Robert Cialdini Weapons Summary

In the first chapter of Weapons, Robert Cialdini discusses weapons of human persuasion that are not only a developed phenomenon of human progress, but just as easily accessible in the basic environment of nature itself. He focuses on three main ideas throughout the chapter, triggers, exploitation, and perceptional contrast. He discussed how mother turkey’s maternal responses are “triggered by one thing: the ‘cheap-cheap’ sounds of young turkey chicks” (Cialdini, 3). The author goes on to explain that if the turkey fails to make this sound, the mother will completely ignore it and often even murder because it views the creature as a threat. Interestingly, when a stuffed version of the turkey’s enemy was transmitted with the turkey sound the mother instantly took the animal under its wing. The trigger was all the mother needed to induce …show more content…
While reciprocity can be used to help establish good relationship with clients, salespersons must be careful to ensure they are doing business with integrity most importantly. For example, chapter two discusses that offering any gifts to an employee of the government is considered bribery and may give your firm an unfair advantage. Many large corporations indeed have rules on the price maximum and limits of giving gifts to clients even in the private sector. Suppose Google gave excessively nice Christmas gifts to its auditors from KPMG. And then in February, Google chose to not to note a probable lawsuit in its financial statement footnotes with a potential liability of 23 million dollars. But due to the Christmas gifts, and expected gifts the following year, the auditors choose to let the omitted lawsuit go unnoticed. Not only are the employees acting unethical, but also it is not fair to Google’s competitors and investors. As Cialdini so brilliantly summarizes that “even an unwanted favor, once received, can product indebtedness” (Cialdini,