1.2.6 The Principle of Scarcity When people sense the potential loss they may completely change their decisions. Frankly speaking, people get more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. (Cialdini R. B., 2011, p. 4) Everything is clear. Compliance practitioners’ reliance on scarcity as a weapon of influence is frequent, wide-ranging, systematic, and diverse. Whenever such is the case with a weapon of influence, we can feel assured that the principle involved has notable power in directing human action. In the instance of the scarcity principle, that power comes from two major sources. The first is familiar. Like the other weapons of influence, the scarcity principle makes us feel weak for shortcuts. The weakness is, as before, an enlightened one. Because we know that the things that are difficult to possess are typically better than those that are easy to possess, we can often use an item’s availability to help us quickly and correctly decide on its quality. Thus, one reason for the potency of the scarcity principle is that, by following it, we are usually and efficiently right. (Cialdini R. …show more content…
This desire to preserve their established prerogatives is the centerpiece of psychological reactance theory, developed by psychologist Jack Brehmin order to explain the human response to diminishing personal control. according to the theory, whenever free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain freedoms makes us desire them (as well as the goods and services associated with them) significantly more than previously. So when increasing scarcity—or anything else—interferes with our prior access to some item, we will react against the interference by wanting and trying to possess the item more than