The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Principles of Persuasion — with Bob Cialdini

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Bob Cialdini, one of the world’s leading social scientists, joins Scott to discuss his seven principles of persuasion and his revised edition of Influence — the psychology of why people say yes. Bob also shares how to use these principles in thoughtful debates, politics, and parenting. Follow him on Twitter, @RobertCialdini.  Scott opens with his thoughts on Verizon selling Yahoo and AOL, Epic Games vs. Apple, and Biden’s economic plan.  Algebra of Happiness: Tell someone how impressed you are with them.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Episode 65, the atomic number of terbium plus 65 is the code for international direct out to Singapore. That makes me, that makes me a boomer. All these millennials complaining about healthcare. I'll show you healthcare. In my day, we just died. Go, go, go. Prop G Show. In today's episode, we speak with Bob Cialdini, one of the world's leading social scientists. He's also the bestselling author of Influence and Persuasion, which have sold more than 7 million copies in 44 different languages. We discuss with Bob his revised edition of Influence, a psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. We also hear Bob's insights on using these tools in thoughtful debates, politics, and parenting. Okay. Okay. Let's break down the news. A few topics, a few things in the news, Verizon selling Yahoo and AOL. Shocker that didn't work. Shocker that

a telco buying Yahoo or AOL didn't work. Epic Games versus Apple and Biden's nearly $2 trillion economic plan. Okay, the big news, Verizon is shedding Yahoo and AOL from its portfolio. If you're saying to yourself, well, that never made any sense, trust your instincts. The Wall Street Journal reported that private equity firm Apollo Global Management will purchase Yahoo and AOL for $4.25 billion in cash, and Verizon will keep a 10% stake in the company that's being renamed as Yahoo. Renamed as Yahoo. That makes sense. That's about half of what Verizon originally paid for the two companies. Verizon bought AOL for $4.5 billion in 2015, and Yahoo for $4.5 billion in 2017. I predicted in 2017 that, quote, Verizon will walk from or shave $1 billion plus from the purchase price of Yahoo as they begin to recognize they may be inviting Mr. Death, the mother of all liabilities, into their house.

That was referencing or I was referencing the fact that Yahoo didn't realize they were experiencing an ongoing data breach for about two years here. So verticalization is an enormous trend. The ability to control media preferences with the end product. So Apple gets to promote an inferior music service, specifically Apple Music, over a superior music service, Spotify, because they control the end usage. They've gone vertical.

Core competence is dead. People are going up and down the supply chain, if you will. Retailers are reverse engineering into private label. And then you have brands forward integrating into retail. And the same thing is happening all over tech. And this is an attempt to verticalize. But the problem is when you verticalize and there's really no synergy and you can't figure out a way or you aren't willing to diminish the other forms of revenue such that you say, okay, you can only get HBO if you are an AT&T subscriber, or you can only get AT&T if you are, I don't know, U-verse. I'm not sure what the

right analogy would be there. They never really took cross the chasm, if you will. They never really said, all right, there's any synergy here. The majority of people don't even know Time Warner is owned by AT&T. And then they overpaid for these things. Verizon overpaid. But this is, I mean, this is a flesh wound versus what AT&T is going to have to do to explain the $120 billion acquisition of Time Warner. I mean, that's serious cabbage. That's about 12 times the mistake of Verizon acquiring Yahoo. That was just a quick stumble. AT&T is in the midst of a face

plant and they're going to have to sell off these assets. They've probably made some of the worst acquisitions over the last few years. It feels like Time Warner is literally the Kevin Bacon of catastrophically bad acquisitions. First, they made the worst acquisition in the world of AOL, and I think 160 billion or something like that. Then they acquired Bebo. And then Time Warner was acquired in what was a monstrously bad acquisition for the acquired. The CEO of Time Warner did his job, Jeff Bukas, and got the hell out of Dodge and sold at a high, as did Tim Armstrong, who turned chicken shit into chicken salad and convinced Verizon to overpay for Yahoo and AOL. AOL, remember them? Jesus, that takes me

back. That takes me back. Anyways, oh, by the way, you're just seeing the beginning of this. You're going to see AT&T begin to divest its assets. Might be piecemeal. They might sell the cable bundle of Turner. They might sell HBO, but they're definitely going to sell something. Word has it they've been shopping CNN, which I think is an incredibly underleveraged asset. Oh my God, put that bitch behind a paywall and the most trusted name in news,

whether it's Anderson Cooper, who by the way is literally the most trusted journalist, living journalist alive right now, put Fareed Zakaria, hello, professional role model. Hello, let data speak the truth. I don't care about the far left or the far right. I'm just gonna let, I don't know,

this crazy thing called, you know, data and truth speak for itself. Hello, Christiana Amanpour. Oh my God, oh my God. I've been on Christiana Amanpour. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I've been on Christiana Amanpour, and I have a PBS tote bag. Never question my woke cred. Never. I'm fucking Alan Alda podcasting.

