"World of DaaS"
Dr. Robert Cialdini - 7 Principles of Influence Explained
Robert Cialdini is a world renowned psychologist and author. His seminal work, "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," published in 1984, is a classic in the field. He taught marketing, business and psychology at Stanford and he is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Robert and Auren discuss:
- The science of influence
- Persuasion in tech and marketing
- Guarding against deception
- Persuasive technology and algorithms
Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to WorldofDaaS.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @WorldOfDaaS.
You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Robert Cialdini on X at @RobertCialdini.
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
Robert Cialdini is a world renowned psychologist and author. His seminal work, "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," published in 1984, is a classic in the field. He taught marketing, business and psychology at Stanford and he is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.
In this episode of World of DaaS, Robert and Auren discuss:
- The science of influence
- Persuasion in tech and marketing
- Guarding against deception
- Persuasive technology and algorithms
Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to WorldofDaaS.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @WorldOfDaaS.
You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Robert Cialdini on X at @RobertCialdini.
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
Welcome to World of DAS, a show for data enthusiasts. I'm your host, Oren Hoffman, CEO of Safegraph and GPFlex Capital. For more conversations, videos and transcripts, visit safegraphcom. Slash podcasts. Hello, fellow daters, my guest today is Bob Cialdini. Bob is the world-renowned psychologist and author. His seminal work, Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, was published 1984, 40 years ago. It's a classic in the field and it's really one of my top five recommended books. In fact, Charlie Munger frequently cited it as one of his all-time favorite business book. Bob, welcome to World of DAS.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, aaron, I'm glad to be with you and your listeners.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited. Now I'd like to start with the basics for people who maybe aren't as familiar. There's these seven principles of persuasion. You don't have to walk us through all of them, but walk us through some of the ones that maybe people don't appreciate as much, and some examples of them.
Speaker 2:The first is the principle of reciprocation. People say yes to those they owe. The implication for us is that if we go first and give benefits or information or advantages before we sign a contract, before we have an agreement, people are much more inclined to want to say yes to us because we have given first.
Speaker 1:When I ride the subway car and some cult person is trying to give me a flower, they're trying to give me something small to get me engaged with them. Is that the way it works?
Speaker 2:Exactly right. I mean, when that happens and you accept the flower, it's very difficult to give it back. They won't take it back. For one thing, I used to watch people in airports fall for this, and they didn't want the flower, they didn't want the book that they were given or whatever. But if they couldn't give it back, they would wind up giving something in return. It's a very powerful principle. It's in all human cultures. You must not take without giving in return. We can leverage that by just being benefactors. Before we ask, we arrange a circumstance so that we are providing information or some kind of services to people. They stand on the balls of their feet, ready to say yes to us when we have a request or recommendation to offer. The next principle is the principle of scarcity. No surprise that people want more of those things they can have less of. If we can arrange to show them that what we have is unique or uncommon, rare or dwindling in availability, it becomes more attractive for it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes when I go to the grocery store I'll see something like the maximum allowed to buy of these is three, and I would have never even thought to even buy more than one. But once I see that sign I kind of want to buy all three, that's such a good insight because it's backed up with research.
Speaker 2:There was a big supermarket firm that did that exactly. They put that little card below the array of a product. They got twice as much response as they have ever gotten.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:You know that FOMO fear of missing out. That's what they're leveraging there.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, what's the third one? This is great.
Speaker 2:Third, is the principle of authority. When we're uncertain, we don't look inside ourselves for answers, because all we see is the confusion. We look outside and one primary place is to authorities, the voices of people who are competent and experienced, knowledgeable on a topic. If we can show them that we have that authority or that we have testimonials from people who are acknowledged authorities for what it is that we're saying, we significantly increase the likelihood of our success. There's a nice piece of research that shows, by the way, counter to what a lot of advertising agencies claim, which say, if you've got testimonials, just present your best one, because the other testimonials from other experts will dilute your best argument.
