Principles of Ethical Influence, by Dr. Robert Cialdini

I'm always trying to promote the principles of ethical influence (by Dr. Robert Cialdini) to people, and I've recently discovered he makes them available in pocket guide form on his website, along with all his terrific books and other materials.

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The principles are:

1. Reciprocation — You, then me, then you, then me…
2. Scarcity — The rule of the rare.
3. Authority — Showing knowing.
4. Consistency — The starting point.
5. Liking — Making friends to influence people.
6. Consensus — People proof, people power.

The ethical use of influence means:

• Being honest;
• Maintaining integrity;
• Being a detective, not a smuggler or bungler.

From Gerard Kroese's review of an article (reprint available for download) by Cialdini:

Cialdini believes that five decades of research by behavioral scientists shows that persuasion is governed by six fundamental principles that can be taught, learned, and applied. Each principle is named, linked to an application and discussed:

(1) The principle of Liking: People like those who like them, whereby two compelling factors reliably increase liking: similarity and praise.

(2) The principle of Reciprocity: People repay in kind, whereby the application is "give what you want to receive."

(3) The principle of Social Proof: People follow the lead of similar others. "Stated simply, influence is often best exerted horizontally rather than vertically."

(4) The principle of Consistency: People align with their commitments. The author's research "has demonstrated that most people, one they take a stand or go on record in favor of a position, prefer to stick to it."

(5) The principle of Authority: People defer to experts. "The task for managers who want to establish their claims to expertise is somewhat more difficult. ... A little sublety is called for."

(6) The principle of Scarcity: People want more of what they can have less of. "Study after study shows that items and opportunities are seen to be more valuable as they become less available. That's a tremendously useful piece of information for managers."

These 6 principles of persuasion are not new and have been known within the psychology field for around 10-20 years. However, in the form provided by Cialdini they are easy to grasp and understand.

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The Corporation. At the core of good and bad in the world today?

The Movie shown free below has won
26 International Awards and
10 Audience Choice Awards.

If the dominant institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, who bears the moral responsibility for its actions? When measured against norms for individuals, many corporation are prototypical psychopaths:

Yet Corporations also do essential good for society. Corporate CEOs discuss how this is true, and what they do about it, because the Corporation is legally bound to put it's short-term financial well-being ahead of all else, including life, liberty and property of others.  The movie also discusses the benefits of having everything owned. 

The Corporation is today's dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. This award-winning documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and future of the modern business corporation and the increasing role it plays in society and our everyday lives:

Institutions can be monstrous, but be peopled with individuals who are benevolent as individuals. But in their institutional role, they are monsters, if the institution they work for is monstrous. Agree? Disagree? Comment!

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Ever been brainwashed? Sure about that?

One of my favorite themes is how identification (a key tool in brainwashing) is used in marketing and politics. In brainwashing, we are made to label ourselves, and then brought to "see" how in labeling ourselves we have also accepted other things about ourselves.



In one experiment, people are asked to put an ugly billboard or small sign on their lawn promoting community safety. They are shown a picture of what it would look like on their lawn; huge, ugly, totally inappropriate for the yard of a house. Not surprisingly, no one wants the billboard---it's ridiculous.



A second group is only offered the small sign, some accept, and are praised for being a particular type of person.



Later, the researchers (still posing as community activists) return to those in the second group who accepted the small sign, and use the same words of praise before asking them to "upgrade" to a billboard size sign (still ridiculously large and ugly). They are encouraged to believe that they are the kind of person, as demonstrated by their previous action of accepting the small sign, that would do this.



Proof of how powerful this technique is



Amazingly, some accept the billboard for their lawn! If this was an actual attempt at brainwashing, a smaller step would have been first, which they could have justified to their neighbors. The act of justification to others is a key step in brainwashing, solidifying the self-identification, and increasing the separateness from others. Divide and conquer. You would also be introduced to a group of others like yourself, also brainwashed. (If this sound a lot like single-issue politics, it is! An excellent modern-day example of brainwashing people.)



A favorite trick of Marketers is to fake an "authenticity" that we can identify with, and in the process of identifying ourselves with it, inadvertently trust the message. (Another issue on the web is how can we protect our reputation from attacks on it.)



Can you be manipulated?



One of the core tricks marketers rely on is that we don't realize we can be manipulated. Read up on the Obedience to Authority experiment if you don't think so. People argue about what it means, but remember this: it means most of us can be manipulated, most of the time (apologies to Abe Lincoln). You might also want to read 5 Psychological Experiments That Expose Humanity's Dark Side.



Brainwashing plays on our desire to remain consistent, getting us to agree to one thing, and then another, and then another ... Or, as Harry Beckwith says, "Certainty is a trick your mind plays on you; keep yours open."

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What motivates people? Harry Beckwith knows: The Beckwith 40

When I wrote about prof. Clay Shirky and giving people the chance to achieve higher needs, I was thinking about some of Harry Beckwith's genius.

We're not talking brainwashing here, this is common-sense human nature from a brilliant observer of it. One of my favorites from Harry is: The ultimate test of a communication: Does it make people stop what they are doing? That gem of advice is #40 on the list he calls the Beckwith 40.

So, for an introduction to Harry, here's a baker's dozen from the Beckwith 40: (The subheads are my addition. For the full list, Rajesh Setty has published it with Harry's permission.)

