Phil Agnew (4:47)

The World Economic Forum advises people to invest in social influence. An analysis of 17 million job listings found that persuasion is the third most important soft skill for recruiters. All of this suggests that learning the psychology of persuasion is still greatly important. And Kahneman says Cialdini is the best person to learn from. But is his work still relevant? To find out, let's look back at how he originally came up with his famous six principles of influence.

Bas Wouters (5:21)

He became a university professor end of the 70s and he was fascinated, why do I do the things that I do? For example, he's sitting on his couch watching tv. Somebody rings the doorbell. He opens it, makes a little chat, sits back on his couch and thinking, why on earth do I have a new energy supplier? I didn't need it. Everything worked perfectly. But I still signed a contract a minute ago. Why do I do these things? So he looked at the scientific data back then and, and there was approximately 50 years of scientific research about influence. As a matter of fact, it started when Hitler came to power. Sociologists were fascinated. How can a man who advocates such a totally Arian regime, how can he get so many followers? So they started doing research during World War II. This increased a lot because Influence literally became a matter of life and death. And death never stopped. So Cialdini had 50 years of data and now why is he world famous? He was an entrepreneur in the scientific community. He realized those are lab researchers, I need to go out into the real world. So he went undercover. He didn't call himself Robert Cialdini, but for example Bob Colvin. And he attended training programs in sales, in marketing. He even looked at how the military recruited soldiers. He looked at Colts. And he was undercover for three years. And then he took his findings and looked at the scientific data. And now he did something. What until then, nobody did. Everybody looked what is different? And everybody told him they were different. Marketing told we are different from pr. PR told we are different from sales, sales was different from advertising. Everybody was different. He looked what is similar? What works every time in every situation. And that's why the principles of persuasion are called the universal principles of persuasion because it works in every country, it works in every culture and in every language.

Phil Agnew (7:31)

Cialdini became the godfather of influence because he did something quite unique at the time. He went undercover in private businesses for three years, learning their tried and tested methods of persuasion. Cialdini found six principles that appeared to be universal. They worked consistently in every industry with all types of requests. I asked Bas to walk me through the six principles Cialdini identified in 1984. And then I looked for modern day examples that prove or disprove their relevance today.

Bas Wouters (8:05)

So he found originally he found six. Reciprocity. If I invite you to my birthday party, you feel a pressure to invite me back.

Phil Agnew (8:13)

Now, I won't lecture you on reciprocity. I recently released an episode all about this principle and I even tested it myself. I gave small favors to 10 major influencers to see if it would trigger reciprocity. After I completed a favor for them, I asked the influencers to promote Nudge. Bear in mind, these influencers usually sell their promotion. And I was asking for around $3,000 worth of promotion in total. Yet 8 out of the 10 influencers promoted nudge completely for free. Reciprocity definitely still works today. You can hear more about that experiment and the power of reciprocity on the previous Nudge episode titled How I Persuaded eight influencers to promote nudge. So reciprocity works. What about the next principle?

Bas Wouters (8:59)

Liking. If a complete stranger. I'm walking on the street and a complete stranger asks me, boss, I'm moving houses, can you help me? Probably I say no. But if my best friend asks me the same question, probably, I say yes.

Phil Agnew (9:13)

Cialdini documented liking back in the 80s, but research conducted 20 years later proves its power. In five separate studies by Brendel, customers were even more likely to purchase a product if the brand name shared the initial letters of their own name. So I'm more likely to buy a Philips TV because I like and have the name Phil. Researcher Garner increased the percentage of participants who responded to a mailed survey by changing one small feature of the request on the COVID letter. He modified the name of the survey organiser, the person who was sending the survey, to be similar to that of the survey recipient. Thus, Robert Greer received his survey from a survey centre official named Bob Grigor, while Cynthia Johnston received hers from a survey centre official named Cindy Johansson. Adding this bit of name resemblance triggered liking and nearly doubled survey completion. So liking certainly works then.

Bas Wouters (10:13)

Social proof if everybody is doing it, it must be a good idea to do so as well. Booking.com if the hotel gets 6,000 reviews and a 9.7, we think that's a good hotel.

