Sublime

It turned out that many of the other students had access to the prof’s old tests. They knew roughly what the professor was going to be covering—and that the special assumption would probably be on the test. After discovering what the other students were up to, Barb started interacting more with her fellow students to make sure she had access to the

Social incentives, like social currency, are more effective in the long term. Foursquare doesn’t pay users to check in to bars, and airlines don’t give discounts to frequent flier members. But by harnessing people’s desire to look good to others, their customers did these things anyway—and spread word of mouth for free.

Aunque modesto en su alcance, este estudio muestra la acción de una de las más potentes armas de influencia de nuestro entorno: la regla de la reciprocidad. Según esta regla, debemos tratar de corresponder a lo que otra persona nos proporcione.

their lives could be significantly improved by making it as easy as possible to do the right thing—based on everything else we know—using the power of default options and small nudges:

It turns out that students who were in the “lucky” seats were consistently

I learned, watching my mother, that there was a price we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging. It meant dressing well and speaking well. It might not work. It likely wouldn’t work, but on the off chance that it would, you had to try.

The Science of Influence

These results suggest that once someone (or some organization) does us a favor, we become partial to anything related to the giving party—and that the magnitude of this bias increases as the magnitude of the initial favor (in this case the amount of payment) increases.