The Jordan Harbinger Show - 507: Robert Cialdini | A New Look at the Science of Influence

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Robert Cialdini (@RobertCialdini) is widely regarded as the “Godfather of influence” for his groundbreaking work in ethical persuasion. An update of his bestseller that started it all, Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion, is out now. What We Discuss with Robert Cialdini: Cialdini’s Universal Principles of Influence that turn you into an unstoppable persuasion machine (and allow you to defend yourself against the unethical influence of others). Why it’s a bad idea to accept a gift or favor from someone we don’t like or trust, and how we can reject such a gift or favor gracefully. How to become more likable (without being a smarmy weirdo about it). Why social proof is powerful for positive and negative outcomes and how we can leverage this. The most ideal time to disclose a negative for maximum damage control. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/507 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. In the case of reciprocity, let's say we've just done somebody a favor. We've gone out of our way. We've turned around an invoice more quickly. We've paid a whatever it is. We've done something for them. And they say, thank you. That was really great.

And how often I used to hear myself say, oh, don't think anything of it. It's part of the job. This is what we do for people. Would have done it for anybody. What a mistake. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies, psychologists, even the occasional legendary Hollywood director, Russian spy, or economic hitman.

Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we now have episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by popular topics. This will help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us, which is always appreciated. Today, Robert Chaldeenie, he is the absolute OG, the father of persuasion and influence.

His book, Influence, is the seminal work on influence and persuasion. You've either read it or you've read books from people that are derivative or take concepts from this book and expound on them. This book and the concepts they're in are in use by every marketer, government, propagandist, and parent on the planet, whether they know it or not. We're talking about automatic influence, fixed action patterns, reciprocation, the liking rule, how we become more likable, how to defend ourselves against these techniques. I don't need to keep going with the intro.

Again, this is the OG, this is a must listen, and I know you're going to love it. so we can jump right in. And if you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every week, it's because of my network and my influence and persuasion skills that I've learned from Robert Chaldini. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course.

You can put some of these influence skills to work in creating and maintaining relationships. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on our show, and this is a technique, it is an influence technique called Social Proof. Most of the guests on our show already subscribe to the course.

course and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. That's also shaping. You'll hear about it in the episode. All right, here's Robert Chaldeenie. So why redo the entire book or the original influence, right? It's the classic. It's sort of the Bible where people go, oh, I've heard of these concepts. I didn't know they were from this book. Like it's that much of a classic kind of book. Well, there's a quote that my grandfather used to favor. He said, if you want things to stay the same around here, things are going to have to change. So the book has done very well, sold more copies than I can sensibly imagined, 44 languages. I had a Polish colleague who said, you know, Bob,

your book influence is so famous in Poland, my students think you're dead. So it was going well. There are good things. But, you know, if things are going to stay the same, things have to change around here. So it seemed to me it was time for an update. Well, that makes sense. I mean, there's probably a lot of research in this area. Plus, there's a lot of cool stories that have come out of people using these techniques for good, using these techniques for bad, and frankly, influence and things like that has been in the news. And we'll get to some of those examples here on the show as well. I know a lot of folks are probably wondering how you came up with this. Did you just give people a bunch of surveys and then figure out the concepts? But you

actually went undercover in, what was it, sales, marketing, law enforcement to research, compliance, and influence, and those sorts of things. Yes, I spent two and a half years infiltrating the training programs of as many influence professions as I could get access to. I would answer ads and take training to be an aspiring professional in sales, marketing, management, fundraising, recruitment, and so on, to see what were the features of each training program that were consistent with all the other influence practitioners and professions whose business it is to get others to say yes to them. And I was shocked by how small a footprint there was. There were hundred, maybe thousands of individual tactics.

that people were using. But I thought I could identify the great majority of them in terms of just a very few fundamental, and I'm going to call them universal principles of persuasion, that if you included into a message, you significantly increase the likelihood of assent into that message. Why is it important that we understand what you refer to as automatic influence? What is it and why is it dangerous, actually? It's probably a better question. It's both necessary and dangerous. That is, we live in what is unquestionably the most information overloaded, stimulus-saturated environment that has ever existed on this planet. We're simply bombarded with information of all sorts every day, and to make good choices

within that avalanche of challenges and choices and available options, we have to have shortcuts, automatic tendencies that will normally steer us correctly if we just see one or another fundamental feature in that influence array that normally steers us correctly. Let's say something as simple as this is what the authorities are saying, This is an approach or a direction or a product or a service that experts have said is, well, now we don't have to understand or process or filter through all the pros and cons of that. We just take that one piece of information, respond automatically to it, and we usually make a good choice. Well, in the modern world, we need those shortcuts. Because we have so much information, right?

So this is where, and we'll get through some of these examples further along in the show here, but this is why when we see that on Amazon there's only two left, right? Or when we see a bunch of people waiting outside a restaurant for something, we say, that place must be good because the heuristic is, hey, lots of people want to get in there. It's so full that they have to wait outside and they're actually waiting outside. they're not just going to the place next door, that place must be good. But of course, as we know from being scammed over and over by everyone online or otherwise, all of these things can be engineered. And we've talked about that on the show. We've had Conman on the show who pull these levers,

right? They are levers of influence. They just flick a switch and we respond automatically. You know, that you were just talking about online. You know, you see all these stars and we're at war with those people who would falsify that information. They create phony reviews. They pay people to write in favor of their organization or their product or service. So that now, here's a piece of information I learned in researching the book. The most successful number of stars for producing converts, moving people from prospect to customer, is not five stars. It's a sweet. It's a sweet. spot between 4.2 and 4.7 stars. Below 4.2, you think, ah, this isn't so good. Above 4.7, you think something's wrong here. I'm being scammed. Right. Nothing's that good. Yes. Yes. So that's the danger.

There are people constantly, you know what a shortcut is. It's going through the woods. There are people lying and wait along the boundaries of those shortcuts for us. Right. Right. Right. To trick us. Right. So at some point our mind says, this is not just convenient. It's too convenient. Thus, it's got to be a honey trap as opposed to, hey, I'm just really lucky. I found this nice shortcut here. It can't be so appealing that it seems suspicious. Right. And so that's funny that that works with like trust pilot or Yelp. Right. Exactly. Now, on the other hand, the more information overloaded the environment gets, the less time we have for suspiciousness. The more we're inclined to just go ahead because we've got to stop calibrating and calculating.

