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A Challenge to Cialdini's Six Principles

Techniques > General persuasion > Cialdini's Six Principles > A Challenge to Cialdini's Six Principles

The six factors | Underlying factors | Same factors | More factors | See also

In his classic text, Cialdini (1984) describes six principles that are, without doubt a very useful and widely-applicable set of methods for persuasion and influence. But is this it? Are there any further principles that may be used?

The six principles

Cialdini's six principles are:

• Reciprocity: Obligation to repay.
• Consistency and Commitment: Need for personal alignment.
• Social Proof: The power of what others do.
• Liking: The obligations of friendship.
• Authority: We obey those in charge.
• Scarcity: We want what may not be available.

These are described well in his book and supported by much research, though each seems to have emerged alone, rather than all being derived down a tree from more general guiding principles, perhaps with other candidate principles being rejected due to dominance and power of the six given principles.

Reframing

Challenges for each principle may include reframing them:

• Reciprocity could be viewed as obligation, which is a wider principle that includes duties based on social norms.
• Consistency may be viewed as alignment, where we seek to reduce tensions.
• Social Proof can be seen as alignment with social rules. It also becomes important under confusion.
• Liking can be framed as the deeper principle of bonding.
• Authority can be framed as using assumption and social status to gain agreement.
• Scarcity plays to fear and greed, and the need to possess.

Consistency

The principles may be viewed as being inconsistent in their form, in particular:

• Reciprocity is a simple technique of 'this for that'.
• Consistency is an inner force that is tapped.
• Social Proof is about motivation in particular situations.
• Liking is a generic principle about engendering trust rather than gaining specific actions.
• Authority presses a .
• Scarcity plays directly on inner needs.

Further:

• Reciprocity and Authority play to specific social rules (exchange and obedience).
• Consistency and Scarcity play to inner forces (alignment and greed/fear).
• Social Proof and Liking leverage inner concerns towards outer examples (of how others are).

The question that comes out of this is that these seem to be a disparate kit rather than a coherent set. It does not challenge their individual validity but does challenge their completeness.

Underlying factors

A qualitative analysis seeking deeper forces that lead to the six principles is described in a related article, where several underlying factors are identified:

• Control: The need for a sense of control.
• Social dependence: Where we are dependent on others
• Identity: Our need for a sense of identity.
• Social conformance: Where we feel a pressure to conform to social norms and demands from social leaders.
• Social comparison: Where we compare ourselves to others.
• Trust: Which is a basic gateway to influence.

These factors were derived by connecting common needs to the six principles. These break down into:

• Social dependence and social conformance as external social pressures.
• Control and Identity as fundamental needs.
• Trust as an initial condition.

This highlights two key areas through which we are influenced:

• External forces: In particular social rules.
• Internal forces: Needs, values, emotions and so on.

Two questions arise from this:

• Same factors, more principles: Could these factors be used to derive further principles that appear widely in persuasion and influence?
• More factors, more principles: Are there any further basic factors that could be used identify even more principles?

Same factors, more principles

What other principles may be identified under the same factors as identified as key in Cialdini's six principles?

The Need for a Sense of Control

Persuading using the need for a sense of Control in the Cialdini principles:

• In Authority we give them comfort that everything is under control.
• In Consistency and Commitment we may use inconsistency to destabilize and hence provoke change.
• In Social Proof and Scarcity we leverage uncertainty to destabilize their sense of control.

Using the sense of control as a influencer, we can take control or offer control, for example:

• Assumption act as if something is true.
• Amplification changes the importance of things.
• Logical argument plays to the sense of control, even when fallacies are used.
• Framing is another method by which we change what makes sense.

The Need for a Sense of Identity

Persuading using the need for a sense of identity in the Cialdini principles:

• In Reciprocity, Social Proof and Authority, we suggest exclusion if social rules are not followed.
• In Consistency and Commitment we connect actions and self-image.
• In Liking we bind their identity to ours.
• In Scarcity we offer/threaten social status.

Using the sense of identity to influence, we can offer connection or threaten loss, for example:

• Investment gets people to bind their identity into actions.
• Isolation takes them away from disconfirming evidence.