Speaker 1:Turns out that's not true. And the best one, meaning the person with the most authority or the most powerful one, or, yes, the one that sings your praises with the most gusto and eloquence. And what do you think of these eight out of 10 dentists agree. Do you think those are good things or not so good?
Speaker 2:Those are very good things, but there's a little caveat there that has to do with your honesty in this. Research shows that if you say nine out of 10 people who purchase our product report favorable experiences with it, if you say 90%, you get more positive reaction because you've given something specific rather than just number that you pull out the top of your head or someplace lower. If you say 89%, do you get the most.
Speaker 1:It just sounds more believable or it sounds more believable.
Speaker 2:You are being not just specific, you are being trustworthy in the presentation of this and the single most effective authority communicator we have ever identified behavioral scientists around the world is the credible authority, one that has expertise and trustworthiness.
Speaker 1:Nowadays, we often doubt authorities. If we see somebody in a lab coat who's pitching a product or something like that, we think, oh, it's an actor. Or even if it's not, even if they're a well-known person, oh, they're getting paid to do it. And so how do you know it's like a trusted authority, or how does one convey that that's?
Speaker 2:why providing multiple authorities rather than a single one works so well. It's clear that you haven't just cherry picked one, You've got multiple, and they don't dilute the quality of your best one. Your best one is still there. They reinforce that person's opinion and you get the sense of a consensus of opinion and that outdistances a single best one every time.
Speaker 1:What's the fourth one? This is great, let's keep going.
Speaker 2:Fourth one is social proof. Again, when you're uncertain, you don't look inside, you look outside. One place you look is to your authority, figures, experts. The other place you look is to your peers. What are the people around you like you, saying or doing with regard to a particular opportunity, a new piece of software? They've beta tested it for you. You don't have to do it yourself.
Speaker 2:If a lot of people like you not just many people, but many comparable people then you assume that this is going to be right for me. So if you have the evidence of movement in your direction, of market share, of popularity, you make that prominent. Now, if you don't have that, there's a little approach that works. Let's say you only have 20% of your established customer base to buy your new model, the one that you think is better. If you say 20% of our customer base, just like you, that reduces success because that means 80% have not. But if you use the 20% as the end of a trend and you say three months ago it was 10%, two months ago it was 15. Now it's 20. It's the same 20%, but people project that into the future and you get significantly more compliance.
Speaker 1:What I've traditionally found I've been selling enterprise software is just like the most powerful slide is the logo slide of my customers. Here's the list of my customers that are out there. And the hardest thing for me is sometimes you have customers that say, hey, you can't put me on your logo slide. And so let's say, Goldman Sachs is your customer and you really want to tell everyone in the world because it's such a great customer to have, they don't put you on there. Is there a way to like help get your customers, to help them get that social proof?
Speaker 2:There is, and it goes back to reciprocity. What have you done for them? First, to make them obligated to you, to make them feel well, I owe something in return for what I've done? You have to reverse engineer that situation that's in place and then they say, well, okay, all right, what can I do? In fact, there was a study done by Citibank and they found that in British-based cultures the UK, us, canada, australia, new Zealand the single thing that was most likely to lever people in Citibank's management programs, if somebody asked for a favor, was has this person done a favor for me? You're just almost helpless. Then it's my turn.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Oh, this is great. Okay, what's the fifth one?
Speaker 2:So the fifth one is commitment and consistency. The idea that people want to be and to be seen as consistent with the commitments they have already made, especially in public and especially in your presence. So, for example, there was a study done in Chicago. A restaurateur was having problems with people who were no showing after making a booking. They wouldn't call ahead, they wouldn't cancel, they just wouldn't appear. It was a big problem. He listened to what his receptionist said, which was thank you for calling Gordon's restaurant. Please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation. He asked her because he had read my book. He asked her to say will you please call if you have to change?
Speaker 1:Make him say yes or no a yes or no.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Pause. Let them fill that silence with a commitment and unannounced no-shows. Dropped by 64% that day and never went back up.
