Course 15A · Lesson 6 of 12
Behavioural science and persuasion
| Work | Grade | Verdict | What we take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Influence (Cialdini, 2021) | Mixed | Caveat | Peer proof from the buyer's own sector; small first commitments; only true scarcity |
| Pre-Suasion (Cialdini, 2016) | Weak to mixed | Caveat | Unity: the founding cohort as "the firms building this with us" |
| Yes! (Goldstein, Martin, Cialdini, 2008) | Mixed | Caveat | Specific, true descriptions of what peers do |
| Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman, 2011) | Mixed (12% to 46% replicability) | Caveat; do not teach priming or ego-depletion | Anchoring, framing, premortem, outside view |
| Nudge (Thaler, Sunstein) | Mixed | Caveat | Protective defaults; a regular audit for friction |
| Misbehaving (Thaler, 2015) | Mixed | Caveat | Fairness in price rises; mental accounting |
| Save More Tomorrow (Thaler, Benartzi, 2004) | Strong in its domain | Caveat | Pre-committed future autonomy upgrades for Holly (an idea to confirm with Dom, not a feature) |
| Alchemy (Sutherland, 2019) | Weak | Caveat (as hypotheses) | Costly signals of restraint; showing Holly's reasoning (a hypothesis, D10) |
| Contagious (Berger, 2013) | Mixed | Caveat | The STEPPS checklist; practical, positive content |
| The Catalyst (Berger, 2020) | Weak to mixed | Caveat | Lower barriers: small reversible steps, cost of doing nothing, clustered peer proof |
| Hooked (Eyal, 2014) | Weak | Caveat; do not teach variable reward as a profile-growth tactic | A fixed weekly trigger; investment through the voice |
| Habit formation study (Lally and others, 2010) | Mixed (small sample) | Caveat | Onboarding over 60 to 90 days; no streak shaming |
| Give and Take (Grant, 2013) | Mixed | Caveat | Scoped giving, always paired with an ask |
| Predictably Irrational (Ariely, 2008) | Debunked | Do not teach | Nothing; cite independent replications instead |
| Influence Is Your Superpower (Chance, 2022) | Mixed | Caveat | "What would it take?"; the "gator 95%" claim is often unsupported |
| Learned Optimism (Seligman, 1990) | Weak | Do not teach the MetLife figures | Hire on behaviours, not optimism scores |
| Prospect theory (Kahneman, Tversky, 1974 to 1981) | Strong | Safe | A real anchor; loss framing around the buyer's specific risk |
| Defaults meta-analyses (Jachimowicz and others, 2019) | Strong | Safe | Governance on by default; never pre-tick anything paid |
| Narrative transportation meta-analysis (van Laer, 2014) | Strong | Safe | Peer stories with one number and one avoided risk |
| It doesn't hurt to ask (Huang and others, 2017) | Mixed to strong | Safe | Discovery built on follow-up questions |
| Chameleons bake bigger pies (Maddux and others, 2008) | Mixed | Caveat | Mirroring: limit it to pace and vocabulary |
| The Limits of Attraction (Frederick and others, 2014) | Strong | Safe (as a warning) | Do not build pricing on decoys |
| Choice overload meta-analysis (Scheibehenne, 2010) | Strong | Safe (as a warning) | Recommend one plan for indecision reasons, not because of the jam study |
| From Promotion to Emotion (CEB, Google, 2013) | Mixed | Caveat | Sell personal value and personal safety |
| RCTs to Scale (DellaVigna, Linos, 2022) | Strong | Safe | Expect small behaviour-change effects at scale |
| Tax compliance norms trial (Hallsworth and others, 2017) | Strong | Safe | Show team norms only when they are favourable |
| The 5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing (Binet, Field, 2019) | Mixed | Caveat | Emotional, broad-reach creative; brand and activation balance as a guide |
| The 95:5 rule (Weinberg, Lombardo, Dawes, 2021) | Weak (illustrative) | Caveat; never as a budget split | Quote only as "roughly 5% of buyers are in market at any one time, on the LinkedIn B2B Institute's estimate" (illustrative, never measured) |
| How Brands Grow (Sharp, 2010) | Mixed | Caveat | Mental availability; consistent distinctive assets |
| Category Entry Points in a B2B World (Romaniuk, 2022) | Mixed to strong | Caveat | Five to eight buying situations, one per post |
| Popular claims to ban | Debunked | Do not teach | 7-38-55, power posing, ego depletion, the Yale goals study, "buyers decide in seconds" |
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