We've got to move. We've got to get off the fence. We're going to lose otherwise. Right. So our brains are hardwired to look for the shortcuts. And then unscrupulous people are noticing these and taking advantage of it. And yet they're still so useful of these shortcuts that we still have to use them. And they, you mentioned in the book, fixed action patterns. This I think you call click run. So like click run, like an automatic program in the human brain. Can you give us some examples of this? Because first start with animals, right? Because when animals do it, we think, oh, how stupid are these animals? Then when we do it, we go, well, wait a minute, but I have to, I mean, what am I supposed to do? Think about everything, right? So I think some of these examples

are really funny in illustrative because they show how us humans are like two notches away from a Turkey. Right. So let's take birds, for example. If there's a robin, a male robin, that is trying to protect its territory, and it sees another robin come into the territory, it gets what click that produces the run of an attack program. You get an aggression attack program. Here's the key. It's not the robin as a whole. It's a specific shade of red breast feather that triggers it. So, researchers show, you can pin Robin Red Breast feathers to a branch inside a bird's territory. It will attack the red feathers ferociously. You take a regular robin, paint its breast feathers blue, and it won't be attacked. It's not the whole thing. It's a single thing. Well, there are scenes.

single features fixed action patterns is what we call us, and trigger features that trigger those patterns in human decision making about when to say yes, it's one thing, not the whole array. That's interesting. And I suppose that makes a difference for our brain, right? Because otherwise our brain has to say, let's use the Robin example. Is this a male Robin? Well, he's got a red chest, right? And if that's the only thing we're looking at, then we can say, okay, that's pretty safe, all male robins have a red chest, therefore anything red is threatening, click run. But if we say, if I'm a robin and I'm not evolved like that, I go, okay, are the feathers red? Yes. Okay, well, also, does he have these kind of ears? What size is he? Does he look strong? Are we sure it's a

robin? Maybe it's a different bird that looks like, well, how close are they? I mean, there's all these different things that are, there's more work that our brain has to do to figure out if something is a threat. And that's less efficient, probably. Right. Because. while we're doing that, the other robin is getting an advantage over us, flying above us, but in getting us into a situation where they have an advantage or has seen our environment and so on. We can't just wait around. If the robin reacts quickly to just that one breast feather, because it's the only thing that usually signals another male robin, well, then you have acted efficiently. You need that. You don't have the time to do the rest of it because that if you take

the time, the other Robin may be getting an advantage on you while you're thinking about it. Right. So the quicker we can act, the more successful will be in our defense if we're a Robin, right, or in a human in any of our examples here. But those things take time. So of course, we use shortcuts. And those, again, those shortcuts, those click run examples are what a lot of marketers and unscrupulous types will also take advantage of. There's a couple of principles in the book with those several actually, and we won't get to them all here on the show, but one of them I think is really interesting, of course, the contrast principle showing something much worse or, let's say a higher price to get people to react more positively to the real price. So we see this all the time.

It's very common. That's why I'm starting here with something that says like normally 1499. Today, 999. We go, oh, it's a deal, right? Because of the contrast, if it's a just as $9.99, we might go, for a mug? I'm not paying $10 for a mug, but if we think it's usually one price instead, it's the other, that's an obvious sort of thing that we see all the time with anchoring and pricing. With other examples, and one of them in the book, I remember this from the original book, was a daughter writes a letter home to her parents. Do you want to take us through that? Because I think this is, she gets an A in psychology, for sure. Right. So she writes a letter home to her parents. I'm remiss. I'm sorry for not having written before. I want to bring you

up to date. And I can tell you that the jump out of my dormitory window after it caught fire produced only a concussion. And I can almost see normally now and only get those sick headaches once a day. And the fire was seen by an attendant at the gas station down the street. He kindly invited me to share his apartment with him because of the burnt out dormitory. We've fallen deeply in love. We're planning to be married, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show. He's a very fine boy. We've had a little trouble getting our premarital blood test because he's failed his, but soon we'll be able to resume, and I know you'll look forward to being grandparents. And then she says, now I want to tell you, there was no fire, there was no concussion, there was no concussion, there was

no boyfriend. I am not engaged. I am not going to be married and I am not pregnant. But I am getting a D in chemistry and an F in math. And I wanted you to see those grades in their proper perspective. So what I say in response to that in the book is that, you know, she may be getting an F in math, but she gets an A in my psychology grade book because she knows how to use the principle of I love the principle of contrast because I think it's something that we intuitively understand. It's something that we use all the time as humans in marketing. It's something that we always find ourselves being confronted with, but few of us really know how to use it. I don't think many of us are going to be writing a letter home to our parents like that anytime soon. But I think that a lot of

us, if we start to become aware of these types of techniques in the wild, we can not only use them for ourselves if necessary, but we can also realize when they're being used against us. And I think that's sort of one of the major points of outlining all of these. So again, even though some of these might seem intuitive, I think there's something there to being able to deconstruct it and articulate it. Because once we can articulate something, we can kind of know when it's right in front of our face instead of just feeling it if it may be there, right? Right, right. A good example is just a wine list. You always get the list where they begin. with the least expensive bottles and then go up to the moderately expensive ones and the most expensive.

The problem with that is when you start with the least expensive, now by the time you get to the moderately expensive one, they seem more expensive than if you hadn't started down here. But if instead the list had begun with the most expensive, by the time you get to the moderate ones, they seem less expensive. People forget to do this correct. So we can always make something more palatable or often make something more palatable by using anchoring. And that's why on online marketing we see this a lot too, right? You see cheap option, middle option, super expensive option.

And the super expensive option might say something like best value, right? Because it's like, oh, well, okay, I'm getting more for more money. But the middle might say something along the lines of most popular. And that goes to the social proof idea. but either way you win, or you have three prices and the one at the top is actually a decoy that nobody really buys because it seems really overpriced, but it serves to make the price in the middle actually seem much more reasonable. Again, $14.99 for a mug, no way, or $9.99 for a mug sounds much more reasonable if the original price was $14.99.

Right. I want to touch on reciprocation because I think this is an amazingly underutilized principle. and it's something that people use in their relationships all the time. I didn't realize how powerful it actually was until you talked about the Taliban example. Can you go through this with us? Because reciprocation, a lot of people think, hey, I scratch your back, you scratch mine. But the fact that it applies to a war zone really shows you how strong this really is. Right. So in Afghanistan, the U.S. Secret Service, CIA, we're frequently trying to get the cooperation of local tribal leaders to give them information about Taliban movements and supply routes and so on.

But these leaders didn't much care for these CIA agents and so on, and they were getting almost no information. Besides, if the tribal leader did this, they might get retaliation by the Taliban against their tribe. So there was one CIA officer who was visiting this particular patriarch, and he noticed the guy seemed very tired, exhausted from being in charge of his whole tribe and being the head of a family with four wives, four younger wives. So he came back the next week with a gift, four Viagra tablets, one per wife. And he put them secretly in the tribal leader's hand. The next week when he came back, this guy came bounding out of his hut and bringing him and he gave him a cornucopia of information in return for that gift.

So I always say to people, look, we have to give first. Give first. If you go into a room with people you want to be influential with. Give them Viagra. Oh, yeah. Right. Don't ask who can help me here. Ask whom can I help you. Help that person who will stand on the balls of his or her feet ready to help you in return. And on the internet, how do we do it? We do it with information that we give first. on our site. Information like the top five tips for nutrition or the top three mistakes that financial investors make that lead them. Whatever your business is, you give first. It's costless. And the other thing it does, besides producing a gift that you've given to people and the obligation to give back that goes with it, you've established yourself as an authority.

An authority is another one of the universal principles of influence. We may get to that later in the show. We may not even have time to get into it. It's another one of those where we kind of know intuitively that it works, people in uniform, etc. The reason I go into reciprocation, and it's something that, look, it works in networking and relationships and business. And again, people are going, come on, man, I've heard this before. We're all familiar with this.