Anyways, according to our guest on Influence, that will disarm you, and that will provide. I'm compromising. I'm establishing authority. Anyway, I don't know where we are. Where was I? Okay, let's talk about Epic Games and Apple or the Epic battle between Epic Games and Apple. Epic and Apple began their three-week trial this week. The trial marks the biggest antitrust case since the DOJ went after Microsoft more than 20 years ago.

What, you think antitrust is bad or anti-capitalist? Guess what? If the DOJ hadn't gone after Microsoft in 1999, we'd all be saying, I don't know, Bing it. Google was birthed on antitrust. Antitrust is oxygenating. Antitrust is the valerian steel of capitalism. Don't believe this bullshit from big tech that innovation will go away or it's anti-capitalist. The most capitalist thing we could do would be to break these things up. Epic Games CEO testified on Monday saying that he knew he was breaking Apple's App Store rules by building an in-app payment system, but did so as a way to highlight Apple's control over iPhone users. Quick recap, in August 2020, Epic implemented its own in-app payment system in Fortnite, and then Apple kicked the game off of its App Store.

Apple's argument is the App Store's rules have made consumers feel safe and secure. Well, I feel warm all over, Mr. Cook, but you're all wet on this one. And this is really your Achilles heel here because the bottom line, if Epic can find a way to get people to pay for in-app purchases and charge them a lower commission, that's what you call competition in the consumer benefits. And even with these new, kind of the new Bork mentality around the consumer test, we don't have any competition in apps. We have a duopoly. And essentially, we have a monopoly called Apple, because I think about 80% of dollar

volume for apps goes through the iOS app store. Apple will complain or will defend this by saying they have spent billions creating a safe, secure ecosystem. Well, fine. If there are true advantages to a monopoly effect where you have to start fairly punishing competitors, then that's called a utility and you should be regulated. What should they do? Simple.

Apple has so much momentum around its businesses where there is truly competition. There's a lot of competition in handsets. Meanwhile, the iPhone, which is essentially a mating call that says, oh my God, I'm creative. I can afford $1,200 on $550 of chip sense and sensors. Have sex with me. By the way, by the way, find any product with a lot of margin in it. It's one of two things. It's something that's either from a monopoly or increases your likelihood of a random sexual encounter. Anyways, back to Epic and Apple. Apple should take the small L here. They should get out ahead of this.

They tried to. They tried to by reducing the commission they demand on apps that are smaller than 2 million, trying to wrap themselves in sort of a cuddly small business blanket, that wasn't nearly big enough. They are going to have to, in my view, they should go to regulators, they should go to competitors and say, all right, we are going to open this up for in-app purchases. We're going to let other people offer their own payment system or their own transactions in-app, in-app, so to speak. They will lose some of that $65 billion in annual revenue they get from their app ecosystem.

But that money, that cabbage is dwarfed by the growth prospects of this company, specifically when it gets into auto and autonomous. Oh my God, specifically, have you seen the latest health thing? Jeez, the new Apple Watch is now going to measure your blood sugar level? Hello? Who's diabetic? America. So this is, they have incredible growth opportunities. Also, a key strategy for Apple has been their disarticulation from the rest of big tech, specifically trying to starch their hat white. And this is their Achilles heel. This is what turns the hat gray and then turns them into the bad guys again. And that is they are really vulnerable around their monopoly abuse of the rails of the app economy. They should absolutely get out ahead

of this. There's only three things, three things only to remember in a crisis. And this is an existential crisis for Apple that could lock the company up and take a lot of attention away from the most innovative, important people in the company. The three things, the three things, one, acknowledge the issue. Okay, we get it. A lot of people justifiably are upset that the all-important app economy is dominated by too few players. We acknowledge the issue. Two, the top guy or gal has to be the one addressing the issue. This should be Tim Cook on MSNBC addressing the issue. And third, you have to overcorrect. While we believe that we have made a staggering investment and made a healthier ecosystem and grown the app economy and helped small business thrive, we see the concerns. We want to be seen as a good citizen. We want to cooperate with

