Cialdini's reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity — used to influence and to manipulate.
Cialdini identified six levers that reliably move human decisions: reciprocity (we repay favors), commitment/consistency (we stay aligned with past acts), social proof (we follow the crowd), liking (we say yes to those we like), authority (we defer to credentials and uniforms), and scarcity (we want what's limited). These are not inherently sinister — honest communication uses them too. They become manipulation when they are engineered to short-circuit judgment: fake scarcity ('only 2 left!'), borrowed authority, manufactured social proof (bots, astroturf). Literacy means feeling the lever pull and asking: is this evidence, or just a trigger? The countermove is to make the decision on the merits, separately from the pressure.
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