Speaker 1:When I've been selling software. Usually what we do is, let's say it's a three-month sales cycle. We'll kind of lock with them backward and say, okay, look, three months from now is when this thing normally gets sold. So, okay, that means that two months from now we need to have all this stuff done, because you have to bring it to your committee, and that means one month from now we need to have these other things done. And then we all agree, okay, and they want to get it sold too. So we all work together, we all sign our name. That's committing ourself as well. We have to commit to work to get done, and they're committing their self to that process.
Speaker 2:That's really brilliant, because both sides have to commit. Have you ever have somebody back out? Yeah, all the time. Here's what you can do Send them an email that says I'm so glad that we have agreed to this. I'm so glad that I've mentioned it to all my staff.
Speaker 1:My board yeah.
Speaker 2:That we're going to be working together and now they're publicly committed to it. Based on what they've already said, here's another thing If you've ever got a meeting that you're running where you assign people a task to complete by the next week, don't let anybody out of the room until you say, will you just like in Gordon's restaurant and pause. Let them say yeah. You significantly increase the likelihood that they will because they're on record. Next is liking. No surprise, people prefer to say yes to those they like. Well, how do you get them to like you two? Two things stand out Similarities we have the same taste in whatever and compliments genuine compliments that you give them. I used to be a real laggard in this last one. I remember how many times I've been in meetings with graduate students and I say to myself well, that was a really smart thing that Arne just said. And I say it to myself and I lose all of the well being that goes with announcing it.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it has to be genuine and unique to them ideally.
Speaker 2:All of this has to be genuine. There has to be genuine scarcity, there has to be genuine authority, there has to be genuine social proof, and then nobody loses. Two people like each other more now.
Speaker 1:Obviously it could be on topic, like you mentioned this. But it could even be off topic, like you like their shoes or something.
Speaker 2:Yes, you could. I mean as long as it's real, but the more on topic the better, or even something like where you give them a reputation to live up to. I really like how you come to the meetings prepared. They're going to come prepared to the next one. The last is a new principle that we've developed, called the unity principle, which has to do with the extent to which let's say it this way people say yes to those they consider one of them that is not just similar to them in taste and cuisine or movies or fashion, so they're in the same tribe.
Speaker 1:in a way, they're in a tribe.
Speaker 2:They share an identity, a social identity. All you have to do is when you see that and you raise it to consciousness, they're more likely then to be loyal. People want to follow and favor those who are in their tribes, who are in their categories. I'll give you an example a study done on a university campus Researchers took a young woman about college age, dressed like a college student, and had her stand in front of a table for United Way asking students who were going by to donate. And she was getting some results because she had liking going for them. Similarity about the same age, about the same clothing. But if in half of the cases she said excuse me, would you donate to the United Way? I'm a student here like you, donations went up 450%. You don't say no to one of you.
Speaker 1:You felt like okay, that's part of my tribe. Is there something in a tribe where there's something about we're together on this thing, but we're also against this other thing? Part of being in a school at Ohio State is also hating Michigan. Is there something about? Okay, we also don't like those guys together there?
Speaker 2:is To really solidify the we, there has to be a they that you can distance yourself and distinguish yourself from, and it elevates you and your group, the norms, the values, the beliefs inside that group. It's unfortunate, but that is the case.
Speaker 1:If you're in a sales motion or some other type of thing, how do you figure out what tribe the other person's even in? We're the engineers and we're fighting against the management together, or something.
Speaker 2:You can do that. That's exactly right. I mean, if you're creative, you can find things where you share an identity. I did it with a long-term colleague, turns out. I needed something from him the same day because I was writing a grant report and it needed to be completed and sent off the next morning. And I had a section of it that was incomplete. It really wasn't compelling. But I knew that my colleague in the psych department had done a study that generated the data that I needed, but he hadn't written it up yet, it was still in his archives. So I sent him an email. I said, tim, I really need this. I explained it. It's due the next day. I'm going to call you to try to arrange to get the data to me, the data to me.
Speaker 2:Tim was known as a sour, irascible guy in our place. I call him up. He says hello, bob, I know why you're calling and the answer is no. Look, you're a busy man. I'm a busy man and I said but I have to have it tomorrow. He said, bob, I can't be the correction to your poor time management skills. I'm not responsible for that.
