Robert Cialdini - 7 Principles of Influence Explained

the single thing that was most likely to to lever people in City bank's Management Programs if somebody asked for a favor was has this person done a favor for me hello fellow dors my guest today is Bob galadini Bob is the world-renowned psychologist and author he is the uh his seminal work influence the psychology of persuasion was published uh 198 4 40 years ago it's a classic in the field and it's really one of my top five recommended books uh in fact Charlie Munger frequently cited it as one of his all-time favorite Business book Bob

welcome to World of D well thank you all right I'm glad to be with you and your listeners I'm really excited now I'd like to start with like the basics for people maybe who aren't as familiar um there's these seven kind of principles of persuasion can you kind of like walk you don't have to walk us of them it walk us through some of the ones that maybe people don't appreciate as much and some examples of them sure um I'll try to do that briefly uh the first is the principle of reciprocation people say yes

to those they owe so uh the implication for us is that if we go first and give benefits or information or advantages uh before we sign a contract before we have an agreement people are much more inclined to want to say yes to us because we have given first second when I ride the subway car and some like cult person is trying to give me a flower they're trying to give me something small to get me like engaged with them is that way I mean that when when that happens uh and you accept the flower

it's very difficult to to give it back they won't take it back for one thing but uh then I used to watch people in airports uh fall for this and they didn't want the flow they didn't want the the book uh that they were given or whatever but they if they couldn't give it back they would wind up giving something in return it's a very powerful principle exists in all human cultures you must not take without giving in return we can leverage that by just being benefactors before we we ask we we we arrange a

circumstance so that we are are uh providing information or uh some kind of services to people uh they stand on the balls of their feet ready to say yes to us when we have a a request or recommendation to all yeah yeah uh next principle is the principle of scarcity now no surprise that people want more of those things they can have less of so if we can arrange to show them that what we have is unique or uncommon uh rare or dwindling in availability it becomes more attractive Ive for it sometimes when I go

to the grocery store I'll see something like the maximum allowed to buy of these is three and I'm and I would have never even thought to even buy more than one but once I see that sign I kind of want to buy all three that's such a good Insight because it's backed up with research there was a big Supermarket firm that did that exactly they put that U that little card below the the the array of of of a product they got twice as much response as they have ever gotten oh my gosh yeah if

if you can't have you know that fomo fear of missing out yeah that's what they're leveraging there yeah H okay interesting okay what's the third one this is great third is uh the principle of authority uh when we're uncertain we don't look inside ourselves for answers because all we see is the confusion we look outside and one primary place is to the to Authority the voices of people who are competent and experienced knowledgeable on a topic so if we can show uh them that we have that Authority or that we have testimonials from people who

are are acknowledged authorities for what it is that we're saying we significantly increase the likelihood of our success there's a nice piece of research that shows by the way uh in uh counter to what a lot of advertising agencies claim which say if you've got testimonials just present your best one because the other testimonials from other experts will dilute your best your best uh argument turns out that's and the best one meaning the person with the most Authority or um or the or or just like the most powerful one the one that sings your Praises

uh with the most Gusto and eloquence right and what do you think of these like you know eight out of 10 dentists agree that my product is the like do you think those are good things or are not those are very good things research shows but there's a little caveat there that has to do with some with with uh your honesty in this research shows that if you say nine out of 10 people uh who purchase our product uh report favorable uh experiences with it right yeah if you say 90% you get more positive reaction

because you've given something specific rather than just number that you pull out the top of your head or or someplace lower right oh interesting but here's the interesting thing if you say 89% do you get the most because it's it just sounds more believable sounds more believable you are being not just specific you are being trustworthy in the presentation of this as it and the single most effective Authority Communicator we have ever identified behavioral scientists around the world is the credible Authority one that has expertise and trustworthiness well because nowadays we often doubt authorities right

like if we if we see somebody in a lab code who's pitching a product or something like that we think oh it's an actor or um or or even if it's not you know even if they're well-known person like oh they're getting paid to do it and so you know how do we how do you know it's like a trusted Authority or how does one con exactly that's why providing multiple authorities rather than a single one works so well it's clear that you haven't just picked one one one you haven't Cherry Picked one Cherry Picked

