#244 Robert Cialdini - Mastering the Seven Principles of Influence and Persuasion

[Music] i'm sean delaney and on this episode of the what got you there podcast i sit down with robert cialdini master of influence and persuasion who is out with his newest updated and expanded book of influence the psychology of persuasion and in his previous work dr chaldini has gone through the six universal principles of persuasion and if you want to know what the seventh is then tune into this episode dr chaodini welcome to what got you there how are you doing today well i'm doing well i'm looking forward to our chance to interact yeah there's there's going to be a lot of fun pathways during this conversation but i would love to start at a place around why are we not having a conversation about you being in the major league baseball hall of fame i think uh first of all my own gifts as an athlete are limited but i did get a an offer to play minor league baseball out of high school and was actually going to sign a contract with a a scout who had come to my last game and uh he had a contract with him and his his pen didn't work so we walked through his car to get another pen and while we were walking he said to me so let me ask you something kid are you any good at school i said yes you said good enough to get into college yes good enough to finish college yes and do you like school yes and he said go to school kid that's where your strength is and that's what you like i know you want to be mickey mantle or willie mays i was a center fielder but you it's unlikely you'll reach that but what you've told me tells me not just that you should follow your dream or your passion you should follow your passion that you're good at and that man changed my life because we wouldn't be talking today we wouldn't be reflecting on my work on my book and so on we would have an entirely different set of interactions if we ever met i i might be a minor i might have been a minor league baseball player for a while ended in a small town maybe maybe even a city des moines iowa we might meet because i'd be the manager of the sporting goods store in des moines iowa where we might meet not like this and i'm appreciative of that your work as you as you know has just been foundational for me i'm wondering though 17 18 19 year old kid i mean was that hurtful at the time what was always going through your head when it seems like your dream could have been crushed at the time he put me back in touch with reality i knew that i don't know how much of a baseball fan you are i couldn't hit a good slider i couldn't hit a good slider and i was going to see a lot more good sliders moving up the line i was i was flattered to get that contract but he was right he was right and he put me in touch with reality and didn't just say don't he gave me an alternate reality that i was also passionate about i've always been curious about human behavior and going to school and being a researcher and a psychologist and so on that was another door that he opened or recognized that was open to me and that's how i i got here i i'm not sure how you interpret that the pen not working i kind of view that as somewhat locked in serendipity so i'm wondering for you i mean someone who understands influence so well what influence has luck and serendipity had on your life well once i got into school i was working with a researcher who was studying animal behavior and i was going to go to graduate school to get a phd in animal behavior that's where all my research was with this guy and i had never taken a class in social psychology which turned out to be what i eventually got a phd in right but i had a mad crush on marilyn rapinski at the time marilyn marilyn robinski and we were at a stage in our relationship we wanted to be together all the time and she was taking a social psychology course and there was by serendipity by luck an empty seat next to marilyn and i filled that seat just to be close and by yet the end of the term i was more enamored of social psychology than of maryland as these things go you know in college and that piece of luck besides the the pen that wouldn't work that serendipity moved me into a place that allowed me to exercise whatever talents and gifts i had for understanding and researching human behavior then i realized that i i wanted not to go to study animals i wanted to study human behavior sent me in a different route altogether it seems like everyone i've ever encountered who's reached a high level of excellence or we can even call it mastery has spent a deep amount of time in in deep immersion in their work and i'm wondering for you was there an early period where you just went all in on this and you really thought your learning curve just accelerated yeah and it was in graduate school right so now i'm in grad school and the first year of graduate school was pretty much working on the research programs of my major professors the people who were my advisors and helped me learn the skills of doing academic research into human behavior but once i finished that first year they kind of turned it over to me and said okay you've shown us that you know how to do this now it's up to you and suddenly all the all the opportunities all the freedoms all the choices were mine and that caused me i think to really blossom as somebody who was not just able to do this stuff but so excited about the chance to find out what i was most curious regarding human behavior yeah yeah giving you that that empowering moment it sounds like i'm wondering what were you doing at that time to actually fully dive in and even increase that learning curve well i was in graduate school and had just in the first year i had completed a master's thesis and now my question was well what should i study beyond what i just looked at what other opportunities are there to answer questions that i'm not just the only one who's curious about but that people would love to do that's what set me out and then there was another big place where this happened and it was now i'm in i'm i'm a university professor uh i'm studying persuasion and social influence mostly in my laboratory with college students in on a campus and recognizing that while i was learning some things with these laboratory experiments you know you say something this way