Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.
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 bring you up to date now, but before you read on,...
Compared to the customers who got only the standard sales appeal, those who were also told about the future scarcity of beef bought more than twice as much.
As the stimuli saturating our lives continue to grow more intricate and variable, we will have to depend increasingly on our shortcuts to handle them all.
A job candidate might say, I am not experienced in this field, but I am a very fast learner. An information systems salesperson might state, Our set-up costs are not the lowest; however, you’ll recoup...
Quite 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.
Extensive analysis requires more time, energy, and motivation. As a consequence, its impact on our decisions is limited by the rigor it requires. If we don’t have the wherewithal (time, capacity, will...
Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others’ actions to decide how they themselves should act.
The differential phrasing might seem minor, but it is critical to achieving the company’s unitization goal. Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one...
One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim—and that you write it down. Ther...
Once again we can see that social proof is most powerful for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best...
In Korea, the product was a brand of Chinese communism; in the United States, it might be a brand of cuticle remover. The
But more telling for me as a persuasion scientist attuned to pre-suasive approaches was how Mr. Buffett began that all-important section.
What is more accessible in mind becomes more probable in action,
When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal results; but when the news story concerned an ol...
When our freedom to have something is limited, the item becomes less available, and we experience an increased desire for it. However, we rarely recognize that psychological reactance has caused us to...
No psychic powers; I just happen to know how several of the big toy companies jack up their January and February sales. They start prior to Christmas with attractive TV ads for certain special toys. T...
Lastly, these findings tell me that the answer to the question of whether, as a group, MDs are primarily patient-serving or self-serving is . . . yes. They are each, depending on their attentional foc...
In this case, because we know that the things that are difficult to possess are typically better than those that are easy to possess, we can often use an item’s availability to help us quickly and cor...
A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.