Quotes from Robert B. Cialdini

those who cheat for you will cheat against you.

you're much more persistent when you're confident in your abilities.

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.

It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations.

civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.

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.

a communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. —

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.

once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience.

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

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.

Just as amino acids can be called the building blocks of life, associations can be called the building blocks of thought.49 In

What we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next.

So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them. There's a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves.

in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses; for confirmations of the idea rather than for disconfirmations.

Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.

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.

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.

A job candidate might say, "I am not experienced in this field, but I am a very fast learner." An information systems salesperson might state, "Our set-up costs are not the lowest; however, you'll recoup them quickly due to our superior efficiencies.

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.