It's been Chaldeenie wrote about this a decade. ago or 20 years ago or however long it's been now, right? I'm familiar with this. But the power here is undeniable because it can even overcome being disliked. And I think that was the major takeaway that I got from the updated version of the book, which is, if I do something nice for you and then you later on feel like you owe me lunch, like, okay, big surprise. But the fact that we could be in someone else's country having invaded, right, they want us out of there. They're facing potentially lethal retaliation. and yet giving somebody a couple of Viagra or a handful of Viagra is enough, in many cases, to sway their actions. They might still say, I hate these American pigs get out of our country, but I kind of owe this guy one because he'll be up.

I owe this guy, yes, I owe this guy, and it just crushes all the other considerations. Right. And here's the other thing about this book that I think I've tried to do differently. I've tried to move from the idea of, let's say, reciprocity or any of the concepts, to how do we harness it? What precisely do we say? What words do we use to activate that powerful principle? And in the case of reciprocity, let's say we've just done somebody a favor. We've gone out of our way. We've turned around an invoice more quickly. we've paid a whatever it is, we've done something for them and they say thank you. That was really great.

And how often I used to hear myself say, oh, don't think anything of it. It's part of the job. This is what we do for people. Would have done it for anybody. What a mistake. We've earned that principle. We need to be sure we don't knock it out the window. Right. So here's what I suggest that people say, if this is somebody, that we have a long-term relationship with a colleague or a long-term business partner, we say, of course, it's what long-term partners do for one another. We can't forget the term for one another so that we've put it on the map. We haven't knocked it out the window with the back of our hand. We've put it on the map. That person now is ready to help us. Now, if this person isn't somebody we have a long-term relationship or friendship with, here's what I recommend we say.

Of course, I was glad to do it. I know if the situation were ever reversed, you'd do the same for me. Once again, we put that on the map. We don't diminish it at all. Now, here's what I think is important. I've heard people use a variant of this and get that wrong. They say, oh, I was glad to help. I know that if the situation had been reversed, you would have done the same for me.

Well, that's in the past. No. You say, if the situation were to be reversed, I know you would do the same for me. Now you've got the future open to you for reciprocal exchange. Ah, okay. That's interesting. I definitely have, I mean, I help people all. the time and they say thank you and I say, oh, it's my pleasure, don't mention it, or don't worry about it,

or something along those lines. But I suppose I could just as easily switch to, hey, this is what good people do for one another or something along those lines. Or friends do for one another. Or partner, business partners. Yes. You do the same thing for me if the rules are reversed. You do the same thing for me. Yeah, I'm going to start using that. People are going to see that in my emails now or in my DMs on LinkedIn and they're going to go, ah, ha, ha, you're applying it. Yeah. Well, you know, I used to do it all the time, and now I use this other language, and nobody has ever said, oh, I see what you're doing. Nobody. This is really, what I like about this is, it's not manipulative if your intent is good, because all you're doing is triggering something. Look, I guess any of this can be misused, but if I'm saying, well, you do the same for me if the rules were reversed, I just, one, I just did them a favor.

So, you know, I'm already. You earned it. And two, I'm probably just going to say, share the podcast with some friends. I'm not going to say, so please donate a kidney to, you know, mail me some valuable item, family heirloom that I can put in a pawn shop. Like, I'm not going to pull a full-on cable TV pastor kind of move on these folks. But this does bring up an interesting concept, right? Because that would make it a bad idea to accept a gift or favor from somebody that we didn't

trust, wouldn't it? That's right. And indeed, if you think that this is a device, because you don't trust this person, you know this is a devious individual, yeah, you can decline, right? But you don't do that as a rule. Right. You don't do that as a rule. You go in expecting the best of people, and if they give you things, then you open yourself up to genuinely helpful, friendly people. You don't want to wall them off.

Right. It's only if then they say, hey, now that I've done this for you, would you help me move on Thursday and bring over a rental truck? Then you get to say, wait a minute, that's a trick. Right. This was an artifice. This was a device. I'm not falling. Because what the rule says is favors deserve to be returned.

Tricks, you don't return a trick with a favor. Right. No, that makes sense. And these people who are using this trick, they know that it's very hard to reject a gift. It's rude in like every culture known to man, right, to reject a gift. That's where the phrase comes, right? The old saying there's nothing more expensive than that which comes for free. It comes from somebody doing someone a favor and then having them ask to move and bring the truck. Right. Right. One of the rules in the, and one of the stories in the original book was that people don't sue doctors that they like. It was one of these kind of, I don't know if insurance companies dug this up or if you came out with this in your research, but we find that people don't sue doctors for malpractice if they like the doctor. They'll sue somebody completely different who worked at the hospital or they'll sue some other organization that had nothing to do with it, the medication manufacturer, if they like their doctor. And that was an amazing takeaway, not only for many, I'm sure, actuaries at insurance companies over the years, but also because we know now that being liked is actually a pretty darn good insurance policy, not just if you're a doctor, but if you're anybody helping anyone and you're worried about ramifications from that, the best thing you can do is have a decent relationship with that person or that group.

Yes. I mean, liking is one of the universal principles of influence because it works so well and so broadly across all these situations. I saw an article that listed the factors in an e-commerce site that significantly increased the likelihood of conversion if it was there. It was a welcoming letter. How many sites do we have a welcoming letter in them? Just saying the way you would to somebody who came to your door, a friend who came to your, you welcome them in. You say how glad you are to see them, how good it is to have them with you. Why don't we do that online? Online, we have to infuse our electronic communications with as much humanity as we possibly can, because humanity and liking and rapport are the things that move us toward people. So the obvious question

is, how do we get more likable? And one of the concepts here is the halo effect. And we've talked about this on the show before where, hey, if you're a good looking person, people will assume that you're smarter or more competent. And that's maybe no surprise. I guess. It's kind of a bummer for those of us that might be a six out of ten because now we just have to get smarter, I guess. But how come that principle doesn't necessarily work the other way, right? If I'm very good-looking people say I'm more competent, I'm more intelligent, but nobody's going, dang, that Stephen Hawking guy, he was one sexy guy, right? But he was a genius. I mean, he was one of the smartest people of our time, and the principle doesn't really seem to work in the other direction.

In his instance, it doesn't because the principle of authority militated against it, right? Because this guy was recognized as the most brilliant physicist of our era. So you can't quite reconcile those things. But there is also something called a horn's effect. Just as there's a halo effect where everything around you, if you're good looking is, there's also something called a horn effect. if there's something negative about you, distinctively negative, people then associate other negative things with you in the same way as a halo effect. It infuses everything. So we have to be

sure that we make sure that our first encounters with people are very positive, welcoming letter, doing something nice for them first, giving them a compliment, pointing out a similarity between the two of us that exist, that produces that liking, positive rapport, and then we can build much more efficiently from that platform to yes. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Robert Chaldeenie. We'll be right back. Now back to Robert Chaldini on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I was surprised at how mundane the commonality could be, right?