Phil Agnew (10:27)

One 2012 study titled Opposing Torture shows just how powerful social proof continues to be. The researchers gathered a random group of university students. Now, like most young university educated people, the majority of these students were against the use of torture in interrogations. However, their opinions changed after the researchers used social proof. After the students were told that the majority of their student peers favoured the use of torture in interrogation, 80% of the college students suddenly saw torture as morally acceptable. Social proof is clearly still very powerful. But what about authority?

Bas Wouters (11:08)

Authority? We follow the lead of the expert. Think about the white coat of a doctor. If we walk into a hospital and we see somebody with a white coat, we think they are a medical expert. But it could be me as well, wearing a white coat. Whoever checked the diplomas of their general doctor. Nobody does that. We trust him because he's the doctor.

Phil Agnew (11:31)

I hardly need to tell you about authority. The vast, vast majority of us follow the directions of those in authority. If you don't believe me, consider this this series of studies by social psychologist Leonard Bickman. Bickman's basic procedure was to ask passersby on the street to comply with some odd request, for example, pick up a discarded bag or stand on the other side of a bus stop sign. In half of the instances, the requester was a young man dressed in ordinary street clothes. In the other half of the instances it was the same young man, but he wore a security guard's uniform regardless of the type of request. Many more people obeyed the requester when he was wearing a guard costume and Similar results were obtained when the requester was female. The poor passersby were compelled to do all sorts of demanding things simply because the person who was asking them wore a guard costume. In my favourite part of this experiment, the requester stopped pedestrians, pointed to a man standing at a parking meter 50ft away. He said, you see that guy over there? He's over parked but doesn't have any change. Give him a dime. That's a very strong request. And fewer than half agreed when the requester wore normal clothes, but nearly all the pedestrians complied when he wore a guard's uniform. That study is 40 years old, but the BBC repeated it in 2017. Here, a reporter dressed in normal clothes asked people not to walk on black stones on a public pavement in a busy shopping street. And it didn't work very well.

Unknown (13:03)

Oh, you can't step on there. I'm sorry. You cannot step on this. This area.

Phil Agnew (13:10)

Why not?

Unknown (13:11)

It's not allowed at the moment. I'm sorry.

Phil Agnew (13:13)

And the reason why? Yet, when dressed in a high vis jacket with a clipboard, this BBC presenter's request was far more persuasive.

Unknown (13:22)

Can walk on the black line. That'd be great because we're keeping that free.

Bas Wouters (13:26)

Oh, thank you.

Unknown (13:28)

Yeah, that would be great.

Phil Agnew (13:29)

Beckmann's Studies may be 40 years old, but it's clear that they're still relevant today.

Bas Wouters (13:34)

Then we have consistency. We feel a pressure to act consistent with what we previously said or done in the Netherlands. We actually have a saying, who says A, must says B. So that's the consistency principle in a nutshell.

Phil Agnew (13:50)

Cialdini showcases the power of consistency nicely in his book. He says, suppose you want to increase the number of people in your area who would agree to go door to door collecting donations for your favourite charity. You would be wise to study the approach taken by social psychologist Stephen J Sherman. He simply called a sample of Bloomington, Indiana residents and asked them to predict what they would say if someone asked them to spend three hours collecting money for the American Cancer Society. Of course, not wanting to seem uncharitable to Stephen J Sherman or or to themselves, many of those people who were called said, oh, yes, of course, I would volunteer if I was asked. The consequence of this subtle commitment Procedure was a 700% increase in volunteers. When a few days later, a representative from the American Cancer Society did call and asked for neighbourhood canvases. Now, that study again is from the 80s, but the same principle of consistency has been proven in multiple settings. Clifford and Jarrett proved it worked. For encouraging people to present in front of audiences in 2016. Spanberg and Greenwald in 2011 found that it increased election Day voting. Sprout and colleagues in 2006 found that it can improve health care choices. And Finchman, Lambert and Beach in 2010 discovered it can reduce sexual infidelity. Their 2010 study found that consistency can reduce one's likeliness to cheat. If a romantic partner agrees to say a brief prayer for the other's wellbeing every day, he or she becomes less likely likely to be unfaithful during the period of time while doing so. Why? Well, because cheating would be inconsistent with the daily active commitments to a partner's welfare. Consistency, it seems, is just as relevant today.

