80 Top Quotes From Influence
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion delves into the fascinating science of social influence and the psychological principles that drive human decision-making. Robert Cialdini, a renowned psychologist, explores the six universal principles of persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus. Using compelling real-life examples and experiments, Cialdini demonstrates how these principles are harnessed by marketers, salespeople, and even individuals in daily interactions to sway behavior and make persuasive appeals.
By understanding the underlying mechanisms of influence, readers gain valuable insights into how to become more effective communicators and protect themselves from manipulative tactics. The book goes beyond merely identifying these principles and equips readers with practical techniques to ethically and effectively use them to influence others positively. Influence is a captivating and eye-opening read that sheds light on the subconscious drivers of decision-making and empowers readers to navigate a world of persuasion with greater awareness and discernment. (Influence Summary).
Influence Quotes
"Embarrassment is a villain to be crushed.”
"We all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided”
“A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.” (Meaning)
"Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”
"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”
"There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news. The simple association with it is enough to stimulate our dislike.”
"People seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.”
"The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.”
"Persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”
"Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.”
"Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
"The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.”
"All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality…and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he wins, you win.”88”
"Be as precise as possible about your need for aid.”
"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
"When our freedom to have something is limited, the item becomes less available, and we experience an increased desire for it. However, we rarely recognize that psychological reactance has caused us to want the item more; all we know is that we want it. Still, we need to make sense of our desire for the item, so we begin to assign it positive qualities to justify the desire.”
"First, we seem to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t.”
"Good-looking people are aware that other people’s positive evaluations of them are not based on their actual traits and abilities but are often caused by an attractiveness “halo”
"Apparently we have such an automatically positive reaction to compliments that we can fall victim to someone who uses them in an obvious attempt to win our favor.”
"In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.”
"Our typical reaction to scarcity hinders our ability to think.”
"The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.”
"Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds.”
"The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.”
"We like people who are similar to us. This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background, or life-style.”
"Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others’ actions to decide how they themselves should act.”
"Audiences have been successfully manipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.”
"Abraham’s willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of his young son because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn in this story that the correctness of an action was not judged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.”
"The feeling of being in competition for scarce resources has powerfully motivating properties.”
"As a general rule, whenever the dust settles and we find losers looking and speaking like winners (and vice versa), we should be especially wary of the conditions that kicked up the dust—in”
"Once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience.”
"We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves.”
"Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.”
"We all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.”
"There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news.”
"Once again we can see that social proof is most powerful for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.”
"Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them. –Alfred North Whitehead”
"The drop from abundance to scarcity produced a decidedly more positive reaction to the cookies than did constant scarcity.”
"Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?”
"The aim is to get someone to want to buy quickly, without thinking too much about it.”
"When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal results; but when the news story concerned an older person’s suicide, older drivers died in such crashes. l advised, then, to take special care in our travels at these times.”
"Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.”
"Psychologists have long understood the power of the consistency principle to direct human action.”
"The second important thing to understand is that we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can be used to dupe us into playing them at the wrong times.”
"Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A”
"Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.”
"The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.”
"The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.”
"The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.”
"In this case, because we know that the things that are difficult to possess are typically better than those that are easy to possess, we can often use an item’s availability to help us quickly and correctly decide on its quality.”
"Revolutionaries are more likely to be those who have been given at least some taste of a better life.”
"A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason.”
"The house I got them spotted for looks really great after they’ve first looked at a couple of dumps.”
"When it comes to freedoms, it is more dangerous to have given for a while than never to have given at all.”
"Stubborn consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We don’t have to think hard about the issues anymore.”
"The automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise.”
"The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors. ”
"Once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.”
"When we are uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd.”
"Bad social proof in this situation. Temporarily disconnect automatic pilot.”
"Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth that directs them to seek prestige not from the generation or promotion of their own attainments, but from the generation or promotion of their associations with others of attainment.”
"Such cases it is vital to remember that scarce things do not taste or feel or sound or ride or work any better because of their limited availability.”
"After being exposed to the price of the large item, the price of the less expensive one appears smaller by comparison. In the same way, the larger-then-smaller-request procedure makes use of the contrast principle by making the smaller request look even smaller by comparison with the larger one. If I want you to lend me five dollars, I can make it seem like a smaller request by first asking you to lend me ten dollars. One of the beauties of this tactic is that by first requesting ten dollars and then retreating to five dollars, I will have simultaneously engaged the force of the reciprocity rule and the contrast principle.”
"It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.”
"The principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.”
"Compared to the customers who got only the standard sales appeal, those who were also told about the future scarcity of beef bought more than twice as much.”
"Now, during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially.”
"The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity”
"Higher price typically reflects higher quality.”
"Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.”
"To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it."
"All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality…and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he wins, you win.”
"Patsy. For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark”
"It will be when prestige (both public and private) is low that we will be intent upon using the successes of associated others to help restore image.”
"The world abounds with cults populated by dependent people who are led by a charismatic figure.”
"Every day in every way, I’m getting busier."
"All this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe in.”
"It is odd that despite their current widespread use and looming future importance, most of us know very little about our automatic behavior patterns. Perhaps that is so precisely because of the mechanistic, unthinking manner in which they occur. Whatever the reason, it is vital that we clearly recognize one of their properties: They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work.”
"There is an obligation to give, an obligation to receive, and an obligation to repay.”
"Our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
"The correctness of an action was not adjudged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.”
"Principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”
"Automatic-pilot device, like social proof, should never be trusted fully;”
"Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly that the product is good, they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough. The”
― Quotes from the book Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Influence Author
As a renowned psychologist and author, Robert B. Cialdini has become a leading authority on the science of persuasion and influence. In his groundbreaking book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," Cialdini explores the principles behind why people say "yes" to certain requests and how these principles can be ethically applied to various aspects of life, including business, marketing, and personal relationships. Through engaging storytelling and empirical research, Cialdini uncovers the six key principles of influence, such as reciprocity, commitment, and social proof, shedding light on the subconscious drivers that guide human behavior. With his keen insights into human psychology, Cialdini equips readers with the knowledge to become more discerning consumers and decision-makers while also providing valuable tools for those seeking to communicate and persuade more effectively. Robert B. Cialdini's work continues to be a go-to resource for anyone interested in understanding the intricacies of persuasion and the powerful role it plays in shaping our choices and interactions with others.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
