Robert Cialdini on the Psychology of Persuasion (Podcast)

Robert Schildini is a professor at Arizona. He is also the author of what everybody I know who works in any form of marketing or sales calls their Bible. UH. He wrote the book Influenced the Psychology of Persuasion, and he tells some just absurdly delightful stories of spending time working under cover at used car sales places and UM

infomercial sorts of shops and UH fundraisers. UH. He also explains how Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway was so taken by the book UH that thirty years ago he sent Bob a single share of Berkshire Hathaway stock UH and, as you can imagine, turned out pretty well when everything is said and done. I found the conversation absolutely delightful, and I'm sure you will also. With no further ado my conversation with Bob Cheldoni. My extra special guest is

Dr Robert Schildini. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina and did some post stock work at Columbia uh. He is currently the region's Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is perhaps best known as the author of the book Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion. That book has sold three million copies in over thirty languages. He is also a co author

of fifty scientifically proven Ways to be Persuasive. His latest book is Persuasion, A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. Robert Sheldini. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you, Barry. I'm very glad to be with you and your listeners. Same here. I'm excited to talk to you because everybody I know who works in the field of sales and marketing. When I just casually mentioned, oh, by the way, my guest this week is going to be uh Dr Sheldini, Professor Sheldini,

they were like, what from Influence. So they were very excited to uh to hear we were having this conversation. And I have to begin with the story of the original research you did for the book Influence. It almost sounds like an urban legend. You spent three years undercover working as a used car salesman, a telemarketer, UM, a fundraiser. What what was that period like and how instructive was it?

It was the most instructive and most entertaining research enterprise I've ever engaged in, because not only was it fun uh to mix up the idea mix up with the ideas of people who were actually practitioners who were in the business of getting us to say yes, not just the study of it, uh, but also I learned so much as a consequence of how they employed psychology, which is my field, uh, to move others in their direction.

Did you go into that research expecting I'll get a book out of it or was it really let me get some practical grounding in the field before I become a pure academic. No, that's really a good question. I went in to it to get some ideas for doing research in my laboratories, UM, where I would say something this way versus that way and see how many people agreed with it. It was the same thing, I would

just say it in different ways. But I realized that by staying located in a laboratory with college students as my subjects, I was missing the power of these techniques to really make a difference outside of the laboratory. In the real world. Well, there were professions dedicated to getting others to say yes to them, and it seemed to me there was a lot to learn if I infiltrated their training programs and learned what they were teaching their

perspective professionals. When when did you decide, Hey, you know, there could be a book in this. You know. That's exactly what happened to me about three months in, because what I was learning was telling me there are universal principles of persuasion in a limited number, not just hundreds

or thousands of tactics. They could be They could be categorized under six basic categories tendency, human tendencies that inclined people towards yes, And so I thought I could put each one as a chapter in a book and tell the story of what are the fundamental reasons that people say yes to requests? As as I was rereading influence and reading persuasion, I couldn't help notice the parallels to

behavioral finance. So you were doing your work in the early eighties around the same time as some of the early work in behavioral finance. When you're doing your research or the academic side of it, did did you ever come across the works of comments Aversky, fail or Schiller, all the behavioral scientists of that era were these two

completely different paths. They were parallel paths that converged about five or ten years later when I realized, oh wait a minute, the work that was coming out of the practitioners who were in the streets was comparable to the work that was coming out of the scholars who were in the avenues. What I did was to move from the from my university position the avenues into the streets. That was the smartest thing I ever did. So there are some examples that are just simply amazing, and I

want to give a few examples. Can we increase voter turnout simply by surveying people and asking them not who they're going to vote, but asking them to make a prediction whether or not they're going to vote. What what's the impact of that. In fact, there is research to show that that's the case because people then set a path in their mind and a time in their mind, and they then use those features as cues that spur

them into action. Or if it's just left ambiguous, there are really no cues in their mind that send them and into a behavior change. So simply asking people and when you ask people, hey, do you think you're going to vote this year? Most people are gonna say, yeah, I expect to vote. That simple act then gets them committed to actually vote in And if you say where

and when will you vote? Doubles it doubles it. So my local polling places, the library or the school around the corner, and just really and it's November six, hypothetically this year. That has an impact that does that. That's that's quite astonishing. So when you were writing the book, after your three year experience um in the trenches, did you have any idea how successful this was going to be as a book? Did you have any idea that

sort of reaction this was gonna in gender? I could not have sensibly known Verry because there were no books like this, And did you have an So sometimes I'll wrap. Sometimes I'll write a column and I'll say, oh, this is the greatest thing ever, and it just lands and nobody cares. And every now and then I'll put something out and I'm like, oh, that's not bad, and it

just goes. I'm curious if at a book length you have SIMI looks, do you have a sense at the very least this is very different than than the academic literature that's out that right, But I didn't know that it was going to be adopted um outside of the academic community, which it has. I was in Poland recently and I have a colleague from Poland, professor Vilamina Voisinska. She said to me, you know, Bob, your book Influence is so famous in Poland. My students think you're dead.

That's fascinating. You wrote the book in the early eighties. How has the state of the art on psychology and persuasion changed since then? The tendencies that people employed to decide whether to say yes have not changed. Those were evolved over eons. They're still in US hardwired. What's changed is the channels available for using or tapping those tendencies.