And you see this when you kind of think about car sales. You walk in, oh, where are you from? Oh, Michigan. Oh, yeah, I've got a third cousin that lives out there. He likes fishing. Oh, do you like fishing? I mean, it's just, it's like, you wonder what these guys are doing, but apparently it works. But in your research, you show that even if somebody has similar initials, right, if I'm

going to the car dealership and the guy's name is John Hancock, I mean, literally the J.H. can somehow notch me up one little level closer to close in the deal, which, you is amazing because if I think about this logically, I go, I don't care if your initials are similar. I don't care if you grew up in Michigan, but somehow my subconscious cares. Your subconscious cares because it's about associations. If the associations are positive, they don't have to be logical to have a favorable effect. That's a little scary. I sort of let that sink in, right? Because people can easily take advantage of that, especially in the internet age,

You Google someone, you look at their hobbies, and you can immediately become a cat owner who likes to have bees in their backyard and travels to Italy occasionally or just knows a lot about it and is interested in podcasting. I mean, you can really just pull those levers and someone will go, what a coincidence. They won't say, oh, he must have Googled me and is using one of these principles. Right. Because we will just take those associations and run. And the same thing with compliments. Like if somebody's too complimentary, right, it's the same thing as we discussed at the top of the show where it triggers that suspicion. But the praise can be something that maybe isn't even necessarily true. And we used to call this shaping when I was doing social engineering,

where you call it alter casting, I think, right? Where we give praise not for something that we necessarily see to get somebody to get on their good side. We give praise for a trait that we want to see more of. Right. That is brilliant. And, and, and, possibly can be used in an underhanded way. Right. We give them a reputation to live up to with that praise, something they want to live up to. So, for example, I have a newspaper carrier who goes by my house every morning and tosses my paper from the window of his car into the center of my driveway, most of the time, 75% of the time. The other times, it's on the sides and the paper gets wet from the watering systems.

So he always sends me a little letter with his name and address on it and ask me to give him a tip at the end of the year. I always do. I give him a tip. But this time, I wrote a little note on a post-it and attached it to the check. And I said, you know, Carl, thank you for your conscientiousness at getting my paper in the middle of the driveway so often. In the past, he did that about 75% of the time. This year, every day, 100%. He's living up to the reputation I gave it. So if somebody does something that we see as conscientious or helpful or some, compliment that person on, not the behavior, on the trait,

because a trait stays in that person and goes forward into the future, we'll see more of it as a consequence. Something that we did back at one of my old companies, we would, if we spotted a lot of mistakes or even small things from certain people or from even a group of people, we would say something along the lines of, and we didn't even do it necessarily in person because then they would feel singled out, or we'd do it in a group meeting or in an email, we'd say something along the lines of, one of the things that makes this organization great is that the that even if somebody falls short of the bar, they're not punished and it makes us all better because they continue to, something along the lines of like continue to correct their mistakes

or they continue to clean things up even if no one's ever going to see it. And then you'd slowly see like, oh, you know, they probably didn't see that I didn't finish that or that I left that that way. But we're an organization that makes sure that things are always cleaned up, put away, taking care of even if no one's going to see it. So I'm just going to go ahead and roll that up. I'm going to make sure that this closet is organized. It had to be refreshed every now and again because I was dealing with a lot of 20-somethings. Maybe they weren't as conscientious as Carl,

the paper delivery guy, but it is quite powerful. I mean, people love to see themselves in a positive light, and if you just give them the light to shine on themselves, they'll do it. You know, it happened to me. I was the victim of this. I wrote a book called pre-suasion

before this new version of influence, and the first 5,000 copies had a printing error, actually several printing errors. The paging was wrong, and there were some pages that the print was much fainter than other pages. And my editor called me up, and he said, Bob, I have some news for you. It's unfortunate news. And he told me about this. Five thousand copies were out there. It's a lot. And they were the ones that went to the most important bookstores, to the reviewers who we wanted to write reviews of it, that most important reviewers. and he said to me, I hate when this happens to good guys like you.

You know what I heard myself say? Ah, Ben, it's okay. Don't think anything of it. You know, it happens. This is this. I became the nice guy. Right. Instead of pounding my fist on the desk and saying, what?

How are you going to compensate for me? What are you going to do? How are you going to pull those books out of the bookstores? No, I became the nice guy. He labeled me. Maybe if that ever happens again, you just say, you know, it's no problem because what we can do is print up 5,000 little cards and in the front of the book, we'll place those cards and they'll say something like, Dear Reviewer, we know that some of the pages on this book are off, but we knew that you were able to look beyond the cosmetic appearance of this and really look at the content. And that, we know you know that that is the most important part. So we've given you one of these copies and we know that it won't be a big deal. Something along those lines, then they go, you know what, I don't need to. print. You've got the concept, man. This is, it's really, it's scarily easy to apply. And our examples right now might seem a little bit on the nose. But I think when people start to become aware of this happening and even

start trying to use this and they think, I'm going to get caught if I do this with my kid or my significant other or my boss, you will be surprised at what you can essentially get away with because you're giving people a compliment. Very few people are going to go, how dare you tell me that I'm a nice understanding person. It just doesn't really happen. And actually, this describes all of the principles, because as we said, they occur mechanically. They occur automatically. We don't step back from them as a rule and say, wait a minute. Is that an overly large compliment or is that too much of a gift? Do I like this guy too much for the 35 minutes I've been with him while he's trying to sell me a car? Wait a minute. We don't do that. Right. It just, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to be

that on guard. Only people who are, I'm sure there are some people that are that on guard, but that's almost a dysfunction, right? If you're really stopping all of your click run heuristics to try and stop influence principles, I mean, show me a person who's doing that, and I'll show you somebody who has very few friends and social interactions and sort of a lot, you know, it's not a normal type of way to live, right? That's right. And it's somebody who's locked in place most of the time trying to deliberate between all the pros and cons, while the time for action speeds by and away. Right. Yeah, you're either a massive overthinker or you're a borderline paranoid in a way that probably inhibits other function. Yeah. One of the other elements

of likeability is familiarity and exposure. And you give the example of looking at two photos, one of the way that we see ourselves in the mirror and the other which other people, you know, typically see when they're looking at us. And we always choose the one that we're more familiar with, the mirrored one. For folks who are wondering, this is the same concept of why we We see models and commercials because marketers want us to associate desirability with the products, right, and that sort of association. And for me, the principles of contrast and association, I wonder where these leave off. For example, let's say I'm hanging out with, I'm going to just be blunt here, let's say I'm hanging

out with ugly people a lot and I'm average looking. I look great by contrast, but now I'm also associating with ugly people all the time. So that status would rub off on me too, right? Right. So you don't want to do that. You don't want to hang out with people who have lower ethics or skills because you're known by the company you keep on the one hand. On the other hand, if it's a situation where you're at a party and somebody walks up to you who's less attractive to you or you go over and talk to somebody, a third person who comes along, is going to see you as significantly more attractive than if that person wasn't there with you. So you can choose that. You can do that strategically, but never do it characteristically that you're always hanging out with people who are associated with less negative ideas because you're going to get

some of that association flowing to you. So it's essentially almost a factor of time, right? So if I'm standing next to somebody for a brief period of time, the contrast effect may be dominant, but if I'm always associating with people of, let's just say, generally low status, then the status then rubs off on me. And the contrast effect actually probably gets washed out a little bit because there is less contrast. The status is washing, weighing me down, right? I'm being weighed down by the other. There's no real polite way to explain this one, is there? It's kind of one of those. Well, no, but there's a piece of research that shows. So suppose you want to feel better about

