Glossary
Learn the techniques behind the requests you hear every day.
Becoming more influential starts with knowing what is going on when someone asks you for something, and when you ask them.
Here are the 8 techniques and effects from four decades of research on ethical influence, each defined plainly, with the study behind it and how to use it ethically.
The terms
These 8 terms explain why people agree to a request.
You will meet them in sales calls, fundraising letters, negotiations and price lists.
Each one comes from published research, and most belong to one of the seven principles of influence. Below, they are grouped by principle.
Each term gives you a name for something you have done, or had done to you, without knowing it.
Read the definition of each one below.
Reciprocity
Commitment and Consistency
Across all seven principles
- The Contrast PrincipleHow we judge something depends on what we experienced just before it.Read the definition
- Click, Whirr (Automatic Responses)People often respond to a single trigger feature automatically, without weighing the full information.Read the definition
- Pre-SuasionWhat a communicator does just before delivering a message shapes how it will be received.Read the definition
Go deeper
Go deeper than the definitions.
Knowing a term helps you spot it. Becoming more influential takes using the principle behind it, every day, in your own work.
Take these two steps to start:
See how strongly you use each principle.
Take the free Influence Assessment to see which principles you lean on and where you lose people. Your result is free; the full report is $49.Take the free assessment
Learn to use them in your own work.
The Cialdini Method gives each principle its own module, online and at your own pace, for $1,497 with a 7-day full refund.Explore The Cialdini Method