regulators. And we are negotiating right now to come to some sort of pre-settlement settlement. The hardest thing here is to overcorrect. Acknowledge the issue, top guy or gal, and overcorrect. They did a small correction, a small correction with a reduction in commission for small business, but it was sort of, I don't know, overcorrection with a small case O. That makes no sense. That makes no sense. Anyways, you get the point. All right. All right. Let's wrap this up with a comment on Biden's $2 trillion American family plan. So last week, just one day before President Biden's 100th day in office, you thought I was going to say the day before his 100th birthday, didn't you? Anyways, he detailed the second part of his economic agenda in an address to Congress.

After 100 days of rescue and renewal, America is ready for a takeoff in my view. We're working again, dreaming again, discovering again, and leading the world again. The $1.8 trillion family plan is in addition to the $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that Biden announced back in March. The family plan proposes a number of things, including $600 billion in expansion of the child earned income and child and dependent care tax credits, nearly $500 billion for child and family support, including nutritional programs and paid leave, funding for free universal preschool, two years of free community college, and increases the maximum worth for Pell Grounds. What's going on here? What's going on here? The immunity that has finally kicked in, and that is the cohort that has

just gotten kicked in the gut for the last 30 years. Everyone's got their favorite cohort that's been oppressed, but the data shows that people under the age of 35 have had their wealth, their share of wealth cut in half. They've seen their ratio of wealth to income cut in half, whereas every other age group, every other age group in America has seen that number increase. That is the ratio of their wealth to their income. And guess what? For the first time in history, the first time in history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents. And by the way, over half of them for the first time under the age of 30 are living with their parents. So what do you have?

You have shame. And then you have constant reminders of shame in the form of mom and dad who are living next door, as in like a wall separates them. I mean, it's a mix. Can you imagine just how difficult this is? And especially hard on young men who are more prone to suicide, more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to be depressed, more likely to abuse opioids, more likely to overdose. There is a war on young people that needs to stop,

and we need to make a huge reinvestment in young people. Why? Yeah, it's moral, why? It's the right thing, but also it's an existential threat to our society, because what happens when young people, specifically young men, are bored and broke and angry? They get violent. That's how revolutions start. No 65-year-old inspires a revolution other than the 65-year-old dictator that refuses to give up power and implements a

series of shitty decisions. But the people who actually start firing shots, the people who say, fuck this and stand in front of tanks or show up at the castle with torches and pitchforks tend to be young, angry people. And they're getting angrier. Why? Because we keep borrowing against future generations and their generation to pump up the market. This is overdue. And how on earth? You want to talk about an ROI? You want to talk about ROI? Infrastructure. Anyone who's run a company says, okay, I have to invest in infrastructure. I have to invest in technology. I have to invest in real estate. I have to invest in culture, and these investments will pay off. Probably the greatest ROI, the greatest ROI, universal preschool. What happens when you don't give kids the type of environment

where they can learn, where they can get out ahead of the curve, where they can compete? They end up in hospitals. They end up depressed, they end up in jails, they end up on unemployment. We have so underinvested in our young people and our infrastructure. A tax cut for the poor and the middle class is infrastructure because who needs the goddamn train to get to work? Who needs free universal preschool? Simply put, the single mother who wants to be a productive member of society, but can't if the government doesn't step in and help her make those investments in infrastructure such that we can lift up our lower and middle income communities. Two huge tax cuts in the form of an investment in infrastructure. And also, my thinking is the biggest tax cut we could do other than antitrust to oxygenate the economy, simplicity. We implement complexity around our tax code such that we can transfer money from the young and the poor to the older and the rich.

What do I mean by that? If you're running a boat race and you can navigate by stars, you want to have boat races at night. And because we make the tax code so complex, only the wealthy can hire Magellan's to navigate by starlight and figure out all the different loopholes and end up with a tax rate like, I don't know, Amazon that's registered $20 billion in profits over the last 10 years and has paid an effective tax rate of 4.5%. What is your tax rate? The same thing happens to middle income earners. Simplicity, infrastructure, great investments in the young, great investment in our future. It is time. Fly into an airport in China and you say, okay, these people not only take themselves seriously, they take the middle class seriously. That's what it means to take the ballast of a capitalist society seriously, and that is the

middle class. And even though people say, well, China's not capitalist. Yeah, they are. They're acting more capitalist than we are. They're making investments in the middle class. By the way, the best forward-looking indicator for society, how many people it's adding to its middle class and what has America been doing for 30 years? It's been taking people out of the middle class. Infrastructure, levering up, investing in families.

