Pre-Suasion

Cialdini's follow-up to Influence argues that what a communicator does immediately before delivering a message determines how it is received, and that this is a distinct mechanism from the six principles of influence he documented earlier.

His central claim is that directing attention to a particular concept immediately before a request makes that concept temporarily more accessible and therefore more influential in the subsequent judgment. He calls this the privileged moment for change. His examples include research showing that people asked whether they consider themselves adventurous agreed to a request more often afterwards, that a wine shop playing French music sold more French wine while customers denied any connection, and that survey response rates changed substantially with a preceding question about helpfulness.

He covers what draws attention, including the sexual, the threatening and the unexpected; the fact that attention itself confers importance, so that whatever is focused on appears more causally significant; and the mechanisms of association, in which linking a message to something already positively valued transfers the response. He adds unity as a seventh principle of influence, meaning shared identity rather than mere similarity, and argues that it operates through the category of we rather than through liking.

The research base has weakened substantially since publication, since much of it is priming research from the period most affected by the replication crisis. Several specific studies cited have failed to replicate. Cialdini has defended the work. The core observation that context shapes reception is not in doubt, and the specific effect sizes claimed should be treated with caution.

Regents' professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University who studies compliance and influence.

Influence organises the persuasion research into six principles - reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity - each tested experimentally and observed in the field among salespeople, fundraisers and negotiators. Pre-Suasion adds the timing question: what an audience attends to immediately before a request changes how they answer it.

Arizona State University