The book is organized around these six principles, one to a chapter. The principles—consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity— (Location 67)

are each discussed in terms of their function in the society and in terms of how their enormous force can be commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into requests for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, assent, etc. (Location 68)

Called fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of behavior, (Location 126)

A fundamental characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviors that compose them occur in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time. (Location 127)

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do. (Location 148)

“You get what you pay for” (Location 172)

The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way they structure their requests, the way they arm themselves with one or another of the weapons of influence that exist within the social environment. (Location 234)

The exploiters can commission the power of these weapons for use against their targets while exerting little personal force. (Location 263)

There is a principle in human perception, the contrast principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are presented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is. (Location 267)

one of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us—the rule for reciprocation.7 The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. (Location 350)