Trust

Persuading using trust in the Cialdini principles:

• In Reciprocity we build trust by giving first.
• In Social Proof we ask people to trust the example of others.
• We use Liking to first build trust before persuading through the reciprocity of friendship.
• We ask people to trust expert Authority.

Trust is important as the gateway to other methods and is not the prime factor in Cialdini principles. In effect it is 'baked into' the method. Other ways to persuade with trust include:

• The Ben Franklin Effect creates trust by asking for help, in a kind of reciprocity reversal.
• When we seem harmless or naive, people will trust us and hence may offer help.

Social dependence

In social dependence, we rely on others for things we do not know or cannot do.

• In Authority we accept truth from those who are more expert.
• In Social Proof we follow the example of others, particularly when we are unsure.
• In Liking we encourage them to depend on us.

How else may we get them to be dependent on us? Cults create dependence by extreme methods such as identity destruction that take time and are ethically unsound, so are not considered. They do, however, use methods that can also seen in sales and similar methods.

• Isolation: Separate the person from counter-arguments.
• Exhaustion: Wear them down so they are less able to resist.

Social conformance

In social conformance, we are constrained by social rules.

• Reciprocity uses the rule that we must repay kindness.
• Consistency and Commitment: uses the rule that we must be predictable.
• Social Proof uses the rule that we must be like others.
• Liking uses the rule that we must help friends.
• Authority uses the rule that we must obey those superior to us.

What other common social rules may be used?

• Simply asking uses the rule that questions must be answered.
• Pleading uses the rule that the vulnerable must be helped. In it, the person typically shows themself as harmless and helpless, playing on the obligation of the powerful to help those in need.
• There is a rule that social harmony must be maintained, where people feel they cannot argue, even when they know that what they are being told is wrong.

Social comparison

In social comparison, we compare ourselves to others, particularly as we seek a superior social position and status.

• In Social Proof we look at others to know what to do.
• In Scarcity we compare ourselves with others through possession.

How else may we use this very common force?

• Pleading places ourselves in a lower social position, showing need and harmlessness, and triggering obligation to help.

More factors, more principles

A further approach is to step beyond the criteria derived as above and consider additional factors and principles.

Social harmony

The social harmony principle uses the social rule that we should put the group and others above our own needs.

Tension

Most persuasive methods make use of tension, where gaps are created, for example between what is and what could be. We feel the tension in the gap and are motivated to close the gap.

• Hurt and Rescue: Create tension, offer relief.

Thinking

In thinking

• Argument: Reason with logic.
• Association: Guide the natural process of connecting ideas.
• Amplification: We can affect choice by making things more or less significant.

Decision

Decision as a process to be influence has not been pulled out in analysis so far, though it is an important element throughout.

Conclusion

Each

Cialdini's principles are without doubt sound and widely applicable. There is a complex and overlapping background that supports them and which provides a set of lenses through which many other persuasion methods can be seen. This is a common principle that happens with many bounded models, that its supporters can explain everything through the lens of the model. However there may be simpler, more closely aligned ways of viewing how people persuade that are more useful.

An alternative set

So can an alternative set of core principles be identified, perhaps using some of the analysis from above? The goal is to create a short set of principles that are directly applicable in persuasive situations and which offer, as the Cialdini six, a broad coverage of the area.

Needs-based appeals:

• Appeal to Control: Offer a greater sense of control.
• Appeal to Identity: Offer to boost their sense of identity.
• Appeal to Arousal: Offer excitement and stimulation.

Persuasive fundamentals:

• Hurt and Rescue: The fundamental principle. Create tension, offer relief.
• Bond and Bend: Connect with them, then move them with you.
• Prime and Prompt: Prepare them then set off the trigger.

Social principles:

• Dependence Principle: Persuade by making them dependent on you.
• Conformance Principle: Persuade through social rules.
• Peer Pressure Principle: Other people are doing it.
• Comparison Principle: Use the way we compare ourselves with others.
• Attention Principle: Directing and deflecting conscious attention.
• Alignment Principle: Persuade through the tension of misalignment.
• Logic Principle: Persuade by guiding how they think.

Emotion-based principles:

• Fear and Greed: A common push and pull.

See also

Cialdini, R. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, New York: Quill

Note: This article is a reasoned analysis based on experience, reading and understanding. It is not intended as an academic paper. If you are interested exploring further in this area, please do contact the author.