Influence: Science and Practice 5th Edition

This topic is just fascinating - the hidden pushes and pulls that affect our decision making, even when we believe we are reasoning. One such example (p.146) is the 1974 Canadian study that found politicians who were more attractive got 2.5 times the number of votes. Despite the evidence of favoritism, 73% of Canadian voters denied "in the strongest possible terms" that their votes had been influenced by physical appearance; only 14% even admitted the possibility! (See the study by Efran & Patterson, 1976 and another by Budesheim & DePaola, 1994.)The book does a wonderful job of keeping the subject light despite that it is chock full of references to studies. There are even cartoons are scattered throughout the chapters. Pictures from real life also are mixed in. Included are "defenses" that are meant to help us avoid the pitfalls, but I'm not sure they'll be entirely helpful or not because I personally thought a lot of these tactics would be very obvious to me. Summaries of the chapters are included, which serve as good refreshers if it's been a while since you've read the book (and need to write an Amazon review :] ).I think even anyone with a healthy dose of cynicism or business sense will read this and be surprised that these tactics work. One such example is of Detroit's Joe Girard, deemed greatest car salesman by Guinness Book of World Records for selling an average of 5 cars per day, who describes a technique he used: every month he sent a holiday greeting card (for Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, whatever) to each of his 13,000 customers, with nothing but the words "I like you" and his signed name. (p.150) "Could a statement of liking so impersonal, obviously designed to sell cars, really work?: Joe Girard thought so, and a man as successful as he was at what he did deserves our attention." It was at least one of the techniques he used to earn himself hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a car salesman.There's only one bit I came across in this entire book that I disagreed with, and it was from the chapter on authority, in which the author claims that normally authority figures (specifically and namely included are politicians and doctors) have earned the right to have "the word" on subjects they speak on. Politicians? Ha! Doctors? Like the ones who vouched for smoking being healthy when cigarettes came out? Think again. Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future Other than that one tiny bit that caught my eye, the rest of the book is very informative and even fun to read.I'll leave you with one unbelievable example from the very beginning that tells how a shop owner accidentally relieved herself of the trouble of selling a certain variety of turquoise jewelry. She left a note instructing her employee to reduce them to 1/2 price. The employee misread and raised the price by 2 instead; the pieces sold almost immediately. This is due to the fact that people without better knowledge of a particular good will use the price alone to determine the quality or value of that good. This also worked for Chivas Regal Scotch Whiskey, which was a struggling brand until it's owners decided to raise its price substantially above its competitors!

The quote by Tom Peters on the cover of the fifth edition is what helped compel me to purchase this text: "If everything were on the line in a negotiation, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have advising me than Bob Cialdini." A colleague of mine noted after the fact that this book recently appeared on a top-20 list of leadership books to read this year, but I have read my share of leadership texts, so what interested me was its apparent focus on negotiation. To some extent, this book is faintly reminiscent of an audio tape called "The Psychology of Selling" by Brian Tracy that a former colleague of mine recommended early in my career, because the focus here is looking at the factors that cause individuals to say "yes", and the techniques that most effectively use these factors to bring about such a decision.This book is organized around the 6 psychological principles that direct human behavior and give these techniques their power: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Although this book may have been written to engage the popular reader, the conclusions that the author, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, reaches are based on controlled, psychological research. As Cialdini entertainingly walks the reader through what he learned during his 3-year period of participant observation that served as input to this book, in my opinion although he is both successful at instruction as well as keeping the reader engaged, as with many texts the reader will need to extrapolate in order to apply personally, especially if what is sought is application to the workplace.Judging by the location of dog ears that were left behind after my reading of this text, the portions I especially appreciated are the first chapter, "Weapons of Influence", the last chapter, "Instant Influence: Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age", and the many sidebars throughout the body of what the author provides called "Reader's Reports". In fact, it turns out that the author has found that the "Readers's Reports" are one of the most popular aspects among readers, and in my opinion these are similar to the "Letters to the Editor" one might find in a newspaper or magazine: people writing in to the author to share how the principles and techniques that are presented in this text have been encountered in the real world. Fascinating lessons learned rooted in science. Recommended reading.

If you have never taken a Social Psychology class, then this book should be a must read. Even if you are not into psychological manipulations, you would want to be aware of when and how you are manipulated. Knowledge is power and knowledge of human psychological tendencies is as valuable as any.Written by a PhD in Psychology, this book provides numerous examples of Psychological studies. Although lacking examples of cutting edge research, the book nonetheless provides a empirically tested and credible insights into human influence and behavior. Pop-psychology this book is not and NLP and its controversial methods, fortunately, are not even mentioned.The Psychology researches are explained in layman's terms and the author purposesly wrote this book to be unlike Psychology textbooks. Nevertheless, this book isn't always interesting and can sometimes be pedantic.The author seemed to have cherry-picked the best and most useful Psychology knowledge of influence and put them in a very readable format. The author spends 80% of the book on expounding 8-10 core concepts involving Psychology of influence.I can't say, however, that I have read anything new in this book that I haven't read in my college Social Psychology class. But I am still glad I read this book since reading this book was a great refresher.