The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.

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

The factor that frequently determines whether people are going to make a particular choice is not the factor that counsels wisely or the one that leads to the greatest economic benefit. It's the one that's top of the consciousness in the moment.

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 study that shows that people who were asked their political opinions, when there was a picture of the American flag in the corner of the questionnaire, reported more favorable attitudes toward Republican Party positions, because the flag is typically associated in people's minds with a Republican belief set. If people vote at a polling place inside a church, they vote more Republican. If they vote at a polling place inside a school, they vote more Democrat.

Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds.

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.