The Secret to Developing Incredible Powers of Persuasion

We all want to be more influential, whether that’s in personal relationships or workplace meetings, or just even casual encounters with strangers on the street. We want to have our ideas to be heard and maybe even implemented by the person across from us. But this is also very difficult because quite often the other person has their own agenda that they’re trying to push. And one of the interesting things about the human species is we’re a very communicative animal. We need to be seen, we need to be heard, we need to have our ideas validated. But if you’ve ever felt like your ideas are just landing on deaf ears, people aren’t responding to them in the way that you feel they should. Like they’re not being persuaded. That can be a very frustrating experience.

So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to talk about the six weapons of influence, as outlined in Robert Cialdini’s landmark book, influence the Psychology of persuasion. Now, persuasion is not manipulation. It’s about presenting your ideas, your thoughts, in a way that’s compelling, that breaks down some of the barriers that the other person is likely to have, so that you can have the maximum opportunity to persuade them, so that they can see your point. They can process it and say, I understand this and I accept this. Now, the other side of understanding these six weapons of influence, regardless of whether or not you want to utilize them in your own communications with the world, it’s important that you’re aware of them. Because whether you’re aware or not, people are going to be using them against you in sales tactics or just in general communications. If you’re aware of what these six weapons are, you can better protect yourself so you don’t find yourself buying a product or a service from somebody who understands how to use these weapons to manipulate. And just by being cognizant of them, you can recognize it when it’s being utilized against you, and you can call it out for what it is, which then deflects a lot of the power that these influential tools have.

Now, that’s not to say that it will reduce it all to nothing, because the thing about influence is when you understand how the human animal processes influence and inputs, you’ll understand that even when you’re aware of these weapons, it’s not so easy to resist them. So let’s get into it. Number one, reciprocity. Now, reciprocity is a really interesting one. It’s this idea that if I do something for you, then you’re going to feel this subconscious, compelling force to reciprocate to do me a favor. Now, this gets abused in a lot of cases where, say you go into buy a used car and they’re like, hey, can I get you some coffee? This is a tactic just to get that first little favor in where it’s like, I gave you this small thing, and now you’re going to try and reciprocate and buy this big vehicle, right? That’s how it’s used in some cases. Now, another way of doing this, Benjamin Franklin would talk about was simply going to somebody and asking them for advice and saying, what’s your opinion on this? And by soliciting that, the person on the other side is thinking, wow, I’m giving advice to this person. I must value them, because I don’t give advice to people I don’t value.

So whether or not you get them a cup of coffee or you ask somebody for their opinion or a piece of advice, these are all ways of igniting that reciprocity. Because again, the human species were very collaborative. We’re a tribal animal. And if when somebody did a favor for you in the olden days, in the millennia where we were evolving in our tight little tribes, if I did a favor for you and you didn’t do a favor back then, I’m not going to do a favor for you. You’re going to die out there in the woods. Right? So it’s under, it’s important to understand why reciprocity is so powerful. It’s ingrained inside of us. Number two, we’re going to talk about commitment and consistency.

Now, consistency is one of the most powerful forces in the human psyche. Our identities, they’re not locked in stone. We can change them, they’re malleable. But the identity that we have for ourselves is something that we hold to and hold very, very sacred. So if I say something like, I am not a smoker, I am a healthy person, that’s my identity. I don’t identify as a smoker, like, you will never catch me with a cigarette because it is against my identity. And so what we can do is utilize that idea of consistency to persuade or influence other people by pointing out the traits and characteristics that they likely see in themselves, that they want to be consistent to. Like being a person of integrity.