in a persuasive appeal and this many people say yes to it you say the same thing this way and now this many people say yes to it you know that was intriguing and so on but the things i was studying i wasn't sure that they were powerful outside of the laboratory the thing i really wanted to answer as a researcher and a scholar was what are the things that caused people to say yes to requests to move them in the directions you're asking them to move in the naturally occurring situations we all experience where we're trying to move people our friends our neighbors our family members our clients our customers our superiors and so on in our direction for that i needed to get outside of the lab outside of the college campus and what i did was to enroll in as many training programs as a kind of spy of sorts with disguised identity disguised intent nobody knew i was a university professor looking to understand and learn from influenced practitioners so i joined the training programs of sales organizations marketing organizations advertisers recruiters fundraisers to see what they were saying worked for them because their livelihoods depended on the success of the strategies they were using so they had to know what really worked outside of the laboratory where i was investigating it and what surprised me was how small the footprint was of those things they all used systematically i initially counted just six things now i counted hundreds of tactics but i thought the great majority of them could be categorized in terms of just six universal principles of influence that everybody was using to get people to move in their directions profitably i put one of those principles in each of the chapters of my book influence that i learned from these um undercover activities i would love to know being in the laboratory setting versus getting out there in the real world hindsight now would you have gone into some of those actual programs earlier i would just love to know how you think through the balance between the two you're exactly right i think the greatest mistake i made professionally was not getting out of the lab and into the naturally occurring environment where the influence wars are being fought every day after all i could have done it two or three years earlier but to be honest i was intimidated by the idea that i wouldn't get tenure i wouldn't get promoted because i wouldn't be doing laboratory experiments that i could publish immediately right i was spending two and a half years in in this in this other activity i think i could have done that years earlier and had a better experience uh earlier in my career that's really fascinating and we're going to get into these principles here in a minute but i would love to know when you finally do get out in the field were there certain things you were just doing that allowed you to absorb so much more of this great wisdom that you end up distilling down well i did uh take with me tape recorder so i was recording everything i was taking notes on everything that they were training us to do because they worked well and then whenever they gave us the chance to go along with an established pro let's say on a sales call right i would jump at those opportunities to see what the most um practiced and effective of of the [Music] influence professionals were doing when they got into a situation where they had to improvise what did they say how did they handle something like that and i learned from that as well i love going to the people who are most advanced know the most to be able to learn uh it's something that i wish more younger people would do a lot more frequently and earlier has there been a specific story that stuck with you with one of those people who might have been a great salesman or a great marketer that still sticks with you today yeah there was a guy we it was a a firm that was selling uh very expensive heat activated fire alarm systems for the home and i would go along with several of them to see how they did it but this one guy was the champion he was the one who sold the most contracts every month compared to all of uh his uh contemporaries so i was especially interested in what he did and what he did that everybody else failed to do there was a book that we would take into a home where people would schedule themselves for an appointment with the the the salesperson and uh that explained all of the advantages of this particular kind of uh heat activated uh uh fire alarm system for the home and so on and um he would leave it in the car so he would come in and do do a first uh introduction with him and then give the couple usually um a little test to see how much they knew about uh fire dangers in the home and while they were taking the test he would say oh he would slap his head he said i forgot some information in the car would you mind if i went out let myself out and let myself back in while you're doing the test and of course they were saying they were doing the test and he just of course of course let me unlock the door for you right so and i asked him about it i saw him do this three times in one day right why did you do this and he said he wouldn't tell me at first the third time when i asked him he said finally he said all right look bob who do you allow in and out of your home only somebody you trust right i want to be associated in the minds of those those couples with trust before i ever begin the appeal and showing them the materials all the sales materials that everybody else would bring in right from the beginning this guy did what i call pre-suasion before he ever made his case he persuaded people to be in a state of mind that was going to foster and advance his case because he had arranged to be seen as a trustworthy source brilliant absolutely brilliant that that's what i love about your book pre-suage and i i remember the first time i picked it up um i was involved a lot more in the sales type process that time and it was just epiphany after epiphany eye-opening moment i i love how you're talking about how you were studying what he was doing if someone was sitting with you for a while and studying you what do you think it is that you do really well at this stage that someone younger could learn from so it's going to require making contact with three of the principles of