How “Compliance Practitioners” Choose Your Agreements For You — Recommended Reading

Cialdini, Robert B., Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. 2007, New York: Collins Business.  

[You can see a 12-minute animated story of the principle ideas.]

A core intention of our work in Ecosynomics and harmonic vibrancy is to consciously choose the agreements that most influence our daily experiences and outcomes.  In his classic text Influence, Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus of psychology, shows how professional “compliance practitioners” use your intuitive processes of perception to make you unconsciously accept the agreements that most benefit them, not you.

First published 30 years ago, this permanent fixture on the bestseller’s list remains relevant today.  Professor Cialdini walks you through six healthy human processes that professionals misuse to influence you: reciprocation; commitment and consistency; social proof; liking; authority; and scarcity.  Full of examples and references to rigorous research, Influence also provides research-based antidotes to the tricks the professionals use on you.  To learn about what the professionals actually teach their own, Cialdini went undercover, infiltrating their organizations as a newbie influencer to learn how they train people to be “compliance practitioners.”

While sobering to realize how easy it is to unconsciously accept agreements imposed on you by skillful practitioners, it is also empowering to see how to avoid these traps, enabling you to consciously choose the agreements that best serve you.  While Ecosynomics suggests that many of the fundamental agreements you tend to unconsciously accept are buried deep within the design of today’s economic, political, cultural, and social systems, Influence shows you how to be aware of agreements thrust on you by others on a daily basis.