if we hear about something while eating delicious food, we tend to associate the matter in question with the positive feelings elicited by the food.

Turkey mothers are wonderful parents: loving, protective and nurturing of their young.

However, look a little more closely and you’ll see that this tenderness hangs by a single thread. If a chick emits the distinctive “cheep-cheep” sound, the mother will care for it lovingly. But if the chick does not, the mother will ignore or even kill it!

The

Banning something makes it very desirable.

The second question you should ask when confronted with an apparent authority figure is: how honest can we expect this authority to be in this situation? Do they have our or their best interests at heart? A waiter, for example, may be an expert on the wine list at a restaurant, but also stands to gain from recommending more expensive wines.

We comply with people we like, and it is easy for some people to make us like them.

Have you ever been to a Tupperware party? If you go, be sure to appreciate the skill with which the business model leverages the power of compliance tricks. From reciprocity, where every attendant gets some kind of gift before the buying begins, to social proof,

In an experiment to study this phenomenon, a researcher asked people queueing up to use a copy machine whether she could skip the line. She found that if she gave a reason – “May I skip the line because I’m in a rush?” – 94 percent of people complied with her request.

If she gave no reason, only 60 percent complied.

But, fascinatingly, if she gave a

Consider the famous case of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in New York in 1964. Some neighbors heard the young woman’s cries for help, but no one intervened or called the police. The media soon reported that the neighbors had been callous and completely unconcerned about their neighbor, sparking outrage.

In the 1970s, the Krishna organization in the United States also used this tactic to great effect. They gifted flowers to passersby on the street and, though generally annoyed, people often made donations to the organization to satisfy their need to reciprocate the gift of the flower.

Another factor influencing whether we like someone or not is whether we find them physically attractive. Attractiveness produces a so-called halo effect , meaning that we tend to see attractive people as smart, kind and honest. Worryingly, we even tend to vote for more attractive candidates in elections!