influence that i think really move people powerfully in our direction and that so but the thing that i try to do now whenever i enter a situation uh where i'm meeting people for the first time i don't have a lot of experience with them i expect the best from them right that allows me to be generous with them and that generosity has three powerful consequences first of all one of the principles of influence is liking they like me more for being generous with them another principle of influence is reciprocity we give back to others what they have first given to us so they become more generous with me they give me things right and as a result of seeing themselves giving me things giving me information giving me great deals giving me something in return they see themselves as a partner with me not an adversary a partner they see themselves committed to me as someone they want to do exchanges with and people then after they've made a commitment to someone behave in ways that are consistent with what they have already committed themselves to so those are three of the principles of influence liking reciprocity and commitment and consistency you do it all by allowing yourself by thinking the best of the people that you're with not people you know might be tricky or just deceptive no no people you you don't know come in believing the best about them it allows you to be generous and then that generosity triggers all the other principles yeah well the seven total principles now with the updated edition of influence um i i would love it we could lightly touch it on each one of the seven i mean i we talk about reciprocity commitment consistency social proof liking authority scarcity and then the newest one seventh is unity which i would love to dive into but are you okay with diving into each one and just doing a little bit and do it absolutely let's start with reciprocity because it's very it occurs very early in our uh interactions with people even children understand that you are obligated to give back to others what they first give to you and we train we train them from childhood in that rule so that people uh who receive are much more likely to say yes to you after you've given them something so this is a suggestion i make to people who want to be influential if you want to go in if you go into a room with a number of people you want to be influential with the people there um get some assistance or some uh service from from those people you should not ask yourself first who can help me here the first thing you should ask is whom can i help here whose outcomes can i enhance whose circumstances can i elevate they will stand ready to do the same for you right so for here's an example a study done in um southern california a candy shop researchers did a little experiment where they asked the manager one week to greet all of the people who came into the shop warmly when they entered and introduce and escort them to the candy counter where they could make choices but for half of them right the researchers also asked the manager to give them a small piece of chocolate before they went to the candy counter those people were 42 percent more likely to buy candy they had been given something now you might say oh maybe they just like the chocolate it turns out if you look at the data most of them didn't buy chocolate they bought some other candy so it wasn't that oh they liked the chocolate so much it wasn't what they had been given it was that they had been given so ours are the lesson for us we always give first that's one way to get people to want to give to us second principle is the principle of liking we've already talked talked about that one but one clear way to get people to feel more rapport with us is simply to point to genuine similarities that exist between us right there was a study done of negotiators who were bargaining over in over email they didn't know anything about each other and under those circumstances they were likely to have deadlocked stymied negotiations where nobody won nobody everybody just walked away with nothing right 30 percent of the time if before they began the negotiation they sent information back and forth to one another about their hobbies their interests where they grew up you know that sort of thing where they went to school stymied negotiations dropped from 30 percent to 6 why because inside that information people encountered commonalities oh really you're a runner i'm a runner you're an only child i'm an only god those were the things that drove the willingness to give the other person grace so one of the things we can do before we ever try to influence anybody identify commonalities parallels similarities and raise them to the surface next principle is the principle of social proof the idea that when people are uncertain they don't look inside themselves for answers they look outside and one place they look is to their peers people like them so there was a a study done in beijing china shows you the cross-cultural reach of uh the idea of what are the other people like me doing in this situation restaurant managers in beijing put a little asterisk next to certain items on their menu now what did the asterisk stand for it didn't say what you normally see this is one of the specialties of the house or this is our chef's selection for this evening shalom you know it didn't say either of those it said this is one of our most popular items in each one became 13 to 20 percent more popular for its popularity right so the implication for us we all have most popular models or features or payment plans or ideas we just need to let people know about that and that gets them off the fence it reduces their uncertainty and they move toward us the next principle is similar in this sense it's the principle of authority another thing we do another place we look when we're uncertain is to the opinions of gen genuinely uh acknowledged experts in a particular arena so when there are experts who have uh opinions that fit with what it is that we are offering or what it is that we are suggesting we need to find those voices and include them as testimonials in our in any messaging that we use right uh and the key is i'm going to say two things one is how can you increase the impact of an of an expert voice multiply it find two experts who