Bas Wouters (15:35)

And Scarcity Think about Black Friday. People show complete irrational behavior to grab in their mind the best deal ever available.

Phil Agnew (15:45)

You've probably seen the scarcity principle used on you this week. I can guarantee that you've seen a limited number tactic where told that a certain product is almost out of stock and it can't be guaranteed to last long. When Booking.com first included their online information about the limited number of hotel rooms that were still available, their purchases skyrocketed to such heights that its customer success team called the technology office to report what they thought must have been a systems error. There was no error. That increase came solely from the power of scarcity, which turned shoppers into buyers.

Bas Wouters (16:23)

Those are the six principles he introduced in 1984 when he first time published his book Influence.

Phil Agnew (16:30)

I feel fairly confident that these six principles are just as important 40 years on and Bass has evidence to prove it.

Bas Wouters (16:39)

So a couple of years ago there was a study done that analyzed 6700 AB tests and they looked at what are the most successful principles to increase conversion and they defined a list of about 20 different principles that could boost your conversion. The entire top five was Cialdini's principles. So I think that shows the relevance and people might ask but why if it's 40 years old? Well, because it's human behavior. We grow as humans in what we are able to do. For example, from a technological point of view. But I would argue on the part of decision making we actually go back in time because we lean more and more on that system, one part of us, because the information overflowed. There's actually a Nobel prize winning research in the 70s that already talks about a term which is now known as satisficing. When we have an information over. When we are overloaded by information, we don't look for the best solution. We look for the solution that gives us sufficient satisfaction. And we all know do we have more information to process than 40 years ago? Much more, more than 20, much more and so on. So these principles I would argue actually become more powerful over time instead of less powerful, which that study from the 6700ab test showed us as well.

Phil Agnew (18:17)

That study with the 6700ab tests is a 2017 meta analysis of several large e commerce stores, mainly from the retail and travel sectors. They found what Cialdini suggested 40 years ago that some principles are universal and seem to work across different cultures, industries and customers. The top three most effective A B tests in terms of relationships to the lift in revenue per customer were scarcity. So that's highlighting items low in stock that boosted revenue per customer on average by 2.9%. The second was social proof. So informing users of others behavior, well that boosted revenue per customer by 2.3% on average. And then urgency was number three. So using time limits, often with a countdown timer, which of course is a variant of scarcity that boosted revenue per customer by 1.5%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the world's most successful companies are based on Cialdini's 40 year old principles.

Bas Wouters (19:20)

Back to booking.com I know they recently got some penalties that they misused them in an ethical way. But if you look at the application of the principles everywhere, they have social proof scarcity. So they tell you what's the review score of the hotel? They tell you how many people are watching it, how many people booked that hotel already. So the social proof then they say how many rooms they have left available on their website. But you also saw how many people are currently looking at the hotel which amplifies the scarcity effect of course. So you see it everywhere and for the right reasons because the research shows those are very powerful mechanisms.

Phil Agnew (20:07)

These principles aren't just used by major companies to improve their offerings. Some companies are founded on these principles. Cialdini writes about one company that has grown from a basement run operation to a business with 8.8 billion in annual sales. It grew simply by applying the reciprocity principle. Amway, who sell health, beauty and home care products, used a free sample device called the Bug. The Bug consists of a collection of Amway's products. Bottles of furniture polish, detergent, shampoo, spray containers, insect killers, window cleaners, all these sorts of things. Big collection of products carried to a customer's home in a specially designed tray. The originally confidential Amway career manual will then instruct every salesperson to leave that tray of products leave the bug with the customer for 24, 48 or 72 hours at no cost or obligation to her. The manual, I should say, uses the pronoun of her. It continues, just tell her you would like her to try the products. That's an offer no one can refuse. At the end of the trial period, the Amway representative is to return and pick up the orders for the products the customer wishes to purchase. Of course, reciprocity and consistency declare that a customer who has accepted and used the bug products has been trapped. Many such customers yield a sense of obligation to order the products they have tried and partially consumed. And of course, by now, Amway knows that to be the case. On average, customers purchased about half of the total amount of the bug when it was picked up. This simple tactic helped build an $8 billion company, but the principle was so powerful that it got Amway into trouble. Sellers felt pressurised to use these tactics endlessly because they worked so well and customers felt a huge obligation to buy. Their aggressive tactics raised controversy about Amway, but their use of the bias was undeniably successful. However, these door to door sales tactics, well, they may seem irrelevant for those of us who sell online. So after a quick break, we'll focus on how Cialdini's six Principles Influence can be used on the web.

