At the beginning of each lecture I say, 'Here's a set of events unexplainable by common sense, and I promise you'll be able to solve this mystery at the end of class.'

If we are paying attention to something, it's important. That's how we decide to pay attention. But a communicator can reroute our attention to something that isn't important, but make it seem important as a consequence.

We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves

Pre-suasion is the practice of getting people sympathetic to your message before they experience it.

The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.

What I'm talking about is pre-suasion, directing their minds to the moment before they experience the content. There's this interesting study. A guy goes to a shopping mall in France. And he tries to get women's phone numbers as they pass various shops, so he could call for a date. But in neither of those cases was he very successful. He only got a number 13 percent of the time. But there was one kind of shop that doubled his success rate when women were passing it, a flower shop. Why? Because flowers put women in the mind-set of romance.

There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter requesting others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling.