Persuasion used to be a purely human skill. Read the room, pick the right lever, close the deal. Now that skill lives inside a chatbot too. The seven principles of influence are baked into the training data of nearly every major AI model, and the book that first laid them out is being cited more today than ever.
We sat down with Dr. Robert Cialdini, the researcher behind Influence, to talk about what's changed now that the principles are everywhere, and what marketers still get wrong even with the research sitting in plain sight.
AI Knows the Principles. It Doesn't Know the Ethics.
Cialdini has a theory for why his citation rate keeps climbing: AI. As more people started asking bots and LLMs for help, more of them started asking how to frame a request, its style, its content, to get the best response back.
That doesn't bother him. What he cares about is what the principles get used for. "We have to lace whatever we provide, including that which comes from technological systems, with an ethical component," he said, "to make sure that this is something that allows for both sides to derive positive outcomes."
There's a practical trap here too. AI models aren't just trained on research. They're trained on opinions, hunches, and one-off anecdotes that people believed were true and never checked. Cialdini's fix is one sentence long: add the phrase according to the research on the topic to any prompt asking for persuasion advice. That single qualifier filters out the noise and points the model toward what's actually been tested.
In Authority vs. An Authority
Asked where he sees marketers get a principle wrong most often, Cialdini didn't hesitate: authority. Specifically, the failure to separate two things that sound identical.
- In authority: power. Coercion, bribery, penalties, pressure. It moves people, until you leave the room.
- An authority: credibility. Built from expertise and trustworthiness together, and it holds even when you're not there.
"Your credibility is determined by your expertise on the one hand and your trustworthiness on the other," Cialdini said. "If you can get those two things operating in concert, no one can beat you as an authority communicator." He sees this mistake most often inside organizations, where managers lean on title instead of building the kind of credibility that survives without them in the room.
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The Confidence Trick
Content held constant, the more confident a communicator sounds, the more persuasive they are. Cialdini's fix is almost mechanical: speak roughly 20 to 25 percent faster than normal. That modest bump, he said, is "enough to cause people to perceive that what you are saying is something you're not having to question yourself about."
Push it further and it backfires. Too fast and you sound like "a sideshow salesperson." A little faster is the sweet spot.
Buffett's Trust Move
Asked for a favorite real-world example of the principles at work, Cialdini pointed to Warren Buffett's annual shareholder letter. Every year, on the first page, Buffett names something that went wrong. A mistake, a bad call. Then he bridges into everything that went right.
"You believe what he says about the strengths more deeply and more fully than if he hadn't mentioned the weakness," Cialdini said. He reads the letter every year for exactly this reason.
Buffett never says "to be honest." He just is honest, and only then makes his strongest case, once the credibility is already built.
Point to It. Don't Manufacture It.
Asked about the biggest gap between the research and what marketers actually do, Cialdini's answer came down to one habit: reaching for a principle before checking whether it's genuinely present in the situation.
"Think of the principles of influence you know about," he said. "And ask: if they're truly present in the situation, that not only allows you to be effective when you point to it, it makes you ethical. You haven't fooled anybody. You haven't coerced anything. You've just educated them into assent."
In a large-scale training program he described, managers taught the seven principles got consistently stronger results when the principle they used was already true, rather than manufactured. They didn't fabricate urgency or fake scarcity. They just pointed at what was real. That, every time, won.
Limited Number Beats Limited Time
On the classic "act now, only a few left" appeal, Cialdini's view is conditional: if the constraint is real, surface it. Across a study of 6,700 online commercial sites, genuine scarcity was one of the strongest levers driving conversions.
But not all scarcity is equal. "Limited number works more powerfully than limited time to make a choice," he said. A time limit gives people an excuse to delay: "You don't have to do it now. You can do it on Thursday and it'll still be there." A limited number removes that excuse entirely. Someone else might take it first, and that's a pressure a calendar deadline can't create.
Give First, and Give Right
Cialdini shared a study run at McDonald's locations in Colombia and Brazil. For one week, every child got a balloon. Half the families got it on the way out, as a thank-you. Half got it on the way in. The families who got the balloon first spent 25 percent more on food. Same balloon. What went first was what mattered.
The gift doesn't have to relate to the product, but it does have to be meaningful, tailored, and unexpected. In a separate study at another fast food chain, customers in line got either a cup of yogurt or a keyring of equal value. Economists would predict the yogurt eaters would order less food. Instead, they ordered more, because the gift addressed the actual reason they were standing in that line: hunger.
"If you give a favor that's directed toward the needs of the person you are gifting... they appreciate it more," Cialdini said. His broader recommendation: lead with something useful and unattached to a pitch, like a research-based tip sheet, and let gratitude do the rest.
The Principles Don't Change. Access to Them Does.
Cialdini doesn't think culture has changed how these principles work. They're evolutionary. "We have evolved over thousands of years, these proclivities to defer to experts, to follow similar others, to seize scarce opportunities, to live up to our commitments, and to give back to those who have given to us," he said.
What's changed is access. Social proof, in particular, used to be hard to find. Now it's a few clicks away: star ratings, reviews, testimonials. But the framing still matters. Describing feedback as reviews conjures check marks. Describing it as reviewers conjures people. "That image is the one that you ought to be employing for social proof," Cialdini said. "It's not check marks... it's people."
Humanize the Appeal
Asked for the one shift he'd want marketers to make right now, Cialdini pointed to something simple: put people back into the interaction. We work, shop, and get medical information from screens, and in the process we've been quietly separated from each other.
"The one thing I would recommend people try to do in their appeals is humanize them," he said. "Provide social connections, personal, human connections within that, within your appeal."
The evidence backs it up. Landing pages that opened with a simple welcoming statement converted significantly better across a study of 6,700 websites, before a visitor read a single word of the actual offer. Radiologists shown a patient's photo alongside a scan gave three times more recommendations. And a request made by email is 16 times less likely to land than the same request made in person, a gap that a video call closes to roughly 2 to 1.
The One Thing to Change
Strip away the platform and the technology, and Cialdini's advice hasn't moved. Find what's genuinely true about your offer, whether that's scarcity, expertise, or a debt someone already owes you, and point to it honestly instead of manufacturing a version of it. AI hasn't changed that math. It's just made it easier to fake, and easier to check.
Resources:
The Cialdini Institute is giving 97th Floor followers their Cialdini Influence Assessment for free for 30 days. Use code 97FLOOR at checkout: https://assessment.cialdini.com/
They’re also offering 20% off the Cialdini Certified Practitioner Course. Use code 97FLOORCCP at checkout: https://cialdini.com/certified-practitioner
Connect with Dr. Cialdini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertcialdini
Connect with Paxton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paxtongray/
Looking for an agency that'll be worth the investment? 97th Floor creates custom, audience-first campaigns that drive pipeline and conversions. Get started here: https://97thfloor.com/lets-talk/.
About Dr. Cialdini
Robert Cialdini, a thought leader in the fields of influence and persuasion, has spent his career publishing scientific research on what causes people to say “Yes” to requests. The results of his research, his ensuing articles, and his New York Times bestselling books have led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science.
His 7 Principles of Persuasion have become a cornerstone for any organization serious about significantly increasing its influence, while doing so ethically.
As a keynote speaker, Dr. Cialdini is renowned for his ability to translate the science of influence through valuable and memorable stories that result in immediate and long-term business applications.
His books, including his New York Times Bestselling Influence and Pre-Suasion, have sold more than seven-million copies in 50 languages. As a result, he is frequently regarded as “The Godfather of Influence”.
