Why You Say Yes, When You Actually Want to Say No - Persuasion - FutureIQ

6,295 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jul 18, 2025

Slog Reference: Persuasion (part 1)

Description

You’re being persuaded right now and you don’t even know it.
Every ad, every social post, every “limited time offer” is part of an invisible war for your attention, trust, and choices. In this powerful episode of Future IQ, we reveal the psychological weapons of persuasion that shape your decisions even the ones you think are completely your own.
What if we told you that 25% of the entire global economy runs on just one thing: persuasion? And that number shoots up to 40% when we include everyday interactions, like negotiating with your boss, convincing your partner, or simply trying to get your kid to eat veggies. It’s more than the time we spend eating or sleeping. Yet... no one teaches us how it works.
We break down the 6 legendary principles of persuasion from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, backed by science and tested for over 40 years. Discover why free gifts aren’t really free, how scarcity hijacks your brain, and why we trust people who simply dress better. Real-world case studies — from Amway to Jonestown to Reddit sock-puppets, reveal how persuasion techniques are used for good and evil.
Whether you're a marketer, a manager, or just someone trying to not get scammed by clever salespeople, this episode will open your eyes to how easily you can be influenced... and how you can protect yourself.

More Videos:
Why Do We Follow Social Norms? Group Conformity in Sociology: https://youtu.be/_XhIECCt_P8
How to Select an Engineering College? | Choosing an Engineering College and Branch: https://youtu.be/kUgFekrvHrg
How to Learn Anything Fast? Learning by Osmosis: https://youtu.be/YlRmFeOODoY
Looks Do Matter! Good Looking People Have it Easier: https://youtu.be/xQfypw2nkeA
Mastering Both Your Brains: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4

Sources:
Book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: https://www.amazon.in/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-New-Expanded/dp/0063138808
Paper: One Quarter of GDP is Persuasion: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2117917
Benjamin Franklin Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

00:00 - Introduction
00:27 - A persuasive Book.
02:18 - 1. Reciprocation.
04:39 - Clever Marketing Tricks.
06:10 - The dark side of Reciprocation.
08:43 - The Art of doing Favours.
10:59 - 2. Social Proof.
14:22 - Child-rearing with Persuasion.
15:34 - 3. Liking/Mirroring.
24:33 - The Mirror Image Experiment.
25:38 - Subconscious Persuasion.
26:48 - Outro

#futureiq #persuasiontips

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Persuasion (part 1)

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Transcript

- 25% of all human economic activity is persuasion. Convincing somebody of something and if you look at non-economic activity, the percentage probably goes up much more. Such an important activity, do you really understand it? Can you use it well? Can you detect when it is being used against you? How come this is not taught in our schools like reading, writing and arithmetic? This is such an important topic. Shriant that there is much research on this on persuasion. Yes. So in fact 40 years ago a very persuasive book was okay uh 40 years ago a book was written called influence the psychology of persuasion and that is considered the bible in this field. Okay. Uh you asked

0m 52s why it is not taught in schools because if it was taught in schools all the students would persuade their teachers to give them 100% marks probably you don't know. Yes. I mean schools are trying to create robots who will listen, right? Okay. These robots will be more intelligent than just listening and schools don't want that. This book influence the bible of persuasion, right? Okay. Is a fascinating book because it was written by Robert Sealdini who is a professor of psychology. Okay. But what happened was that one day he got persuaded by a salesperson against his will. Later that day he was thinking about it and he wondered how did that happen right and being a

1m 36s psychology professor he decided that he needs to find out. Yeah. So he took a job as a car salesman worked there for 3 years. Every day he would learn the techniques of persuasion from the salespeople. Then he would go back to the university sit with the students. They would analyze it. They would come up with psychological experiments to confirm whether what they thought was happening was really happening. Okay? And that resulted in the book. The book has six principles of persuasion that everyone should know about.

2m 12s We are going to cover three of those in this episode. Okay. Okay. So let's start with the first one. All right. Very simple reciprocation. Easy to understand. Okay. Okay. But we still underestimate it. Okay. Okay. Okay, let's start with a simple experiment. There was a researcher called Joe Reagan. He did the following experiment. Joe Reagan, huh? Not Rogan. Oh, just checking. Not Rogan. Yes, you're right. Hey, he's also very persuasive. No, but this is very long ago. Okay. In his experiment, what he did was he called over a bunch of students saying there was a psychology experiment going on about some art appreciation or something.