yeah you've got multiple and they don't dilute the quality of your best one your best one is still there they reinforce that person's opinion and you get the sensus a sense of a consensus of opinion and that out distances a single uh best one every time okay that's a third what's the fourth one this is great social proof again when you're uncertain you don't look inside you look outside one place you look is to your to authority figures experts the other place you look is to your peers what are the people around you like like

you saying or doing with regard to a particular opportunity if they're all uh raving about a new restaurant or many of them about a new piece of software well they've beta tested it for you you don't have to do it yourself if a lot of people like you not just many people but many comparable people then you assume well then this is going to be right for me so if you have the evidence of uh of of movement in your direction of market share of popularity you you make that uh you make that prominent now

if you don't have that there's a little approach that works let's say you only you only have 20% of your established customer base to tr to um buy your new model right the one that you think is better um if you say 20% of of our customer base just like you have that reduces success because that means 80% have not but if you use the 20% as the end of a trend and you say three months ago it was 10% two months ago 15 now it's it's the same 20% but people project that into the

future and you get significantly more compliance yeah you know I found like just selling software which is I what I've traditionally found selling enterprise software is just like the most powerful slide is the logo slide of my customers here's the list of my customers that are out there and the the hardest thing for me is sometimes you have customers that won't that that say Hey you can't put me on your logo slide um and so let's say Goldman sacks as your customer and you really want to tell everyone in the world because so it's such

a great customer to have they don't put you on there is there a is there a way to like help get your customers to like help them get that social proof there is and it goes back to reciprocity what have you done for them first to make them obligated to you to make them feel well I owe something in return for what I've done right you have to you have to reverse engineer that situation so that has that's in place and then they say well okay uh uh all right what can I do in fact

there was a study done by City bank and they found that in a british-based cultures the UK US Canada uh Australia New Zealand the single thing that was most likely to to lever people in in City bank's Management Programs if somebody asked for a favor was has this person done a favor for me yeah then you're just almost helpless yeah okay then it's my turn yeah yeah yeah yeah okay that makes sense oh this is great okay what's the uh what's the fifth one so the fifth one is commitment and consistency the idea that people

want to be want to be and to be seen as consistent with the commitments they have already made especially in public and especially in your presence so for example uh there was a study done in Chicago uh restorator was having problems with uh people who were no showing uh after making a booking they wouldn't call ahead they wouldn't cancel they just wouldn't appear it was a big problem y he listened to what his receptionist said uh which was thank you for calling Gordon's Restaurant please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation he

asked her because he had read my book he asked her to say will you please call if you have to change or make them say yes or no that's exactly right pause let them fill that Silence with a with a commitment and and unannounced no shows Dro by 64% that day and never went back up interesting when I've been selling software usually what we do is we kind of like walk with let's say it's a three Monon sales cycle we'll kind of walk with them backward and say okay look three months from now is is

kind of like when this thing normally gets sold so okay that means that two months from now we need to have all this stuff done because you have to bring it to your committee and that means one month from now we need to have these other things done and then we kind of walk through and then we all agree okay and they want to get it they want they want to get it sold too so they they they we all work together we all kind of like sign our name and that that's committing ourself as

well like we have to commit to work right to get done and they're committing that's really brilliant because both sides have to commit have you ever have somebody back out after you've you know here's how yeah all the time yeah they they all they back out all the time for sure here's what you can do send them an email that says I'm so glad that we have agreed to this I'm so glad that I've mentioned it to all my staff and all all of uh my friends that we're going to be work and now they're

publicly committed to it based on what they've already sent and the more public and uh that here's another thing if you've ever got a a a meeting that you're running where you assign people a task to be to complete by the next uh week don't let anybody out of the room until you say will you just like in that in gord's restaurant and pause let them say yeah yeah yeah you significantly increase the likelihood that they will because they're on record yeah yeah that's great next is liking no surprise people prefer to say yes to

those they know uh to those they like and uh well well how do you get them to like you right two things stand out similarities that they're oh we have we have the same taste and whatever you know and compliments genuine compliments that you give them I used to be a real in this last one I could I can't remember I I mean I remember how many times I've been in meetings with graduate students and I say to myself well that was a that was a really smart thing that AR just Ain just said and

