Introduction:  

We all have things we want to change—whether it's persuading a client, shifting our boss’s mindset, leading an organisation, or even influencing our children’s behaviour. But change is hard. People resist it due to inertia, and our natural response is to push harder—providing more facts, more reasons, or more pressure.
However, FBI negotiators and expert change-makers use a different approach: instead of applying force, they remove barriers to change. This is the foundation of Berger’s book—how to become a catalyst and make change happen by unlocking resistance rather than fighting it.

A Better Way to Change Minds, Inspired by Chemistry

In chemistry, catalysts speed up change by lowering the barriers to interaction. The same principle applies to human behaviour: instead of pushing harder, we need to reduce resistance and remove obstacles.
Change-makers ask: Why hasn’t the person changed already? What’s blocking them?

By finding and addressing these barriers, we can create transformation without force. Berger introduces five principles for being a catalyst, forming the acronym REDUCE:

• Reduce Reactance
• Distance Shrinking
• Corroborating Evidence

Principle 1: Reduce Reactance 

When people feel pushed, their instinct is to push back. This psychological resistance, known as reactance, triggers when someone perceives their freedom is being threatened.
For example, when Tide discouraged people from eating Tide Pods (a viral internet stunt), reactance led to even more people doing it. Similarly, anti-smoking campaigns sometimes make people more likely to smoke.

How to Reduce Reactance
Instead of pushing harder, help people persuade themselves:

• Provide a menu – Give people a limited set of options rather than telling them exactly what to do.
• Highlight a gap – Show how their current behaviour contradicts their beliefs to encourage change.

Principle 2: Ease Endowment

People prefer sticking with what they know—this is called the status quo bias. Unless something is clearly broken, they see no reason to change.

How to Overcome Endowment Bias

1. Highlight the cost of inaction – Help people see how sticking with the status quo is actually costing them. Example: A man manually typed "Best, Charles" on every email until Berger pointed out it was wasting 11 hours per year—prompting him to automate it.
2. Burn the ships – Remove the option of going back to the old way. Example: When Muslim commander Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded the Iberian Peninsula, he burned his own fleet—forcing his soldiers to fight forward rather than retreat.

Principle 3: Shrink Distance

If new information is too different from someone’s existing beliefs, they reject it outright. Berger calls this the zone of rejection.

Imagine discussing alcohol prohibition with people on a football field: those on the 25-yard line might be open to discussion, but those in the end zones will completely reject extreme arguments.

How to Overcome Distance Bias

• Find the movable middle – Target people who are already close to agreeing.
• Switch the field – If someone is stuck on one argument, shift the conversation to common ground.

Principle 4: Alleviate Uncertainty

People resist change because of fear of the unknown. If something is uncertain, they often stick to what’s familiar.

How to Overcome Uncertainty

1.  Trialability – Make it easy to try something before committing. Example: Test drives in car dealerships.
2. Harness freemium models – Let people experience value upfront before paying. Example: Dropbox’s free storage plan, which encourages users to upgrade.
3. Make it reversible – Provide a risk-free exit option. Example: Adoption agencies letting families return a pet if it’s not the right fit.

Key takeaway: Easier to try = easier to buy.

Principle 5: Find Corroborating Evidence

People don’t trust single sources of information. They need multiple signals before they’ll believe something is true.

How to Increase Social Proof.

1.  Diverse sources matter – Multiple perspectives strengthen credibility. If all testimonials come from the same group, they count as one opinion.
2. Concentrated exposure – Hearing the same message from multiple sources at once is more persuasive than hearing it spread out over time.

Choose the right strategy –

• Use a sprinkler approach (widespread exposure) when resistance is low.
• Use a fire hose approach (high intensity in one area) when resistance is high.

Conclusion

Creating change isn’t about pushing harder—it’s about removing barriers.

To be a catalyst, follow the REDUCE framework:

• Reduce Reactance – Help people persuade themselves.
• Ease Endowment – Show the cost of inaction or remove the old option.
• Distance Shrinking – Move them gradually towards change.
• Uncertainty Alleviation – Reduce risk with trials and reversibility.
• Corroborating Evidence – Provide multiple sources of proof.

By removing roadblocks instead of applying force, you make change easier, faster, and more natural.