Natalie Gingrich (22:16)

Once on holiday, a local asked me to explain what marketing actually is and I struggled. How do you even begin to describe marketing? You have to generate leads, you have to score leads, you have to contact leads, you have to create content, you have to gather data. And the next day you'll need to do it all again. And you wonder if it's even working. It's clear that marketers are spread far too thin trying to do so many different things. But HubSpot really can help. With the help of Breeze, HubSpot's collection of AI tools and features like Content Remix can really help. With Content Remix, you can turn one piece of content into a suite of assets. With HubSpot, you can also pinpoint the best prospects with a predictive lead scoring system. And you can level up your campaign's KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. Even if all of that won't actually help me explain what marketing is, visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more.

Phil Agnew (23:20)

Hello and welcome back. You're listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. I wanted more evidence on how these principles could be used digitally. Digitally, it's Clear, they work face to face. But can they work online? Bass thinks they can.

Bas Wouters (23:34)

One example that pops to mind right away is a test done by Nyx Makeup Studio. So they had a product page and there was a buy button. Very clean, very simple. Then they did a test and below the buy button they wrote 71 beauties viewed this product today. So Social proof, did it work? Yes, 33% increase in transactions. But now they changed one word and it went from plus 33% to plus hundred percent. Or in other words from going from plus 33 to plus 100. That's again a 300% increase in your results. Changing one word and that are the nuances I mentioned. What they changed was 71 beauties have purchased this product today.

Phil Agnew (24:30)

Social Proof works online. The product page was 33% more effective when visitors read that 71 others had viewed it. But when they tweaked it to say 71 had purchased the product, that increased sales by three times. One 2021 study replicates these results. The researchers found that saying a digital camera had 156views increased purchase intentions by 30%. But saying 39090 people had bought the camera, well that boost purchase intent by 53.5%. It's very clear that social proof works online. Yet six principles are a lot to consider to some of you selling online. It might feel overwhelming. So I asked Bas where he thinks you should start.

Bas Wouters (25:15)

A simple start is reducing uncertainty. And look at principles of social proof and authority. If you search for a product, let's say you need a new chair and you go to Google and you say well I want find me a new chair. You get bang, you get a million hits. So subconsciously we are uncertain where to click. Well, in Google you can add already your review stars that you collected. Make sure people feel certain. Then if they click on your page, make sure the message that they saw in your ad is repeated on your landing page because that confirms our subconscious mind. I'm still at the right place. Then make sure above the fold they see where some authority elements, companies you work for, degrees you have, the amount of years you are in business and or some review scores, quotes, what do other people say about you that's easy to implement often and it reduces the first friction uncertainty in your customer journey. So I think that's always an easy and good start.

Phil Agnew (26:31)

Most people, especially if they're visiting a website of a brand they don't know, will feel very uncertain. It is hard to trust a website. Websites have never been easier to set up. How can we know if a company is trustworthy. Well, social proof and the authority bias can help. I discovered this recently when searching for houseplants. I typed houseplants into Google and a bunch of results came up from companies I'd never heard of before. Almost all of them used social proof and authority to quickly quell my uncertainty. Take www.houseplant.co.uk who definitely haven't sponsored today's episode, but they were the ones who popped up. When I clicked on their website, they immediately reduced my uncertainty by using the authority bias. A banner at the top of the page says rated excellent next to five stars. The banner is a rotating carousel and the next message to pop up is pure social proof. It says over 200,000 houseplants sold and each of the plants on the page has dozens of reviews, all five stars. So within five seconds of loading this page, they've used the authority bias and social proof to completely remove my uncertainty and make me much more likely to buy. What I particularly liked though, is how they proved their claims. They don't just say we're rated excellent, they let you click on that claim and then you can see a page which contains their links to their 1,750 five star reviews on Google and then their 1,500 five star reviews on Trustpilot. Proving these claims with third party sources makes the company instantly reputable. Within two clicks, this website had gone from being a totally unknown company to a company I would genuinely buy from. But social proof and authority are rather simple to apply and you probably use these principles already on your site. So how about applying the principle of liking?

