Seth Godin knows how to leverage the principle of reciprocation. This comes from
one of Seth’s free PDFs and you’ll notice he’s not shy of asking you to return the
favor.
Commitment
“I like to do what I say.”
This principle tells us that we like to believe that our behavior is consistent
with our beliefs. Once you take a stand on something that is visible to other
people, you suddenly feel a drive to maintain that point of view to appear
reliable and constant.
A familiar example of this in action is when comments on a blog degrade
into a flame war. Commentators are driven to justify their earlier comments
and often become even more polarized in their positions.