International Law

Influence Links for Thursday

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The New York Times has an interview with Cialdini, Goldstein, and Martin on their new book 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive.

As would be expected they have some interesting observations that go against the grain of common expectations.

"But a question that we get asked a lot is whether sellers should set the starting price really high, really low, or somewhere in between.

The research demonstrates that in most situations, it's better to make the starting price really low.

At first, this might seem at odds with findings from negotiations research, which suggest that as a seller, it's far better to set the initial value quite high.

But there are some fundamental differences between typical negotiations and auctions, including the fact that in auctions, an almost unlimited number of people can choose to get in on the bidding.

In auctions, if the initial price is too high, it acts as a barrier to entry, so fewer people will place bids."

David Desteno, also at the Freakonomics blog, has an interesting view about moral sentiments and socialness.

"For humans, though, problems of predation or contracting communicable diseases may be no more important to flourishing than ones integrally involved in successfully navigating social life. Simply put, building social and economic capital is central to our success and depends on correctly dealing with questions like: "Who should I trust?" "Should I pay you back?"

Consequently, humans should possess a class of emotional responses that prod them to be "good partners." As my collaborator Robert Frank has argued, many of these social emotions should help us control our greedy "id-like" impulses.

Now, the idea of such "moral sentiments" has been kicking around at least since Adam Smith, but supportive data has been hard to come by, at least until recently."

So what is the data?  Well read his guest post.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on August 07, 2008 (boomark / email).