2m 53s Okay. Okay. And then just before the art appreciation experiment started, he would say, "Oh, I'm going to go out." He would go get two cooks, take one himself, give one to the other, uh, subject. Okay? Right? In half the cases, in other half of the cases, he would just go out and come back and not give anything to the student. Okay? Then at the end of whatever that art experiment, that was bogus. Okay? That was not the real experiment. At the end, he would ask that student, "Oh, there are these raffle tickets I need to sell and if I sell more than $50 worth, then I will get a prize. So, can you please buy some raffle tickets from me?" Okay.

3m 35s Okay. So, that was the real experiment. That was the real experiment. And what he found out was that the people he gave Coke to in the beginning, huh, bought twice as many raffle tickets as the people he did not give Coke to. Everything else was the same. Oh, there was a control group that he didn't give the coke to. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Now, see, like I said, this seems obvious, right? Oh, you feel nice that he gave me coke, so maybe, you know, I should buy.

4m 07s But he very very deliberately gave them coke because he knew that then he would sell them raffle tickets. Correct. Exactly. And this salespeople use all the time, right? When you go to a shop, they'll give you chai and something like that, right? Wow. But only if there are high value items like a jewelry store. Exactly what I was going to say. If you go to any jewelry store in Pune, the first thing you get as you enter the door is either a juice or sbat or some chai. Please. And they'll be like, "Please have it. It's on us." Yeah.

4m 36s Because the rest of it is on us. Another example. Okay. When I was growing up, organizations like World Wildlife Fund, Yeah. they would send letters I remember this asking for donations. Yeah. But they did something very clever. Okay. Along with the letter asking for donation, they would send some simple small free stuff. Okay. Oh yeah. One example is that they would send free address label stickers. Okay. So a little sticker with my name and my address on it and a little nice logo of and all of that. Yeah.

5m 13s And this is a sticker which I could peel off and I stick on any letter that I have to send out where I have to put the from address. Yeah. Luggage, letters, wherever you need your address to be put. You would just peel off that sticker and use it there. And it was it was like coming in your junk mail. You weren't even thinking about it and it was free. There would be like you know seven sheets with 30 labels on each sheet, right? It seemed like oh my god they have done such a nice thing for me. Right.

5m 38s Yeah. When companies started using such gifts asking for donations, the number of people donating went up from 18% to 35%. Wow. Right. Just because that simple thing which probably didn't cost much Yeah. created a sense of obligation. A sense of obligation, a sense of reciprocity as you were saying. Exactly. Right. Uh it's a very powerful thing. Uh right. In fact, one very powerful example of this, okay, okay, is there is something called the Jonestown mass suicide. There was a God man, a very charismatic figure called Jim Jones. He convinced a lot of people to become his disciples and they all moved to Jonestown and he convinced all of them to commit mass suicide. Okay, I'll not

6m 27s get into the details. You look up the details. Fascinating story. But the important part is that there was only one survivor. Oh, and when they talked to her, they found out why she survived. She was the only person there in the entire Jonestown community commune of theirs. Yes. Who had not taken favors from Jim Jones, right? Favors like when she was ill, special food was prepared and sent to her and she said, "No, I don't want it." Most of the others would take favors from Jim Jones.

7m 02s So that when it came time for the mass suicide, she could say no, the others couldn't. Oh, so this reciprocity was not that powerful a thing. And in her case, there was no reciprocity because she hadn't taken any fevers. So she didn't feel the need to reciprocate any of those favors because there were no favors in the first place. It it seems like such a simple thing, reciprocity, but at the same time it leads to such powerful results and Jonestown is the most powerful of them because it literally is a matter of life and death here.

7m 34s Yeah. Fascinating. Much much simpler things, right? uh good salespeople especially where the sale is happening over a long period of time know to become your friends and you know give you gifts on your birthday and uh things like that right so that works very well when there is a relationship okay but also a lot of modern companies are just doing it so badly because a bank sending an automated happy birthday mail does not create a sense of obligation but you know it started from actual sales people wishing happy birthday by calling you up and those sales people this is like 30 40 years ago they used to get a huge amount of benefit from doing simple things like

8m 21s that absolutely which is which is which is exactly the example I was thinking about when you mentioned it the first time and also now a lot of relationship managers are the ones who call you and say sir happy birthday how are you doing a funds you want to invest Yes. I mean, see, you have to make it less fake, right? Uh there is one more variation on this technique of doing a favor where you can do a favor without doing a favor. Okay. Okay. The basic idea is that ask for a very large favor. Most people will say no, then withdraw and ask for a much smaller favor. And it just seems like because you went from a large favor to a small

9m 02s favor, it seems like you are doing them a favor by reducing your demand. Example, okay, researchers did a study in which they went to people and asked them would they be willing to spend one day at the zoo with juvenile delinquents. Okay, juvenile delinquents are underage criminals and the idea is that you know this will make them feel better and all of that. Yeah. rehabilitation rather than correction or punishment. But 83% of the people refused. Okay. Well, turns out this was part one of the experiment. This was the small favor.