We need competitive young human capital. And the way we do that is by embracing their education, helping moms, helping dads raise secure, loved children that have a shot in the global economy. This isn't an investment in America. It's overdue. It is about time. Who's going to pay for it? Corporations and the wealthy. I was speaking to Stephanie Ruhle and she kind of laid it out for me and she said something that really impacted me and that is, Democrats believe we will vote against what offends us and that income inequality offends us when the reality is people will vote for what affects them. And there's a huge population of Americans that just walk into the voting booth and say, I'm going to just vote for whoever puts more money in my pocket. Now,

having said that, having said that, taking, eliminating the capital gains tax, I think is overdue. I've never understood why we have a preference for the money that money makes versus the money that sweat makes. And corporations should, we should either eliminate the corporate tax and just call it what it is, illusory, and tax at the individual level and stop this bullshit. But this notion that 90 of the Fortune 500 didn't pay taxes last year, tax rate is meaningless. It's all about tax code. We need simplicity. We are going to have to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. For the first time in our history, the top 1% pays a lower tax rate than the bottom 50%. Why the fuck does that make sense? Anyways, I think this is the right thing to do.

I am worried. I am worried. And I talked to Stephanie Ruhl about this. If it sounds like I talk to Stephanie Ruhl a lot and think of a lot of Stephanie, trust your instincts, she said she's worried that Democrats could lose the House, which that's interesting. That kind of blew my mind, just that notion. But I do think we're going to have to figure out a way to pay for this. I like the idea of a financial transaction tax that goes after day traders or firms that are constantly trading securities. I think that could generate a lot of money of value out of tax, maybe, although that's sort of a regressive tax. Anyways, I don't know how I got into

tax here, but he is trying to close the loopholes. First thing, simplify the tax code, you would be shocked. If you said 10% tax rate, zero to 100K, 20%, 100K to 500K, and then say 40% everything over 500K, you'd be pretty much done. That's kind of all the revenue we need. But the problem is these tax rates have no teeth because there's so many loopholes. As Biden put it, it's time for corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to pay their fair share. Bloomberg found that during Biden's first 100 days in office, the 100 wealthiest Americans made a combined $195 billion. Wow. My gosh, $195 billion. On top of that, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon and Microsoft collectively made $321 billion. That's a 41% increase compared to the same period a year ago. And one of the most important parts of Biden's economic plan is what he calls a blue-collar

blueprint to build America. Let's repeat that, a blue-collar blueprint to build America. Right now, the college degree is the vaccine against the inequities of capitalism or can be the vaccine of the inequities, but elite colleges remain, in my view, this is a bit of a pivot to education. Anyways, just go with it. Hold on. Hold on. Elite colleges remain hedge funds that educate the children of their investors. I stand by that. I predicted that they would dramatically open up their enrollments and partner with big tech. I was wrong. They have doubled down on exclusivity. Why? Elite universities no longer see themselves as public servants, but they see themselves as the Hermes of America. They have totally lost the script. I think they're just fucking weirdos saying, oh, let's keep Harvard at 1,400 kids. Let me get this. Let me get this. A $40 billion endowment and you have 1,400,

a class size of 1,400 kids? Harvard, what's the fucking point? Seriously, why are you here? What is the point? And you want nonprofit status? At 38 of the top 100 colleges in America, including five of the Ivies, there are more students from the top 1% of income-earning households than there are from the bottom 60%. Applications for federal financial aid are down 9% in contrast to the explosion in applications to elite universities, which suggests the college ambition among poor and working class kids is declining. That's sad, isn't it? Why am I excited about Biden's economic plan? Nearly 90% of the infrastructure jobs that Biden's plan would create would not require a college degree. Oh my God, a gangster move. I've spent the first 40 years of my life telling everyone they needed

a college degree. Now I'm totally convinced that the key to American prosperity is to figure out on-ramps to the American dream that don't involve a college degree. Why? Because whether we like it or not, two-thirds of young people aren't going to get a college degree. It's not only not for everyone. We say like that was a big deal. Well, college isn't for anyone. Yeah, no shit. Actually, it's not for most people. We've said before on this pod that the only way we can break the wheel of higher ed is if corporations drop their fetishization of the college degree,

