The yes man

BEHAVIOUR:Six simple rules can show you that persuasion is a science not an art, argues author Prof Robert Cialdini

It's Monday morning and I'm running up Clerkenwell Road in London, trying to keep an appointment with Prof Robert Cialdini, an expert in the scientific study of persuasion. He is co-author of Yes: 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion, a book chronicling over 60 years of research in to the topic.

We meet in the lobby of a trendy boutique hotel, the furniture a homage to the mid 1970s, as is the service. The professor is playing host to the media and while waiting for a previous interview to finish, I ask the publicist how his day is shaping up.

This afternoon, she says, he was due to meet Steve Hilton, the Conservative party's chief strategist. Interesting. Hilton is the former Saatchi ad man who has become one of the most influential members of David Cameron's inner circle. What could they be discussing? The good professor must be advising Hilton on how to shape the Tory message and get the British electorate to embrace the word of Dave.

He'll also be having lunch with Daniel Finkelstein, says the publicist. Hmm. Finkelstein seems to be a big fan. He is a senior editor at The Times and a former adviser to John Major. His name appears on the front cover: "This book changed my way of looking at the world. This thinking is the real deal. Don't miss out".

That's some heavyweight backing right there, this bloke must know his stuff. And look at the queue of journalists waiting to get some time with him. The professor is finishing off with the man from Reuters. After The Irish Times it will be the BBC, then CNBC and the Financial Times. All this hustle, it's contagious, it must be gold dust this book.

It's almost as if the attention is intended to make me think . . . and then the penny drops. I've read about this, in his book, so I know what's going on here. This is "social proof" with a bit of "authority" thrown in. These are two of Prof Cialdini's six rules of persuasion. Social proof is when we look to what others do to guide our behaviour. It's like with the towels - hotel guests were encouraged to re-use their towels by subtle changes in the wording on a card left in the bathroom.

The routine message implores them to keep their towels and help save the environment. Researchers changed the sign next to the sink in the bathroom. The new one suggested that the majority of guests recycled their towels at least once during their stay. The result was a 26 per cent increase in recycling.

"We want to show that the persuasion process is a science, rather than an art," says Cialdini as we sit down. Often he says we have an excellent case to make, but nobody wants to listen.

To move people in our direction, we should adhere to some "fundamentals", such as the power of reciprocation (we feel obligated to return favours), scarcity and authority (looking to experts to show us the way). These can be applied to the personal, business or political arena.

A central tenet of Cialdini's research is that we feel under a social obligation to return favours. A small act of kindness can reap large results. He takes this a stage further by asking whether the impact of the favour increases or falls over time. In short, does a favour behave like bread and go stale, or grow in value, like wine?

A large study carried out at a major airline's customer care department indicates that the answer to the question depends on whether you are the giver or receiver of the favour.

Recipients of favours regard them as more important immediately after it was performed, but the impact lessens over time. The reverse is true of the favour-doer. Cialdini suggests we have a tendency to see ourselves in the best possible light: the receivers think they didn't need that much help in the first place and favour doers "think they really went the extra mile".

"Reciprocation is one of several universals to the human experience that cause people to respond positively to us," says Cialdini. "These change from culture to culture."

He cites research carried out within Citibank, which has offices in 90 countries across the world. taking four prototypical cultures - Anglo Saxon (UK, US and Canada), Mediterranean, Middle and Far Eastern - the findings varied greatly as to the key driver in negotiation process.

"Has this requester done anything for me recently?" This question that dominated responses from the UK, US and Canada offices. Employees in the Middle East offices of Dubai or Saudi Arabia, placed a high emphasis on the views of a particular leader and showed greater deference to perceived superiors. The relationship to family or community was central to the Mediterranean feedback whilst central European and Scandinavians showed a slavish attachment to systems, "How do the company's regulations suggest I am supposed to answer this request".

A friend of Cialdini's, a professor at an American business school has devoted his life to answering the question as to what is the single best sales strategy. "Twenty years later he determined that the best strategy is not to have a single strategy".

Given his afternoon agenda, I was keen to establish how politicians could use this book to their advantage. Politicians of every hue are guilty of manipulation, says Cialdini, rather than informing us. "It's entirely appropriate for a public service entity to honestly inform people about what the majority of people are doing in a certain situation," he says. "That's one form of evidence of how people move to making decisions. It allows them to make a good decision based on what others like them have learned to do. This option is available to governments and political parties without breaking the trust with the electorate."

Problems arise when the electorate suspects that there is something under the surface that is not being revealed. "Politicians bury the weaknesses, steer us away from the negative and allowing their opponent to make capital from it," he says, a strategy that only gives us the impression that they are trying to fool us.

Cialdini's advice is to admit weaknesses early and build a bridge from them to your biggest strength.

This is a feature of some of the most successful advertising of recent times. "Avis, we're number 2 but we try harder", and "L'Oreal's because your worth it", which emphasises the product's high price, are examples. "By doing this it allows the strong argument to nullify the weakness," he says.

The principles of persuasion have not changed over time, however the channel used to communicate has. "E-mail is the most bloodless form of communication ever devised," he says. The upside of its potential reach has to be weighed against the removal of personal contact, the rapport that needs to be in place for us to persuade effectively.

A study carried out between American business schools tried to rectify this by demanding that before a negotiation took place online, the participants enter in to some mutual self disclosure, exchanging personal information by e-mail before the negotiation takes place, the sort of thing we do naturally when we meet face to face.

The results were impressive. The number of stymied negotiations fell from 29 per cent to 6 per cent when some form of disclosure took place.

"The challenge in developing the next generation of e-mail will be to humanise it," says Cialdini. "Its what we do before we send messages that matters."

As we conclude our chat, I walk away believing the book will change my life, convinced I'm going to use the professor's secrets to make people do what I want them to do. Then, sitting on the train on the way home, I remember an old gag. "Paul McKenna tried to hypnotise me once, but it didn't work. I remind him of this every Wednesday when I go round to clean his car."