yourself. All right. And you go back and you think about a time when things were really tough. When you were in the middle of a bad relationship, you were feeling lonely, all things were going bad, right? So should you go back there and now make yourself feel better by contrast to how you are now? You should if you go back there briefly. If you go back there characteristically, or for a long time. Now the negative associations get absorbed and you're into the bad mood now. So, yes, you should go back, but briefly, then you get the contrast principle working for you. You go back and hang out there. Now you got the association principle working against you. So if we're going to dip our toe in the water of low status or negativity or something along those lines, just be sure to

pull your foot out as quickly as possible. As soon as you get that contrast effect, don't sit there waiting for it to do more because what you're going to end up with is a bigger problem than you started with. Feeling sorry for yourself. And just you're going to soak up the negativity and it will change your move. What happens if we find ourselves liking someone too quickly, right? We find ourselves liking someone too quickly and we go, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right. Something's wrong here. What do I do? I mean, walk away, obviously is always the answer to this kind of thing, I assume. But what if we don't necessarily have that option? What if we just know in the moment we're being manipulated? So I use this a little bit

earlier when I said, suppose you're buying a new car and you're in the showroom and you're really liking your salesperson, 35 minutes and you're liking this person more than you normally would spending 35 minutes with somebody. This is where the flag should go up and you say, wait a minute. What has he been doing? Well, he gave me a soft drink. He said his wife grew up where I grew up. He complimented me on my choices, my choices of options. He used all the principles of liking, and I'm not going to be driving him off the lot. I'm going to be driving this Toyota or this Ford off the lot. So at that point, you say to yourself, it's time to step back and consider the choice entirely on its merits, on the merits of the thing, of the deal, not the person who's delivering,

who's presenting the merits to me. That is a short-term relationship. I want to get away from that, right, for making my choice. Now, if it's a matter of a friendship, I think you may want to hang out with somebody who's so authentic and funny and pleasant and so on and see if it stands the test of time. The pluralistic ignorance effect. Now, this is a fancy way of saying, why do people wait in line just because other people are waiting in line, right? Among other concepts, but this is really one of these funny examples where we're seeking certainty, right? We see, this is the example I mentioned earlier in the show, this sort of social proof where we see people waiting in line for that iPhone and we think, man, that phone must be something else. Right. Right. So this unfortunately can also lead to the

bystander effect. And I want to talk about this a little bit because we've heard about the bystander effect where, and if people haven't, this is kind of the classic example is you're on a city street, someone is on the ground breathing heavily or having a heart attack or so we think, and people are stepping around them or looking at them and not doing anything because everyone else is not doing anything and it creates this sort of lock where if you're not doing anything and they're not doing anything, then I'm not going to do anything and everyone's thinking the exact same thing. Right. Because people are saying, oh, if they're not acting like it's an emergency, it must not be an emergency. It must be just a drunk sleeping one off on the side of the road there.

Right. And so everybody decides that nothing is wrong because nobody is acting as if it's wrong. And the reason nobody is acting is that nobody wants to seem flustered and everybody wants to feel poised and calm in a situation and knowledgeable. And so you look around at what the other people are doing before you get all agitated and they're looking around too. and they see that you're not getting agitated. And so everybody says, I guess it's no issue. So if you're ever in that situation, if you find yourself in need and distress, maybe you're having a stroke or something, and people are walking by you, you're in the park, people are walking by you, they're looking at you, but you're not acting.

What do you say? What do you say? What words do you say? You say, you in the blue shirt. shirt, call 911. You assign the task to one person, so they're not going to look around them to see what to do. You've told them, you are the person to do this. Now, there's even more interesting information about what you should say. If you're a woman who's being assaulted, it. Research shows that if there's a public confrontation, a physical confrontation between a man and a woman,

most people will not get involved because they think this is a couple. This is an internal conflict, and they shouldn't get involved. Those people will tell them to hit the road. It's none of your business. So what a woman needs to say to get help is to the person who's a person who's a attacking her, even if it's her spouse, get away from me. I don't know you. And as soon as she says, I don't know you, everybody around them knows this is something to intervene in. So again, the exact words that you use are now what we put in the new version of the book. That makes sense. It is disturbing that people are so unwilling to get in the middle of a domestic dispute. But I also kind of understand why at another level, because you read so often that you don't even help anything,

you just end up getting stabbed or something, and then they're back together after, you know, those two are back together after you're dead. Testifying against you. Right. Yeah, testifying against, he just attacked my husband. Weren't you getting punched in the face? Well, no, I mean, I don't know. You know, they won't do it. But if you say, hey, I don't know you, then I can see that working and people going, wait a minute, okay, this is a stranger just attacking this woman. And then kind of everybody's ears would perk up. It's a shame, but it's, It does make sense that that would work. And the book also outlines why social proof is powerful for both positive and negative outcomes and how we can leverage that. So cults, anti-smoking groups and things along

those lines. And I think that that's a very useful way to think about social proof. And I remember when I was teaching and doing a lot of the dating stuff, it would be like, oh, you want to be seen with these attractive people and you want to know the people that work there and make sure that they're calling you by name and all these sort of familiarity and social proof concepts. But, In the public service sector, you mentioned in the new edition, there's a lot of public service communication gone wrong, right? Highlighting the wrong thing when it comes to signs and trying to influence behavior. I'd love for you to take us through that a little bit because it's almost hilarious how bad

this backfires. Right. So, for example, I live in Arizona. In Arizona is the national petrified forest. At the entrance to the forest, there's a sign that says, so, many people have been stealing petrified wood from the forest floor that it is endangering the existence of the forest, the integrity of the forest, of the park. We did some research. That sign triples theft because it tells people that's what visitors are doing here.

I came to this realization because I had a graduate student who was coming from California, he was working in an ad agency in L.A. to work with me in Arizona. And his fiance stopped at the petrified forest. And he describes her as the single most honest person he's ever known in his life. She's never borrowed a paperclip or a rubber band that she hasn't returned, right? And he says, we're standing in front of that sign. And he said, before I finished reading it, I felt her elbow in my rib and she said, we better get ours too. The single most honest person he has ever known becomes an environmental criminal

because of social proof. That's how powerful it is. And it's mispurposed social proof, telling people how many others are doing this wrong, tells them how many others are doing it. and people pile in to the evidence of what those around them like them are doing. It's really kind of funny how much of an epic fail that sign must. And it's actually a little depressing to think about how many pieces of petrified forest probably have been stolen as a result of that sign from people who ended up, I don't know, throwing them away when they get home because they're like, I don't need this thing.