I say it to myself and I all of the wellbeing that goes with announcing it because but it has to obviously has to be genuine and kind of unique to them ideally all of this has to be genuine there has to be genuine scar there has to be genuine Authority there has to be genuine social proof that yeah and then nobody loses every nobody loses two people like each other more now right so yeah similari and it can be could it be off top like obviously it could be on topic like you mentioned this gr

but it could be even be off topic like you like their shoes or something yes you could I mean as long as it's it's real but the more on topic the better more or or even something like where you give them a reputation to live up to you say you know I I really like how you come to the the meetings uh uh prepared prepared yeah they're gonna come prepared to the next one yeah yeah yep okay that's a great one then the last is a new principle that we've developed calls the unity principle which

has to do with the extent to which let's say it this way people say yes to those they consider one of them that is not just similar to them in tastes and Cuisine or movies or uh fashion so they're kind of like in the same tribe in a way or they're in they share an identity a social identity right and all you have to do is when when you see that and you raise it to Consciousness they're more likely then to be loyal people want to follow follow and favor those who are in their tribes

who are in their categories that they count I'll give you an example a study done on a University campus researchers took a young woman about college age dressed like a college student and had her stand in front of a a table for United Way asking PE students who were going by to donate uh and she was getting some result results because she had liking going for them similarity right this about the same age about the same clothing but if in half of the cases she said excuse me would you donate to the United Way I'm

a student here like you donations went up 450% you don't say no to one of you got it so they you felt like okay that that's part of my tribe right is is there something in a tribe where it's it's almost like there's something about like okay we're together on this thing but we're also against this other thing like part of being in a school at Ohio State is also hating Michigan or something right um like is there something about like okay we also don't like those guys together there is to really solidify the we

there has to be a they that you can dist you can distance yourself and distinguish yourself from and it elevates you and your group The Norms the values the beliefs uh inside that group uh it's unfortunate but that's that's that is the case and how does one like that that's one maybe like how does like if you're in a sales motion or some other type of thing how do you how how do you join how do you figure out what tribe the other person's even in or something it's like are we the we're the engineers

and we're kind of fighting against the management together can do that that's exactly right I mean if you're creative you can find things where you share uh an identity I did it with a long-term um colleague I turns out I needed something from him uh in the same day because I was writing a a grant report and it need to be completed and sent off the next morning and I had a section of it that was incomplete really wasn't compelling but I knew that my colleague in the psych Department had done a study that generated

the data that I needed but he hadn't written it up yet it was still in his archives so I sent him an an email I said Tim I really need this I explained it it's due the next day I'm going to call you to try to arrange to get the the data to me and this Tim was known as a sour erasable guy in our place so I call him up he says uh hello Bob I know why you're calling and the answer is no look uh uh you're a busy man I'm a busy man

and I said but I have to have it tomorrow he said Bob I can't I can't be uh I can't be the correction to your poor time management skills I'm not responsible for and if I if I hadn't read the research search on Unity I would say come on Tim I need it it's do it tomorrow he had already said no to that yeah here's what I said come on Tim I need it we've been members of the same psychology department now for 12 years I had the data that afternoon okay because that's a very

exclusive tribe but how many times have we done business with people for long periods of time y as partners as clients as as co-workers if we just be and we have a request we should we would be fools of the influence process if we would didn't Begin by saying you know we've worked together well for the last x r I really wish you could do this for me that's all just bring it to to Consciousness like bringing we're students at the same University I mean they probably thought this girl S standing next to thing was

a St but until they were Unity was brought to Consciousness I'm like you I'm a student here like you it didn't have an effect now what now that you've seen these practice um over many many years which of these principles or which of these things you think are the most misunderstood it's the principle of authority people confuse being in Authority with being an authority being in Authority Works your boss that's power that's power it's not persuasion there's maybe it's even coercion depending on how the boss approaches you and so people hate that they resent it