Bas Wouters (28:22)

Another interesting research where many people were probably not aware of is how do you apply liking online? This liking is driven by similarities. So it's also a question how you can humanize yourself in a digital world. Well, research shows the answer is in a welcome message. In that study of 6,000 A B test, what they found was if there's on a landing page a welcome message. Welcome to our newest course. Welcome to Cialdini Institute. We are happy you're here on specific landing pages that increases the conversion.

Phil Agnew (29:05)

Honestly, I've always found the welcome messages a little bit intrusive. Maybe it's the millennial in me, but I just don't love a pop up as I enter a page. I actually think there's a slightly smarter way to apply this. Rather than show a welcome message, show an exit message when the customers go to click away. If human behaviour was entirely rational, these messages shouldn't work at all. If the visitor wants to leave. Nothing should stop them from doing so. But Harry Dry, the founder of Marketing Examples, showed how that's not true. On his site, he pops up an exit intent message when somebody goes to leave that encourages the visitors to sign up to his newsletter before they leave. And he's always surprised by how effective this message is. He says that that pop up drives 50% of his entire subscribers. That is more than the CTA at the bottom of his articles. That is more than the CTA on his navigation bar. And it is more than the CTA on the subscriber page, in fact, is more than all of those different sources combined. Perhaps it's due to the liking principle. Most of us who visit his site, well, we appreciate the content and when prompted, we're more likely to sign up despite wanting to leave. But what about applying consistency online? Well, BAS gives an interesting example of how consistency can be applied.

Bas Wouters (30:19)

Let's say you are a charity and you want people to donate. You can say donate now that's pretty direct that the ultimate commitment you are consistency is driven by commitment. But you could also say explore donation possibilities by clicking it subconsciously. We are now agreeing to explore the possibilities. I have a personal example from a company that wants to receive more people. Applying for jobs was a hat hunter. And what they did was add. You had a landing page and there you were asked download the app if you did that. And then you were asked to record a video of yourself to apply for a job. Well, these are pretty hard call to action. Oh, I have to download an app right away and now I have to record a video of myself. Not many people are comfortable. So what we did is they clicked on the ad, they came on a page. Well, great that you are here. Fill in your email address so we can send you more details. So they did. Okay, that's a commitment. Then they were emailed. Well, please download our app because the next step will be recording a video. No worries. You get instruction first the dire behavior download an app. More people downloaded the app. They indeed got some instructions. So an extra step there and then asked to do the recording. 25% more people applied send in videos. So that's another way of thinking applying consistency in an online world.

Phil Agnew (32:01)

Adding more steps boosted applications online by 25%. But with consistency, you don't even need to add more steps. In his latest edition of Influence, Cialdini shares a reader's report. It's an example of the consistency principle spotted in in the Real World by a reader. The reader writes how a Restaurant owner used public commitments to solve a major problem of no shows. So customers who don't show up for their table reservations. The owner of this restaurant told his receptionists to stop saying, please call us if you change your plans, and to start asking, will you call us if you change your plans? And then just wait for a response. This made the person commit and the owner's no show rate immediately went from 30% to 10%. That's a 67% drop simply by triggering the consistency principle. Now, before ending, I wanted to ask Bas about some of the biggest mistakes he sees online when companies try to apply these principles.