or more specifically, are open to employing individuals who do not carry a traditional degree. It's as if you didn't have a security badge and you were trying to break into a corporation if you showed up without a college degree. Oh, yeah, we put those people in the mailroom and we put a ceiling on their careers. There has to be an on-ramp to the greatest wealth generator in the history of mankind,

and that is the US corporation that doesn't always involve a college degree. Am I saying you treat everybody equally? Am I saying you stop recruiting at schools? No, no, but take 10%, 20%, 40% and find skills-based individual as opposed to the certified individual. When I came out of UCLA, when I came out of business school at Berkeley, I was highly certified. Guess what? I was pretty fucking unskilled. Although I could make a bong out of household items, almost any household item, a can, a toilet roll, a apple, anything could be used to inject THC into the lungs of the dog and his buddies. And then we'd sit on the couch and watch the Planet of the Apes trilogy over and over. Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape.

Oh my God, genius. Genius. Anyway, anyway, bring us back. All right, stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with Professor Bob Cialdini. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc.

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to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Bob Cialdini, the foundational expert in the science of influence and best-selling author of Influence and Persuasion. Bob, where does this podcast find you? I'm in my home office in Phoenix. The dry heat of Phoenix. Well done. I grew up in the Midwest and I wouldn't go back.

Yeah, I hear that a lot. We hear that a lot down in Florida. Okay, so let's bust right into it. You have what you refer to as the seven principles of persuasion that get people to say yes. And the latest one that you've added to your revised edition of your book, Influence, is unity. Can you walk us through those principles and tell us why you added unity to the list? Certainly. The first principle is reciprocity. The idea that we feel obligated to give back to those who have first given to us. So, I always advise people who want to be more influential in a particular setting, if they go into a room, the question they should ask themselves is not, hmm, who can help me here? It's whom can I help here? Because if you begin with the process of advancing someone's circumstances, elevating their outcomes, they will, by this rule, stand on the balls of their feet ready to give you those

benefits and advantages when you call on them for some kind of assistance. So the next principle we can talk about is the liking principle. There's no one in your audience who would be surprised that we prefer to say yes to those we like. But there are two very small things you can do to increase the likelihood that you will be liked. One is to point out genuine similarities that exist between the two of you. The other is to give genuine compliments, real praise that is warranted. And so often we fail to do either of those to our detriment, to be honest, and to the detriment of the quality of the relationship that then ensues. Another principle is the principle of social proof. The idea that we, when we're uncertain,

we don't look inside ourselves for answers. All we see is that confusion. We look outside, and one place we look is to the actions and the opinions of those around us like us, something that we call persuasion rather than persuasion, which is actually more powerful than mere persuasion. Because if we can inform people honestly that a lot of people are moving in our direction, people like them, uncertainty is reduced and they're willing to get off the fence and move in our direction. Another principle, similar, is the principle of authority. Again, a way to reduce our uncertainty about what we should do is see what the authorities are saying, the experts, the people who know what they're talking about in a particular domain. You mean actual data? Bring data versus opinions to a discussion?

Well, I think in this case, that's right. Because there are two kinds of authorities. You can be in authority, that is somebody who holds reward and punishment power over you. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone who is an authority, who can bring real evidence to bear based on their perspective and experience and credentials. And so, if we as communicators can establish ourselves as authorities, point out our history or experience in an area, usually not face-to-face. That makes us come off as braggarts. But ahead of time, sending ahead our resume, our background, our LinkedIn page, and so on, that people are informed of our background and experience and

are more likely to say yes to us. And then the next principle would be commitment and consistency. The idea that we want to be more consistent with what we have already said or done. In other words, committed ourselves to publicly, especially publicly, if as a communicator, we can get people to take a small step in our direction, they will have established themselves as committed to that direction and be more likely to say yes to subsequent requests. There's a great example from an acquaintance of mine who says he's figured out a way to really ace job interviews. You know, you go into a job interview, there's usually an evaluator there, maybe more than one. And you ask, so you say to them, I'll be happy to answer all of your questions. He says he adds the following.