And the biggest change is the Internet We now have available to us information about what other people like us have done, are choosing to do, have opinions about from around the world, chat rooms, interest groups, various kinds of review sites, and so on. We know what thousands of people who have similar interests as us are thinking and

doing and reacting. And if we follow that lead, which is what I call the principle of social proof, we are much more likely to be successful because we've essentially beta tested with all these people the proper response. So I'm gonna go on a limb here and say, of all people, you're probably not very surprised about the role of Facebook and fake news possibly having an influence in in the last election. I am not surprised because of that principle of social proof. We look around us, what

are the people around us doing? And then there's a second, uh dimension, whether the people around us like us doing well? That's Facebook. So you talk about social proof. There's an example in several of your books that I'm just tickled by. Somebody was selling something on an infomercial and they changed three little words on the tagline, uh what what you normally here operators are standing by please call now. It's

almost a throw a line. They changed it to if operators are busy, please call again, and that simple change broke all sorts of sales records going back twenty five years. Is that simply a case of social proof that, oh, the lines are going to be busy, lots of people are buying it, therefore I should buy it. Is it? Are we that easily manipulated? It can't be anything else,

very because think about it. To say, if a lot of people to say you might be inconvenienced if you try to call us is like death in almost any other sense. Right, don't don't try to access our product because you might not be able to get access to This is saying if a lot of people, if if if the lines are busy, call again, that means a lot of people just like me are doing this. I better get on this train. Do you think they had any idea in advance how successful that simple little change

was gonna be. It just they just got lucky. This is what they do with with with what. They try out a lot of different things, and then when they hit on one, they realize, oh, this works, but they don't realize why it works. It's not their job to know why it works. That's my job, that's what I do for a living. So so let me bring up one of my favorite stories from influence that just cracks me up. There are these two old tailors, Sid and Harry drew Back, one of whom is hard of hearing,

and uh. The first one he's has a customer trying on a suit, and he asked the other one, who's across the room stitching something up, how much is this is this suit? And the answer comes back, forty that's a very fine will suit. It's forty two dollars. This is during the depressure right way back when, and the heart of hearing. One turns to the customer and says, he said it's twenty two dollars, and the customer thinks

he's getting a deal immediately buys it again. Is it that easy to fool our wet wear that just oh, it's a forty two dollars suit, I'm getting it twenty dollars off. Let me get it before anybody realizes it is that easy? Because we are so hardwired for these principles, they just cause us to leap into a choice when one or another of them is present. Let me give you a quote from the book, which I find fascinating.

We all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done. Why is the desire for consistency such a motivator of behavior? Two reasons. One is, we prefer to have our for reasons of self concept, to be consistent within ourselves, right. We want to see ourselves as reasonable as logical and rational individuals. Who would be who would say one thing that would fit with the next

thing we say. The other is the people around us want us to be consistent too, And so for both of those reasons internal UH status and external status, we want to be consistent and appear to be consistent in our environments. So so let's talk about the status of social primates in a group. Why is reciprocity such a strong influencer. Is this just the result of our evolutionary biology uh becoming the dominant species as part of a social group of primates that lived and worked in in

teams or what? How do you explain that? Yeah, I think I think it's both hardwired in us over a long period of time. If we back to those who give to us first. That's the rule of reciprocity, and we have to do that. Uh. Then people will want to be with us, will want to work with us, will want to exchange with us. If we don't do that, we have very nasty names for people who take without

giving in return. We call them moochers or takers or teenagers actually, and nobody wants to be labeled like that. So we will go to great lengths to give back after we have received. I just saw a study, uh, in a candy shop. If a if a manager greets um people who come into the store warmly and then invite invites them to the counter, that's the control group. If instead he and gree greets them warmly and gives them a piece of chocolate, they buy forty more candy. Really,

that's amazing that they're giving back. The other reference you make is um in one of the books, and they're all kind of a blur in my head. But if when you hand the check to somebody at a restaurant, when the waiter brings the check, if you include a mint or a chocolate with the check, what does that end up doing versus having a mint at the desk

on the way out. It means the server has given you something personally, and the server's tip goes up three point three percent if there's a mint on the tray. Now here's the interesting thing. If there are two mints on the tray, his tip goes up fourteen points. Really, that's amazing. Um, let's do another social proof, which is I'm fascinated with what's a simple way to avoid hung juries? Ah,

don't let people vote preliminarily by raising their hands. Can't be in public in other ways, you need a secret. You write the vote down, you take a test straw poll. But no, once you raise your hand in public, you're now you're You're committed for for now. Is that social proof or is that consist It's consistency. You will now resist changing your mind, even in the face of evidence, because you've made a public commitment to that choice. Quite

quite fascinating. The example of the smoker who hand wrote a bunch of notes I promise you I will never smoke another cigarette, and gave them out to co workers and friends and a now former boyfriend, but at the time a serious boyfriend that that smoker said the only thing that prevented her from ever smoking again where those notes is that commitment and consistency or social approval and social proof its commitment and consistency because of social approval,