and when the boss can't monitor the behavior they go around the side of it or they they torpedo it because they resent that if instead you come on as an authority who has information that will allow them to produce better outcomes in their lives right they want to follow that when you're gone you don't have to be there monitoring them it's it's the concept that they were a credible source of information you believe that information more and it's the one that has legs it's the one that produces durable effects now um a lot of people

most of our listeners are in like the tech world or data world what do you think are some examples like tech companies could apply to from some of these principles well if you're enjoying this podcast please sign up for our newsletter go to world of.com the link is in the description below now back to the video Apple does it amazingly well the way that they release their new new generations or new models like iPhones and so on and they produce long lines of people outside the door all night and sleeping scarcity yeah you know what

that does it does two princip it gets two principles here and let me explain it by a a true story there was one of those long lines I think it was for Apple two or something like that and people had stay and my local TV station sent a reporter to interview those people uh what are you do why are you doing this and by the way did you have sociable conversations with the people around you and you you built your shared identity as a Apple user and they said yeah and this one woman said yeah

in fact I'm I was I'm number 23 in line right now but I used to be number 25 and I had a conversation with the woman who was 23 who admired my shoulder bag it's a $2,800 Louis Vuitton bag and I said to her I'll tell you what my bag for your part Point uh your place in line oh my gosh what a story right two two steps right yeah to her credit the the reporter said what why would you do that well there are two reasons one is that long line that um that Apple

created also created social proof people like me want this thing the second thing it did was to produce scarcity and she said to this woman to the to the uh journalist I heard they didn't have a lot of them at this location and I didn't want to lose the chance to on scarcity that combination produced that trade mindboggling now when I when I was in high school I was kind of like pre- internet I used to wait on these long lines for tickets to concerts um that's how you would get concerts and come you know

there's a local place and and you would just wait forever and um in fact in some ways that's how you got rewarded you could buy the tickets for 40 bucks and kind of immediately sell them for 60 if you wanted to um but nowadays like these things are like online um it's all and they're kind of like maybe they're manufactured like how does one kind of think about it now that they're online you know who does it booking.com which uh is this company that that provides hotel rooms and so on they found that at first

when they were doing this they were getting you know pretty good results if they added which you can see now a timer only three rooms left oh yeah yeah I always see that six people are looking at them right now they did that and they got and and the marketing department got a call from the or the marketing department called the tech uh group and said uh there's a problem we we're get we're over we're we're getting so many Quest there must be a problem with our with our technology it must they said no no

it's really it just happened that that one thing competition for a scarce and desirable resource wow yeah yeah okay so it's so much of human nature yes I saw a an on article they looked at 6,700 online commercial sites and they did AP tests what are the factors that most cause people to jump and go from uh visitor to to customer yeah scarcity um com competition for a scarce resource that is limited numbers available were was the one that that was at the top of the list y now how's like certainly a hotel room makes

sense it's scarce like you know or like a limited the sneaker thing like makes sense but a lot of things that we buy you know um um Netflix or something like they they have unlimited they could sell unlimited um uh subscriptions to Netflix to you and I or something like so how do how does somebody like that think of it they use another one of the scarcity principle it's not limited number it's limited time this is oh you have a deal the deal this will be or this is scheduled to be off of Netflix in

by this is the last week that it's available on Netflix ah okay yep y that pile in that's when they get the most um juice yeah yeah okay now what do you think of this word influencer like that's now a common word and maybe it means something that you kind of different than when you wrote the book like how do you how do you relate to that I'm neutral with with regard to it I don't I don't mind people being influencers uh provided they've done it ethically provided they've they've used these seven principles of influence

by pointing to them that be that are when they are naturally there in the situation we have a limited number of these or you know this is what the authorities say about this brand of U Cosmetics or uh I'm just like you and I love this lipstick or what whatever it is right yeah if those if that's true I don't mind it you're informing people into a scent okay uh we've got a trend if that's true you'd be a fool not to use it because if I'm a customer I want to know that I want