are saying that what you have or your idea is a good thing and you multiply the impact as a result the second thing about it is in your presentation especially if it's an online presentation put those testimonials first don't put them in the body of your message or down lower at the end first so that that expert authority is there from the outset so people are believing everything you say from the outset with the aura of authority on your side next principle is the principle of scarcity uh people want more of those things they can have less of so people are very willing to move in our direction to the extent that what we have available to them is scarce rare or dwindling in availability there was a study done of 6 700 online commercial sites websites and in terms of a b tests that were done on those sites and which features of an appeal were most likely to turn a person from a prospect into a convert get a conversion to to customer scarcity was at the top if you had a limited number of items at a particular price or a limited time in which to move to get that item right that's what most produced yes from people once again you get them off the sidelines into the game by giving them a reason for moving in this case it was if you don't you might lose this valuable thing and as a consequence um scarcity really has uh big big advantages by the way they found that of the two kinds of scarcity limited number or limited time to get some um offer right limited number of items at a particular price for example outstrip limited time why because if there's a limited number competition now enters the in the psychological environment you mean if i don't these other people might might get it with a limited time no you can go whenever you want in there oh i don't have to do it right now right and as a consequence a lot of people forget to do it or never do do it within that time they never purchase what you have to offer but limited number with other people in this in the mix the top of all of the a b tests so and then uh the the sixth principle is commitment and consistency the idea that people want to be consistent with what they have already done said or done in your presence so if you can get people to take a small step in your direction right now they will want to be consistent with that in the future right um oh there's a great story about from a acquaintance of mine about how he's gotten three better jobs in a row in uh job interviews right so in the interview you typically go in there's some evaluators sometimes a team of evaluators and you're what you're supposed to say is i'm very glad to be here that you invited me today and i want to answer all your questions right he adds one more thing he says but before we begin i'm curious why did you invite me today what was it about my uh my background that or resume that that made you think i would be a good candidate and now he says he hears people say all kinds of positive things about him before the interview begins and he learns what it is that they thought was the most important for them so he can build on that when it's his turn but in the meantime now people want to be consistent with what they have already said and he said three straight better jobs in a row i absolutely i i just love that story so much and and you can see why it works so well i'm thinking about this when i've interviewed people and it's like if i was just rattling off reason after reason of why i brought them in you can exactly see why it would work yes right and he said in some instances you actually get people uh arguing with one another as to which feature of him is better it was his background or it's his training or it's his scores on some tests or is fit with the uh with the organization's value system whatever it is they argue with one another as to which is the strongest i i have a feeling a lot of the listeners who are in that job market are going to be implementing this technique at least i hope they do yeah and then finally is the seventh principle of influence which i've added uh when i've recognized the power of what we call unity that is the idea that we share with other people an identity some kind of social identity to the extent that if we communicate that shared identity they consider us one of them not like them one of them of them so there was a study done on a college campus researchers took a young woman college aids woman who uh they they placed at a busy intersection of paths on campus a lot of students walking by when a student walked by she asked them if they would contribute to the united way and she was getting some donations but if she added one more sentence she increased donations by 250 the sentence was i'm a student here too now they're being asked by one of them and inside the boundaries of those in groups those what i'm calling we groups all barriers to influence come down we trust those people more we believe them more we want to cooperate with them more and bottom line we say yes to them more and that was the case in this instance yeah dr chaldenia i would love to know for you after these years what was it about the unity that just rose to the surface for you and you realize you know what this is one of those foundational principles you know it was um partially seeing the the research that uh was coming out of the academic arena of persuasion science that let me know that people who had that kind of quality who could be considered one of us right we're having remarkably powerful effects in the academic research that was being done on this but as well as i think you can recognize and all of your viewers can recognize we're seeing tribalism in our society now so that people are responding to those who they feel loyal to inside their groups their ethnic groups their religious groups their political parties and so on and so i was i i was actually uh blown away by uh the extent to which that tribalism the weakness of a communicator seemed to overrun all other factors in the message yeah it's funny you mentioned tribalism in the number of research studies i've looked a lot into tribalism coming from a team sports background and understanding just the connection there and then i went to the the back of your book and you have something like 700 uh research studies cited how how do you even