Violating your promise in the face of the people you care about means you lose their approval. And so that's the thing that people don't want to do. So if they make a public commitment to people they really care about, that will hold them steady to their choice more than

making that a private commitment to themselves. So I thought about doing when I read that in the book, I thought about doing that exact thing, And I have to tell you, honestly, it really scared me because once you write it down and commit to five or ten people, that's a powerful, powerful thing hanging over your head. You have to decide do I really want to fill in the blank, go to the gym, lose weight, whatever. Once you once you make that commitment, that is just really strong,

and it's remarkable how small the commitment can be. There's a study done in Chicago. Buy our restaurant owner he had his receptionists changed two words and what she said when she took an order a reservation excuse me from please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation too. Will you please call if you have to change, And then she waited for people to say yes, I will it reduced no shows by Wow, that's amazing. I have to ask you about the way you use the

term um compliance officials and compliance agents. It really is a question of getting people to comply with your goals, desires, or requests. And it's different from persuasion. I don't have to persuade somebody that we should see this movie that I prefer if I just say, you know, you chose the movie last time. So I've I've changed them, I influenced them, I've gotten them to comply with my request without changing their opinion about the movie at all. Very interesting.

So there was a thirty year period between Influence and then Persuasion, which is almost like a prequel to that book. I know you've done other writings in between, but really focusing on a big, bold idea and expanding it to a full book. Why why did you take three decades and what motivated this book? I think the the key is that these are my only two solely authored books.

First Influence thirty years later pre Suasion, And the reason I waited is that I. I didn't want to just plant a series of bushes around the tree that influence had become. I wanted to wait till I had the seed for another tree, and that didn't come along till the idea for pre suasion and and influence is a giant redwood. We were discussing earlier. This is a tremendously influential book amongst marketing and sales professionals. Who do you think the audience for pre Suasion is going to be

similar or different? Possibly differently? It will also be influence professionals, but I hope it will also be UH citizens who want to know that UM, they can resist certain kinds of influence that they never recognized before. It's the influence that comes before they receive a persuasive appeal. And you give a number of examples of that, including UM. Some of my favorites were a little bit infuriating. The minor commitment for something small and then later they asked for

something big, or the underpricing of something. You get somebody to agree to buy something for much less money than it perhaps should have been, or a couple of hundred bucks off a car or something, and then by the shockingly when oh, somebody caught it, my manager, the bank, somebody caught the mistake. Hey, this car is in twenty four thousand, it's twenty five thousand. They still seem to go along with the purchase. I can't imagine tolerating that. Do most people put up with that? Or it's I

would lose my mind. In a car dealership, it's so common it's called the lowball to technique. It actually has a label in car sales. This is not an accident. This is done on purpose. This is done on purpose. They do it, and very often it's done where they will give you a price on your trade in that that's way too high, and then the used car manager comes in with the blue book and says, I'm sorry,

our salesperson made a mistake. It's really doesn't He shows you the real price and you say, okay, caught me. You never realize that they caught you. What what other things can we do to to shield ourselves from these sorts of techniques other than read the book. If you read the book, and by the way, if that ever happens to you, use the term lowball, call it a lowball. That's against the law. In most yes, I mean, it's against ray regulations. State in state state rules, they will

start backpedaling like a cornerback fly route. Really, that's interesting. So you also mentioned um, the scannily clad, lovely woman who came to your house trying to sell you the book of entertainment stuff, and you said, if only I had revealed that I understood the technique and called her out on it, she would have been out of their fastest as can be. Is it Are these techniques that effective that as soon as people know you're using these

techniques they back away from them. Well, that's a crucial question, because if they're being used dishonestly, yes, then when we call them on them, we've caught them in the lie,

and then they back away. But if they're being used honestly, if, for example, the last time I brought a television set, I was in a play in store I was really looking for when the salesman came up to me, So, I see you're interested in this set over here that I was looking at, But it's our last one, really, And I just got a call from a woman who said she might come by this afternoon to buy it, right Barry. Twenty minutes later, I'm wheeling out of the

store with that television said in my cart. And I'm supposed to be the doctor of influence. If you get suckered by these things, what helped you the rest of us? Well, here's the key. Was I a sucker? I went back the next day to see if that if there was an empty spot on the shelf, and there was, And so I went back to my office and I wrote a glowing review of that store and that salesperson. But if there had been another one, I would written a

very negative review. That's how we have to defend ourselves. Not just look at reviews from others who have experienced this store or that salesperson. We have to contribute to that so that they don't get away with it in the future. I have to ask you about a Benjamin Franklin quote that you reference that I'm also tickled by quote. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he who whom

you yourself as obliged. Tell the story if you would, about the person Franklin was having a hard time UH with who had a fairly substantial library. What what happened? Now, So this was a guy that Franklin was in conflict with regularly on a lot of political issues. They didn't like each other, and so Franklin asked this guy to lend him a book. The guy did. Now, the guy had a fairly substantial library of ram manuscripts, and of course was deeply proud of of that library. Correct, And

he gave Franklin the book. And Franklin said in commentary, now he has to think of me differently. He has to think of me as someone who's worthy of receiving one of his prize books. I've changed his conception of me now. And he sends the book back with a note, I'm deeply obliged, and if you ever need a favorite, please never hesitate to ask. The dynamic completely flips, completely fix even though he's the one who's obligated, the person who was so difficult to him suddenly become as much