to yeah put that into the equation of what I I decide on this and and it's the it's when they counterfeit that information when they claim uh product sales that don't really exist when they when they uh when they cherry-pick a single Authority who's who says something good about but most but it's not representative of all the people when they claim that there's scarcity when there isn't scarcity those are the people who I I want to spit in their Direction honestly because they're I really like it this shortcut that we need in the information overloaded

nature of Modern Life to make good choices quickly I really like there there's a lot of these like influencers who who focus on like very very very specific things like people are really good at fishing or something like that and they kind of like talk about why they're good at it but they also talk about like how to get better at it or I'm great a guitar or something and what I like is some of them are very genuine they may they they they may sponsor products but they sponsor the products they actually use um

and you kind of seen them in other videos they're using this because they actually really like it it's not because they got maybe they got paid later they probably used it first and then the sponsors like oh wow they really like so then I'm gonna pay them to kind of that's what I like but when they're Shilling something that like you could tell they don't really even use then I'm a little the favorability you know there's a there's a a a a tactic that um uh the these people for the what are these late night

uh TV commercials what do they call those things infomercials infomercials there you don't see many of them anymore but the person who was the queen of infomercials once was doing a a study where she changed the um what she said uh at at at the end of a a uh of a message to instead of operators are waiting please call now to if operators are busy please call again oh like never before and you think about it if operators are waiting they're twiddling their thumbs totally right op are standing by yeah what no one's calling

yeah nobody operators are busy it means a lot of people like you have decided to do this okay yeah that makes that makes a lot of sense you one of the biggest areas like in discussion Tech right now are all these like addictive algorithmic feeds that are out there um like on Tik Tok or on Instagram Etc and they're using all these different kind of persuasive Technologies and and times manipulating their users like how do you how do you think about that you know again I'm neutral on it uh it depends on whether what they're

saying is genuine or whether it's designed to um to to manipulate their preferences without a basis in reality that's where I draw the line yeah okay yeah that makes sense you know part of the benefit of understanding the principles of persuasion is also to be slightly less susceptible to being manipulated um and but by the way I admit I'm so like ultimately always manipulated by these things and I feel like I'm falling for them all the time like they still manipulate me but um are there ways we can kind of like inoculate oursel a little

bit more to being less likely to being taken advantage of yeah I so I think there are in fact at the in in my book influence where I have each of these principles the the last section is how to say no so I talk to people about how to recognize and resist and deflect these principles when you see them being employed in some sort of uh undo or unwelcome way way um but I I think the best way to do it when you might not even um be able to to recognize that is check the

internet first go online see what product groups are saying about this see what evaluations with see see what CR uh comments U their customers and so on have gotten and then if they fake that somehow or you you don't know to do that when you have been deceived go online and penalize those people write a bad review or or those allow them to get away with this they have to be sanctioned and right if they have done things with all respect for ethics and auth uity and and responsibility compliment them on it so that there's

they're praised for that kind of behavior when it is the case and we can be as instrumental uh on the internet as we are uh simple uh recipients of information we can be the providers of information that shape the reputations of the people we like and dislike now when you think of like these kind of more well-known scams like the B Bernie made off or Theos or FTX or some of these things that you know where people going to jail of like how what what have you learned from kind of like you know watching or

kind of seeing how these folks operated yeah the thing that they operated on I think there were M multiple things uh what's surprising is that uh these weren't just foxes raiding the chicken house they were fooling other foxes correct they were fooling yeah ruber Murdoch put $100 million into Theros right and and and maid off had investors had Economist yeah Financial uh Giants investing it was because he put them in a category of people who he would allow in he got him in the club in the club and it was scarce not everybody was allowed

in yep yeah in fact he would he'd sometimes threaten that he would kick people out yeah the fear formal fear of missing out yeah yeah it was interesting yeah if you think of like the board of Theos like it was the most well known as people George Schultz like Henry Kissinger like those types of people yeah yeah um really really oh okay you've also studied like cult indoctrination like what are the parallels there and and and I assume there's also some parallels with like the algorithm driven communities as well well I know that uh yeah