Right. I just took it because I don't know why I'm stupid. I took it, you know, versus trying to do it in the proper way. So what do you do instead? Do you write a sign that says, everyone's protecting the forest, don't be the one who doesn't? I don't know, something along those lines. Yes, what we say is if even one person steals, it undermines the integrity of the force. So we marginalize rather than normalize theft, and that cuts theft in half. Wow. Yeah, that's something to pay attention to, right? If you own a store, instead of a lot of people shoplift, watch your stuff, or a lot of people still here, watch your

stuff. It might be, this is a very safe place, but theft is so rare. But nonetheless, maybe don't leave your bag unattended. I don't know, something along those lines. We will prosecute to the full extent of the law, even the rare person who does shoplift. That's almost a nicer feeling as well, because the last thing I want to do is think, wow, I'm in a place where everybody steals and it's kind of day. I want to think only the biggest a-holes that walk in here steal things, and I'm not one of those people, right? Right. Marginalize the undesirable behavior. Don't normalize it. We mentioned authority earlier, and this is something that's probably not going to be new for most people, but we trust doctors, we trust people in uniform, typically more. A lot of

con artists will dress in scrubs to show you that they know what they're doing, or they'll get a PhD from a mail in mail order university and say that they're a doctor and then they'll tell you to buy their magical spirit water or whatever, right? And we often fake status to get authority and we fake authority to get status. That's big, anybody who's ever been on a date or been in the dating pool has seen this firsthand, right? And what this does what authority can do is it turns off or disables critical thinking. And this has been massive in social engineering for, I'm sure you've done a lot of work with those like ethical hackers and security personnel who one of the best things you can do to one of, I should say one of the most effective things you can do is utilize authority to get people

to just not think critically about the crappy forgery you're handing over to them or something along those lines. I know that you mentioned disclosing shortfalls or weaknesses in advance, right, in this building authority, this creating a more trustworthy impression. Can you talk about this, because this is sort of an additional take on the concept of authority. Yeah. Authority turns out to be most successful when it's a credible authority. That is a person who has two features. One is expertise, knowledge. That's what we typically think, oh, that's an expert. And we should be sure, before we ever try to influence people, to let people know of our genuine background and experience and credentials in an area, right? We should be sure to do that. But then the second

feature is trustworthiness. If you've got expertise and trustworthiness as a communicator, all other things equal, no one can beat you. It's the single most effective authority communicator we have ever uncovered in behavioral science. So we know about expertise and credentials. Get those across. Usually in writing, you don't want to do it face to face. You come off like a bragger, right? Get those across or have somebody else present your credentials. But then credibility is the perception that you're willing to provide this expert information in an honest, unbiased way. You're not trying to serve your own interest with it. You're trying to accurately depict reality. And there's a strategy that produces instant trustworthiness. It is,

before you mention the strongest feature of your case, you mention a weakness in your case, a drawback. And it causes people to sit back in their chairs and say, what? This person is saying something that's not a plus. I have to listen. This is a trustworthy person. And that's the place for your strongest argument now, when people are registering you as a credible source of information. Now, if you give them the strength of your case that overwhelms the weakness, they believe it in a way they wouldn't have believed it before. You honestly informed them of your

credibility. So this would be an example of this might be. Now, you might notice that this is the most expensive model on the market by far. On the other hand, it's the most effective and it's also the safest and it's also da-da-da-da-da. But it is, again, you know, yeah, and you list all these amazing. No, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. Or if you say, you know, you're in a job interview and you say, you know, I don't have a lot of experience in this particular area. But, as you can see from my other information that I give you, I'm a fast learner. They believe you that you're a fast learner, that they're going to get somebody who is going to grab this information and be a fresh mind to use it, right?

As long as you can actually show that and you're not just blowing smoke, because as an experienced interviewer or a hiring manager would go, I don't see anything here that indicates you're a fast learner, right? You have to have some evidence to show for it. Yeah, you have some evidence of it.

Like, for example, your grades. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Robert Chaldini. We'll be right back. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show. I really love creating this stuff for you. The whole team loves creating this stuff for you. Your support of our advertisers, I know sometimes the ads are annoying.

I try to make them entertaining, but your support of our advertisers keeps us going. All the deals, all the codes that are all in one place, you don't have to write them down, you don't have to memorize them. Please do consider supporting those who support us, and you can do so easily by going to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals, all the codes, all the URLs in one place. Don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode. Those are also free. If you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during the show, they're all in one easy

place in the worksheets that we make for you. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Robert Chaldeen. This is a good thing for people in the job market to note as well, because a lot of young people go in and they go, so they want somebody who's fresh and young and under 30 and willing to work hard and they want two decades of experience. Who started doing this at age 11? Nobody, right?

That's the common joke is they look. looking for somebody who's over 18 and has 20 years, or 18 or whatever, under and has 20 years of experience. So if we're going to disclose a negative, we do it right, not at the very end, because the peak end rule says most people might remember that part the most. You do it right before the most favorable element, which will outweigh the negative. Exactly. Do you remember the ad campaign for Avis, which was Avis?

We're number two, but we try harder? Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Right. Increase their market share by 700% in one year. That's a, you really don't get that in the lifetime of most companies, 700% increase. I mean, that's a really like that's a cryptocurrency level return. Right. On your investment if you bought shares in that company, which reminds me, now is a great time to remind people that negative reviews add to the credibility of the positive for anything in business.

For example, this podcast, right? I'd still rather have the positive reviews. but everyone should know that most people leave positive reviews for this podcast, including some very competent and attractive people. So just throwing that out there for everyone. Unrelated to that, what is our defense against an authority attempt, right? What if we know that this is happening to us in real time? The guy in the white lab coat says we should buy this, but we know he's full of it. What do we do? Yeah. So I recommend, if you notice at the end of each chapter, there's a section called defense. How do do you defend yourself against these principles when they're used in an undo or unwelcome way?

For authority, what I say is you have to ask yourself two questions. Is this person truly an authority on the topic that sends you away from the lab code? It sends you away from the suit. It sends you away from the automobile, whatever it is, the title that they say they have to credentials. It sends you to credentials. Is this person truly truly? an authority. Then if the answer is yes, you're still not done. You have to ask, is there a reason why this authority might be not telling me the truth because he's invested in this particular product, or is being paid to say this? Something like, so you ask yourself two questions. Is this an authority? and should I believe that this authority is providing the best possible information?

In the time that we have left, I'd love to touch on commitment and consistency, because there's some really deep implications for folks who are paying attention to this. The example you give is how good the Chinese were in the Korean War of brainwashing American POWs. And this example is kind of scary. People can Google it and get the full story, but essentially, why don't you, take us through this just in brief, because I know it is kind of a long example, but it's really disturbing because now we see, frankly, we see the Chinese Communist Party doing this against their own people, but we see a lot of examples of this in cults. We see a lot of examples of this

in pretty much any unsavory organization that exists today is using commitment and consistency throughout. Right. And again, it involves having people take a small step that seems harmless, but then that they use to build, because that is now a commitment you've made in a particular direction, now you will be asked to perform behaviors that are consistent with that small step until you get to a place you never would have said yes to. Here's an example. In Korea, both the Chinese communists and the North Koreans had prison camps. The North Koreans tried to get confessions, tried to get various kinds of admissions,

of the benefits of communism by using force. It didn't work at all, but the Chinese were brilliant. They would do small things like, say, in an interrogation. So would you agree that the United States is not a perfect society? Everybody's, oh, yeah, okay, it's not perfect. Nothing is perfect. Well, could you tell me some of the ways that it's not perfect? And then, well, you know, we have some unemployment and we have lots of poverty and sometimes we have corrupt officials and, oh, could you write those down? They're what you believe, right? And now in a group meeting, you're asked to read aloud to your fellow prisoners all the things that you think are wrong. They're what you believe, right? We're not asking you to say, but now you're making more and more

