Robert B. Cialdini
Social psychologist and the world's most-cited living researcher on influence and persuasion, whose six-principle framework became the foundation for modern sales, marketing, and negotiation practice.
About
Robert Beno Cialdini (born 1945) is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, where he spent his entire academic career from 1971 until his retirement in 2009. He earned his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin (1967), his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of North Carolina (1970), and completed postdoctoral training at Columbia University.
His research methodology set him apart from laboratory-only psychologists: over three years, he went undercover inside the compliance professions — car dealerships, insurance agencies, fundraising organizations, telemarketing firms — studying what actually caused people to say yes. The result was a taxonomy of six psychological principles — reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity — that he first published in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984). The book has sold over five million copies, been translated into more than thirty languages, and became the most-cited text in the persuasion literature. A third, expanded edition in 2021 added a seventh principle, Unity, and updated the research base for the digital era.
Cialdini was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the most-cited living social psychologist in the world in the field of influence. His subsequent books include Influence: Science and Practice (the academic companion), Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (2008, with Steve Martin and Noah Goldstein), and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (2016), which argues that what happens immediately before a persuasion attempt determines its outcome more than the attempt itself.
