a woman. I hope dear readers already have this understanding from personal experience.

The fact is that there are no emotions in the letter, and the emotional background of the message is the very elixir of persuasion. Without emotion, the message will be dry and, even worse, it may be misunderstood. Write a letter with the text: “Well, you are a specialist” and you can’t foresee how it will be perceived. All because there was no intonation in it.

I often write letters and are very attentive to how it can be perceived. Can it be misunderstood? Are there any inaccuracies?

Ethics

Using the techniques of persuasion lies on your conscience. If you make an unfavorable deal for a person based on the above techniques, he will be disappointed and your reputation will suffer. Of course, if you are some sort of “Russian Railways” or “Mail of the Russian Federation”, your reputation is not so important: you are a monopolist and you don't give a damn about your service opinion. But if you want to keep good relations with clients, family, friends and partners, use them exclusively for the good of your neighbor.

“So, in everything you want people to do with you, so do you with them, for this is the law and the prophets.” (Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 7.12)



Thanks to the illustration for Alexander Kornilov .