Author: Lynn

This article is the last in our series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. The scarcity principle boils down to this: we want what we’re afraid we can’t have. Fear of losing out on something can be an extremely powerful motivator. Availability might be threatened by limited quantity, a time deadline, or…

This article is the seventh in an eight-part series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion In this chapter, Cialdini convincingly demonstrates that most of us have a very strong tendency to follow the instructions of someone we perceive to be an authority. This article has been more difficult to write than the…

This article is the sixth in an eight-part series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I’ve been writing about the principles in Cialdini’s book in some detail because the primary mission of Take Back Your Brain is to level the playing field between the advertisers and us in the competition for our…

This article is the fifth in an eight-part series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. The principle of social proof suggests that we tend to look to others to decide what to do, especially when we are uncertain about the correct behavior. Seeing others doing something has a powerful influence on us,…

This article is the fourth in an eight-part series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Social psychology research suggests that taking even a small action creates commitment in us to the position that action represents, and that we will thereafter want to appear to behave in ways that are consistent with that…

This article is the third in a series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. According to Cialdini we are massively socialized to feel uncomfortable if someone has given us a gift or done us a favor that we have not returned. This feeling of indebtedness generally originates from one of three sources:…

This article is the second in a series about Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. If we see two things in sequence that are different from one another, we will tend to see the second one as more different than it actually is. This is called perceptual contrast. For example, a realtor or…

I believe a lot of expertise about how people change their minds and their behavior resides in the selling and advertising and industries. A core mission of Take Back Your Brain is to learn the secrets those industries know about how to influence us and use them to make it more likely we will achieve…