there's some parallels especially with the ideologically based ones right and the parall with Cults is they they degrade all other sources of information except this one that we have the truth everybody else is lying to you or everybody else is ignorant or stupid and so this is the one place and just like the Cults that they don't even let you once you're in the cult they don't want you speaking to your former friends or family members they want no information at all except the information that comes from this source of source to be seen as

credible right they disparage and discriminate against those uh Outsiders yeah yeah and essentially like that idea of being the same tribe is is is is times 100 yeah you know I there's a a set of AC mics who did a long set re a set of studies uh in uh tribalism right the this tendency for and they said tribalism is human it's based I mean it's it's deep in there yeah uh yeah I mean if you think of politics it's sometimes not even about how much you like your own team it's really how much you

dislike the other team or something exactly and there's research to support that that you would be willing to overlook or dismiss or minimize uh an ethical violation of a politician who is in your tribe in your yeah party right uh and what's happened is this is really regrettable factions are superseding facts facts don't matter as much as the faction I'm in and the information that's coming from them what what we all believe and prefer to believe yeah I'm worried and what is there do you think there's like an antidote to that or like obviously people

have been talking about this for a long time um it doesn't seem like it's going to stop again you with one individual interaction you can do you can make a difference um yeah you you can as I say you can do something for that person first get them obligated you can be a a listener a concentrated listener to their position before you ever present yours and by the rule of reciprocity if you have listened deeply and asked non-evaluative questions that get them to tell me what you believe and why when you stop it's their turn

they'll listen to you in ways that they wouldn't have before right now if you think of an AI like the first thing I'm sure every AI has done is read your book um and we certainly wouldn't want like the AIS to use it as a tool to manipulate humans and stuff um how how I don't know if you've thought about this but is there a way to like design an AI persuasion system so that it respects human agency this I have thought about it and this is really a good Insight because just last week and

I think it was in uh the proceedings of the National Academy of Science there was a study that showed that um the newest uh llms um G pt4 for example understands what what deception is right it understands deception and if you include a prompt for machiavellianism it will produce a deceptive communication for you it knows how to do it so here's my the only thing I can think of we have to fight fire with fire and we have to design models that detect this ception that we can run we can run that an answer own

tell me how how manipulative is this that's where we should be spending our our our Focus defensive defensive things essentially okay that would be great I could run every advertisement through it too here's what they're trying to get you to do or here's how they're trying to um get you to to to do something um what one of the things you I think like kids are naturally good at Deception they're naturally good at um you know slightly changing things or putting on puppy eyes to get used to to if they want to stay up 30

minutes later or have another ice cream cone or something like it just seem it seems like very wired into um you know the average six-year-old or something like is that just like part of human behavior yeah it is because I think they can recognize very early on how much of a sucker we are for our kids and and I'm speaking now as a grandparents yeah they can they can get me to do anything right right it's hard to say yeah yeah I and and it really upsets their parents who say no no no they can't

have everything no no don't they no no that's not how we're trying to race them but I I'm lost with I I actually have some research on this so I once did a study where I wanted to get the parents of the students in one in one of my classes uh to answer a a a questionnaire and uh but how how could I do that I mean the parents don't get a grade right but I said to the students send this questionnaire to your parents and tell them that if they return it within week I

will give you one bonus point on one of the exams in this class right I had 2 991 students in the class and I got 296 excuse me I got I had 296 students and I got 291 back wow never seen anything this and I said look the only way this I could increase this would be if I asked them to send these to their grandparents then they'd get 295 of the 296 didn't would have had a cardiac arrest running yeah yeah yeah that's crazy what what now um if you think of like a venture

capitalist so I also have a venture capital firm and we're you know one of the things that were you know some sometimes we we send entrepreneurs a cold email and we say hey we really like your company we'd love to chat with you um or you know we're we're kind of like we're we're out there in kind of a sales mode um of course we think we can help them um and of course we want to give them money um which isn't necessarily a bad thing but still like our response rates aren't as high as