9m 37s Let's look at part two of the experiment which was they went to the people and asked for a big favor. They said, "Would you be willing to mentor juvenile delinquents for 2 hours a week for two whole years?" Yeah. No, let's go back to the zoo. So, everyone pretty much said no. Yeah. Then after that they said okay fine fine you don't have time for that but would you be willing to take them to the zoo for a day more than 50% said yes. Yeah you see how that can happen right so just by changing from a large favor to a small favor you have done a favor to them and gotten reciprocation. So while

10m 17s you were explaining this, I realized that I fell for this exact trick with my bank and my relationship manager who called me suddenly and said, "Sir, I see there are funds lying in your account. Why don't you put 80% of this in this particular whatever investment?" I'm like, "8%? No, I can't I can't afford to lose that much liquidity." He says, "Okay, sir, then do 20%." Like, "Yeah, 20% sounds reasonable." Before that call came in, I had absolutely no intention of putting any money in any investment.

10m 44s I wanted that liquidity. At the end of that call, I was 20% poorer. But look, I didn't even realize I was being reciprocated here. These persuasion techniques. All right, let's go on to technique number two. Okay. Right. This is called social proof. Okay. Okay. Have you ever heard canned laughter or applause on TV shows? Right. Yes. Right. That is social proof. Everybody else is laughing. So you also laugh because you think, "Oh, the joke must be funny, right?" Oh, group conformism. Yeah. Everybody hates that laughter.

11m 21s Okay. But still it is there for like 40 years TV has been doing this. Do you know why? Because experiments show that it does cause people to laugh longer and laughed louder and that it works best for the weak jokes. Yeah. And just in case you think this is like a TV thing, it is not specific to TV. Yeah. Okay. This started in the 1800s in Italy in opera houses. Oh. Okay. There were people who had created an entire business of providing applause givers. Okay. And they had a business card. They would say for clapping when your hero comes in, we will charge this much. for laughing at one joke, we will charge this much. For uh you know

12m 10s clapping at the end of a song, we will charge this much and it really works. It's a it's a great business model. I mean it it benefits the uh production. It benefits the people who are laughing and clapping. Good business model. Yeah. Yeah. It puts money in the economy. But the same technique works in many other places. Like where? For example, if you go to a cafe and there is a tip jar kept there. Have you ever seen the tip jar empty? It's never even if you go at 6:00 a.m. and the store opens, you go in the tip jar will have some money in it. Okay, that's called salting the tip jar. Okay, when

12m 50s you see lots of money there, especially you know various notes, then you also feel like giving. Okay, it increases the giving. The salting example reminds me of uh something I read about uh Reddit the social networking which has now become the social networking site. Initially in the old days uh Reddit used a lot of salting methods where they basically created accounts and made those accounts post stuff on Reddit. So you would see people different people different accounts posting on Reddit and you would think oh this site is being used by so many people I should also join in this Reddit founders have actually admitted this but pretty much every social media website does this right because in the initial days if

13m 35s there is no activity people will not come right but if there is activity you'll say oh this seems to be like a cool site that's social proof so they create fake activity Um not just that but even otherwise whenever a company claims fastest growing largest selling why is that happening why are they saying that right because it is social proof fastest growing means the product must be good selling must means the product must be good if so many people are using it right if so many people are buying it if so many people are quickly joining it then there is definite proof that they like it so I should also like it right Now this seems obvious

14m 16s but I want to give uh some examples of experiments showing this is not obvious because it can be used in child rearing. Child rearing okay yes there are experiments which show that if you show children videos of other children eating foods that the children normally don't want to eat the children start eating those foods. Right? a whole bunch of such experiments showing that just showing children social proof makes a big difference to them, right? Yeah, it definitely does and I have seen it happen with my own two eyes. So, I agree with this.

