1, others do us a favor or give us something, and we will try our best to "repay the favor";

We promise to look after things for others, and usually we will do better than before.

3. When shopping, we prefer those "follow one's inclinations" salesmen, because they can always meet our psychological needs;

4. We firmly believe that "a penny is worth a penny", the rarer things are, the more valuable they are;

5. When shopping online, we prefer to buy products with large monthly sales and high evaluation;

……

If most of you think "yes", it means that most of us are the same and will take similar measures in similar situations.

But behind this behavior, there is actually a subtle thing that dominates us. Once this happens, our behavior habits will be like "audio tapes", which will be played at the touch of a button.

And this kind of thing that we are not easy to detect is a kind of "influence". It works slowly through our psychological mechanism, triggers some psychological mechanism, and makes us do some behavior unconsciously.

Robert Siodini, a famous American psychologist, wrote a book called Influence in response to this phenomenon. Since the publication of 1986, this book has become the strongest and most impressive psychological book in history, translated into 26 languages and widely disseminated. It is also one of the 75 business must-read books strongly recommended by Fortune magazine.

Robert? Siodini himself is a world-renowned authority on persuasion and influence research. The book Influence studies six psychological principles that affect people's thinking and behavior from our fixed thinking mode. Through these principles, we can further understand the laws of people's psychological operation in the economic society, avoid falling into some traps, and thus work and live better.

0 1 reciprocity principle

The so-called "reciprocity" is to try our best to repay what others have given us. For example, if a colleague does us a big favor on the project, we will invite him to dinner or give him a small gift in return.

Behind the principle of reciprocity is actually an innate "debt feeling".

There is a proverb in Ralph Waldo Emerson-"Every debt must be clean as if God were a creditor".

Through research, Dr. Robert concluded that this sense of debt is a "common disease" of human beings and an indispensable communication rule in people's social interaction. Under the guidance of this rule, people can cooperate and live a better life. And once someone doesn't follow this rule, "not reporting gratitude" will be spurned.

It is precisely because people agree with this rule that this principle of reciprocity is widely used in business and its effect is invincible.

We should all have had this experience: supermarkets or shopping malls will give us some free samples, and after use, people will generally go back to buy this product under the influence of this "debt feeling";

There are also some door-to-door service personnel who claim to provide us with various experiences for free, but in the end they have to come up with equivalent "killer" to persuade us to buy services and products.

In this way, we were taken in, because we later found that most of the things we bought didn't seem to have much substantive use.

So what kind of strategy should be adopted to deal with it? Bottom line: distinguish between the enemy and ourselves and actively resist.

For those who really help us, we should "repay kindness with kindness", while for those who use our psychology and adopt "tricks", we should actively resist and don't have to return.

Principle of commitment and consistency

There is an old saying in China, that is, "Keep your word, keep your word", which is the same reason.

Once a person makes such a promise, especially an open promise, then he will try his best to realize it to ensure that he is a person who is consistent with his words and deeds.

Commitment is consistent with behavior, and it can also make people maintain a good personal reputation and image in society.

However, there are also extreme cases in which this kind of words and deeds are consistent.

In the book, the author gives an example of himself. A beautiful girl who claimed to be an investigator went to her house to investigate her leisure time habits, including sports, watching movies, attending parties and so on. In order to show his "Excellence", the author told all these good habits and said that he was willing to spend time and money on generous self-investment in this regard.

It is conceivable that this beautiful girl is not a government investigator, but a club salesman. She said to the author: Since you love these activities so much, our club can save you $65,438+0,200 every year. I trust you won't refuse?

So the author accepted this promotion in order to save face and keep his promise and consistency.

There is a proverb in Ralph Waldo Emerson: "It is foolish to be consistent." .

In other words, it is commendable to make a promise and be consistent, but no principle and brain-dead consistency are stupid.

The author's own story is a case in which a merchant skillfully uses people's psychological traps to successfully promote sales.

As an ordinary person, it is not easy to avoid these carefully designed traps, so remember that it is foolish to be consistent with your own brain, and make appropriate commitments according to your actual situation, instead of talking nonsense.

03 the influence of authority

We all know that we can't be superstitious about authority, but in real life, authority has a profound influence on people's behavior and decision-making.

