Robert Cialdini

9 Minutes

Edited & medically reviewed by THE BALANCE Team

Fact checked

Dr. Robert Cialdini has devoted his professional lifetime to studying persuasion influence and psychology. Dr. Cialdini’s psychology of persuasion has gained his status as an international authority in the domains of persuasion, negotiation, and compliance.

Robert Cialdini’s books are famous worldwide and are mostly referred to as an authority on persuasion, influence, and communication. His works, including Influence: Science & Practice, are the outcome of years of research into the reasons why individuals agree with commercial requests. The influence was a big success with over 2 million copies sold. This book has been translated into 25 languages.

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, his most popular co-authored book, has appeared on USA Today, the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

Today, Dr. Cialdini is the most referenced living psychology professor on the subject of persuasion and influence.

Dr. Cialdini obtained his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina and his postdoctoral education from Columbia University. He has maintained visiting scholar positions at the University of California, the Annenberg School of Communications, Ohio State University, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Cialdini is presently an emeritus professor of marketing and psychology at Arizona State University.

Dr. Cialdini is the President of Influence At Work, a worldwide consulting, training, and strategic planning firm founded on the Six Influence Principles.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Influence, the definitive book on persuasion, explores the psychological reasons why individuals answer “yes” and how to use these insights. Robert Cialdini, Ph.D., is the foremost authority on the quickly growing field of persuasion and influence. This widely praised book is the outcome of 35 years of rigorous, evidence-based research and a three-year program of study on what motivates people to change their behavior.

You will discover the six universal principles, how to apply them to become an expert persuader, and how to guard against them. The concepts of Influence are ideal for people from all walks of life and will propel you toward substantial personal change and achievement.

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Robert Cialdini, “the foremost authority on effective persuasion” (Harvard Business Review), demonstrates in this Wall Street Journal and New York Times best-seller how it’s not always the content itself that transforms minds, but the crucial moment just before you convey that message.

What distinguishes effective communicators from genuinely persuasive individuals? Robert Cialdini shows how to educate individuals to be open to a message before they encounter it, using the same thorough scientific research and intelligibility that made Influence a legendary book. The only way to achieve ideal persuasion is through optimal pre-persuasion. In other words, a pre-persuader must also modify “states of mind” in order to change “minds.”

As one of the “compelling” according to The Wall Street Journal, and “Best Business Books of 2016” according to the Financial Times, Robert B. Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion continues to draw on his extensive knowledge as the most referenced social psychologist of our time and describes the methods a person must employ to develop into a master persuader. According to Cialdini, changing a listener’s beliefs, attitudes, or experiences is unnecessary; all that is needed is for communicators to refocus the audience’s attention prior to relevant action.

Influence: Science and Practice: The Comic

This book has been the source of knowledge for almost two million readers. Utilizing tools of mass influence, evil powers strive to transform civilization into mindless automatons. In this graphic rendition of his best-selling book, Robert B. Cialdini becomes the best chance for society against compliance experts worldwide. He leads a group of special troops across a battlefield replete with psychological assaults intended to elicit predetermined responses from unaware victims.

Instant Influence: How to Get What You Want in Any Business Situation

Robert Cialdini is an authority in persuasion due to his 20 years of study on the psychology of influence. He teaches you the six concepts of influence and how to implement them so that you may obtain collaboration, compliance, and approval in any business setting.

Feeling Good About Saying No

Robert B. Cialdini spent many years monitoring advertising, salespeople, and other so-called “compliance specialists” in order to determine how they influence us to agree with their requests. He describes their most powerful strategies, teaches us how to reject them if we so choose, and demonstrates how to employ similar persuasive approaches in an honest and ethical manner.

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

This New York Times best-selling primer to 50 scientifically proven tactics for enhancing your persuasive abilities in business and life demonstrates how minor changes may have a significant impact on your persuasive abilities.

Daily, we face the task of convincing other people to do what we desire. But why do individuals agree to our orders and proposals? Persuasion is not only an art, but also a science, and those who study it have unearthed a sequence of hidden rules for influencing others. Based on more than 60 years of studies and scientific research into the philosophy and psychology of persuasion, Yes! reveals 50 simple yet astonishingly effective methods that will make you significantly more convincing at work and in your private life.

Yes! introduces dozens of remarkable discoveries from the scientific knowledge of persuasion in short, entertaining, and informative chapters that you can immediately apply to become a more impactful persuader.

Often counterintuitive, the research presented in Yes! will help you avoid common pitfalls while equipping you with little-known but proven knowledge.

Executive Briefing: The Power of Persuasion

Cialdini offers amazing insight into how and why individuals avoid making judgments and agree with requests in corporate environments. He has identified 6 principles that are so potent that they produce a desirable change in a wide variety of situations: reciprocity, consistency/commitment, social validation, liking/friendship, authority, and scarcity. He stresses the non-manipulative application of these concepts so that those who are affected feel genuinely devoted to the transformation and the change agent. This evolves into lasting, effective, and ethical cooperation.

The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence

At some time today, you will need to persuade or influence another person, such as when you bargain with a contractor, ask a coworker for a favor or convince your spouse to take out the recycling. In the small BIG, 3 giants from the realm of persuasive science and practice – Steve Martin, Noah Goldstein, and Robert Cialdini – explain how, in today’s modern information-overloaded environment, the tiniest adjustments result in the greatest disparities in outcomes.

HBR’s 10 Must Reads For New Managers

Acquire the mindset and attitude necessary for people management successfully for the first time.

