Robert Cialdini on Commitment and Consistency
There is simply not a better demonstration of the tension between action and deliberation than Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini's striking observation is that in certain circumstances providing better and more accurate information makes us act less rationally! Download this excerpt
Virtually all of our laws dealing with fraud presume a model of the rational actor, who with better and more accurate information will see through frauds and scams.
This is simply not true, at least for many of the people who need the protection of the law. At times in our lives, we all need to believe in something. Scams and frauds hook innocent, reasonably intelligent people just at these times. Providing more information to people which robs them of hope may only push them faster into making an irrational decision.