Undeniably, experts in a certain field have much more evidence and knowledge in this respect than ordinary people, so they have great reference value and can be used to guide our behavior choice. But it doesn't mean that authority = truth.

In psychology, there is a psychological experiment called "milgram" which is the most inhuman.

This experiment is an "electric shock experiment" conducted by students under the pressure of an authoritative tutor (there is no real electricity, and the tutor invited an actor to perform the pain of being shocked).

The experimental results are shocking, because almost all the students applied the strongest voltage to the subjects under the high pressure of the tutor (all the students thought it was real electricity).

Moreover, we also have more and more evidence that the opinions of authoritative people or experts, even the supreme authority, are not necessarily completely correct.

In order to avoid being misled by authority, we should be psychologically prepared and learn to recognize whether this person is a real authority. Must what he said be true?

But for ordinary people, it's difficult, but it doesn't mean we can't help it. At least we should know that there are other options, not just one side of the story.

04 scarcity

Whether it is the principle of economics or the feeling in our daily life, "scarcity is the most valuable thing" is an iron law of value that we believe in.

A while ago, Uniqlo grabbed T-shirts and Starbucks' cat claw coffee cups, which has been happening constantly since people had an economic life. It is foreseeable that there will be such incidents in the future.

Why? Because it is almost an instinctive reaction to want what everyone is fighting for, and fighting for this scarce resource has a strong stimulating effect on people. More importantly, people will instinctively feel that they will benefit from this thing.

When things are scarce, we want them, and when people strive for them, we also want them. Moreover, this instinctive reaction occurs at a very young age-a three-year-old child is tired of playing with his toys. Once other children come to compete, it will definitely attract his attention and join the war of "grabbing toys".

Merchants will even make some gimmicks such as "hunger marketing", "limited" and "only two days" to harvest our money and let us spend it "convincingly".

How to avoid falling into the psychological trap brought by this "scarcity"? First of all, we should be alert to our consumption impulses and think twice before you act; The second is to judge whether this thing is valuable to us, rather than simply possessing it.

05 social identity

Nowadays, more and more people are used to shopping online, which is time-saving and efficient.

In the process of online shopping, have you ever observed everyone, besides quality and price, what is the most important?

That's right, it's the sales of products and the comments of sellers.

When we open the product page, we find that the monthly sales volume of this product is thousands or tens of thousands, so it is easier for us to buy than to sell dozens or hundreds of products every month; By the same token, those products with good evaluation and high score are easier for us to pay the bill than those with average evaluation.

This is a manifestation of social identity.

Robert? Diodor pointed out in his book: The principle of social identity means that when we judge what is right, we will act according to others' opinions, especially when we are uncertain, unclear and uncertain, we are most likely to think that others' actions are correct.

This is also in line with walter lippmann's famous saying: where everyone thinks the same, no one will think too much.

However, this social identity reaction is actually an unconscious conditioned reflex, so once a merchant or other person uses our psychology to forge or tamper with some evidence, we are easily fooled.

If you don't believe us, we can reflect on how many things we buy online are inconsistent with comments and propaganda.

So in the face of the influence of social identity, what we can do is the same sentence: learn to think independently, judge independently and have our own logical thinking ability.

06 preferences

In addition to the above five psychological traps, influence also explains the influence of "preference" on our cognition and behavior.

The so-called "preference" is to influence people's choices and judgments based on some people and things that people like and love.

In many business training, the sales psychology of "doing what you like" will be mentioned, and the "weakness" of consumers will be seized to promote their products.

For example, some excellent salespeople will know customers' preferences in detail before formal communication with customers, so as to find effective ways to facilitate the completion of this transaction in communication.

Under the influence of "preference", customers are also more likely to pay the bill.

Influence, Robert? Theodini believes that the reason why these influences can play a role without being noticed by us is mainly an inertial thinking mode and psychological mechanism formed over the years, which makes us accustomed to this behavior, just like a "tape", which will automatically play when pressed.

Therefore, in order to truly distinguish what is the real influence and how to avoid being automatically dominated by these influences, you still need to constantly exercise your logical thinking ability and independent thinking ability.

This is also a lesson that we need to practice all our lives.