Read these ten articles on management if you don’t read anything else. This review has been sifted through many dozens of Harvard Business Review articles and the selected ones will help you transform from being an amazing individual contributor to a terrific manager of others. This collection of papers includes Robert B. Cialdini’s “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion.”

This book will motivate you to:

Enhance your emotional quotient
Utilize the art of persuasion to sway your coworkers.
Evaluate your team’s performance and improve it.
Effective networking to meet commercial and personal objectives
Manage connections with coworkers, superiors, and peers
Obtain help from superiors
Consider the big picture when making decisions.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance for your team in a high-pressure job.

It is impossible to discuss persuasion and influence without mentioning Dr. Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion. These are described in his best-selling book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which he collected through his own and other’s research. The world-famous Influence book by Robert Cialdini features the Cialdini principles of persuasion. These principles can all work on a conscious level, but they also deliver a powerful subliminal punch.

1) Reciprocity

Do something for someone without expecting anything in return, and they’ll be more inclined and feel compelled to do something for you.

Reciprocity is not a quid-pro-quo transaction, but rather a circumstance in which one person contributes or performs a service for another without expecting anything in return.

The majority of content sites, such as blogs and news websites, implement some type of reciprocity. They allow readers to read both current and previous content without cost or registration.

You are taking full advantage of reciprocity when you offer consumers links to free research and free content, or when you provide them with complimentary advice on a problem they face. Based on the research of Robert Cialdini, this strategy should be more effective than the much more typical technique of receiving first and then offering.

2) Commitment/Consistency

People unknowingly desire to act in a manner congruent with their past actions.

Experiments have demonstrated that if an individual performs even a small favor for another person, she is significantly more likely to perform a larger favor in the future. This tiny favor could be a Facebook “like” or the completion of a one-question survey online.

Websites with multi-page forms utilize this approach. If users click once, then fills out a few fields, and then click again, proceeding to fill in information would be congruent with their behavior.

To include this approach in your sales process, you could try making tiny requests of your prospect, such as requesting a price for a related blog article your company is producing.

3) Social Proof

People observe other people’s actions, both unconsciously and consciously. They will select the crowded place over the practically empty one, despite the slower service. This is why bloggers emphasize their fame when requesting your subscription. It is not to bolster their ego (at least not totally); rather, it is to demonstrate that they are offering knowledge of high quality.

Similarly, businesses discuss the number of thousands of their products that have been sold or the number of consumers they serve, etc. — it is all about social validation. You can utilize social proof in your marketing funnel by referring to customer research studies, third-party evaluations, or even by utilizing willing customers as recommendations for prospects to contact.

4) Authority

People defer to individuals with authority, including officials, academics, physicians, and specialists.

They may follow the instructions of an authority figure consciously. On an unconscious level, individuals will tend to place a higher value on the judgment of an authority than on that of others.

Authority resembles social proof, but it is based on perceived knowledge, position, or power rather than numbers.

The classic study by psychologist Stanley Milgram demonstrated that individuals were so subservient to a researcher in a lab coat (an authoritative figure) that they administered electric shocks to an invisible individual. (The screams were faked, and no one was injured during the experiment.)

To establish authority, cite industry experts or your largest clients. If your prospects realize that successful individuals or companies utilize your service or product, they may be convinced that it is a worthwhile investment.

5) Liking

People we like persuade us more readily. While some liking sentiments, such as those for a friend, are cognizant, they are frequently so mild that we are unaware of them.

As per Cialdini, having something in common is a crucial component of liking.

Therefore, intelligent salespeople seek to find common ground with prospects. In an effort to develop rapport, they determine whether the consumer is a golfer, a football lover, a grad of the same university, etc.

A fantastic technique to harness liking in a commercial situation is to highlight the similarities you have with the majority of your customers. If the company offers fishing equipment, a picture of the company’s founder swimming in a stream or playing with kids will increase customer affinity.

This principle should already be recognizable to salespeople, as establishing rapport is fundamental to good selling.

6) Deficit

The greater the demand and desirability for something, the less there are of it. They are typically oblivious to their desire for scarcity. As potent motivators, marketers frequently use words such as “Only five left!” or “Offer expires at midnight!”

Travel websites have also evolved into some of the most adept users of scarcity, frequently displaying messages such as “Only two seats remaining at this price!” or “One room remains!”

HOW THE BALANCE CAN HELP WITH Mental Health

The Balance RehabClinic is a leading provider of luxury addiction and mental health treatment for affluent individuals and their families, offering a blend of innovative science and holistic methods with unparalleled individualised care.

A UNIQUE METHOD TREATING Mental Health

a successful and proven concept focusing on underlying causes

ONE CLIENT AT A TIME

TAILORED LASTING APPROACH

BIOCHEMICAL RESTORATION

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY & HOLISTIC

TECHNOLOGY BASED TREATMENT

TRAUMA INFORMED THERAPY

Mental Health TREATMENT LASTING APPROACH

0 Before

Send Admission Request

0 Before

Define Treatment Goals

1 week

Assessments & Detox

1-4 week

Psychological & Holistic Therapy

4 week

Family Therapy

5-8 week

Aftercare

12+ week

Refresher Visit

Mental Health Insights

Sexual Masochism Disorder

Sexual Masochism Disorder is a paraphilic disorder that involves sexual arousal through pain

Black Mental Health

Several causes of mental health problems in the African American community have been identified.

Robert Cialdini