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Concept

Commitment and Consistency

Commitment and consistency is Cialdini's principle that once we take a position, especially actively and in public, we bend our later behaviour to stay in line with it — even after the reasons for it have gone.

Consistency is admired and inconsistency is punished; the person who changes position is called unreliable, so we protect our commitments and invent new reasons for them when the old ones fail. The pull is strongest for commitments that are active (written rather than merely thought), public (told to others), effortful (they cost something) and freely chosen (not made under obvious pressure, which we discount). This is why the salesperson has the customer fill in the order form, why initiation rituals are hard, and why the low-ball works: you commit to the car at a great price, the price rises, and you buy anyway because you have already become the owner in your mind. Kahneman would add that we rationalise more than we reason, so the story we tell about a past yes quietly rewrites the next one. The honest use is to ask for the small, real yes first and let the person's own consistency carry the rest, and to make your own commitments written and told. The defence is one question: knowing what I know now, would I make this commitment again? Consistency with a mistake is not a virtue.

A real-life example

A gym in Kadıköy asks new members to write, on the sign-up form, one sentence about why they joined, and reads it back to them the first time they try to cancel. Retention is markedly higher than at the chain gym nearby, and the members do not feel tricked; they wrote the sentence.

How to use it

  1. 1When you want a big yes, design the small one first: a call, a pilot, a week. Make it real and easy to keep.
  2. 2Write your own commitments down and tell one person; that is the version that binds.
  3. 3Before honouring an old commitment, ask whether you would make it again today. If not, step off.