immerse yourself in in that many research studies i would i would love to know what your process is like i love this stuff and so i'm always alert to these things um you know when when they come across my desk i i subscribe to a lot of academic journals and i'm online and and i get uh you know the the access to these things and anything that that hits me in one of two ways that sort of knocks me out how powerful this is or that puzzles me how could this be that this worked the way it did you know that gets me to zero in on it and learn as much as i can about how this could be that it would have this kind of effect or even be there in the first place right there was a a a a a great study uh for example um in in which uh it was shown that simply showing subjects in an experiment pictures of two people standing together right uh then when the research after they saw a series of these then the when the researcher got up from the table where they were doing the study in the laboratory and pretended to drop some items on the floor those people were 300 more likely to help the researcher pick those things up if they saw pictures of people standing together as opposed to pictures of people standing apart just that now here was the thing that made me scratch my head and say how could this be the subjects in this experiment were 18 months old infants this tendency to want to be together to help somebody when you have the image of togetherness in your mind and now we're talking about unity here right togetherness right that was so powerful that it's there in babies that really made me zero in to try to understand oh i see what it is it's unity it's this sense of connection and bonding that leads to these powerful effects yeah it almost sends chills down your spine when you realize at such a young age the impact this has that'll stick with you another thing that's just so apparent in all of your books is so many of these things are just such little changes like little tactics on a website just a slight change of verbiage it's unbelievable how how impactful that is is that what you found for the majority of these that they're usually little changes yes they're they're things like flicking a switch that turns on big psychological uh effects like uh for example uh an asterisk that says uh this is our most pop now you get eight 13 to 20 more perch just a little thing uh but i'll tell you my favorite um you know when you're in a situation where you've got a new idea or an initiative or a plan and you would like to get buy-in from your colleagues before you advance it so that you can point to social proof all of my all of the people you know uh i've shown this to really like it so how do you get buy-in for an idea you show them an outline or a blueprint of your idea right typically what we do is we ask for their opinion on this that's a mistake when you ask for someone's opinion you get a critic that person literally takes a half step back from you psychologically and goes inside themselves to see where they stand relative your to your idea it's like them and everybody else against your idea right if instead you change one word and instead of asking for their opinion you ask for their advice they take a half step toward you and they partner with you inside your idea to find the best way to structure that idea right so now it's you and that person against everybody else if you change the word opinion to advice you get significantly more favorable responses holding constant what you've said the research shows it's the same idea but if you ask for advice you get a more favorable reaction than if you ask for opinion so little things like that and that's what this new book is that i really tried to do with the new edition of the book include the exact words you say the exact sequence of the words that you employ much more than in preview edition editions yeah dr i actually thought you did a tremendous job at that so you already know how much i've gone through your previous books and just notes notes notes distilling them down uh the the new work though it was just fantastic and both throwing in the seventh principle of unity but then the examples throughout and you were talking a few minutes ago about like when your curiosity strikes when an example like that comes across your decks you had this line i love and it is both personal bane and professional blessing that whenever i'm confused by some aspects of human behavior i feel driven to investigate further and i think that almost seems like that's at the root of you right like you're just so intrigued that intellectual stimulation when you get a study like that that comes across your desk and you're reading that like what is that like for you i mean it's a it's a eureka experience first of all wow this really happened because i can see they did the science correctly they conducted this research in a rigorous sound controlled fashion and they got this result okay now how do we unpack it in terms of human psychology the tendencies the strong powerful influences that are inside us that drive our behavior how did they release those those influence those tendencies in us with a small word or change of one sort or another uh that's what stimulates uh for me i i want to go from understanding it to tree how did they trigger it how do you make this powerful principle of human behavior actionable implementable so that somebody who uses it ethically will benefit both groups both sides i'm wondering for you i know incredibly busy right now with the release of the book but is there a big question that you're at that early stage where that curiosity is just spiked and you're trying to figure out a little bit more into it you know what it is uh you you've told me that you you uh have read the book pre-suasion so the book influence is about what you put into a message to move people in your direction persuasion is about what you put into the moment before you send your message to put people in a mindset right to be more receptive to your message before they ever encounter it right there's one last place postswage what do you do after you've sent your message and even have people moving in your direction that solidifies their change that makes it durable that makes it persist that would be i think the next arena to think through