more flexible, malleable, pleasant. He did a friendly thing, and he becomes a friend as a consequence. Is act the consistency? What is the consistency principle? Because you wouldn't have lent that book to him, right, But it was the ego and the pride in the library that's sort of you know, there's a way to compliment people that fits with this compliment people, to give them reputations to live up to

give them a compliment. So, for example, I've I've got a guy who who delivers my newspaper every morning, and I want him to put it in the center of my driveway so it doesn't get wet when the sprinklers sprinkler systems. So I wrote him a little note, thank you, Carlos for putting my my paper in the center of the driveway, which he would do of the time. Thank

you for that. That's very conscientious of you. Since then one, so you must be a dangerous person to be a neighbor with people who don't even realize what they're what what they're dealing with. Let's let me give you another quote of the from the book that I really like. Quote. People seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. That's kind of intriguing. Why Why is that?

Is that simply the endowment effect? We put more value on that which we already have. Why is the prospect of a gain of equal value versus a loss it sounds a lot like risk aversion. But why is that? Well, you use the right term prospect, because prospect theory, developed by Daniel Konneman won him the Nobel Prize in Economics a few years ago for the idea that the prospects of losing something are psychologically much more potent than the

prospects of gaining that very same thing. He demonstrated it in a lot of ways. And the reason I think is evolutionary. If we gain some unit of value, let's say we're on we're you know here we are, we're doing okay, alright, we gained something, now we're doing better. If we lose something, we might be gone. It's an existential threat as opposed to a temporary increase in we might be below the subsistence level. We might lose the ability to carry on. So we're much more interested in

being sure we don't lose. And you're right about loss of version as the proper label for this. So let's talk about authority a little bit. There are some interesting things happening in in that space. Where does authority come from? And why is it so influential over us? It normally makes sense. Now I'm thinking of authority as being an authority rather than being in authority. Right, somebody who's an expert, somebody who's knowledgeable, somebody who's an authoritariative voice on a

particular topic. It makes great sense to follow the lead of the people who know the most about that topic. It reduces our uncertainty as to what we should do, and it allows us to get off the fence, stop dealing and and dithering, and move forward to something valuable because it is associated with the views of the true experts on the topic. So here is another quote. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you were thinking about it. Uh, And that comes

from pre suasion. Why why is that the case? This is actually a quote from Daniel Kaneman, And it has to do with the fact that when we focus our attention on something, we typically assign it more value as a result of that focus. And here's why. If if you go into a new situation, you know what you're going to do. You're going to size up that situation and look to the feature in it that is most

important to you. All Right, So if a community, but there's a loophole in this system, if a communicator can get you to focus on some element in that situation. You presume that because you are focusing on it, it's more important to you. So, in other words, by redirecting people's attention, you automatically get them to raise the priority level of what you're what you're looking at or focus. Yes, because you've hijacked a normal, a typical system that that

works most of the time. You focus on the most important things. So if I can get you to focus on something, I will have caused you to miss judge its importance upward, What is it about writing something down that has a similar effect, Even if it's a minor thing. Once you put pen to paper, suddenly it becomes a bigger priority. Is that again, back to just consistency, It is it is consistency. But also when you write things down,

they typically become public. They're available for other people to see. So you want to be consistent in yourself, but you also want to be consistent in the eyes of the people whose regard you care about. You tell the story and in influence about the Chinese um interrogators in the North Korean Conflict of American servicemen, and they weren't brutal.

They weren't torturing people. They were doing these very very subtle psychological um nudges for lack of better word, How does a small little thing writing down something like America isn't perfect become something as significant as it looks like you're uh spouting communist propaganda? How how do you go from that little thing to something as giantist? So let me say what they did in in Korea in the prison camps. So this, So they would say, so you

would agree that America isn't perfect, right, it's nothing. Yeah, I'll agree Americans. And then they'd say that's the stepping stone. And then they'd say how is it? How is it imperfect? Can you tell us some of the ways? And then well, you know, we've got some economic ups and downs, we don't do the greatest thing with all of the members of our community and so on. And then they say, well, this is your idea. Could you write it down now

for us? And then after you've ridded it down, they say, now would you be willing to speak to this this thing that you wrote on the camp Um broadcasting system and now you are giving aid and comfort to the enemy in public. It's that it's that subtle, it's that nuanced, and the next thing you know, just by admitting the country is imperfect, suddenly you go down a slippery slope to where your borderline violating used to be. Name ranking, serial number. Yeah, that's right, used to be that's all

you could give. But sure, I mean everybody, no, no, society is perfect. If you agree to that, that's the first step down that slippery slope. So let me ask something a little more pleasant. Um, The number one rule for salespeople is to show customers they genuinely like them. Why is this so much more important than the product they're actually trying to sell? Well, if you see I know for myself, if I see that a salesman likes me, I exhale a breath. Oh good, this person is going

to take care of my interests. My flanks are protected. It's somebody who likes me. It used to be that they said the number one rule of sales was to get your customer to like you. I've revised that to no. No, come to like your customer so that when they see that you like them, they will feel comfortable, and they will be right to feel comfortable if you have really come to like them, you will take care of their interests. So my last question, how can we work to protect

