members into the program. The program claimed it could teach a unique
brand of meditation that would allow us to achieve all manner of desir-
able things, ranging from simple inner peace to the more spectacular
abilities to fly and pass through walls at the program’s advanced (and
more expensive) stages.
I had decided to attend the meeting to observe the kind of compliance
tactics used in recruitment lectures of this sort and had brought along
an interested friend, a university professor whose areas of specialization
were statistics and symbolic logic. As the meeting progressed and the
lecturers explained the theory behind TM, I noticed my logician friend
becoming increasingly restless. Looking more and more pained and
shifting about constantly in his seat, he was finally unable to resist.
When the leaders called for questions at the completion of the lecture,
he raised his hand and gently but surely demolished the presentation
we had just heard. In less than two minutes, he pointed out precisely
where and why the lecturers’ complex argument was contradictory, il-
logical, and unsupportable. The effect on the discussion leaders was
devastating. After a confused silence, each attempted a weak reply only
to halt midway to confer with his partner and finally to admit that my
colleague’s points were good ones “requiring further study.”
More interesting to me, though, was the effect upon the rest of the
audience. At the end of the question period, the two recruiters were
faced with a crush of audience members submitting their seventy-five-
dollar down payments for admission to the TM program. Nudging,
shrugging, and chuckling to one another as they took in the payments,
the recruiters betrayed signs of giddy bewilderment. After what ap-
peared to have been an embarrassingly clear collapse of their presenta-
tion, the meeting had somehow turned into a great success, generating
mystifyingly high levels of compliance from the audience. Although
more than a bit puzzled, I chalked up the audience response to a failure
to understand the logic of my colleague’s arguments. As it turned out,
however, just the reverse was the case.
Outside the lecture room after the meeting, we were approached by
three members of the audience, each of whom had given a down pay-
ment immediately after the lecture. They wanted to know why we had
come to the session. We explained, and we asked the same question of
them. One was an aspiring actor who wanted desperately to succeed
at his craft and had come to the meeting to learn if TM would allow
him to achieve the necessary self-control to master the art; the recruiters
had assured him that it would. The second described herself as a severe
insomniac who had hopes that TM would provide her with a way to
relax and fall asleep easily at night. The third served as unofficial
spokesman. He also had a sleep-related problem. He was failing college
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 47