Entries by Mark Rodgers

What Persuasion and Anchors Have in Common

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In a previous post, I wrote about the concept of anchoring: When it comes to numbers, we “anchor” to whatever number we hear first regarding a specific topic. Click here for more details. Another component of anchoring, and one that is much more difficult to control but still worthy of consideration, is that of unrelated anchors. […]

Working With Numbers and the Concept of ‘Anchoring’

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When it comes to numbers, we “anchor” to whatever number we hear first regarding a specific topic. • The new manufacturing plant will cost $35 million. • The marketing initiative will take $5 million of our budget. • The new training program is going to run us $550,000. Now, whenever we think of these initiatives, […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Social Proof

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In five previous posts, I’ve covered the noted psychologist Robert’s Cialdini’s five principles of persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, consistency, liking and authority. Now, we come to Cialdini’s last principle: social proof. People follow the lead of similar others, and this condition of social proof intensifies when there exists a condition of uncertainty (Sales are down! What should we do?) […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Authority

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We defer to experts. Whether you’re a scientist, a medical doctor, a Ph.D., or a professor, if you have a level of expertise — and your target is aware of that expertise — you automatically become more persuasive. This ties in well with Robert Cialdini’s fifth primary principle of persuasion: authority. (In other recent posts, I’ve […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Liking

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We like people who like us (and state so publicly). We also like people are who are like us. Whether they share similar political views or hobbies, hail from the same part of the world or simply both smoke cigarettes, individuals with commonalities feel an affinity for one another. In other recent posts, I’ve covered […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Consistency

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What do you call someone who says one thing, yet does another? Hypocrite. Liar. Flip-flopper. Politician. Teenager. Most of those terms aren’t considered glowing characteristic traits. This is where Robert Cialdini’s third primary principle of persuasion comes in: consistency. (In other recent posts, I’ve covered Cialdini’s first two principles, reciprocity and scarcity.) We like, trust […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Scarcity

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In a recent post, I introduced Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, who created something akin to a “Unified Field Theory of Persuasion” by categorizing almost every persuasion approach into one of six primary principles: reciprocity, scarcity, consistency, liking, authority and social proof. Last time, I covered reciprocity. In this post, I’ll focus on […]

Revisiting Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion: Reciprocity

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It’s been almost 35 years since Robert Cialdini, now regents’ professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University, wrote Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, in 1984. (It later was published as a textbook under the title Influence: Science and Practice.) The original book stemmed from Cialdini’s literature review of almost 50 years of scientific […]

The Role Emotions Play in Persuasion Success

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More than 400 words exist in the English language to describe “emotion.” In fact, neurologists have even identified distinctions between emotions (the automatic brain response) and feelings (the subjective way we interpret those emotions). Depending on how thinly you’d like to slice the topic, you could literally list dozens of human emotions — from acceptance, […]

When Going Negative Can Be a Positive

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If you want to be hired for the job, you’d like the person in charge of hiring to have interest and hope in you and your abilities. If you’re looking to partner with a venture capitalist, you’d hope that your potential partner is ecstatic about your idea. These examples are self-evident, but there also may […]