ourselves from unscrupulous users of these various techniques. You use the right term unscrupulous, right. We don't want people not to tell us when there's true scarcity, when there's true social proof, when there's true, true authority to move in a particular direction. Those things have become hardwired because they actually serve a purpose. That's a great insight. That's why they're hardwired. They typically lead us in positive directions. But

if somebody counterfeits them, those are the unscrupulous operators. Those of the people we have to watch out for. And we can do it uh sometimes by looking at the u the message that they present. If they're fast talking, for example, that's good. But I like the idea of looking at reviews and contributing to reviews for any organization, any individual that is trying to move us in a particular direction, we have to provide evidence of whether they

were honest and genuine or whether they were duplicitous. Quite fascinating. Can you stick around a little bit. I have a ton more questions for you. I can We have been speaking with Professor Robert Chaldini of Arizona State University. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and come back for the podcast extras, where you can hear where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things persuasion and compliance. You can find that wherever your final podcasts are sold.

We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me on Twitter at Riholts. I'm Barry Riholts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Bob. It seems so funny, Colin Bob. Thank you so much for doing this. I have been looking forward to this for a while. I didn't really mention yes,

fifty scientifically proven ways to be persuasive. But this is one of those books that you could just randomly pick up, open it to any page and there's a two or three page vignette that is so informative, and and oh it just crystallizes something. So I have to go I I just find it fascinating. I have to go back to the early days when you were undercover. So, so you worked at at fundraising organizations and infomercials and use card dealers. Who do you think was the best at

applying the techniques of persuasion? And who do you think you learned the most from watching of those professionals, both those professions and individual you referenced Jim Uh, the guy was selling them the alarm fire alarm systems, who had a wonderful little technique, Oh, I left something in the car or whatever, would it be okay if I leave and let myself back in? And just that subtle little thing of you're now imbuing him with trust to come

back into the house. He said to me, Bob, who do you allow back into your house with your key? Who do you give your own key to get back into your house? It's somebody you trust, right man? And he said, I want those couples trusting me before I ever begin my sales pitch. That's so. So that was the alarm business. Uh, the used car or new car business is one of the most frustrating shopping experiences of everything. What is that about? And and what did you learn

from that group? You know, what I learned is that they recognize over many, many years. They found out what works, right, but they really don't understand why it works. Conceptually, what or psychologically? What are the factors that make this thing work. When I would ask them about it, they would just give me a circular answer, Uh, you know, it works because they like it, or they you know, they've come

to like because I've made them like it. It doesn't they don't know what they did in some kind of psychological sense. That was the most fun for me was to take something that really worked and unpacked it. Unpack it in terms of the drivers of it, not just the procedures that produced it, but the psychological tendencies that accounted for it. And what about some of the infomercials. The examples you've given the book are just it's a The takeaway I constantly come back to is are we

really that easy to manipulate? And I keep coming back to the answer, Yeah, I guess we are. We are because these things are hardwired in us, and we get we get cues that trigger those responses that are essentially unthinking. Because most of the time, if one or another of these principles is really their authority social proof, they do steer us correctly. So these people are essentially hijacking are our natural tendencies by by counterfeiting the cues for when

we should undertake action that's consistent with those tendencies. You use the example of the female predator firefly using a certain set of illuminations and dances that to a slightly different male firefly species appears to be a mating dance, and instead they come to them, at which case they're devoured. Um So if that was too successful, they'd eliminate their food supply and p and the other fireflies would eventually learn not to respond to that. Apparently this can work

just when it's on the margins. You can't overreach as a species or as a salesperson precisely, right, Huh, that's quite interesting. Um. The other thing that really stood out in the book, and I mentioned this during the broadcast portion, it is the overlap in the parallels to some of

the behavioral finance things we've seen. What do you find in that space to be interesting and do you ever go there thinking, Hey, that's something I should research or this is an area I might want to experiment with, Because there's a lot of interesting academic work done on that side of the There is, and of course people like Daniel Kneman First Key and Richard Taylor are um are superstars in that area, and I certainly want to

pay attention to what they've done. UM. But there's another couple of guys who are not in that space, not academics Buffet and Monger, who have taught me. Because about twenty twenty five years ago, I went to my mailbox and opened an envelope. It was a share of Berkshire Hathaway stock, right, which, by the way, this is another urban legend which it turns out to be true about you and Charlie Manga tell us. It was sent to

me by Charlie. He said, I read that book that you wrote, and it's been so gainful for us here that by the rule of reciprocation, you're entitled to a share of stock. It was about seventy five thou dollars then back then then, and that that what year was at It was years ago, so years ago seventy is real money. Well, it's three hundred and twenty dollars, not to chavvy. But the thing is, because I had that share of stock, I was able to get the Berkshire

Hathaway shareholders letter and it is brilliant psychology. It is brilliant. And so that's where I've been exposed to some of the connection between this stuff and finance by reading that letter and seeing how Buffett, who's not just um a brilliant investor, he's a brilliant communicator about being a brilliant investor. So I have to ask the a little bit about the Monger story. Your your home and a letter comes. What's going through your mind when you open up this

package with a stock certificate? And I assumed there was a cover letter from what was that moment? Like? It was disbelief. It was because as you say, years ago, that's it. That was a lot to me. Uh and uh, and I think this is this is a joke. One of my friends has done this because they know how much of a fan I am of Berkshire Hathaway. I

never could afford it at that point to buy. But it turns out I checked it out and it wasn't And then there was a phone number there come on, you know, and Charlie said, could you give me a call because we I'd like to And then he asked me to do some things for him and with him and now, um, we're friends. That's a that's an amazing story. I'm a huge fan of their work they're writing. And

