Robert Cialdini's Six Principles Of Influence

The principles of influence are essential to establish how people perceive you. Most of the times how people see or perceive us in social life is not at all accurate. However, in business life is very important that people perceive us in a certain way in order to improve our influence in others, and continuously improve negotiation skills. Two of the six principles of influence established by Robert Cialdini that I see mostly in my daily life are reciprocity and liking. As a student, reciprocity is always in everyone's interest because you always help someone in order to have a good relationship with the other person, and you expect them to be willing to return the favor in case you need it. Another principle I see very often is liking. A

clear example are new students (freshmen). They always try to assimilate and tend to do what upper-level students do in order to fit within the university’s student community, or to a certain group they are interested in (e.g. fraternities). Also, students implement liking when doing an internship in order to get a good recommendation letter, or to have a job opportunity with the same company or institution in the future.