He says, but I'm curious. I have a question of my own. Why did you invite me here today? What was it about my background or qualifications? And he gets them to take a step in his direction, committing themselves to his strengths. And then they continue the interview in terms of those strengths and that being consistent with this positive view they see of him. He claims he's gotten three better jobs in a row by using that strategy. Last, another principle is the principle of scarcity. People want more of those things

they can have less of. And as a consequence, anything that we can offer them that is unique, is uncommon, is dwindling in availability, increases their attractiveness to it. So we shouldn't ever forget to identify those things that are distinctive, uncommon about what we have to offer. And the truth is, if we can let people know that there is only a limited time in which they can move to get what we have to offer or a limited number of those things at this price or with these features, they go a little crazy to have it actually. Yeah. There's something you said that really resonated with me is I think especially younger men aren't very good at giving compliments. And that to not – if you think something positive about somebody, whether it's you like the way they're dressed, you're impressed with their success, they say something that's especially insightful. Saying, you know, when it's honest and authentic, essentially, you are very impressive to me. It's just an unbelievable weapon. It's hard not to like people who like you, is what I found.

You know, I have to admit to that is my greatest weakness. It has traditionally, historically been my greatest weakness of, for some reason, has to do with the way I was raised, I think. Not giving compliments that were deserved. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a research meeting and I say to myself about something that one of my graduate students said, gee, that was smart what Brad just said. Or, oh, you know what Rosanna just summarized fits perfectly and explains where our next step should be. And I say it to myself. And I miss all of the goodwill associated with that. And so, I've trained myself out of that. I always, when I hear myself saying something complimentary about a person to myself, I move it from my mind to my tongue. And it's had remarkably better effects on the subsequent interactions and relationships. Yeah, it's powerful. It's as if, as men, we think that compliments are some sort of currency, and that if we give up or we acknowledge another man's strength, that we're somehow diminishing our own strength.

I've thought about this a lot, and I really regret not getting better at it when I was younger. So these principles of persuasion that you lay out can also be used against people. How do you suggest people navigate both sides of that coin? Well, in fact, in the book I've written on the topic called Influence, there's a section at the end of every chapter called Defense. And each one begins with a recognition of what that principle is and whether it was being used on us in an authentic way by simply pointing to real authority that exists. So let's say regarding your opinion or social proof or genuine scarcity that is inherent in the situation, that informs people into yes. And I don't militate against the use of those principles at all. It's the individual communicator who counterfeits their presence there, who manufactures or fabricates and claims to have real authority when that's not the case or lies with statistics to tell us about market growth or market share and popularity and

these kinds of things. Those are the people we have to watch out for. So if you know what the principles are, and you can flag them when you recognize, oh, this is a scarcity appeal, or this is an authority appeal, this is a commitment and consistency appeal, right? Then you can step back from the situation and weigh the offer for its merits on its merits, not on the psychology of the way that it was presented to you. And that kind of differentiation allows you to choose well. And I've been thinking a lot about the notion of rightness versus righteousness. As an example, the difference between having a meaningful and thoughtful conversation or dialogue versus what we seem to have more and more these days is an aggressive call-outs and tear-downs.

You make a caricature of someone's comments, you can take it to somewhere that you can then dunk on them. How can we use your principles of persuasion to try and have a more thoughtful and effective dialogue? Well, one of the things is to use the three principles that establish bonds and relationship strength. They are reciprocity. If you give first, people, it's very hard to disarm, I mean, disarm that feeling. You're wrong, I suck. Yeah. Yeah. The other is liking. You point

to genuine similarities, genuine compliments. There was a lovely study done of negotiators who were bargaining online with one another. And if they sent information about one another, their interests, their hobbies, where they went to school, what their major was in school, these kinds of things, they reduced stymied negotiations where everybody walked away empty-handed from 30% to 6%. Now, the key was not the amount of information that they sent back and forth to one another, humanizing the other person. It was whether there were commonalities in the exchange. That was the thing that caused people to give grace to one another. So, they're not seeing each other so much as adversaries, as interactants, as partners in the process. And then the final principle that works here is the one we haven't

talked about yet. It's the new one, the seventh principle of influence that I call unity, which is the perception. If a communicator can arrange for me to see him or her as a member of one of my in-groups, one of the groups I use to define myself, all my barriers to influence from that person come down. There was a study done on a college campus that showed it's not about similarities of preferences or tastes or styles. This is about similarities of membership in a group. The researchers in this study, they took a young woman, college age, had her stand on a busy intersection of paths on a university campus, a lot of students going by. And she was asking for donations to a legitimate charity, and she was getting some contributions. But if she added one