public statements of this. And then sometimes you'll be asked to turn them into an essay. And the winner of an essay contest gets a small prize. And so in order to get that prize, it might be nothing more than a couple more cigarettes or a piece of fruit. People will start embellishing the negatives because they know the more negatives they have, the better chance of winning the prize. And now the Chinese Communist have an essay that you wrote that they can show to everybody and cause you to become a prisoner who has agreed with their case from nothing by commitment and consistency. And this is scary because it works even when we're aware of the coercion element, right? This isn't something where we go, okay, now I know that, you know, they're using authority

on me. This is a scary one because you can see it happening to you almost in real time. and then what do you do? I mean, it seems so much more difficult to defend yourself against this particular principle. Once again, we have to know what the principles are. You know, we've talked about so your audience will know what these principles are. When you find yourself doing that, just as you say, wait a minute, I would never say this. What has happened to me? Then you can trace back the tricks that were used. It wasn't a real commitment to communism or against. democracy. These were tricks. These were devices. That way you can put on the brakes,

pull back from that sense that, oh, I have to continue to be consistent with this because it wasn't a genuine commitment I ever had to communism, let's say. So if we want to get somebody to believe in something, maybe don't bribe them, right? Don't force them. I hate to use the word, but I'm going to use it anyway, bait them to take responsibility for what they're doing so that they invest in it, right, emotionally or otherwise. Right. So, for example, you know how when you go to a doctor or a dental appointment, it's changed these days because of the internet, but we used to get a little card at the end of our appointment

where there would be the date and time of our next appointment, right? And you would get a significant number of no-shows as a result of that. and they found out that they could knock no-shows down to almost nothing by instead of giving the person a filled-out card, have that person write the date and time of the next appointment, take responsibility for what they just did, make a commitment to it, and now they're going to live up to it because it's their commitment. my dentist used to have us fill it out and then sign it. And I thought, I'm keeping it. I don't need to sign it. And you go, no, you got to put your name on there so that you know it's not for your mom. And I would go, oh, okay, that makes sense.

But now I'm like, ah, you were definitely just getting me to commit. He read the book. Yeah, yeah. He may have read the book. Or maybe there's a newsletter for Dennis going around where they explain how all this stuff works. It is possible Dr. Stolberg knew what he was doing. But I don't know. I don't want to give him too much credit.

I still love him. He's a great guy. Maybe he was using this on me the whole time. But asking people to remember their commitments written or otherwise will enforce the desired behavior, right? Signing codes of conduct and things like that. All these stupid things we had to do in college, write this thing down and sign it. They knew what they were doing when they had us do that, when they had us do these agreements

because it does at some level work. And whenever you see an organization that is known for, I don't want to say brainwashing, but certainly influence and persuasion, cults and things like that, or superfluence. super strong groups of believers of any kind, there's a lot of commitment. There's a lot of writing things down. There's a lot of sharing things in a group and trying to almost compete for the most committed. And you see that in action, whether you're a P-O-W or you're a member of some sort of hippie cult in the middle of Redwood Forest, right? Right, right. Or even in a business meeting where you're trying to show your boss that you're on board with this new, and so you,

make public commitments to it that will drive you to make further such commitments to it. What about hazing at fraternities and things like that? Is that the same principle, right? The IKEA effect, right, is where we suffer through something or invest in something and therefore it becomes more important to us. Yes. I also wonder if it's why people keep ugly tattoos. I mean, they're hard to remove. Once they've been tattooed on you, you don't necessarily want to just have them zapped off. Yeah, I'm not sure about that one, but I'll tell you one that explains another puzzle in exactly this way, getting people to commit to something that is difficult, like hazing or going through some sort of strategy or device that requires a lot from them to get to the point

where they are. Do you know that every year Amazon offers all of its employment, all of its people in their distribution centers, their fulfillment centers, offers them $5,000 to quit? Yeah, didn't Zappos do that too, offer them a couple thousand dollars after orientation? If you don't, if you're not feeling it or you need the money, just go kind of thing. Right. And why would they do that? Why would they offer people who have produced great success for them? Amazon is the most successful company around, right? Why would they offer these trained individuals $5,000 to quit? Well, Jeff Bezos, whose idea this was, sends them a memo every year that says, here's $5,000 if you quit, but I don't want you to. I hope you won't.

Now, in fact, 97% do not quit. What does Bezos now have for 97% of that workforce? 97% of the people who've made an active, public, costly commitment to their job. And research shows that job commitment elevates performance. That's what he's doing. That's interesting, right?

Because I can imagine if six months in, I'm going, I don't, this is so painful. I got kind of another cool offer from somewhere else. But I gave up $5,000 to stay here. And I, you know, I didn't do that for no reason. Right.

So that would erase a lot of my will to just bounce for the next shiny object. I must like this job. I gave up $5,000 to stay in it. Do we know if he does that with higher level executives, too? Because $5,000 to somebody who makes that in four days is not going to be much, right? No, it's his fulfillment center employees. Right.

Do you think it would work with high-level executives? I mean, you can always bribe them, but that's not the same thing. Not that, not that amount. No, no, no. Now with that, you'd have to add a zero to that. And even then it's kind of. Yeah, and even then. So do you think it would work with somebody who's making

$5 million a year if they said, look, we'll give you $500,000 if you leave? Absolutely. Not $5,000. You have to give them a reason to leave that isn't enough to get them to leave because they're making $5 million. So they choose not to go. And that choice is a commitment now, a public, active, voluntary commitment. And people live up to those commitments as a consequence.

It would have to be something mundane like money, right? You can't make it too attractive. You can't say we'll give you a bunch of shares or we'll give you a super expensive sports car because somebody might actually want to think about it. It has to be something fungible, right? Something that's not super interesting. Right. So you have to almost be an expert in ratcheting up the amount just under the point of action,

right, under the tipping point, I guess you would say. Right. Right. For action. Right. Interesting. So then what's the defense against this, right? if somebody's trying to get us to invest in this, right? The awareness helps, but what else?

Well, the awareness. And then when you recognize what's been done, stop, step back, and make your decision on the merits of the choice. How much do you like this job? What are the consequences of getting $5,000 and go out on the market? Are there other jobs? Check the merits of it rather than the psychology that the person used to get you into that situation. The choice, the merits of the choice, not how you got there is the key. There's so much more in the book. You know, it seems like we'll never stop being exposed to influence techniques, so it makes sense that we develop an awareness of them and we know how to defend ourselves so that we can regain control and agency over our thoughts and actions. I wonder, is there anything I haven't asked you where you're thinking,

oh, well, we definitely need to cover this? You know, we've done a good job of getting me, getting us through that. I think that maybe the biggest thing is to be sure that when we act ethically in the use of these principles, we do so by pointing to the naturally occurring existence of one or another of them, true scarcity, true social proof, true authority, true liking, and so on. The key is to feel good about yourself in the use of these principles. You can feel both successful and ethical by pointing to them rather than fabricating or counterfeiting their presence in a situation.

Have you found that the natural way of going about each of these principles is more powerful than the fake way? Because that's usually the case with things like this, right? It's usually the counterfeiter, the knockoff is not as good as the real thing. Exactly right. And besides, you feel so much better about yourself if you know that you can win and succeed and be influential without cheating. It's something about you then, about your traits and characteristics and skills. When you see these in the wild and you see them being used in disingenuous ways, what do you usually do?