Let’s say you’re in a negotiation and the other side is coming back with some terms that just don’t feel very fair. You can appeal to this sense of consistency by pointing out, I know that you are a person of integrity and that you have a high degree of fairness and that you don’t want to see anybody getting taken advantage of. But when I look at these terms, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And so what you’re doing is you’re drawing this ideal value from them that they probably lock onto and identify with in some way. And you’re saying, what I’m seeing here is not consistent with what I see here. And by doing that, the other person’s going to try and fill the gap. So that’s another way of, you know, another one of those weapons of influence. We have reciprocity, we have commitment and consistency.
Number three, social proof. This is why you see testimonials absolutely everywhere. When you go on the websites of, you know, any business, service, product, you’re going to see people who are raving fans about this is why reviews on Amazon and Yelp, this why they’re so valuable, is because, again, we are a tribal species that in lack of total omniscience and complete information about the product or services out there in the world, we have to rely on the opinions of others because that can be a good surrogate for ourselves. And so if somebody else enjoyed this thing, then the chances are we might enjoy this. Now, this can really be abused when we just get our friends and family and whoever to go and leave positive reviews. But in short, we want to be really cognizant when we’re seeing social proof that we’re not just being swayed without really giving credence to. How valuable is this person’s opinion in relation to me? Right, when David Beckham goes out onto the pitch and he’s wearing, you know, his nikes or whatever, that’s a form of social proof. Somebody that we look to and say, oh, he likes that, and therefore, maybe I should like that.
But his scenario and his circumstances are completely different than mine. So it’s not really a one to one comparison, right. He doesn’t know what I would value in a pair of shoes, right? And so he’s not the greatest person to be taking influence from on that topic. And yet that is one of the most powerful influencers out there is celebrity endorsements. Authority is incredibly powerful because we look to the people who we perceive as being the experts in a domain as being more trustworthy or somebody whose opinion we should value more highly. And this makes sense, right? Like, of course I should take the opinions of my doctor or my lawyer when we’re reviewing medical or legal matters, right? Like, they are the experts. So it makes sense that they should be more persuasive and more influential in those domains. The problem is that it’s very easy for influence to cross pollinate across domains.

And so we might see a doctor, and if they’re giving us legal advice, we might think they’re an authority because we see them as an authority in one domain, but they’re not an authority in legal matters. And this is the problem is that quite often we get the wires crossed here. And the authority weapon of persuasion can be abused so easily that studies show that simply wearing a uniform, say, a police uniform, can improve your ability to persuade or influence other people, even if they know you’re not actually a police officer. Just seeing you in a uniform can have that effect. So this is something that we need to be really, really careful about. And a lot of businesses utilize this in marketing tactics where they’ll bring in a doctor to talk about a, the health benefits of some food. But then if you really dig into it, that doctor is, you know, a dermatologist. And it’s not entirely clear what their link with, you know, gastrointestinal medicine really is.

And so be really, really careful when somebody is touting some sort of authority because there’s a good likelihood that they’re abusing that in some way. Number five, weapons of influence we have liking. So just simply being likable makes you more persuasive, more influential. And this makes sense. Like, I don’t want to be persuaded by somebody I hate. I have my resistance, my guard up, right? And so if we can be more likable, we can be more friendly, then we’re going to increase our influence, our persuasiveness. All right, so last but not least, we have the 6th weapon of influence. It is scarcity.

And you likely have seen this everywhere. This is hey, buy now because we only have a limited supply. Deals running out. 3 hours left. Get it now. Now. And this plays into one, the scarcity mindset that’s so abundant, however ironic that is in the world today, but more deeply, it plays on our loss aversion bias. And the loss aversion bias is a really powerful mental model to understand in all aspects of life.

It says this, that we react more harshly, more negatively to losing something than we experience joy from gaining an equivalent amount. So let’s put this into context. If I have $100 and I lose 50, I’m gonna feel that loss of $50 more poignantly than if I had $0 and you gave me 50. The end state is the same, I have $50, but I feel that loss so much worse. And we as humans, we do not like losing on options. We do not like losing out on that. And so we might be on the fence, we might not even want the thing. But if we realize, hey, I might never have the opportunity to get this thing again, well, maybe I should go ahead and just get it.

Because who knows? Maybe future me is going to want that thing or regret not having done that thing. And so those are the six weapons of influence that you need to understand as you move out there into the world, because people are going to be utilizing it against you. And if you can be cognizant of it, it’s going to make you that much more able to overcome and be persuasive and influential in your own right. Because, again, we all just want to have a sense of acceptance and an effective communication. We want to have our ideas understood. We want to even maybe have them implemented. Nobody wants to go through the world ineffectual and nobody really listening to their ideas or thoughts, right? And so utilize these six weapons. Find ways to implement them in your day to day interactions, whether it’s with friends and loved ones, or in business relationships, or just in a casual encounter with a stranger at the coffee shop.