Bas Wouters (32:56)

How do we point out our reviews with the word? We have 2,000 reviews going back to the humanizing part of things. Call them reviewers. Show these were actual people. This is not some static digital form. They were real people. And real people are not reviews. They are reviewers. These simple tweaks can really help make your reviews trustworthy. If you have pictures, company logos, where they came from, add them to the reviews. Introducing a new principle here. Also on that side, I like to do reciprocity. Many people think, well, I have a free downloadable and people just have to fill their email, give me their email address, and that's reciprocity. That's not. That's an exchange. That's a reward condition. Reciprocity is based on a gift condition. What's the difference between a gift and a reward? Well, it's very simple actually. The reward or the gift doesn't have any conditions. A reward has conditions. What science tells us that the gift condition is much more persuasive. So trust the science there to give your value away without an exchange and trust the science. People will value you more and feel a pressure to repay. And actually, more people will show the desired behavior you're asking for. So that's another mistake I see often in the online world.

Phil Agnew (34:35)

This was pretty hard to hear because I had just made this mistake. Those of you who listened to the episode on reciprocity titled How I Persuaded eight Influencers to Promote My Podcast Will remember that I also tried to use the reciprocity principle to nudge listeners. I gave those who signed up to my free Science of persuasion course a 20% discount to my paid courses. I assumed reciprocity would be triggered as I'd given away the Science of Persuasion course for free. But Bass made it clear that I'd made a fairly major mistake. The course was not a gift gift, it was a reward. You got access for the course in return for your email address instead. I Should have given it away as a gift with no email address necessary. That would have made my reciprocity request asking my subscribers to buy my other courses. It would have made that request far more persuasive. To finish up, I asked this expert in persuasion principles which one he liked.

Bas Wouters (35:30)

The most, what I like the most of the principles, the principle of consistency. And why? Because people making those commitments voluntary, willingly. But at one moment they start persuading themselves I don't have to do all the hard work. They made all the commitments moving in my direction and they feel an internal pressure I don't have to do all the hard work. I have to make a side note here that there's research which principles are more powerful in which areas of the world is done by Citibank and indeed the Anglo section. Countries like the US and the uk when they did the research, what do people wonder if they get a request, they wondered what did that person done for me? So that was connected to reciprocity? The more let's call the Netherlands, the Nordics, the Germans. They asked themselves and I'm Dutch, so they asked themselves, did I made a previous commitment to that request? So maybe that's why I prefer commitment consistency that well, because it works here Also the best countries in South America ask themselves is this person connected to a friend of mine? So the liking principle. And countries in the more Asian area of the world were wondering is this person connected to a boss of mine? So the authority principle was powerful there. So my personal take definitely commitment, consistency and the liking principle. Although I put it in a certain perspective that actually research tells me that it's also the most powerful one in the area where I live.

Phil Agnew (37:29)

Cialdini's claim as the godfather of Influence seems safe for now. His six principles of influence are just as relevant today as they were 40 years ago. But Cialdini has introduced one new principle, an update 37 years after his original book. To hear what that principle is, you'll have to tune into a future episode of Nudge out in a few weeks where Bas shares the principle of persuasion that you probably haven't heard of. Okay, thank you for tuning in to this episode of Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. I want to express my gratitude to Bas Valtus for coming on Nudge. Bas is highly knowledgeable about Cialdini's work and is an expert in behavioural science on his own right. His best selling and award winning book Online Influence combines Cialdini's work with a wealth of information from behavioural science to help his readers enhance their online results. If you're interested, you can pick up a copy by clicking the link in the Show Notes. Before we wrap up, I highly recommend reading Cialdini's latest edition of the book Influence. It's a fantastic read and, as I mentioned, is still very relevant today. Lastly, if you want to make sure you don't miss that episode of Nudge that I mentioned, the one on the psychological principle of persuasion that you probably haven't heard of, well, there are two things you can do. You can subscribe to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. Could be YouTube, could be Apple, could be Spotify, could be all three. Just make sure you hit subscribe and you can follow my newsletter. Not only will you get my newsletter, which is the best behavioral science tip I've discovered in that week every Friday, but on every Monday you'll also receive a notification when the newest episode goes live. To subscribe, just go to nudgepodcast.com and click Newsletter in the menu. That is all from me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please do click subscribe, leave a review and let me know what you think you can find me on LinkedIn and X. Just search for Phil Agnew with two L's. Thanks again for listening. Cheers.