Do you call it out in the moment? Well, it depends on a situation, but I will almost always go online and report what I've seen either through a rating or some sort of a post. So you'll actually write to the company and say, hey, look, I was told to do this, and this is a principal number, whatever, or this is on page 468 of the book influenced by Robert Chaldeany, no connection. And I'm telling you that this is not the right way to go about this, and you should be instead succeeding on the merits of your product, not on creating false scarcity. You'll actually go and do

something like that? Exactly. And I'll say, you should fire the advertising agency or marketing agency that arrange that message for you because you come off like a cheater. Interesting. Not a good look for the long term. So I wonder, is there, I'm going on the fly here, so I know that I'm probably going to do this wrong, but I'm wondering, is there an underlying principle of almost authenticity that is a part of influence, or is that authenticity an amalgamation of these other principles in some way and trustworthiness? It's an amalgamation of using them only in situations where you inform people with them into assent. You point to true scarcity, you point to real commitments that they've already

made, they are consistent with what it is that you're asking them to do, and so on. But I would say there's one approach that people ask me, if you had one piece of advice, what would it be? It would be when you go into a new situation, when you don't know very much about the people that you're dealing with, expect the best from them. That allows you to be generous. And the consequence of being generous hits on three of the principles. First of all, people like you more for that. Secondly, they reciprocate the generosity with generosity of their own. And when they've done that, they've made a commitment to you as a partner.

When they've given to you, when they've gone out of their way to be generous to you, they've made a decision about making a commitment to your partnership. Robert Cheldini, thank you so much for your time. and your expertise. We'll have to have you come back and discuss some of your other work as well. I read Pre-Suage and I loved it. I did a show with you a long time ago, but we did it over the phone. That's how long ago it was. We didn't have things like this. So I'll have to have you come back and do that. And maybe we'll be able to do that one in person. Who knows? Depends on the old. Who knows? That would be great. Yeah. Thank you once again very much for your time, though.

This is always, it's always so great to go back to these principles because I think a lot of people, they quote unquote, they know them because they feel them. They've seen them in the wild, but rarely do we ever break these down into discrete parts. And that's really the way we're going to learn them and see them being used against us in real time. I agree. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. You asked good questions, Jordan. Got me to the center of my material, you know, the core issues. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. I literally, I think I read influence when I was like 14, maybe. I mean, when did it come out? Yeah. It came out in the mid-80s. Okay, yeah, I still have it. It's literally got to be from 1993 or something like that.

I mean, it's... That warms my heart, I have to say. Thank you for writing it, and thank you for spending so much time with us here. I'm going to link to it in the show notes, the book. Thank you very much. I've got some thoughts on this episode, as usual, but before I get into that, here's a preview of my conversation with Austin Meyer. He's a software developer who exposes patent trolls and how they shake down innocent victims using legal loopholes and abuse of this system. I was working at a trade show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where I was sitting there in a sweltering hot aircraft hangar, showing X-plane, my flight simulator, to a steady parade of sweaty pilots wandering through the hangar to look at my various wares, and all of us from the phone rings. Hello, I noticed you've been sued for patent infringement. I'd be happy to represent you for a price.

And I said, no, I'm not going to settle with somebody I've never even heard of before for infringing on a supposed patent I've never heard of before. And he said, okay, just remember, your defense cost is going to run around $3 million. Wow. The patent claims to own the idea of one computer checking another computer to see if a computer program is allowed to run. The patent we were sued on had, as I recall, 113 claims. And every claim was almost the same. In other words, one claim would say a computer accessing another computer to unlock software. And the next thing would be software unlocked by one computer accessing another computer.

Now it's just the same thing over and over 113 times phrased a little bit differently each time. Because since it took us four years and $2 million to overturn one of those sentences, they had the same thing written down 112 more times. So they could put us through this for the rest of our lives. For more with Austin Meyer, including the details of his own investigation into patent trolls and why none of us are safe, check out episode 326 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. I hope you enjoyed this. This episode was awesome for me to create.

I read this book in the 90s. It's been life-changing. Everything you have heard is in use against you or, yeah, against you at all times, by marketers, by governments, by propagandists, by the media, by people trying to sell you stuff, by people like me trying to give you free stuff like my networking course. We're all using this stuff. So the more you understand it, the better off you are. And the defenses against people doing this and using it in nefarious ways are extremely useful.

There is way more in the book, of course. This is like a 20-hour audio book. A normal-sized book, by the way, is like eight hours if you don't do audio. So this thing is a beast. I thought this was going to be a two-part show, but producer Jason edited mercilessly. There's some interesting anecdotes from the book as well. For example, we will vote for somebody whose face is modified in Photoshop to look more like us. Obviously, it's a scientific test.

But imagine thinking that someone's more qualified because they look more like us. Just think about the average person in this country or anywhere. Just imagine that they think people who look more like them are more qualified. I'm just going to leave that there. Also, the concept of loss aversion and scarcity, this is a game changer for people who are selling, are in sales, are buying too much stuff and don't want to do it anymore. We're more motivated to stop ourselves from losing something

as opposed to having motivation to gain something. Daniel Kahneman talks a lot about this. He's coming on the show as well. People are willing to spend big in order to avoid losing something. This is a fascinating concept. It's just a little teaser of what's in the book. I want you to go and check that out. Also, you're all familiar with the concept of scarcity, right?

There's only two left. By now, here's a counter that's showing you when this deal ends. Everyone familiar with this. There's false scarcity in pretty much every business deal that you see advertised anywhere. This week only, Friday only, until 11 a.m. only. Sometimes it's real. Usually it's false. And this is a concept that when you start to realize that this is being employed,

against you, it just takes away all of the anxiety that is being trained into you by marketers and by media. And the defense against scarcity, and it goes into this in the book as well, is to note that arousal, right, that anxiety that says, oh, no, this is only good for a week or this expire sooner? They're not going to give me this deal later. And then ask yourself, why do I really want this? Do I want the item or the service for the function? Or do I want it just to have it because I feel loss aversion? Like maybe I won't be able to get this later because of the scarcity real or otherwise that is being employed against us. Remember, things aren't necessarily better because they're less available. Things are not necessarily better because they are less available.

Although, tell that to my kid and my cat. This must be why my kid, my cat, they cry when they want something or when I take something away, and then they stop carrying the second that I give them the thing that they wanted. And all parents know this intuitively as well. If you need an illustration of this concept in action, just take something away from your kid and then give it back to them. We won't care five seconds later. Maybe it's just my kid, but I'm pretty sure it's not. Thanks to Bob Cheldini, the book title is Influence. You can find it everywhere.

Again, highly recommended no matter what your line of work is. Links to all of Robert Cheldini's stuff is going to be on the website in the show notes. Please do use our website links if you buy the book. Yes, the links work in other countries. Yes, buying the books helps support the show. Yes, I know you think everybody uses our links and so you don't need to, but that's what everybody thinks. And people tell me all the time, I bought the books, but I didn't use your links.

I'm just one person out of many, right? It's that collective action problem. Please do use those links. Worksheets for the episode in the show notes, transcripts for the episode in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course, which is free, over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and or contribute to the course.

So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Did you notice all the influence techniques at work there? This show is created in association with Podcast 1. And my amazing team is Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful

or interesting. If you know anybody who's interested in marketing, sales, psychology, social psychology, interaction, influence, persuasion, absolutely share this with them. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of the show, so please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused

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