I always use Monger's admonition to invert. Anytime you're looking at something and it's a little perplexed, ask yourself, well, what would happen if the counter facts? What would happen if the opposite were drew? What does that mean? And very often it's pretty clear that, oh, I'm looking at this from the wrong angle. Once I flip it, it becomes very very easy to uh to do and perhaps

the greatest a little bit of social proof. Right in the middle of the financial crisis, and oh, eight oh nine, Buffett pens a op ed and I don't remember it was the New York Times of the Wall Street Journal, but it was one of the bigger mainstream papers saying, um, by America, I know I am and said, hey, I'm a long term investor even at eighty four whatever he was back then, late late seventies. Uh, and I'm buying stock here and you should also. That's potentially enormously influential.

Another example of social proof, Yes, coupled with authority, huge authority. Perhaps the most successful investor of all time. He's got an advance. Him and Charlbabe have an advantage that good genetics and longevity allow compounding. And the last couple of decades certainly hasn't hasn't hurt their uh their reputations. What what else have you done with Monger and of it? It seems like that's an interesting crew to hang with. Well, you know they Charlie has a dinner every um every

weekend before the Berkshire Hathaway annual event. And uh this z an omaha. My wife and I are invited along with other people. Um, and what we get to hear his latest piece of wisdom, you know. And he said something a couple of years ago. I really like it, he said. The way I help myself avoid mistakes is I keep a list of inanities, the things not that I have done wrong, because I will protect myself from

believing they were mistakes, you know, just human psychologist. Sure, but I keep a list of the inanities of the people around me who have made terrible mistakes. And before I make any choice, I consult that list and make sure I'm not falling into the same mistake territory that they They strode through in making that mistake. That's hilarious.

Figure out what somebody you don't respect would do and then just do the opposite that that that's fascinating, That their body of work and there philosophy is going to live on for for a long long time. Before I get to my favorite questions, I just wanted to go through, um the other questions to see what I might have missed. There were two in particular, UM I wanted to ask you about, and then we'll jump to our favorites. So you have consulted on several political campaigns as a behavioral

scientist over the past a couple of decades. I have a couple of questions on this. The first is have the modern techniques of of political campaigning? How much better have we has this group gotten at figuring out what voters really want, what motivates them, and how to reach them? Is that now dark art? Or is it becoming a science or somewhere it's it's a science. It's it's it's big data and big data churning and crunching and and

extracting that kind of information. But what we've learned I think the biggest difference in modern life is that here in the United States we've become partisan. We we we are not really susceptible to persuasion attempts anymore to change our opinions or our beliefs or or attitudes towards various candidates. What they have focused on is getting out the vote from your base. If you do that, you win. Whoever gets more of their base out right is the victor. Now.

I remember reading a Wired magazine article about the former Google employees who had joined the Obama campaign, and apparently the iteration and the big data analysis that you're referring to, they became tremendously successful at knowing how to word the request for donations. Where to put it is at the top, left, is at the bottom right, the even the font and the color and the size. They just test. They had so many paige us. They would just test in A B,

A B, A B, test over and over again. Eventually they just kept tacking towards what worked. That's that's the big data. So that that's right. So now you're not really talking about persuasion. You're talking about influence, getting people to donate, getting people to register, getting people to vote. To the choir that you're preaching to as opposed to converting. That's right, you're not converged. And but they've figured out

ways to make that more successful. So, for example, during a campaign, there will be a lot of volunteers who are hand fassers they call it, try to get people to donate or or or or register. What they have found is if that person can say to the uh, to the recipient of the message, I'm your neighbor or I live here in town two. So it's not like bringing people in from out of state isn't as successful as saying, hey, I live in the same town as you.

And here's why this is important. That's what they've learned. You bring in these people from someplace else because you need to staff a particular office, and you're not nearly as effective. It's the connection that allows you to say, oh, this person is like me. I can move in this direction. So so let me um reference the current White House occupant and you said something now that puts Donald Trump

into a little more better context. I always thought that he was a very un persuasive sort of politician, because we know he has a tendency to not tell, be a straight shoot, to not tell the truth. He kind of makes stuff up on the fly. But what I'm hearing from you is he's not trying to persuade me to switch a vote, or to come to go from a center left progressive New York or to let me support someone who's very right of center. What you're suggesting

is he wants to motivate his base. He wants to take the people who um believe as he does and get them out to vote. While we're having this conversation, uh, there's the caravan from Guatemala he's talking about. He's talking about tax cuts, he's talking about our friends, the Saudis, all sorts of stuff that I would imagine the opposing party and even people in the middle would disagree with. But his base just eats up. He does a couple

of things very well. Is to speak with confidence and certainty, regardless of whether or not it's deserved or not. And that does move people into saying, oh, well, here's an authority. This person must know what he's talking about. Look at the confidence the certainty with which he speaks. All right, that's one thing. The other thing is he uses social proof brilliantly in his um. Everybody knows his people, that everybody,

everybody I talked to, he says. But then in his campaign rallies he has he he has the cameras, he says to the camera, Turn the cameras around. Take a look at this big room filled with people. Social proof. If all these people think I'm legitimate, of all these people think I'm right, I must be right. I have had the debate with friends who think he's dumb, and I argue with them. You have to acknowledge his street smarts.