systematically and fully and then write about well i i i certainly hope that that comes to fruition uh and you bring another fantastic book to life um i'm wondering you talked about that last phase now diving so deep into unity has your life changed because of some of the things you unpacked with that how you approach life now is it slightly different yes so for example um i had a difficult situation uh that i was able to resolve by simply turning on the principle of unity a while ago i had uh i was finishing a project and had to submit it the writing up this project had to submit it the next day there was a deadline and as i was proof reading the final version i noticed there was one section that was missing a piece of evidence that really would make the case would be convincing i just didn't have that that quality of evidence in there but i knew that a colleague of mine had done a study the year before and he did have some of this the kind of evidence that would have allowed me to really seal the deal with this section uh and i also knew that this guy was sort of a irratible sour guy inside my psychology department you know and we knew him let's call him tim not his real name we knew tim to be that kind of difficult guy to get along with so but i needed him to help me to get the the data that he had done out of his archives get get them into shape and send them to me that very day so i could complete the project before the next day the and and uh so i um wrote him an email explaining what i needed from him because of this deadline and said i'll call you after you've had a chance to read this uh to talk about this so i did i waited a few minutes i called him and uh and he said hey bob i i know why you're calling and the answer is no i'm sorry you say you're a busy man i'm a busy man you say you have deadlines i have deadlines so i can't be responsible for your poor time management skills i'm sorry and before i had read about the unity principle i would have said come on kim i really need this i i have this deadline tomorrow he had already said no to that right so this is what i said you know tim we've been in the same psychology department now for 12 years i really appreciate it if you do this for me i said we are a we group we are of the same category we share an identity i had the information that afternoon i i love it how it can apply to real world it's it's so funny i almost view it as earlier in life it was pre chaldini and then it was pro post child you know when i got that to read it i viewed these books as foundational pillars that other knowledge can be built on top of i'm wondering for you are there foundational pillars or books or ideas that you built some of the knowledge you have off of as well yeah we we have to go way back to aristotle and his rhetoric right the first systematic treatment he was talking about orators but how orators can be more successful of course there wasn't any science to it right then when i was a kid in 19 i was 12 years old and there was a book called hidden persuaders about how the advertising industry used psychological strings that they would strum in people with their ads that resonated with the the human tendencies that people had to like something or want something or say yes to something and i remember thinking oh this is beyond just orators and and and and getting people uh you know to listen to you no this is actually advancing it in a systematic way into into the the process of moving people in a direction that actually gets them to give you their money that's powerful if you can get people to give you resources by how you present a message wow right so those were the two initial books and then of course there are a whole range of books now that are out and i would say probably the one i would point to is daniel kahneman's book thinking fast and slow um daniel conrad won the nobel prize in economics and that details two forms of methods methodology for getting people to say yes to you system one right where you use things like cues and images and single words that have associations that move people versus another kind of logic approach that is a logical rational one that also works under different set of circumstances right so those would be the uh the the books that really took me in the direction that i find myself now yeah kahneman's thinking fast and slow a foundational pillar for me as well he's got another book coming out on signal versus noise you mentioned a minute ago about doing something so well you get people to give you money um one of your big time fans uh one of the people who shaped me a lot is charlie munger who actually ended up giving you shares in berkshire hathaway after reading your book just to show you how influential you've been on him he's a very wide red cross-disciplinary thinker do you ever find yourself exploring ideas outside your specific domain and if so do they help you out or what are those ideas you're exploring you know i do because of the mentoring of one of my major professors in graduate school a man named john tebow and when we would sit in a meeting with john let's say on some research question that he wanted to investigate maybe it's how do people negotiate um with another when they are negotiating for themselves alone versus when they're negotiating for uh a group or a t a team they're they're a representative of someone is there are there differences in how you have to arrange yourself or argue and so on the kinds of arguments you you raise or the strategies you use and he would say let's say that's the question he would say now what if the great novelists of our time said about this so now we would be completely thinking uh far afield out on the peripheries well what have the great novelists the great minds in the way that they have structured situations and showed us how that situation of being responsible for others affects the way that they bargain or negotiate or arranged to try to get something and then he would say and what if the philosophers said about this oh so now we think about another group of individuals who've who've talked about this idea right then he would say what have the other disciplines besides social psychology said about this what if our fellow researchers in communication or economics or political science or