that Joe’s formula leaves unanswered: What are the factors that cause
one person to like another person? If we knew that answer, we would
be a long way toward understanding how people such as Joe can so
successfully arrange to have us like them and, conversely, how we
might successfully arrange to have others like us. Fortunately, social
scientists have been asking the question for decades. Their accumulated
evidence has allowed them to identify a number of factors that reliably
cause liking. And, as we will see, each is cleverly used by compliance
professionals to urge us along the road to “yes.”
Physical Attractiveness
Although it is generally acknowledged that good-looking people have
an advantage in social interaction, recent findings indicate that we may
have sorely underestimated the size and reach of that advantage. There
seems to be a click, whirr response to attractive people. Like all click,
whirr reactions, it happens automatically, without forethought. The re-
sponse itself falls into a category that social scientists call “halo effects.”
A halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person dom-
inates the way that person is viewed by others. And the evidence is
now clear that physical attractiveness is often such a characteristic.
Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking
individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intel-
ligence. Furthermore, we make these judgments without being aware
that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process. Certain of the
consequences of this unconscious assumption that “good-looking equals
good” scare me. For example, a study of the Canadian federal elections
found that attractive candidates received more than two and a half
times as many votes as unattractive candidates.^1 Despite such evidence
of favoritism toward handsome politicians, follow-up research demon-
strated that voters do not realize their bias. In fact, 73 percent of Cana-
dian voters surveyed denied in the strongest possible terms that their
votes had been influenced by physical appearance; only 14 percent even
allowed for the possibility of such influence. A similar effect has been
found in hiring situations. In one study, good grooming of applicants
in a simulated employment interview accounted for more favorable
hiring decisions than did job qualifications—this, even though the in-
terviewers claimed that appearance played a small role in their choices.^2
Equally unsettling research indicates that our judicial process is
similarly susceptible to the influences of body dimensions and bone
structure. Good-looking people are likely to receive highly favorable
treatment in the legal system. For example, in a Pennsylvania study,
researchers rated the physical attractiveness of seventy-four separate
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 129