You have to acknowledge, all right, he's not read, and we can't call him a great communicator, but he's an incredibly effective communicator to that group of people, the people he wants to motivate to get out and voted. It's I'm always I'm an independent. I'm always astonished how the partisanship on the left, how the Democrats, I don't I don't really mean partisanship. How the faith in your own political beliefs can obscure some truths out there that would

make you a more effective party candidate, ideology, whatever. But people have a hard time seeing pest the end of their nose. Yeah, once, once you've got a hard position. It's really difficult to move away from it, especially if you've made it in an active public way. If if you're going to give advice to either political party about either getting their base out to vote or persuading the

independence in the middle. A lot of states are purple um and if we hold a side the Gerryman's their districts, what advice would you provide to try and UM win that great purple middle. It's something that for some reason, the two major parties have not employed systematically. It's something called the convert communicator, which is what somebody who used to believe the other side and now testifies, Oh no, and then I realized or I saw something, or this

happened to me. It could be, for example, in a healthcare issue. You know, I was an opponent of this, and then I got sick or my son got sick, and then they say, I used to be in your shoes. You can't reject somebody who was like you, right, And then they say, but I flipped, and you you're willing to be open to this guy even though this person is saying something that is not what you currently believe because he or she used to believe. That's quite fascinating.

It's too late, but hopefully people will pay attention to that, so I know I only have you for a finite amount of time. Let me get to my favorite questions that I ask all my guests. Um. These are always interesting because I end up finding out a lot about people that that I wouldn't have found out otherwise. And let me start with what's the most important thing that people don't know about your background? I had a chance to play minor league baseball instead of go to school.

Really it was a center fielder, and I wanted to be Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. Uh. And the scout who was going to sign me said to me, tell me, are you could. Are you any at school? I said yes? He said good. You go to college? Yes? Could you finish college? Yes? Go to school kid, really, go to school kid. He recognized something that I couldn't hit a slider. Truth is, I couldn't hit a slider. And he knew I wasn't gonna go up very high in the mind.

All right, um, And he said go to your strength. Essentially, he didn't say it in those words. Go to your strength. If you're if you're really good at school, go to your strength. Kid and Barry. If I hadn't taken that advice, I don't know where i'd be right now, but I wouldn't be in this room with you. It would you would have taken a very different path on your career. I had tremendous accuracy as a pitcher in high school, and I could throw a wicked fastball, no breaking ball

that you can't throw a curve. You're done so similarly. Um, but that's interesting. I know, I what were you a decent hitter? I was a good hitter and I could get a jump on the ball, and but I, you know, couldn't hit a slider. So tell us about some of your early mentors who influenced you, either academically or professionally. Yeah, you know, once again, I've got academic mentors. But I'm going to go again to Buffet and Monker, who has just just been um, breathtaking lee good at showing me

how uh success can be maintained and and augmented. Huh, that's that's fantastic. Um. What about psychologists? What psychologists influenced your approach to thinking about academics, behavioral psychology, sociology. I'm going to say condomen divers Key and Taylor. Could you could do worse? Um, I've had condiment in here. He's delightful and nobody is more amusing than Dick Taylor. He's just resolutely charming. UM. Also a previous guest, we'll get

a little social proof going. UM, tell us about books. What are some of your favorite books, be they fiction non fiction. I'm going to stay in the category of of of of persuasion, social influence, compliance. Um. I would start with Aristotle's rhetoric. First, anybody took a systematic look. Now, he was talking about orators. How do you make your case convincingly as an orator? That's all they had? Then

you know? Uh? And then do you remember a book in the fifties by a guy named Vance Packard, Hidden Persuaders. I don't remember that book, but I'm familiar with the title. Yeah, I don't remember me it was I was a kid at the time, but I remember reading it in college and thinking, this is the first time this guy really looks at the advertising industry and why makes these commercial successful? Psychologically? What is it about the psychological buttons that are being pushed?

I remember something from that book, choosing mothers, Choose Jeff, that was one of the examples, and I have to imagine, um, there are tons of other examples. Nobody systematically had looked at the psychology behind that within the industry, not within no, not within the advertising against the wall. They were doing the version of the A B tests without really controlling them,

but just trying things out to see what worked. And any other books, well, you know, I like Dan Arielli's Predictably Irrational, you know, terrific insight that even though we seem to be irrational, it's in a predictable way because these irrationalities are built into the way we function in modern life. You keep naming, um, some of my white whales who I would love to get on. And then there's Nudge. I love he Uh, that's a that's another

interesting book. Nudge, speaking of influence apparently, has become very influential around the world. A lot of governments have adopted the precepts for that. Not only that, but so has so has corporate America recently, fundraisers, NGOs, even ordinary citizens because we've developed, um, this this new category called popular

behavioral science. So we're speaking to the people who's whose tax money has paid for the research they're entitled to know what we found out about them with their money, right. So the one of the interesting things that we use from NUDGE. Anytime there's a four oh one K account that's opens, anytime a new hire happens, they automatically get a four oh one K and the choices for what

