Social Influence, the art of making people do what you want.

Social Influence consists of producing an image of reality that looks real.

It is part of the daily life of civilizations where systems of power, conflicts of interest, power relations, are omnipresent.

Social Influence develops from self-awareness, language, and the hierarchy of society that produces a lot of interactions and that everyone wants to take advantage of.

Social Influence can be achieved by regularly using various means of psychological pressure such as

Fear,
Hope,
Guilt, etc.

This yields very interesting results on the human psyche.

If you are smart enough to understand humans as "machines", or as pre-programmed automates,

That means that you have a better understanding of reality than 99% of the human population.

Humans, tend to react a certain way in certain situations, thus in predictable patterns.

By controlling the information (controlling the input), you can predict, and a fortiori, decide on the reactions of a given human being.

This is the base of any human interaction.

With this understanding, you can change the output (the reaction), and change how people act.

The reason why this scheme takes a central position in Social Influence is that it is important for your subject to believe that his actions are furthering his own interests.

Why would they take those actions otherwise?

Your strategic objective as a social influencer is to

Control the flow of information in such a way that your subject's reaction should lead to actions that further your own interests.

Your main problem, given that social influence, lies in the condition of no coercion, is to be discovered.

Do not abuse social influence techniques, and maintain plausible deniability if your machinations ever come to be found.