Robert B. Cialdini Quotes

There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news.

Just as amino acids can be called the building blocks of life, associations can be called the building blocks of thought.49 In

The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.

So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them. There’s a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves.

Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.

What we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next.

Every day in every way, I’m getting better. — EMILE COUE

in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses; for confirmations of the idea rather than for disconfirmations.

Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them. –Alfred North Whitehead

If a gift, favor, or service incorporates all three features of meaningfulness, unexpectedness, and customization, it can become a formidable source of change.

In one experiment conducted on five classes of Australian college students, a man was introduced as a visitor from Cambridge University in England. However, his status at Cambridge was represented differently in each of the classes. To one class, he was presented as a student; to a second class, a demonstrator; to another, a lecturer; to yet another, a senior lecturer; to a fifth, a professor. After he left the room, each class was asked to estimate his height. It was found that with each increase in status, the same man grew in perceived height by an average of a half inch, so that as the “professor” he was seen as two and a half inches taller than as the “student.

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.

I can live for two months,” confessed Mark Twain, “on a good compliment.

The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.