in the position of the lower animals—with a mental apparatus that is
unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the
outside environment. Unlike the animals, whose cognitive powers have
always been relatively deficient, we have created our own deficiency
by constructing a radically more complex world. But the consequence
of our new deficiency is the same as that of the animals’ long-standing
one. When making a decision, we will less frequently enjoy the luxury
of a fully consid-ered analysis of the total situation but will revert in-
creasingly to a focus on a single, usually reliable feature of it.
When those single features are truly reliable, there is nothing inher-
ently wrong with the shortcut approach of narrowed attention and
automatic response to a particular piece of information. The problem
comes when something causes the normally trustworthy cues to counsel
us poorly, to lead us to erroneous actions and wrongheaded decisions.
As we have seen, one such cause is the trickery of certain compliance
practitioners who seek to profit from the rather mindless and mechan-
ical nature of shortcut response. If, as seems true, the frequency of
shortcut response is increasing with the pace and form of modern life,
we can be sure that the frequency of this trickery is destined to increase
as well.
What can we do about the expected intensified attack on our system
of shortcuts? More than evasive action, I would urge forceful counter-
assault. There is an important qualification, however. Compliance
professionals who play fairly by the rules of shortcut response are not
to be considered the enemy; on the contrary, they are our allies in an
efficient and adaptive process of exchange. The proper targets for
counteraggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit,
or misrepresent the evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses.
Let’s take an illustration from what is perhaps our most frequently
used shortcut. According to the principle of social proof, we often decide
to do what other people like us are doing. It makes all kinds of sense
since, most of the time, an action that is popular in a given situation is
also functional and appropriate. Thus, an advertiser who, without using
deceptive statistics, provides information that a brand of toothpaste is
the largest selling or fastest growing has offered us valuable evidence
about the quality of the product and the probability that we will like
it. Provided that we are in the market for a tube of good toothpaste, we
might want to rely on that single piece of information, popularity, to
decide to try it. This strategy will likely steer us right, will unlikely steer
us far wrong, and will conserve our cognitive energies for dealing with
the rest of our increasingly information-laden, decision-overloaded
environment. The advertiser who allows us to use effectively this effi-
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 209