Influence

Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall within six basic categories.

The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity—are

ethology—the study of animals in their natural settings.

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.

It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference.

the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response

automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of human action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary.

You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated stimulus environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet. To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must very often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond mindlessly when one or another of these trigger features is present.

As the stimuli saturating our lives continue to grow more intricate and variable, we will have to depend increasingly on our shortcuts to handle them all.

“civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”

a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another.

this “web of indebtedness” as a unique adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for the division of labor, the exchange of diverse forms of goods, the exchange of different services (making it possible for experts to develop), and the creation of a cluster of interdependencies that bind individuals together into highly efficient units.4

Sometimes it is not the effort of hard, cognitive work that makes us shirk thoughtful activity, but the harsh consequences of that activity.

Sometimes it is the cursedly clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us mental slackers.

people will hide inside the walls of consistency to protect themselves from the troublesome consequences of thought.