Robert Cialdini’s ‘Pre-Suasion’ Extends The Science Of Persuasion

By Roger Dooley

Prior to departing, though, he received a call from the dean of the school he’d be visiting. The dean described the wonderful office Cialdini would be working from, the new computer, the staff support he’d receive, and so on. Everything sounded marvelous, even better than expected.

Then, the second shoe dropped. The dean explained that one of their professors had been sidelined by illness. Would Cialdini mind teaching just one graduate business class? He agreed, even though he knew that now a big part of his time at the school would be taken up by preparing a brand-new course, teaching it, and working with students. The book project would have to wait.

At first glance, that seems like classic reciprocation. The dean presented Cialdini with unexpectedly favorable accommodations for his stay at the university, and attached no strings. Hence, when Cialdini was asked to teach a class, he was more likely to agree than he would have been otherwise – straight out of the Influence playbook.

But when Cialdini reflected on his rapid acquiescence, he realized something else was at work. When I spoke with Cialdini about this experience, he explained:

I wound up agreeing to teach this course because he asked me in the moment after I said how much I appreciated what he had done for me. If he had called me a day later, I think I could have marshalled the ability to say, “Well, you know, I have a book that I need to write. I can’t really do it.” But not in that moment. There was something about the moment before he delivered his message that made me say yes.

The key factor this sequence illuminated for Cialdini was timing. In the short span of the phone call, Cialdini was “pre-suaded” by the generous favor and ended up agreeing to something he would have declined under other circumstances. According to Cialdini, more formal research supports this anecdote: the most powerful reciprocation effect is immediately after the favor. As time passes, its potency declines.

Cialdini cites other pre-suasion techniques that have been shown to work. In Holland, residents were asked to complete a long survey and told they would receive a cash reward. The appeal produced a higher response rate when the residents were given the gift in advance, even though they could have kept it and ignored the survey.

Similarly, U.S. hotel guests were 47% more likely to reuse their towels if they were told the hotel had already made a contribution in their name to an environmental charity than if the contribution occurred only after re-use actually happened.

Scientists like John Bargh, Dan Ariely, and others have demonstrated the power of priming. By exposing people to various stimuli, their subsequent behavior is changed. Often, the stimuli are so subtle that the subjects are entirely unaware they were primed.

In Pre-Suasion, Cialdini marries the priming concept with classic persuasion. For instance, social proof is one of the most commonly applied of his original six principles. Telling people about the large number of others like them who enjoy your product is almost always effective.

But, social proof can sometimes backfire depending on the mindset of the individual. Cialdini describes one experiment that had subjects watch either a scary movie or a romantic one before seeing an ad to promote museum attendance.

Even though neither movie was related to museums, which one the subjects watched changed their receptivity to the persuasive message they saw immediately afterwards.

“Visited by over a million people each year,” a classic example of social proof, worked very well to boost the favorability of the museum among subjects who saw the scary film. The same message, though, actually had a negative effect on the romantically-primed subjects.

For the romantic movie watchers, “Stand out from the crowd” messaging was far more effective.

The mindset change caused by the movies was almost certainly short-lived, though, another example of the importance of time.

A New Principle Of Persuasion

Perhaps the biggest surprise in Pre-Suasion is that Cialdini acknowledges a seventh principle exists. He calls it “unity,” meaning a shared identity. This shared identity can be with family, with others from a similar background or location, and even with a product one helped create.

At first glance, unity seems similar to Cialdini’s long-established “liking” principle, which depends on shared attributes. He distinguishes unity from liking by pointing out that unity is more fundamental. It’s not just, “they are like me,” but rather, “they are of me.”

Family ties are the ultimate form of unity. Cialdini describes an experiment in which parent participation in a survey increased from less than 20% to 97% when an inconsequential benefit for their student was at stake.

He also extends family-based unity to the language one chooses. Cialdini cites Warren Buffett’s letter to shareholders about Berkshire-Hathaway’s succession plan. What will happen to the firm in a post-Buffett, post-Munger era is of great interest to shareholders. When Buffett addressed the issue head-on in one of his famous annual letters, he could have used his normal plain-spoken, direct style.

Continued at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2016/09/01/pre-suasion-robert-cialdinis-sequel-to-influence/#2dd9e0491bab