Subjects became fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating.
A communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. —WALTER LIPPMANN I
They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high i...
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
The tendency to want what has been banned and therefore to presume that it is more worthwhile is not limited to such commodities as laundry soap. In fact, the tendency is not limited to commodities at...
The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that tricks be met with favors. A
The renowned British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead recognized this inescapable quality of modern life when he asserted that civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perf...
The noted archaeologist Richard Leakey ascribes the essence of what makes us human to the reciprocity system: We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an hono...
The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal v...
The first, a quote from Voltaire, is contemptuous: Anything too stupid to be spoken, he asserted, is sung. The second, an adage from the advertising profession, is tactical: If you can’t make your cas...
The feeling of being in competition for scarce resources has powerfully motivating properties.
Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A
Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such e...
So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them. There’s a wise adage that fits this logic well: people don’t care how much you know until they k...
READER’S REPORT From the Parent of a College Coed Dear Mother and Dad: Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will...
People rarely make decisions in a vacuum; in other words, our choices are almost always influenced by context,
Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.
Notice that all of the foot-in-the-door experts seem to be excited about the same thing: You can use small commitments to manipulate a person’s self-image; you can use them to turn citizens into publi...
Just as amino acids can be called the building blocks of life, associations can be called the building blocks of thought.49 In