Manipulation 391identify basic principles. However, requests are also central
to businesses, charitable organizations, political parties, and
other societal entities that depend on contributions of money,
effort, or time from the citizenry. Accordingly, much of the
knowledge concerning compliance has been gleaned from
observation—sometimes participant observation—of profes-
sional influence agents operating in charitable, commercial,
or political contexts (cf. Cialdini, 2001). Experimentation
and real-world observation provide cross-validation for
one another, and together have generated a useful taxonomy
of effective strategies for obtaining compliance. Many of
these strategies are based on what can be called the affinity
principle—the tendency to be more compliant in the hands of
an influence agent we like as opposed to dislike.
The Affinity Principle
Whoever suggested caution in the face of friends bearing
gifts may not have been advocating cynicism, but rather self-
preservation. Extensive research supports the commonsense
notion that personal affinity motivates compliance. From
sales professionals, the consummate chameleons of the com-
mercial world, to con artists preying on the elderly and
college students calling home for cash, several effective in-
fluence strategies rest on the influence agent’s being liked,
known by, or similar to the target. When such affinity exists
between agent and target, ruse is not necessarily a prerequi-
site for compliance. Quite the opposite, in fact, can be true.
Consider, for example, the Tupperware Corporation,
which has exploited the power of friendship in an unprece-
dented fashion. It has been reported that a Tupperware party
occurs somewhere every 2.7 seconds (Cialdini, 1995)—
although they typically last much longer than that, which
suggests the sobering possibility that there is never a moment
without one. The format is as follows: A host invites friends
and relatives over to his or her home to participate in a gath-
ering at which Tupperware products are demonstrated by a
company representative. Armed with the knowledge that
their friend and host will receive a percentage of sales, the at-
tendees tend to buy willingly, because they are purchasing
from someone they know and like rather than from a stranger.
As confirmation for the pivotal role of “liking” in this con-
text, Frenzen and Davis (1990) found that 67% of the vari-
ance in purchase likelihood was accounted for by socials ties
between the hostess and the guest and only 33% by product
preference.
Personal affinity has been shown to be a potent compli-
ance inducer even in the absence of the liked individual.
Anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon abounds in our daily
lives. It is the rare parent who has not sent his or her child
around to friends and neighbors to collect for a school
walkathon or raffle. The child, hardly the embodiment of a
“compliance professional” (Cialdini, 2001), represents the
parent who is (one would hope) liked by the target. In the
same vein, Cialdini (1993) discovered that door-to-door
salespersons commonly ask customers for names of friends
upon whom they might call. Although we may wonder what
kind of friends a person might surrender in this way, rejecting
the salesperson under these circumstances apparently is seen
as a rejection of the referring friend—the person for whom
affinity is felt. The potency of the affinity principle per se
may be diminished by the physical absence of the liked per-
son, but the allusion appears nonetheless to render the target
more susceptible to other compliance tactics.
The affinity principle is not limited to influence seekers
and their surrogates, but applies as well to those who are
known or at least recognized by the target. During elections,
for example, voters have been shown to cast their ballots for
candidates with familiar-sounding names (Grush, 1980;
Grush, McKeough, & Ahlering, 1978). In similar fashion,
survey response rates sometimes double if the sender’s name
is phonetically similar to the recipient’s (Garner, 1999).
Physical attractiveness represents another extension of the
affinity principle. A total stranger blessed with good looks
has a distinct advantage over his or her less attractive
counterparts in securing behavioral compliance (Benson,
Karabenick, & Lerner, 1976) and attitude change (Chaiken,
1979). Good grooming, for example, accounts for greater
variance in hiring decisions than does the applicant’s job
qualifications, although interviewers deny the impact of at-
tractiveness (Mack & Rainey, 1990). In political campaigns,
meanwhile, there is evidence that a candidate’s attractiveness
can substantially influence voters’ perceptions of him or
her and affect their voting behavior as well (Budesheim &
DePaola, 1994; Efran & Patterson, 1976). Even criminal
justice is not immune to the power of physical attractive-
ness. Better-looking defendants generally receive more fa-
vorable treatment in the criminal justice system (Castellow,
Wuensch, & Moore, 1990) and often receive lighter sen-
tences when found guilty (Stewart, 1980).Similarity and AffinitySimilarity between influence agent and target represents a
special case of the affinity principle. It is rarely a coincidence
when a car salesperson claims to hail from a customer’s
home state or when an apparel salesperson claims to have
purchased the very same outfit the vacillating customer is
sporting. People like those who are similar to them (cf.
Byrne, 1971; Byrne, Clore, & Smeaton, 1980; Newcomb,