sentence to the request, she increased contributions by 250%. The sentence was, I'm a student here too. In other words, I'm of you. I'm one of you. Not just, I'm a student like you. That's not the category that people use to define themselves. No, I'm a blue devil, or I'm a sun devil, or I'm a Bruin, or I'm a Spartan. I'm a sun devil or I'm a Bruin or I'm a Spartan, right? Like you, of you, 250% more contributions. Coming up after the break. The thing that the internet and social media has now allowed to work like never before is the principle of social proof. The idea that you can get contact with opinions and experiences of a lot of other people like you and make your decision based on what

they have experienced as a consequence. Stay with us. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series Stay with us. senior AI reporter for The Verge to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, how and when to use AI. A special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS wherever you get your podcasts. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo.

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Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM. So talk a little bit about the role compromise plays in persuasion. Compromise is crucial because it's a form of reciprocation where one person makes a compromise, a concession to another.

And what that logically or what it typically does is to spur the other person to see that it's his or her turn to make a concession in return. So, for example, we did studies where we would ask people if they would be willing to serve as a chaperone for juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo, right? Well, no, we can't do that. Well, then if you can't do that, would you do this just for one hour, right? And now we increase compliance from 30% to 55%. But if you just asked for compliance for one hour straight away without starting with the larger request and then retreating to the hour, you only get 30%. But if you retreat to it, you make a compromise to it, the other person comes back with a yes. Yeah. So, something I also relate to, I get invited to do a lot of debates where they say, all right, should big tech be broken up?

And they bring in some economist or someone from one of the big tech firms, and they'll usually come out of the gates pretty fast and furious. And I find what makes it just a much more productive conversation is to acknowledge their points, is to say, I think that's a good point, and that's absolutely worth considering, and you might be right. It takes to almost de-escalate and say, all right, we're not here to prove each other wrong or right. We're here to try and figure out if there's a way to craft a better solution. I find compromise right out of the gates or acknowledging the point is really powerful. I'd love to get your thoughts around these, how, if and how these methods or points around persuasion survive, thrive, diminish in a world of social media. Yes. So, I think the research suggests that they are valid and they thrive in social media and e-platforms of one sort or another.

In fact, there was a study of 6,700 websites, e-commerce websites. And they looked at in A-B tests, which were the factors that most led people to convert from prospect to customer. And they investigated 29 of them. The top six were these six principles of influence. So they work there because human behavior hasn't changed, even though the platforms and the delivery systems that we're using to send our messages may have changed. But there is one big difference, and that is the thing that the Internet and social media has now allowed to work like never before is the principle of social proof. The idea that you can get contact with opinions and experiences of a lot of other people like you and make your decision based on what they have experienced as a consequence. And as a result, we have these statistics that show that people who buy online in 90, something like 94, 95% of the cases

go to review sites before they buy. They check out what other people like them have been doing. You know, we can't get 95% of the people in the world to believe that the earth is round. We get 95% of them piling in to this approach to knowing better and reducing their uncertainty. That's where I think the biggest change has been in the extent to which the principle of social proof is available to people. Have you done any thinking around how this relates to parenting or has your research influenced? I don't even know if you have kids, professor, but help. Any thoughts around these principles in parenting? Yeah, there's really good information that parents need to be consistent in the way that they structure the environments for their kids. Otherwise, their kids don't see those things as something that they can count on to behave in accord with. And they wind up, there's research, parents who don't

discipline consistency, for example, breed rebellious children. So, one of the things you can be sure to make sure of is that that commitment and consistency principle is well established in the way that you arrange discipline for your kids. And when you look across politics, business, and society writ large, do you see any individuals who are sort of case studies in how to not only garner, but how to leverage their influence? Do you look at somebody and say, this person is clearly either, you know, just occasionally I see somebody and I say, wow, this person really understands brand. They just, the way they behave in terms of managing their own brand. Do you, who do you look at and say that, that person's activities embody the principles of influence? Warren Buffett, no question about it. I happen to own some Berkshire Hathaway stock. He's along with Charlie Munger, his partner, have taken that company from a small unknown holding company into this powerhouse investing holding company that it is now. And because I have some stock, I get his letters to stockholders

every year. Those are masterpieces of the psychology, not only of being a wise investor, but communicating to shareholders and potential shareholders how to advance the message of his company, the strengths of his company, the reasons for doing so. So, for example, one thing he's learned, and it has to do a little bit with what you were suggesting a little earlier about debates, he begins by mentioning a weakness in his case, by mentioning something that went wrong that year, in the past year. And he gets us to say, oh, this is somebody who's trying not to simply create this image, but to trying to honestly inform us about the pros and the cons of investing in his company. And then he provides the strengths. After you have been readied for fully processing and deeply believing what this person says. First, he goes to the effort of establishing his credibility.