Speaker 2:If I hadn't read the research on unity, I would say come on, tim, I need it. It's good to do it tomorrow, but he said no to that. Here's what I said. Come on, tim, I need it. We've been members of the same psychology department now for 12 years I had the data that afternoon Because that's a very exclusive tribe but how many times have we done business with people for long periods of time as partners, as clients, as co-workers and we have a request? We would be fools of the influence process if we didn't begin by saying we've worked together well for the last X. I really wish you could do this for me. That's all. Just bring it to consciousness. We're students at the same university. They probably thought this girl standing next to the thing was a student, but until unity was brought to consciousness, I'm like you. I'm a student here, like you. It didn't have an effect.
Speaker 1:I'm like you. I'm a student here. Like you, it didn't have an effect. Now that you've seen these practice over many, many years, which of these principles or which of these things do you think is the most misunderstood?
Speaker 2:It's the principle of authority. People confuse being in authority with being an authority.
Speaker 1:Is this your boss, or something?
Speaker 2:It's your boss. That's power. It's not persuasion, maybe it's even coercion, depending on how the boss approaches you. And so people hate that. They resent it. And when the boss can't monitor the behavior, they go around the side of it or they torpedo it, because they resent that. If, instead, you come on as an authority who has information that will allow them to produce better outcomes in their lives, they want to follow that. When you're gone, you don't have to be there monitoring them. It's the concept that they were a credible source of information. You believe that information more and it's the concept that they were a credible source of information. You believe that information more and it's the one that has legs, it's the one that produces durable effects.
Speaker 1:Most of our listeners are in the tech world or data world. What do you think are some examples tech companies could apply from some of these principles?
Speaker 2:Apple does it amazing the way that they release their new generations, their new models, iphones and so on and they produce long lines of people outside the door all night in sleeping bags. It's two principles here. Let me explain it by a true story. There was one of those long lines I think it was for Apple 2 or something like that and people had stayed and my local TV station sent a reporter to interview those people. What do you do? Why are you doing this? And, by the way, did you have sociable conversations with the people around you? And you built your shared identity as an Apple user? You built your shared identity as a Apple user. They said yeah, and this one woman said yeah, in fact, I'm number 23 in line right now, but I used to be number 25.
Speaker 2:And I had a conversation with the woman who was 23, who admired my shoulder bag it's a $2,800 Louis Vuitton bag and I said to her I'll tell you what my bag for your place in mind. Oh my gosh, what a story. Two steps. And, to her credit, the reporter said why would you do that? Well, there are two reasons. One is that long line that Apple created also created social proof. People like me want this thing. The second thing it did was to produce scarcity, and she said this woman to the journalist I heard they didn't have a lot of them at this location and I didn't want to lose the chance to get one scarcity. That combination produced that trade Mind boggling.
Speaker 1:When I was in high school pre-internet I used to wait on these long lines for tickets to concerts. That's how you would get concerts there's a local place and you would just wait forever and in some ways that's how you got rewarded. You could buy the tickets for 40 bucks and kind of immediately sell them for 60 if you wanted to. But nowadays these things are online. Maybe they're manufactured. How does one think about it now that they're online?
Speaker 2:You know who does it Bookingdoncom, which is this company that provides hotel rooms and so on. They found at first, when they were doing this, they were getting pretty good results. If they added which you can see now, only three rooms left and six people are looking at them right now. They did that and the marketing department called the tech group and said there's a problem. We're getting so many requests, there must be a problem with our technology. They said no, it just happened that the competition for a scarce and desirable resource Wow, it's so much of human nature.
Speaker 1:Yes, resource.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's so much of human nature. Yes, I saw an article. They looked at 6,700 online commercial sites and they did AP tests. What are the factors that most cause people to jump and go from visitor to customer? Scarcity, competition for a scarce resource, that is, limited numbers available was the one that was at the top of the list.