we'd like them to be what advice would you have for for us give them examples of other companies like them like them in their in their in their like that they would respect or something other family run businesses o other businesses with multiple locations in the same city something like that right we yeah and we have had good s we that means we haven't sent you something completely cold we've we've recognized who you are what your situation is and we have something for you because we've had other businesses like yours respond to us now how

do how do like naturally occurring um like uh traits in people like I find there are certain voices that I respond really well to and even like when you think of podcasting there's certain voices you're like oh you know and um or you know maybe even a certain look or other type like how how does how do those things kind of play into it maybe it's the likability thing where some of these things play into the likeability and uh I I'll give you a political example the the two US presidents who were able to do

that uh amazingly well to get people who didn't know them to respond positively to them Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton they were both seen as Teflon uh presidents they they had scandals that would just roll off their backs because they would they would connect with their audiences they would were able to as communicators people would say well he's talking to me he really cares about me that kind of thing that kind of Communicator that's very effective right uh so uh also you were mentioning voice there's research to show that if you increase the Cadence of

your voice just a little bit so not your usual but one step more faster right you seem more confident and um and um and and Truth speaking right because you know this stuff you're you're you're convinced that this is the right thing so speaking a little bit faster than normal turns off turns out to be uh a positive U when I listen to my own podcast I'll listen to it on regular speed but then I listen to it on 2x speed and I'm like I feel like I'm 10 times smarter at 2x speed than I

am at regular speed you I would recommend 1.5 for most people what what about like a appearance like obviously people change their appearance you know um from Simply like dying their hair to um cosmetic appearance to you know facial hair to other types of things like how do you how do you think about that I I I don't object to it I think that people are are U allowed to look as good as they can in a situation I mean would we object to people taking vitamins to have yeah or working out working out or

yeah yeah I mean yeah you know buying up to-date clothing no I I think that that's fine I don't have a a problem there and what what about in the in the world that we're living in now we can change our voice we could change our our actual appearance because on the screen we can do all these other types of things you know and and maybe you can change it slightly like I can get rid of any blemishes on my face or I could change it drastically as well almost like I you know you could

be talking to someone who who looks completely different than me like how do you think about that yeah I'm not so crazy about that one that that strikes me as using artificial means you know it's not really you it's not really you and U yeah okay so there's some sort of line there like you can you know maybe dial it a little bit but not too much or something seen these obituaries where people sh have a picture of them at 21 years old they died at at 71 but they have a picture of them from

when they were on the baseball team and high school or college or when they were in the army or so I I always have a I would I would much prefer the ones that have a picture of them then and a picture of them now picture now yeah both are genuine yeah I find that something even like if someone's LinkedIn profile like there was a point actually not that re not that long ago where I had like a LinkedIn profile picture from like 10 years ago and I'm like this is just not truthful anymore I

just hadn't updated it I'm like I got to update this Lake did profile because it's really not uh it's really not who I am anymore yes I was just at a a a a I gave a platform presentation a big group and they had a picture of me from a decade ago right and I I I what I did was to say first of all I want to thank the designer of that poster [Laughter] thank you very much because that's not but that's not me so you admitting to it for having a little bit of

um self-deprecating uh humor really goes a long way in getting you you know guy Kawasaki from of course everybody the the yeah evangelist for Apple during Steve Jobs we were on the same panel uh uh uh same uh dis uh a couple years ago in Romania in Bucharest and he came up to me before he said Bob I'm G to I'm going to use your name in my introduction because I'm going to have to say positive things about myself about how jobs and I created the brand of apple and and saying positive things about yourself

in person makes you lose liking and credibility right so he figured out a way to do it by by starting with self-deprecating humor he got on the stage and he said I called my wife last night and I said to her in your wildest dreams would you believe that I'd be on this same p on the same uh stage as Harari and chelini in your wildest dreams would you see me there and she said and he said she said to me guy you're not in my wildest dream that's a great story everybody laughed and everybody