Rather than burying the negatives in some footnote on page 48, he brings it up front. He says, this was a mistake we made, but we won't make that mistake again. Now, let me tell you about the good things. Scott, I'm ready to believe the good things like never before. And he does it every year. And I always say to myself, wow, this guy's being straight with us. Yeah. What one piece of advice would you give to a lot of young people listening to the podcast? It's a very male, like 80% of our listeners are young men. Any advice or advice to your 25-year-old self, advice to young people, maybe just out of college, or maybe they didn't go to school, if you could go back, advise your younger self.

Yeah. So here's what I have learned over the years, and I would advise my younger Edivar to say, Chiltini, when you go into a situation where you don't know anybody yet, you're not sure about those people, right? And their motives and their skills and so on. Go in expecting the best of them. Go in expecting that you will have the best kind of partners in that situation with those people because that expectation allows you to be generous with them. And generosity has three very powerful positive effects. First of all, they will like you more for being generous with them. Secondly, the rule for reciprocity says they will be generous with you. And finally, as a result of perceiving themselves being generous with you, they will commit themselves, that will be a commitment that they will see to you and your partnership with them, right?

Those three things will then follow. And if I had to give my 25-year-old self that one piece of information, that would be, and I wouldn't do it. I would go in skeptical. I would go in, you know, not altogether convinced that these people were going to be straight with me, and I would get that back. Yeah, you kind of give what you get. Dr. Robert Cialdini is known globally as the foundational expert in the science of influence and how to apply it ethically in business. He's also the bestselling author of Influence and Presuasion, which have sold more than 7 million copies in 44 different languages. That is, for anyone who's written a book and follows their sales numbers, 7 million copies in 44 different languages. That is, for anyone who's written a book and follows

their sales numbers, 7 million copies. Wow, that's impressive. The latest edition of Influence is out now. He joins us from his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Professor, stay well, and thanks for your time. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Algebra of happiness is something that Professor Chiodini said that really resonated was that, and Cindy Gallop said something similar that stuck with me, that the greatest untapped reservoir or resource is good intentions. You know, I'm going gonna ask you to do something. The majority of our listeners are younger, and that is try and develop or try and get past the insecurity I had as a younger man. And when you think something,

when you're talking to somebody, when you're talking to somebody and you think, wow, you're so impressed by their success, or they're so articulate, or you just think they have a great sense of style. Whenever you think something positive about somebody, try and be disciplined and say, hey, I think you have such an incredible sense of style, or wow, you have such fantastic presence, or what you've built is so impressive. Congratulations. That's just so impressive. It's a tremendous tool because no matter how successful people are or how secure you think they are with themselves, recognition is just an incredible way to say my admiration for you. And I wish I hadn't seen that as a currency

as a young man and that when I acknowledged any positive attribute of another male, somehow I was giving up something that it made me less impressive. What insecure bullshit. Now, I want you to take it a step further. I want you to find someone you love in your life, whether it's your parents, a family member, a mentor. And the next time you register something that's impressive about them, don't assume they know it. Yeah, your mom knows you love her. But when you think about what mom did, whether it was balancing work and family and how impressive that was, whether it's your dad's great sense of humor, if you want to have a wonderful moment with your parents

or one of your parents or someone you love, take pause and say, you know, dad, I think you are one of the funniest people I've ever met. You always have been able to make me laugh. Or to say to your mom, mom, I appreciate just how hard you worked and how impressive you are professionally.

Just take that moment to really to push pause and articulate it in an honest, thoughtful way how impressive you find somebody in your life. And I'm not exaggerating. There's a 50% chance that person, you're going to get tears from that person. We all, we spend so much time with loved ones. We think they know how much, they know how much you love them, but do they know how impressed you are with them? And it just, there's nothing like hearing that from a child or someone that you care about, someone you love. Take that moment, take that moment and assume just for a moment that, yeah, they know it, but they need to hear it. Take pause, tell someone you love how impressive they are,

point to an attribute, show that generosity, show that love. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer, again, growing the enterprise, growing the enterprise. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to The Prof G Show from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. Still not used to that, Monday and Thursday. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners.

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