Speaker 1:Certainly, a hotel room makes sense it's scarce or like a limited sneaker thing makes sense. But a lot of things that we buy Netflix or something they could sell unlimited subscriptions to Netflix to you and I how does somebody like that think of it?
Speaker 2:They use another one of the scarcity principles. It's not a limited number, it's limited time.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you have a deal. The deal is going to expire.
Speaker 2:This will be a limited deal or this is scheduled to be off of Netflix. This is the last week that it's available on Netflix, and they pile in. That's when they get the most juice.
Speaker 1:Now, what do you think of this word influencer? That's now a common word. Maybe it means something different than when you wrote the book. How do you relate to that?
Speaker 2:I'm neutral with regard to it. I don't mind people being influencers, provided they've done it ethically, provided they've used these seven principles of influence by pointing to them when they are naturally there in the situation. We have a limited number of these, or this is what the authorities say about this brand of cosmetics, or I'm just like you and I love this lipstick, whatever it is. If that's true, I don't mind it. You're informing people into a scent. We've got a trend.
Speaker 2:If that's true, you'd be a fool not to use it, because if I'm a customer, I want to know that. I want to put that into the equation of what I decide on this. It's when they counterfeit that information, when they claim product sales that don't really exist, when they cherry pick a single authority who says something good about but it's not representative of all the people, when they claim that there's scarcity when there isn't scarcity. Those are the people who I want to spit in their direction, honestly, because they're corrupting this shortcut that we need, in the information overloaded nature of modern life, to make good choices quickly.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of these influencers who are focused on very, very, very specific things. People are really good at fishing or something like that, and they talk about why they're good at it, but they also talk about how to get better at it. Or I'm great at guitar or something. And what I like is some of them are very genuine. They may sponsor products, but they sponsor the products they actually use and you've seen them in other videos. They're using this product because they actually really like it. Maybe they got paid later. They probably used it first and then the sponsor's like oh wow, they really like it, so then I'm going to pay them. That's what I like, but when they're shilling something that you could tell they don't really even use, it's just the money, not the favorability.
Speaker 2:The person who was the queen of infomercials once was doing a study where she changed what she said at the end of a message to instead of operators are waiting, please call now to. If operators are busy, please call again. And it's quite like never before. And you think about it. If operators are waiting, they call again and it fights like never before. And you think about it. If operators are waiting, they're twiddling their thumbs.
Speaker 1:Totally right. Operators are standing by. Yeah, what are they doing? No one's calling Operators are busy.
Speaker 2:It means a lot of people like you have decided to do this.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest areas, like in discussion tech right now, are all these addictive algorithmic feeds that are out there on TikTok or on Instagram, et cetera, and they're using all these different persuasive technologies and sometimes manipulating their users. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Again, I'm neutral on it. It depends on whether what they're saying is genuine or whether it's designed to manipulate their preferences without a basis in reality. That's where I draw the line.
Speaker 1:Part of the benefit of understanding the principles of persuasion is also to be slightly less susceptible to being manipulated. I admit I'm ultimately always manipulated by these things and I feel like I'm falling for them all the time. They still manipulate me, but are there ways we can inoculate ourself a little bit more to being less likely to being taken advantage of?
Speaker 2:I think there are in fact in my book Influence where I have each of these principles. The last section is how to say no. I talk to people about how to recognize and resist and deflect these principles when you see them being employed in some sort of undue or unwelcome way. But I think the best way to do it when you might not even be able to recognize that, is check the internet first, go online, see what product groups are saying about this, see what evaluations, see what comments their customers and so on have gotten and then, if they fake that somehow you don't know to do that when you have been deceived, go online and penalize those people Write a bad review or those types of things.
Speaker 2:We can't allow them to get away with this. Really, they have to be sanctioned. If they have done things with all respect for ethics and authority and responsibility, compliment them on it so that they're praised for that kind of behavior. When it is the case and we can be as instrumental on the internet as we are recipients of information we can be the providers of information that shape the reputations of the people we like and dislike.