14m 50s Correct. In fact, that is the reason why you should try to go to the best college you can get into because everyone around you will be doing something and through social proof you will end up doing the same things. So, you go to a better college, you will study better. you go to a bad college and you will waste your time doing drugs. Right? So that's a bit of an extreme example. That's not how it always happens, but he is right. And we've done an episode on that on why what college you should choose for after your 12th. There's also an episode we've done on learning by osmosis and a couple of other episodes on our channel which talk about this

15m 27s phenomenon. But he's right, social proof is a very powerful persuasive technique. Yeah. So the third principle of persuasion M is liking. Okay. We are more persuaded by people whom we like. Okay. And whom do we like? We like people who are similar to us. We like people who are attractive. We have done an episode on this. Yes. Check out our episode on beauty. Okay. We like people who are familiar to us, right? Don't like strangers. We like people who praise us. True. Okay. And we like people who are generous and benevolent. Okay.

16m 03s True. Let's go through examples of each of those. Okay. So, similarity. All right. Okay. In the 1970s, there was the hippie movement in the US. Yes. So, there were a lot of people who considered themselves normal and then there were the hippies who were considered abnormal. Okay. So, around that time experiments were done where the researcher went and asked students for a coin to make a phone call. Yeah. Okay. Now, half the time the experimentter wore normal clothes. Okay. And half the time the experimental wore hippie clothes.

16m 36s Okay. Okay. And of course half the time the student who was asked was wearing normal clothes and half the time the student who was asked was wearing hippie clothes. Right. Yes. The result was surprising. Okay. Okay. When the dress of the volunteer matched the dressing style of the student, 2/3 of the time they got a coin. Oh. But when the dresses didn't match, it was only one/ird. Oh, right. Yeah. Similar people. You like people who are dressed similar to you. Nice. You might think of yourself as a person who would never behave like this. But it's probably not true. Okay. You probably behave like this just without realizing it. Right.

17m 20s Absolutely. Um in fact, many many sales training programs where sales people are trained, they are trained to mirror the customer. Okay. Oh, think about it. Saleseople is asking where the customer is from and finds out customer is from Latur and magically it turns out that the salesperson's wife is from Laturinally. Uh if you see the customer uh talking in Bengali amongst themselves again, magically this person turns out to have visited Bengal recently and loved the city and things like that, right? Yeah. Not just that, but they are taught to match the customer's body posture, the mood, the verbal style and a whole bunch of similarities along different dimensions. The more you do that, the chances of the sale increase because you

18m 09s know now the salespeople seems like one of you. Yeah, I'm actually going through all of the high-v value sales that I've participated in as a customer and trying to remember all the sales people who sold me stuff and what they were doing at the time. I'm pretty sure they were using these techniques for sure. Yeah. Another technique is basically good cop bad cop. Okay. Where in TV shows, you know, there is like two cops. One of them is being really rude to the criminal and then suddenly the other one starts being nice and it turns out that the criminal then sort of cooperates with the good cop thinking that the nice cop is on their

18m 48s side. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But this technique is actually used. so much now that most people have become wise to it. They're like, "Ah, we know. Yeah, this this to I know you're playing good cop, bad cop. I'm not I'm not confessing anything to you." Well, when a salesperson tells you that they really really want to give you a discount, okay, but let me go talk to my boss and then the boss doesn't refuses to give the discount or sometimes the boss yells at the salesperson in front of the customer saying, "How can you do this?

19m 19s How can you promise this and all of that all kinds of techniques they are using and this is good cop bad cop right where you feel that the salesperson is on your side and then there is that boss who is just being nasty for no good reason Navin I fell for this I fell for this while buying my car by the the salesperson who was selling my car he gave me a really good price on the car two days later he calls me and says my boss just told me I can't give you that Now I'm stuck. I have already committed the price to you and he wants me to not sell the car to you. Tell me what I

19m 55s should do. And we negotiated to a midpoint. I actually paid him more than what he had promised me. That's sales technique in the book written 40 years ago. Okay. And it was a good cop bad cop technique that I fell for. Yes. Uh also, you know, we like attractive people. That's why sales people are taught grooming, right? Uh we have an episode called the beauty premium where we explained that grooming is one of the most important thing right the the natural physical looks that you were born with are not as important as grooming and good haircut and good clothes and good personality and so on.

20m 34s Right. Yeah. You will see the difference in that episode and in this episode in terms of grooming. Yes, definitely. All right. Sorry bad joke but it's true. Actually, that episode alerted me and made me aware of the importance of grooming. So, I've been trying to take a little more care of myself. I hope it is coming through. But can't do much about it. Next, we like people who praise us. Yeah. And that is why halfway through a sales process you will notice that the saleserson is complimenting your choice like oh you are like a discerning customer not like my other idiot customers right?

