Now, during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially.
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.18
Little wonder, then, that the influential French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in describing the social pressures surrounding the gift-giving process in human culture, can state, There is an obligation...
By no means is my friend original in this last use of the expensive = good rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Har...
Bad social proof in this situation. Temporarily disconnect automatic pilot.
We are trained from childhood to chafe, emotionally, under the saddle of obligation.
Patsy. For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark
Once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience.
Once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.
Frequently the crowd is mistaken because they are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof.
Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
Audiences have been successfully manipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.
The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.
The aim is to get someone to want to buy quickly, without thinking too much about it.
Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds.
In one experiment conducted on five classes of Australian college students, a man was introduced as a visitor from Cambridge University in England. However, his status at Cambridge was represented dif...
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. —
Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.
Exodus 23:8–And thou shalt take no gift; for a gift blindeth them that have sight and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. —ALBERT EINSTEIN