Have you ever stood on line in a store and just watched the behaviors of the strangers around you? If so, you can only imagine what it is I’m about to tell you. I found myself standing on line last week at my local book store. There was a blond woman in front of me at the register. It caught my attention out of the corner of my eye that the cashier was throwing out some drab pitch to up-sell the woman. The clerk pulls out a piece of paper from under the counter and shows the woman but she tells the clerk she’s “not interested” in whatever pitch she’s selling. Then, the funniest thing happened, the clerk look at the woman and said “just so you know, most of our coupons come through email so it’s worth it to sign up for our newsletter”. The blond woman snatched the paper out of the clerk’s hands and immediately wrote down her email address.

Now I don’t have to be a behavioral scientist to figure out what just happened here. You see, even though the woman originally wasn’t the least bit interested in what the clerk was selling, at least she wasn’t going to miss out on the chance to get something cheaper or free in the future. The automatic response in her brain was to accept something that would potentially benefit her in the future.

Why would she automatically accept a command from the clerk? In some cases, it might be a good idea to have good automatic reactions when something is about to influence your life. But in others, it may not. The clerk was only repeating what her manager told her to say to get more people to sign up for their free newsletter. The simple offering of future savings hooks the woman into going from a “one-time shopper” to an actual “customer”, someone who will return in the future to make another purchase.

This is just one small example of how we can be influenced by strangers. We find ourselves doing all kinds of things and then wonder why we are doing them. The really funny thing about my story was that I was standing in line, holding a copy of Robert Cialdini’s: Influence-the psychology of persuasion in my hands. In the book, Robert talks about how evolution is really nothing more than our ability to process more and more information unconsciously or automatically at an ever quickening rate. So the more we evolve the more things our minds can process at once. It sounds like a good thing on one hand but on the other hand it presupposes that we are more distracted than ever and the more distracted we are, the easier it is to manipulate us.

Consider for just a moment the millions of times we’ve all been told of scarce oil reserves or how global warming could end us all. We are manipulated into believing in scarcity in order to get us to do what they want. In most cases, its buy whatever it is they’re selling.

Have you ever heard a newscaster while reporting on a hot news story say something like “Authorities tell us or sources tell us” Have you ever wondered who the authorities really are or who the “sources” might be? Even if you haven’t it doesn’t really matter because your subconscious has been instructed to buy, sell, behave, comply and whatever else it is they want you to do or believe.

The critical thing is to identify when you are being influenced negatively by someone so that you can deflect their subconscious attacks. Going back to my book story, I immediately spotted someone being manipulated and I wasn’t going to let it happen to me. The clerk tried to sell me on the same crap but I did not comply with her requests for my email address. I don’t really need coupons in my email, I might not return to this store for six months and the newsletter is more of a nuisance than anything. It’s just more junk I have to delete everyday from my inbox.

According to Robert Cialdini, there are six fundamental psychological principles which govern our everyday human behavior. The principles of – reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. By these, we decide what our map of the world is and how we function in it. We decide how we are influenced and who we are influenced by. The key is to learn when to decide and how to decide that you will not be a victim of social pressures to comply.