Search results for: “Robert Cialdini”
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Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion and the Importance of Recognising “Enforced Compliance”
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is Robert Cialdini’s 1984 book discussing what he calls the six fundamental psychological principles of compliance: consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity. The conclusion to Cialdini’s book points out why, in this increasingly complex world, resisting attempts at “enforced compliance” (deception) through these key principles is as important…
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Web Marketing Lessons from Cialdini’s ‘Influence’
No marketer should be engaging with people online without having read Robert Cialdini’s much lauded Influence, says SEOmoz co-founder Rand Fishkin. To this end, Rand presents his Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence and Persuasion. The six main principles illustrated: Reciprocation: “The power of reciprocation relies on several conventions. The request must be “in-kind,”…
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Year Three in Review
And so another year has passed since my last review. It’s been a busy year of learning a new language in my equally new country of residence, changing jobs (and everything that entails) and, of course, writing 200 posts here on Lone Gunman (and thanks again to you: there’s been hundreds of comments… and 49,810 spam comments). The…
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Year Two in Review
Another year, a further 445 posts and an additional 17,790 spam comments have passed (and 453 legitimate comments, for which I am eternally grateful–thanks!) and Lone Gunman is now two years old. Somewhat delayed since I’ve recently moved to the Netherlands, here are the best things I’ve read on the Internet and posted here over…
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Questioning (Not Telling) Ourselves is the Best Call-to-Action
Thinking about whether we will do a task or not (“Will I…?”) rather than focusing on actually performing the task (“I will….”) has been shown to increase both the probability of us eventually undertaking the task and how successfully we will perform it. The idea seems that “interrogative self-talk”, rather than declarative statements, leads to…
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Applying Knowledge and Not Understanding Ourselves
One of my favourite reads–the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Research Digest–has recently published its 150th issue. To observe this occasion, Digest has asked what twenty-three psychologists still don’t understand about themselves. I’ve mentioned a number of the featured psychologists here before, including Robert Cialdini, Alison Gopnik and Richard Wiseman. As Vaughan notes, many of those contributing to…
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Using Neighbourhood Comparisons to Promote Conservation
By comparing customers’ usage to that of others in the neighbourhood, utility companies are starting to reduce their energy consumption. This, from an experiment conducted by Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: In a 2004 experiment, he and a colleague left different messages on doorknobs in a middle-class neighborhood north of San Diego. One type urged…