loved him yeah he he had buffered himself from the self-promotional things he had to say because he took a he punctured himself at the beginning with this self-deprecating humor and I me like it's interesting that really even to this point in the podcast like we're really just getting to humor um like you haven't you didn't talk about it as much like in a front and I I I when people do use it it is at least for me it is so I am so susceptible to it um especially on the liking I tend to like

people who are humorous and stuff um is that Universal is that cross cultures I think it is I've seen a study that said if you start an e an email message with a with a funny cartoon people are more likely to accept the message okay you're in a good mood and you've given them something yep you made them laugh a little bit or chuckle or something okay um now you've I've seen you tweet before that you don't have any Heroes except Charlie Munger um can you talk a little bit about the relationship you've had with

him uh about 25 years ago I opened an envelope a legalized envelope that I got in the mail and there was a a share an a share of birkshire hathway stock from Charlie monger okay even 25 years ago that was actually worth a lot it was 20 it was $75,000 oh my gosh and he said your book has made us so much money by your principle of reciprocation I owe you and and that was the starting point for our relationship we would go to my wife and I would go to the birkshire haway meetings we'd

have he had a the night before not just with us but 75 other people and we' get and we stayed connected um uh over that time and I learned a lot from Charlie just watching him operate uh in in a lot of because one of the things he was so famous for was talking about incentives of and and in some ways that's related quite a bit to your principles like what have you learned from like his kind of incentives the what what he was able to show is that incentives are not just monetary there are

incentives for example associated with giving back to others if they have given to you there's an incentive to do that otherwise you get eliminated following the lead of comparable multiple others that's a good there's an incentive for that you're likely to make a better choice so all of these things I think fit with that larger sense people do act in their best interests but it doesn't have to be monetary best interests it can be psychological social um uh self-interests as well you know Benjamin Franklin said if you if you wish to persuade speak not to

argument speak to self-interest yeah yeah interesting um all right we have two questions we ask all our audience first one is what is a conspiracy theory you believe I believe that that most politicians are willing to lie to us and the reason that they do polling and um focus groups is to find the lies that we most want to believe and they'll tell us those okay I'm not sure how much a conspiracy theory that is because I feel like most people probably believe that but uh but it's interesting the way you thought they tell us

they're doing focus groups for other reasons right right right finding the lies we're willing to believe yeah got it and the LIE willing believe is X and so we're we're you know we're gonna um and and that might move us in some sort of way right okay is that do you think that's you know nowadays a prerequisite to being a politician is to you know being able to lie yeah I'm I'm afraid that so the th those who are most authentic get the more votes get more votes for that authenticity you know uh so I

think it's it's wrongheaded in the in in the long ter but is it one of those things like well if you fake sincerity you have it made or something exactly right yeah all right this has been great okay last question we ask all of our guests what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is gener bad advice one conventional piece of wisdom or one thing that people typically do with regard to the influence process is to have a a favorite influence appeal a favorite approach to getting people persuasive they have like a specific arrow in

the quiver that they use that's a mistake I have a colleague at the University of Florida marketing Professor who who decided to he was going to he was going to find the single most effective persuasive appeal persuasive approach what would it be and I saw him at a conference about two years later he said Bob I found it the single most effective persuasive approach is not to have a single persuasive that's a Fool's game to think that the same way the same technique is going to work for all populations and all situations and they all

and even with the same person you have to change it up quite a bit or something like that okay this is this is amazing uh thank you uh Bob chalini for being with joining us on World of Das I've been a huge fan of yours for many many years read your book even when I was in college and um um such a great I follow you also at Robert chalini on X formerly Twitter I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there this has been a ton of fun I've enjoyed it I have to say

and if you're a super data nerd go to worldof dash.com that's dworld of.com and sign up for our weekly data as a service news Roundup newsletter thanks for listening if you enjoyed the show consider reading this podcast leaving a review for more world of Das and Das is daas you can subscribe on Spotify or apple podcast or anywhere you get your podcast and also check out YouTube for videos you can find find me at Twitter at Orin that's a n Orin and we' love to hear from you