21m 14s Yeah. So and finally we like familiar things. Okay. A lovely psychology experiment proves that we like familiar things. Okay. Familiar in what sense? Okay. something that you see again and again. Aa not as in family familiar but regularly seen thing. Yeah. And that is why a good salesperson is going to be in touch with you is going to find excuses to call you on a regular basis. Right. U I mean I come from the world of uh you know enterprise software sales right enterprise sales people will continuously be going and visiting the potential customers. Most of the time they don't talk about sales.

21m 58s They just talk about everything all the things uh that are of interest. Right. Yeah. And also it also usually happens that magically if the potential customer is a golfer then the salesperson is also very interested in golf and so on. Another important part of familiarity. Okay. You see all those stupid ads on TV about oh what was that do the digit dance or something like that and you think this is so stupid. I am never going to fall for it. Right. Yeah. But yet when you go to buy something, right, you pick from the brands that you are familiar with.

22m 36s Yep. And you are familiar with brands that have advertised a lot in the past, no matter how good or bad those ads were. It's called top of mind recall in advertising. And you remember brands that are uh that have made the most impact and that are top of your mind. So, anything that stands out from the rest of the pack always gets top of mind. Which is why the digit dance is top of mind many times. Which is why catchy taglines like uh Tandama club is a is a top-of- mind recall. Which is why brands go for catchy taglines like just do it or impossible is nothing or think different. And when I was saying these

23m 13s taglines, you knew exactly which brand I was talking about. That's top of- mind recall. And that's the power of uh branding. Familiarity familiarity sorry so um one thing is that I can imagine a bunch of you sitting there oh I will never fall for such tricks right but the point is that this is not working at the level of your system two brain it is working at lower levels of your brain okay one lovely example which shows that familiarity works at lower levels of your brain okay very simple experiment okay take a photograph of you make a mirror image copy of that same photo like a selfie camera picture unflipped.

23m 53s Right? Now you have two photos. One is normal, one is flipped. Okay? You are shown that photo and you are asked which one is better. Similarly, all your friends are shown these pair of photos and asked which one is better. Okay? Turns out that all your friends prefer the normal one and you prefer the flipped one. Do you know why? uh you are used to seeing yourself flipped in the mirror. Oo, and that is familiar to you. Yeah. Whereas your friends are used to seeing your normal face. They don't see you flipped.

24m 30s So that is familiar to them. And they clearly pick that and you clearly pick this. But then what I realize is that these techniques will not work on everyone every time. Right? Many people think these techniques don't work on them, but many of those people are mistaken. There's a simple experiment showing this. Okay. A bunch of men were shown some photos of cars. Okay. And some of the photos had a good-looking model standing next to the car. Okay. Okay. And they were asked which cars they liked.

25m 05s And they were asked why they liked the cars. Okay. Turns out that the men consistently picked the cars with the hot model standing next to it. But they all consistently gave very technical reasons for liking the car. Oh, the features, the engine size, and so on. I actually have a logical answer to that. See, if a good-looking person is standing next to the car, then that means that good-looking person has made a conscious decision about that car, which means the car must be good. You know, a good-looking person won't like a car just like that. The point is the lower layers of your brain are making the decision but of course the higher layers of your brain are ashamed of this

25m 46s decision. So the higher layers come up with a excuse for justifying that decision. Okay. We talked about this in detail in our episode system one versus system two. Okay. Yeah. It's actually one of our earliest episodes. Uh go check it out. Yeah. But sure you know these techniques maybe it doesn't work on all okay some of these techniques work on all people and all of these techniques work on some people okay sure there are some people whose system two brain is a little stronger so these techniques work a little less but by and large they work on most people and some of them work on you also yeah I thought a lot of these techniques

26m 31s wouldn't work on me and during the course of this episode, I realized that these techniques have worked on me twice in my recent memory. So, you might want to re-evaluate all of your recent decisions that involved salespeople and try and figure out if one of these techniques was used on you. There are uh three more principles of persuasion, right? Yes. So, we will cover them in another episode. Check it out when it comes out. We will come back with that episode soon. But uh meanwhile thinking about all the ways I've been persuaded. This is me Shri Kant. That's Naven who always manages to persuade me.

27m 09s And this is future IQ.