The question above is from Quora and the original specifically asks about Robert Cialdini’s principles. Below is a slightly edited version of my answer.

There are a couple aspects to this question.

First, yes, all people react to the same persuasive elements. But, whether those are Cialdini’s principles, and whether people react to them equally, and how they react to them in different contexts can matter a lot.

1) Cialdini wrote a book about persuasive principles (a couple, actually). Not techniques. Not methods. Not procedures. His research identified some broad properties of persuasion, and the Persuasion Profiling guys are doing cool work identifying how people react to different applications of those principles. However, they are not the be-all-end-all principles, and they can be made to fail if presented in certain ways, so they are also not foolproof.

2) Different people have different lives, and that creates perceptions of value that might differ from person to person. For example, Cialdini says “authority” is a persuasive element — which it is — but authority to one person might be a whiny rich kid to another. The second bit of this lesson is that persuasive factors are relative; each person may need more or less of them to “feel” motivated toward agreement.

3) Finally, within different contexts people have different expectations and “symbols” that are persuasive to them. If you get “paid” in badges and points in a game that’s fine, but if your boss wants to substitute your salary for a sweet-looking badge, you might get upset. Suddenly that persuasive symbol loses it’s value. The third part of this lesson is that you have to apply these general principles (or motivations) in context-specific ways that make sense. “Authority” in the game is points, and at work might be a title and salary, and in your neighbourhood it is a car and nice house… but it’s all authority. Or “status” if you prefer (like I do).

So in the Milgram experiment, the other 30% of the people might have been too authoritative themselves to listen, or perhaps they do not respect authority in general, or maybe they were just killing time and didn’t feel like shocking the guy for the sake of one guy-in-a-labcoat’s opinion of them. As much as scientists would like to believe that a labcoat makes you all-powerful, not all people identify with that symbol of authority.