Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (2016) | Robert Cialdini

Robert Cialdini first released a book titled, Influence, in 1984. Thirty years later, he releases this one, Pre-Suasion. Influence is probably one of the most quoted books by other authors in the same industry. After some time, I bet his work will continue to be quoted and used in marketing programs, sales presentations, business meetings and conferences around the world.

While Influence tackled on the tools employed by compliance professionals, Pre-Suasion takes on the moment before the actual weapons are deployed. It's stated very early on that messages, concepts, made or presented just before a request is made has an impact to the likelihood of the how the message will be received and acted upon. Then it goes on to dissect how and why those factors affect the outcome.

Attention

One critical concept: What's given elevated attention is given importance and presumed causality; the factor most likely to affect an outcome is not necessarily the most accurate or most useful. It's the one that's been elevated in attention.

What commands attention?  Sexual, Threatening, and what’s different.

Sexual images works only on sexually related purpose, or when it appeals to vanity.
Threatening relates to fear, it works best when additional information is given on how to help change habits. What's different relates to novelty, or originality.

Make people wary and they will be driven to a desire of safety. A popularity based appeal will soar. Being separate will not work. Make people amorous and they will be driven to a desire to stand out. An appeal for individuality will rise, being in-group will not.

What retains attention? Self-Relevance, Unfinished, and Mystery

Self-Relevance equates to "you". The unfinished, the incompleteness triggers the   Zeigarnik effect. It holds attention because not completing an activity can make it more memorable, and interruption creates a desire to get back to the task. Mystery grabs attention specifically because of the unknown.

Associations

  • What’s channelled to a concept will be successful only to the extent of the associations it can trigger to change.
  • These raw associations arise in brain operations.
  • Wording shifts, metaphors, language, processing fluency affects associations.
  • Physical places prompts cues and associations, the same way words and images do. How far/near a message to a concept, or the strength of association, relates to the level of action it creates.
  • One can use this knowledge of associations to create habits or defend against risks, using a concept called If-When, Then Plans.


Optimizing the Universal Principles of Influence

In his first book Cialdini offered a way of defending against the principles. In this one, he states ways the principles can be advanced.

Reciprocation: it has to be meaningful, unexpected, and customized.
Liking: highlight similarities, compliments.
The usual rule for salespeople was to get your customer to like you. Cialdini counters that the rule should be to show customers that you genuinely like them.
Social Proof: Validity (it can be done) and Feasibility (other people are doing it)
Authority: Trustworthiness (help it out by referencing a weakness early on, then use transitional words "yet but however")
Scarcity: regard restriction or inaccessibility
Consistency: tend to personal alignments

Stages of Influences in relation to the principles

First Stage: Cultivating positive associations, Reciprocity and Liking
Second Stage: Reducing uncertainty, Social Proof and Authority
Third Stage: Motivating action, Consistency and Scarcity

A Seventh Universal Principle, Unity

Unity is more about shared identities, not merely similarities. These could be kinship relating to family or same the blood; place relating to concepts of Home, Locality or close proximity or a particular region. Unity also relates to cooperating, being together and acting together.

Warnings for Misuse

Cialdini makes the case for ethical use of influence and persuasion: There’s a very steep price for dishonesty and false advertising. Dishonesty creates poor employee performance, employee turnover, employee fraud and cheating.


Lastly, to maintain an enduring effect, one should follow principles of consistency and affect personal identity; and affect the cues around.

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