A few hands-on tips on becoming more influential.

Probably we’re all a bit  puzzled, not to say interested in the art of persuasion.
Personally, it’s a topic I’ve always been extremely interested in.
There are several, not to mention too many ways of increasing your persuasive power. It’s difficult to be familiar with all of  them. For this reason, in this article, I’ll only focus on one of them, which excites me over and over again. And it means that the less there is, the more you want it.

How Does It Work ?

Imagine you’re having a look at a pair of fancy shoes. You like them, you like the price a bit less and you definitely don’t need them. Does this sound a bit familiar?

Anyway … Your husband is not around, you’re with your best friend. Both of you walk into the store and a nice voice goes: “Can I help you with something?” Your actually-no-we’re-just-looking reply somehow does not get articulated. You ask for the shoes, put them on, look at yourself in the mirror and want to leave.
You don’t need them, remember? And then the voice in the background goes: “I’ve got to tell you … It’s our last pair. We didn’t have many in the first place and all of them sold like hot cakes.”
Without actually realizing you started taking out your credit card and the next minute you’re out with a bag, a pair of shoes and – a negative balance on your account (that’s a matter for another article ☺).

What persuaded you?

It’s the Scarcity Principle and it was used in its most straightforward way.

How can we explain that?
Robert Cialdini in his “ The Psychology of Persuasion” explains two reasons for that:

Reason 1: We are of the belief that the things, which are difficult to get tend to be of higher quality than the things, which involve no effort obtaining them.
Therefore, if we have obtained something rare, scarce, hard to get, we can’t be wrong.

Reason 2: The second reason, according to dr. Cialdini, is connected with personal control and the human fear of facing limited control or no control at all of it. Whenever something is scarce, people feel their personal control diminishes. The need to retain such control makes us desire the goods or services considerably more than previously.
And we react by wanting and trying to possess the item more than before (that’s why my closet is full of shoes I’ve never even put on ☺).

When do such reactions appear?

As early as at the age of two, this is when children start seeing themselves as individuals.
The concept of “identifiable, singular, separate”, as Cialdini puts it, is correlated with the concept of freedom.
An individual has choices and a two-year old child will want to explore at great lengths the options he or she may have.

What has this got to do with Romeo and Juliet?

This might also be the reason why Romeo and Juliet wanted to get married at all costs. They suffered from the scarcity of support. Of their parents.
This made them want to do “the right thing” even more.

What About Today?

To put the Scarcity Principle into a more recent context. What about restriction to information? The more the information flow or information access are restricted, the more we want it.
And although the information we literally yearn for turns out to be of no value or relevance, earlier we assigned it  different positive qualities simply to justify the desire.

The Scarcity Principle does not end here. The findings say that not only do we want an item more when it’s scarce, but we desire it even more when we are in competition for it.

Can you imagine what would happen if it hadn’t been only you wanting that pair of shoes, but another customer?

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