sociology what have they said about this what do we know about that and then finally he would say now what if our fellow social psychologist said what are the what are the studies that they've shown uh uh that reflect on this and it occurred to me we are ending where every other mentor i've ever experienced would begin the process looking outside of our silo outside of that small space that we've been focused on to get inspiration and ideas outside of our arena and that's what charlie munger is great he's wonderful at being a renaissance man and knowing about things he reads constantly knowing about things all over the map that he brings to bear on a question that's that's an excellent story an example of that one of the things i was really intrigued about with the new book is kind of the the examples between logic rationality and then kind of that that internal just feeling towards it so i'm wondering how you think through this paradox in your own life well you know both of those things it's kind of system one versus system two as kahneman says where you you react in an emotional uh spontaneous way versus you step to the side and you think through things differently and uh what i've recognized is that the majority of the decisions that i make indeed i have to make in in system one strategy i just don't have the time or capacity to think through the pros and cons of every decision i have to make if i did i would be standing frozen calculating and calibrating while the time for choice sped by and away right so no most of the time i have to move automatically i need my shortcuts and that's what i've considered those seven principles of influence to be they are shortcuts that allow me to move quickly and usually correctly by saying well what are the authorities uh uh recommending here what what's the social proof in the situation is this thing real truly scarce is this action truly consistent with something i'm committed to already you know in my value system i right all i need to do is see oh it's an authority or there's a lot of social proof it's scarcity i i i'm in competition i better get it before it's too late these kinds of things normally steer me right i need that but there are certain times as well let's say when i'm trying to think through something very uh carefully in an analytical way almost like i'm doing my budget for how much i can uh place here versus other sorts of place there i really i want to step back from those automatic res uh uh spontaneous emotional choices and make the rational ones typically they're the ones that are the biggest for me you know the kind that involve big investments of one sort or another i don't want to make those based just on an emotional response yeah this is so helpful because the world we're living today cognitive overload is just so immense that decision decision-making process and unfortunately too many people i think that they don't root their quick decisions on foundational principles and truths that's why your work is so important so these quick decisions can be based on real actual truths um i know we're gonna wrap up here in a minute and we're going to get everyone linked up with the book but i would love to know if you're going to do this long form conversation spending an evening having dinner talking with anyone dead or alive just not a family member or friend who would you love just to sit down with you know right now it would be two of the uh protogenitors of behavioral science two nobel prize winners daniel kahneman and richard thaler yeah right those two folks have really changed the way we have to think about the process of choosing well yeah to two people they they sit highly on my online bookshelf that would be a very intellectually stimulating conversation but uh dr chaldini i want to make sure we can leave the listeners with any final parting words bits of advice or tips that they should take away um and even just i'm sure they're they're very intrigued by influencers they're going to pick this one up anything you want to leave them with yeah i think it is there's a mistake that a lot of people make when they ask me the question so of the principles which is the most powerful which is the one i should make my favorite i should use that one all of the time right and i answer it by describing an experience that a colleague of mine had marketing professor who set about to find the single most effective persuasive approach or strategy right and he spent two years in the process and i saw him at a conference and he uh caught me by the elbow he said bob i found it i found the single most effective influence approach it is not to have a single influence approach that's a fool's game right to think that the same tactic or procedure or principle is going to work in every situation with every audience with every history that you have with that audience that's just naive no you have to change the situation you have to change your approach based on the characteristics of the situation in front of you and for me to be ethical what already exists in that situation can you point to true scarcity use that can you point the true authority use that can you point to true social proof that's the one you use that way you not only get to be effective you get to be ethical in the process you're informing people into ascent you're not tricking them or coercing them in any way so the books influenced revised and updated edition the psychology of persuasion dear dr robert cialdini once again i mentioned this has been a dream conversation for me so i cannot thank you enough for joining us on what got you there well i have to say i enjoyed it thoroughly [Music] you

Channel: What Got You There

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Keywords: robert cialdini, influence and persuasion, 7 principles of influence, six principles of influence, robert cialdini author, robert cialdini podcast, robert cialdini interview, robert cialdini speech, wgyt, what got you there podcast, sean delaney, sean delaney podcast, top business podcast, top leadership podcast, leadership, investing podcast, how to persuade, principles of influence, principles of persuasion, robert cialdini influence and persuasion

Id: LmuL7-JK-LU

Length: 60min 18sec (3618 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021