they're invested has already set to a default. So the money comes out of the paycheck automatically, it's invested automatically. If they want to change it, they have to actively go out and change it. Because what we used, what Corporate America used to do is, yeah, you're eligible for a four one K, fill out this paperwork. Once you do that, go pick some funds and some ungodly and there's a match. It's free money. Here's six percent or four and half the I think it's fifty something percent

of the employees wouldn't do the paperwork. Who turns down free money? It's it's shocking. Any other books before I move on to my new That's a that's a nice collection, to say the least. Um, what has changed in psychology since you started the profession? What do you think is

the most significant um breakthroughs that have taken place? I'm going to go back to my previous answer and say that behavioral science now, behavioral scientists and psychologists are now speaking to the public about their findings, the things that actually could influence the outcomes of the everyday person, as well as the corporate bottom line, the government's likelihood of getting a good a good policies, and fundraisers getting more donations.

So so you can so we're speaking with books, blogs, um uh, YouTube channels were now speaking to the people who paid the bills for this research in the first place and are entitled to know how this can benefit them. Tell us what you're really excited about right now. I just UH with some colleagues, um answered a question that

I've always had about so shill proof. You know, this is the idea that if the majority of people are doing something that this is the largest selling uh product, it causes people to want to say yes uh to the opportunity. There was this study in in in China. If you put an asterisk next to the items on a Chinese menu right that says this is one of our most popular items. Each one immediately becomes more popular, whether or not it was beforehand or not. Right, you

just tell people, it becomes more popular. Now, what if you're not the most popular. What if you're a startup, What if you don't have market share yet? But you've got a great idea, right that UH is getting some traction, but it's far away from being social proof like UH idea.

Here's what we found. If you describe a trade end in it, even though it's in the minority, if only thirty percent of people are choosing this right, and you tell people that are doing this, we find you actually get them less likely to choose it because they can do the math. That means seventy percent are not. But if you say trending now, twelve months ago were six months ago this month now, they jump on the bandwagon

because they see the trend is continuing. So that's how we defeat the problem of low social proof by giving them evidence of future social proof. That that is quite fascinating. UM, tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from the experience. When I was first learning UH the strategies of influence professions and I was taking training, at the end of the training, I would say, look,

I am not actually applying for a job at your place. UM, I'm writing a book, and I would like for you to allow me to use the data that I uh that I acquired in your training programs. They kicked me out the door. I'm not surprised. This is proprietary information, and they thought I was an investigative reporter was going to reveal all right. So after that I decided to use my principles in making that request. I said, I'm

not um actually a prospective employee of your company. I'm writing a book, and I promise you that I will send you an early copy of the book. I will pay you in the coin you are paying me. That is information, so you know not only what works in your industry, you'll know what works at all kinds of industry before any of your rivals will. Right, That's one thing. The other thing I said was and I'm not just writing a book. I'm a university professor and I'm learning

from you. And they would look at me and say, you're a professor and your our student. You mean we're teaching you And they would puff up their chests and say, of course you get so. The quid pro quo and the appeal to ego and appeal to what is it if you're the teacher. Teachers don't have proprietary information. What the role of teacher is is to dispense information, and so they did. That's fascinating. What do you do, uh for fun out of the office? What do you do

to relax or for enjoyment? I have three grandchildren who are the light of my life, and I spend time with one. One is a dancer, one's a soccer player, and one's loves horses, and so I go with them to all of their activities, and I couldn't be happier. What sort of advice would you give to a millennial or someone just beginning their career in psychology and a recent college graduate? What what would you suggest to them? Anyone?

Here's what I would say, Going to every new situation where you don't know people and expect the best from them. What that will allow you to do is to be generous. And there are two enormously consequential downstream effects of being generous. One is people are generous back to you, right. The other is they like you and they want to do

business with the people they like. Hmm. Interesting. And our final question, what do you know today about psychology that you wish you knew thirty years ago before you were had written Influence. You know, I'm gonna answer that by telling you a story of a friend of mine who had the question that I didn't know thirty years ago.

He decided to study it as a marketing professor, and he said he wanted to find the single most effective influence approach, the one that would he should use in the situations that faced him, because that was the one that was most powerful. And he went on two year search for this, and I saw him at a conference. He caught me by the elder. He said, Bob, I found it. I found owned the single most effective influence approach.

It is not to have a single influence approach. That's a fools game to think that the same approach is gonna work for all audiences and all circumstances at all times. No, you have to you have to size up that situation, those conditions, and then you move with the appeal that best fits the circumstances. Quite quite fascinating. Thank you, Bob for being so generous with your time. This was really,

um quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Professor Bob Chaldini, author of Influence and Persuasion persuasion and Yes, and numerous other papers about the fields of psychology, influence, and compliance. If you enjoy this conversation and I have to think you did, be sure and look up an inch or down an inch on Apple iTunes overcast that you're Boomberg dot com wherever final podcasts are sold, and you could see our other I'm Gonna Bowlpark at A two D

and fifty or so previous conversations. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps put together these weekly conversations. Attica val Brunn is our project manager, Medina Parwanna is our producer, Taylor Riggs is our booker. Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Ridholts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.