Speaker 1:Now, when you think of these kind of more well-known scams like Bernie Madoff or Theranos or FTX or some of these things where people go into jail, what have you learned from watching or seeing how these folks operated?
Speaker 2:The thing that they operated on. I think there were multiple things. What's surprising is that these weren't just foxes raiding the chicken house. They were fooling other foxes.
Speaker 1:Rupert Murdoch put $100 million into Thernos and.
Speaker 2:Madoff had investors, had economists, financial giants investing. Economist financial giants investing it was because he put them in a category of people who he would allow in. He got them in the club. In the club and it was scarce, not everybody was allowed in.
Speaker 1:In fact, he would sometimes threaten that he would kick people out. Formal fear of missing out. Yeah, it was interesting. If you think of the board of Theranos, it was the most well-known people George Shultz, henry Kissinger, those types of people. You've also studied cult indoctrination. What are the parallels there? And I assume there's also some parallels with the algorithm-driven communities as well.
Speaker 2:There's some parallels, especially with the ideologically based ones, and the parallel with cults is they degrade all other sources of information except this one that we have the truth. Everybody else is lying to you or everybody else is ignorant or stupid, and so this is the one place, just like the cults. They don't even let you, once you're in the cult, they don't want you speaking to your former friends or family members. They want no information at all except the information that comes from this source to be seen as credible.
Speaker 1:They disparage and discriminate against those outsiders and essentially that idea of being the same tribe is times 100.
Speaker 2:There's a set of academics who did a long set of studies in tribalism and they said tribalism is human, it's deep in there.
Speaker 1:If you think of politics, it's sometimes not even about how much you like your own team. They said tribalism is human.
Speaker 2:It's deep in there If you think of politics it's sometimes not even about how much you like your own team. It's really how much you dislike the other team Exactly and there's research to support that that you would be willing to overlook or dismiss or minimize an ethical violation of a politician who is in your tribe, in your party, and what's happened is this is really regrettable. Factions are superseding facts. Facts don't matter as much as the faction I'm in and the information that's coming from them, what we all believe and prefer to believe.
Speaker 1:I'm worried. Do you think there's an antidote to that, or? Obviously, people have been talking about this for a long time. It doesn't seem like it's going to stop.
Speaker 2:Again, with one individual interaction you can make a difference. You can, as I say, you can make a difference. You can, as I say, do something for that person. First, get them obligated. You can be a listener a concentrated listener to their position before you ever present yours, and, by the rule of reciprocity, if you have listened deeply and asked non-evaluative questions that get them to tell me what you believe and why, when you stop, it's their turn. They'll listen to you in ways that they wouldn't have before.
Speaker 1:If you think of an AI, the first thing I'm sure every AI has done is read your book, and we certainly wouldn't want the AIs to use it as a tool to manipulate humans and stuff. I don't know if you've thought about this, but is there a way to design an AI persuasion system so that it respects human agency?
Speaker 2:I have thought about it and this is really a good insight Because just last week and I think it was in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science the proceedings of the National Academy of Science there was a study that showed that the newest LLMs GPT-4, for example understands what deception is. It understands deception and if you include a prompt for Machiavellianism, it will produce a deceptive communication for you. It knows how to do it. The only thing I can think of. We have to fight fire with fire and we have to design models that detect deception, that we can run an answer. Tell me, how manipulative is this? That's where we should be spending our focus.
Speaker 1:Defensive things essentially. That would be great. I could run every advertisement through it too. Here's what they're trying to get you to do, or here's how they're trying to get you to do something. Kids are naturally good at deception. They're naturally good at slightly changing things or putting on puppy eyes if they want to stay up 30 minutes later or have another ice cream cone or something. It just seems like very wired into the average six-year-old or something. Is that just part of human behavior?
Speaker 2:It is because I think they can recognize very early on how much of a sucker we are for our kids and I'm speaking now as a grandparent they can get me to do anything.
Speaker 1:It's hard to say no. It really upsets their parents, they say no, no, no.
Speaker 2:They can't have everything. No, no, don't tell them that they can. No, no, that's not how we're trying to raise them.
