Kayla_Chp4

I actually had to check and make sure that I was in the right course while I was going back through the powerpoint. There were so many mentions of psychology in this chapter! (Even psychoanalytic theory, which I admittedly chuckled at.) So for this post, I thought I would focus on some other ways psychology is used to "manipulate" people into buying things.

In one of my independent studies on how people make decisions, such as what to buy or not to buy, we discussed how we can manipulate people into making the decisions that we want. There are six major ways, according to Robert Cialdini, that we can do this:

Consistency - we need to make our actions match our beliefs.(Getting parents to agree to buy a toy for their child, but then undersupplying the toy around Christmastime, so parents buy something else for Christmas and buy the promised toy after Christmas.)
Reciprocation - The "not so free free present"
Social Proof - everyone else is doing it.
Authority - Good for professionals like lawyers and doctors.
Liking - Use people who are most like your target audience, or who your target audience will most like.
and Scarcity - Scarcity=valuable (Get it before it's gone!)

Another technique that was mentioned in the book, but not in either of the below websites was the foot-in-the-door technique to increase sales. The idea is, for example with donations, that once you get someone to commit to donating something small, like $5, it will be easier to get them to donate larger amounts later on.

There is also the opt-out technique, which is being used now for organ donation. People are much more likely for a number of reasons to be less likely to opt-out of something than to opt-in to something.

The book athat I read for the course was much longer, over 30 pages, but I found a few websites that go in depth on the six principles without going over the top!

https://www.influenceatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/E_Brand_principles.pdf

https://collegeinfogeek.com/principles-of-influence/