Robert B. Cialdini Quotes

In large measure, we are with respect to any choice is we are, attentionally, in the moment before the choice.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Or, at least, so goes a frequently heard quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

About Author

Robert Beno Cialdini (born April 27, 1945) is an American psychologist and author. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford University.

The automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it...

The drop from abundance to scarcity produced a decidedly more positive reaction to the cookies than did constant scarcity.

Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?

So by my lights,

Responsibility. Those subjects facing the opponent who used the retreating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal.

The recipe for disharmony was quick and easy: Just separate the participants into groups and let sit for a while in their own juices.

In an early study nursery-school-age children chosen because they were terrified of dogs merely watched a little boy playing happily with a dog for twenty minutes a day. This exhibition produced such...

During the Korean War, many captured American soldiers found themselves in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps run by the Chinese Communists. It became clear early in the conflict that the Chinese treated cap...

To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to det...

Automatic-pilot device, like social proof, should never be trusted fully;

Anything too stupid to be spoken, he asserted, is sung.

The lesson applies as well to the politics of family as country. The parent who grants privileges or enforces rules erratically invites rebelliousness by unwittingly establishing freedoms for the chil...

Our ability to create change in others is often and importantly grounded in shared personal relationships, which create a pre-suasive context for assent. It’s a poor trade-off, then, for social influe...

The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.

But it comes down to this: in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses;

There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

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