Speaker 1:I'm lost.
Speaker 2:I actually have some research on this. So I once did a study where I wanted to get the parents of the students in one of my classes to answer a questionnaire. But how could I do that? I mean, the parents don't get a grade. But I said to the students send this questionnaire to your parents and tell them that if they return it within a week I will give you one bonus point on one of the exams. In this class I had 296 students and I got 291 back. Crazy, never seen anything like this. And I said the only way I could increase this would be if I asked them to send these to their grandparents. Then they'd get 295 of the 296. And the one who didn't would have had a cardiac arrest running to the mailbox.
Speaker 1:That's crazy If you think of like a venture capitalist. So I also have a venture capital firm and sometimes we send entrepreneurs a cold email and we say hey, we really like your company, we'd love to chat with you. We're out there in kind of a sales mode. Of course we think we can help them and of course we want to give them money, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but still, like, our response rates aren't as high as we'd like them to be. What advice would you have for us Give?
Speaker 2:them examples of other companies like them that they would respect, or something Other family run businesses, other businesses with multiple locations in the same city, something like that. That means we haven't sent you something completely cold. We've recognized who you are, what your situation is and we have something for you, because we've had other businesses like yours respond to us.
Speaker 1:There are certain voices that I respond really well to and even like when you think of podcasting. There's certain voices you're like oh, or maybe even a certain look, how do those things play into it? Maybe it's the likability thing, where some of these things play into the likability.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a political example the two US presidents who were able to do that amazingly well to get people who didn't know them to respond positively to them Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. They were both seen as Teflon presidents. They had scandals that would just roll off their backs because they would connect with their audiences as communicators. People would say, well, he's talking to me, he really cares about me. That kind of communicator that's very effective. Also, you were mentioning voice. There's research to show that if you increase the cadence of your voice just a little bit so not your usual, but one step faster, you seem more confident and truth speaking, because you know this.
Speaker 1:You're convinced that this is the right thing. When I listen to my own podcast, I'll listen to it on regular speed, but then I listen to it on 2x speed. I feel like I'm 10 times smarter at 2x speed than I am at regular speed. I would recommend 1.5 for most people. Obviously, people change their appearance from dyeing their hair to cosmetic appearance, to facial hair, to other types of things. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I don't object to it. I think that people are allowed to look as good as they can. Would we object to people taking vitamins or working out or buying up-to-date clothing? No, I think that that's fine. I don't have a problem there.
Speaker 1:What about in the world that we're living in now? We can change our voice, we could change our actual appearance, because on the screen we can do all these other types of things, and maybe you can change it slightly. Like I can get rid of any blemishes on my face, or I could change it drastically as well. You could be talking to someone who looks completely different than me. Like, how do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not so crazy about that one that strikes me as using artificial means it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not so crazy about that one that strikes me as using artificial means. It's not really you, so there's some sort of line there. You can maybe dial it a little bit, but not too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you've seen these obituaries where people have a picture of them at 21 years old. They've died at 71. But they have a picture of them from when they were on the baseball team in high school or college or when they were in the army or something. I would much prefer the ones that have a picture of them then and a picture of them now. Both are genuine.
Speaker 1:I find that sometimes even like if someone's LinkedIn profile. There was a point not that long ago where I had a LinkedIn profile picture from like 10 years ago and I'm like this is just not truthful anymore. I just hadn't updated it. I'm like I got to update this LinkedIn profile because it's really not who I am anymore.
Speaker 2:I gave a platform presentation, a big group and they had a picture of me from a decade ago. What I did was to say first of all, I want to thank the designer of that poster. Thank you very much. But that's not me admitting to it. But having a little bit of self-deprecating humor really goes a long way in getting you. You know Guy Kawasaki, the evangelist for Apple during Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2:We were on the same panel, the same dais of, a couple of years ago in Romania, in Bucharest, and he came up to me before. He said I'm going to use your name in my introduction because I'm going to have to say positive things about myself, about how Jobs and I created the brand of Apple. Saying positive things about yourself in person makes you lose liking and credibility. He figured out a way to do it by starting with self-deprecating humor. He got on the stage and he said I called my wife last night and I said to her in your wildest dreams would you believe that I'd be on the same stage as Harari and Cialdini? In your wildest dreams would you see me there? And he said she said to me, guy, you're not in my wildest dreams.