First, Understand How They Think

1. Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s indifference.
2. Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s distrust.
3. Your biggest obstacle is whatever stereotype your prospect has formed about you and your industry.
4. Prospects decide in the first five seconds.
5. Prospects don’t try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice.
6. At heart, every prospect is risk-averse, and risks are always more vivid than rewards.

Second, Understand How You Need To Think

7. Beware of what you think you know or have experienced; memories fail people constantly.
8. For the same reason, beware of what others say they know or have experienced.
9. Certainty is a trick your mind plays on you; keep yours open.
10. If everyone likes your idea, it’s not an idea. Good ideas always make enemies.
11. Don’t create something that everyone likes; create something that many people love.
12. Research never shows anything; it only suggests.

Value, Communication, Action, Understanding

13. Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.
14.-40. Full list

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Protecting reputations, changing perceptions in the face of negative publicity on the web

I've provided a brief overview in four strategic areas at the TweetSmarter blog.

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Bashing Google's rel="nofollow"

Sorry, going against the crowd on this one. (And if you aren't familiar with this issue, this will likely sound like a lot of gobbeldygook.)

Everyone is always looking for ways to rank better in Google, trying to figure out the innumerable facets of their ever-changing algorithm. Now Google gives a clear cut method, and everyone is up in arms. Why? Because they phrase it in terms of penalty, rather than benefit.

Just call rel="nofollow" "GoogleTagToHelpMeRankBetter"-and it would be much more popular---a white hat way to rank better! And regardless, it's basically just a way to prevent the organic SERPs from being sorted by money---which I think everyone agrees is a good thing. As Matt Cutts has pointed out:

"A domain that sells links that pass PageRank can lose the ability to flow PageRank, it can lose PageRank in the Google Toolbar, it can be demoted, and if the content is spammy enough, it can be removed from Google's index."

Google has been moving very rapidly to a much greater partnership with webmasters. They started out opaque and non-responsive, and are now much more transparent and responsive. This is a simple tool for webmasters to use to prevent the index from becoming all about money. Google has put the most impressive collection of brainpower ever gathered in a public company to keep the index clean and of high value. Search is not a trivial problem to solve, and Google does it better than it's ever been done.

People are also mad that Google added to the purpose of rel="nofollow" over time, from it's original purpose of blocking comment spam. Fine. Use a robots.txt blocked intermediate page instead. No one is forcing use of rel="nofollow"---it's a convenience.

And it's always been the case that some of what you do to optimize for one search engine will not help/may hinder optimization for another search engine.

(And, frankly, if you're aware of the problem, and you can't think of a way to make your paid links look "natural," optimization isn't really something you should be messing around with. While I advocate against this, still, those who complain should be able to find ways of doing things the way they want to.)

rel="nofollow" is a way, like robots.txt, to adjust your link equity to benefit your rank in search engines. All search engines do, and should, penalize excessive spam and black hat methods.

Google reduces the value of your content for a variety of reasons, whether you use robots.txt or rel="nofollow" (and other methods) or not. Using them gives you a greater variety of methods of adjusting your link equity and monetizing via advertising. The SEO/SEM community has requested a variety of things from Google to minimize content theft and organic rankings penalties. Google has responded to requests from this community, and continues to respond (addressing subdomain spam currently).

There are a lot of things Google isn't doing, but no one is doing what they do---the algorithm---better than Google. Helping users use advanced operators, tabbed results, and much more are proven to help users get better results over time. Google seems more interested in providing the best results from the simplest interface, leaving a great opportunity---the interface/GUI---to it's competitors.

My problem is that sometimes it's nice to make something look like a paid advertisement and have it pass page rank, when it isn't paid. Remember all the "ads" to help people donate after Katrina, or the tsunami? I had no problem "recommending" (passing PageRank) to the Red Cross at the time. (Now instead of an ad, you have to do a sidebar column article, or text link, or some such.)

Google has shown that giving great search results is rocket science, and I'm grateful for what they've done. The quality of their search results is what has made the internet such a life-changing part of modern culture. Giving savvy webmasters who buy and sell ads the opportunity to improve their placement in search results by adding rel="nofollow" to paid ads really seems pretty straightforward to me. Google's been publicly discounting obvious selling of PageRank for a very long time, now they are just making it easier for webmasters.

Since this is a blog with very little readership, I wouldn't expect much in the way of comments, but to forestall one kind, yes, I know Google is very powerful, and no, I don't think this is an example of them abusing their power.

I think their larger problem is trying to segregate business results from informational results. There can no such artificial segregation. It is not possible to separate commercial from non-commercial. You can take any example of one, and change it into the other. Google does this to try to make the job of keeping the index clean easier by encouraging commercial results to buy ads. Unfortunately, this is evil: suggesting that businesses should work with ads, and not their placement in the organic SERPs. I realize that commercial sites will try to spend money to improve their position in the organic SERPs, and that this effort often controverts the quality of the SERPs, but trying to strong-arm them with "Yes, spend the money, but give it to us (Google) instead" is not ethical. It's like paying protection because Google says "this is our turf."

Google should change their position on this. It's fine to emphasize the benefit of buying ads, but not to state that you should buy ads to the exclusion of doing all you can to rank in the organic SERPs.

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Myths about the developing world, debunked

With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. He creates a new oxymoron: Exciting statistical graphics. Really impressive: some of the best you will see anywhere.

Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:35 - More TEDTalks.)

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