Speaker 1:That's a great story.
Speaker 2:Everybody laughed and everybody loved him. He had buffered himself from the self-promotional things he had to say because he punctured himself at the beginning with this self-deprecating humor.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting that even to this point in the podcast we're really just getting to humor. When people do use it, at least for me, I am so susceptible to it, especially on the liking. I tend to like people who are humorous and stuff. Is that universal? Is that cross-cultures?
Speaker 2:I think it is. I've seen a study that said if you start an email message with a funny cartoon, people are more likely to accept the message.
Speaker 1:They're in a good mood and you've given them something, you made them laugh a little bit or chuckle, or something Piece of joy. Yeah, I've seen you tweet before that you don't have any heroes except Charlie Munger. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship you've had with him?
Speaker 2:About 25 years ago I opened an envelope a legal-sized envelope that I got in the mail and there was an A-share of Berkshire Hathaway stock from Charlie Munger.
Speaker 1:Even 25 years ago, that was actually worth a lot. It was $75,000.
Speaker 2:And he said your book has made us so much money by your principle of reciprocation I owe you. That's amazing and that was the starting point for our relationship. My wife and I would go to the Berkshire Hathaway meetings. He had a dinner the night before, not just with us but 75 other people, and we stayed connected over that time and I learned a lot from Charlie just watching him operate.
Speaker 1:Because one of the things he was so famous for was talking about incentives. In some ways, that's related quite a bit to your principles. What have you learned from his incentives theories?
Speaker 2:What he was able to show is that incentives are not just monetary. There are incentives, for example, associated with giving back to others. If they have given to you, there's an incentive to do that, otherwise you get eliminated, following the lead of comparable, multiple others. There's an incentive for that. You're likely to make a better choice. So all of these things, I think, fit with that larger sense. People do act in their best interests, but it doesn't have to be monetary best interests. It can be psychological, social self-interests as well. Benjamin Franklin said if you wish to persuade, speak not to argument, speak to self-interest.
Speaker 1:All right, we have two questions we ask all of our audience. First one is what is the conspiracy theory you believe?
Speaker 2:I believe that most politicians are willing to lie to us, and the reason that they do polling and focus groups is to find the lies that we most want to believe, and they'll tell us those.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure how much a conspiracy theory that is, because I feel like most people probably believe that.
Speaker 2:That's why they do focus groups.
Speaker 1:They tell us they're doing focus groups for other reasons than finding the lies we're willing to believe, and the lie we're willing to believe is X, and that might move us in some sort of way. Nowadays, a prerequisite to being a politician is being able to lie politician is being able to lie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those who are most authentic get more votes for that authenticity. I think it's wrongheaded in the long term.
Speaker 1:But is it one of those things? Well, if you fake sincerity, you have it made or something. Yeah, that's right, exactly right. All right, this has been great, okay. Last question we ask all of our guests what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?
Speaker 2:One conventional piece of wisdom or one thing that people typically do with regard to the influence process is to have a favorite influence appeal, a favorite approach.
Speaker 1:They have like a specific arrow in the quiver that they use.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's a mistake. I have a colleague at the University of Florida, marketing professor, who decided that he was going to find the single most effective persuasive appeal a persuasive approach. What would it be? And I saw him at a conference about two years later. He said, bob, I found it, the single most effective persuasive approach is not to have a single persuasive approach. That's a fool's game to think that the same way, the same technique is going to work for all populations in all situations and even with the same person, you have to change it up quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Exactly. This is amazing. Thank you, bob Cialdini, for joining us on World of DAS. I've been a huge fan of yours for many, many years, Read your book even when I was in college, and I follow you also at Robert Cialdini on ex-formerly Twitter. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed it, I have to say.
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