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Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert B. Cialdini
Publisher: Collins Business
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.94
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Avg. Customer Rating:  251 reviews
Sales Rank: 197
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 006124189X
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.852
EAN: 9780061241895
ASIN: 006124189X
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Over 600,000 Feedbacks Posted!!! BRAND-NEW IN-HOUSE READY TO SHIP!!! NOT A REMAINDER, BARGAIN OR BOOK CLUB BOOK!!! WE ARE A FIVE-STAR SELLER!!!
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Amazon.com
Arguably the best book ever on what is increasingly becoming the science of persuasion. Whether you're a mere consumer or someone weaving the web of persuasion to urge others to buy or vote for your product, this is an essential book for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing. Recommended.
Product Description
Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 246 more reviews...
 Awesome Book July 23, 2008
To put it briefly this is an invaluable book to understanding many of our behaviors relating to influence but it is written in a way that keeps you completely engrossed in it, nothing dry here. I agree with so many of the reviews here on this book. It is just excellent and if I were to have kids this would be something they would have to read. Having your wife read it is a good way to get her to stop buying thousand dollar canvas bags from Louis Vuitton also... CANVAS ..sheesh they should be laughing :-)
 Basic Information of Great Value July 23, 2008
When I read this book a few years back, I found it eye opening about the involuntary aspects of how people are persuaded. Cialdini does a brilliant job of story telling to illustrate the use of his 'six psychological secrets' in the way products and services are marketed.
The book is readable, and, at least for me, filled with AHAs. Much of it was already familiar, so this piece of his work has already made its way through society. But in a time when campaign advisors and counselors to politicians are using these ideas to foist bad policy on an unsuspecting public, the time has come for we the people to catch on to just how easily we've been decieved, and how to protect ourselves from further deception.
When i was working on my own book on this topic,Insider's Guide To The Art Of Persuasion I found reference to this seminal work everywhere. What Cialdini called secrets, I call signals, because they are no longer secret but are in wide employ.
Cialdini's greatest contribution to the literature is his guidance in how to protect ourselves from being manipulated to act against our own interests. He talks of the 'click-whirrr' response and the role it plays in this. Over and over, he emphasizes our diminished mental activity when presented with persuasion signals. I can't imagine how a person would ever see or hear these signals in the same way after learning about this.
The only thing that would make this book better is a refresh of it that included more current examples. Many of the examples he used harken back to the time of my childhood (50s and 60s) when the rough use of these types of approaches was just catching on. These days, the persuasion signals have been honed to a fine point and, in light of the increasingly fundamental role of marketing and promotion in the success of any business or idea, I'd be very interested in learning how his thinking has advanced on his subject.
Great book July 18, 2008
This was a great read. It opens a new way of explaining the world, it forced myself to scrutinize some of my decisions and methods of thinking...
Great book.
This Book Fills Me With RAGE July 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I first heard of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion from a graduate school professor. He declared that reading it changed his life and that it would change mine as well. I didn't believe him. It took me seven years before I finally picked up the book. And now I'm sorry I waited so long.
Influence explains the underpinnings of how the American marketing machine works. Cialdini explains that modern humanity has developed shortcuts to decision-making in order to deal with information overload. As a result, we have a reflex of sorts that kicks in for certain situations, such as the need to reciprocate favors, the desire for rare goods, following likable leaders, determining whom we should listen to, following the rest of the crowd, and maintaining consistency in our public persona.
As a teenager, these pressures to conform are front and center, but as adults we forget the compromises we made in the transition. "Are you a follower or a leader?" Cialdini explains that there are good reasons to be a follower and that, in most situations, it's perfectly acceptable to do what the rest of the crowd is doing. But there are situations in which our natural inclinations can be exploited, and there are scenarios where following the herd can lead to catastrophic consequences. Recognizing these behaviors in ourselves is an important part of survival, so that when modern life throws something at us unexpected, like an accident or a door-to-door salesman, we know how to react.
I mentioned that reading this book filled me with rage. I'm not angry at the author, but at all the people who now, with the gift of hindsight and Cialdini's guidance, I realized manipulated me.
I'm mad at the magazine salesman. He got me to buy two years worth of a magazine I didn't want by relying on my desire for consistency after I provisionally agreed to buy a subscription for what I thought was one year.
I'm mad at the Saturn dealer. Despite the "no haggle rule," he used the trick of authority where he "checked with his boss" for a better deal and then pressured me into buying it.
I'm mad at the real estate agent. He used the trick of scarcity to show me terrible, run-down houses to make me feel better about the house I ultimately picked.
And that's what's so interesting about this book. Cialdini wrote this book for US. Not for managers, salesmen, or non-profit volunteers. He wrote it as a defense! And yet everything from reviews on the book's cover to reviews right here on Amazon tout this book as a must for marketers. That's completely against the spirit of what Cialdini wrote - each chapter ends with "how to say no" and while the advice isn't always sound (he essentially tells you to, ya know, not fall for the tricks) it's certainly welcome.
It's a bitter irony that marketers have turned a book about resisting marketing into yet another marketing tool. Now that I've read this book, there won't be another magazine subscription, car, or house I buy without a fight. Buy it today so you can start fighting back too.
A Classic Worth Reading Today June 30, 2008
One of the great myths about modern society is that we can divide it into two non-overlapping parts---the private and the public. The private sphere is the purported locus of all affective, emotional commitments, while the public sphere is a realm of impersonal, purely instrumental, social interaction. In the private sphere, the story goes, we live, love, grieve, and sacrifice, while in the public sphere of markets and politics, we act to gather the material prerequisites to a fulfilled private life.
This myth was buoyed up in the mid-twentieth century by the vision of vast tracts of middle-class housing where neighbors were strangers ("and they were all made out of ticky-tacky and they all looked the same"), by the cult of public conformity ("the organization man"), and by such urban myths as women being raped and beaten in public while spectators did nothing.
We now know that this bizarre viewpoint is miles from the truth, and that public life is imbued with a rich nexus of emotion-laden, poignantly human, social relations. Even strangers meeting for the first time engage in characteristically human emotional interactions, and the quality of social life depends critically on the tacit culture of conformity to particular norms of social interaction among people in public capacities.
Chaldini's book is a classic contribution towards analyzing these tacit social relations among strangers. His take on the issue is that we are all vulnerable to being manipulated by our mental weaknesses, and we should learn to be on guard against this manipulation. This is a very good point, but it hides the deeper point that manipulation is just the pathological side of basically healthy approaches to interaction with others in society. Humans are intensely reciprocal, and will sacrifice to repay good with good, and bad with bad, at personal cost, even when dealing with strangers they will never see again (we call this "strong reciprocity"). We have a strong tendency to social conformity, thus respecting others by our willingness to follow their lead. We want to be liked, and we are more willing to sacrifice on behalf of people we like, even if they are strangers. These and other behaviors are what make us human. Cialdini's point is that these predisposition can be used against us, and we must be careful to protect ourselves from this.
The various elements of the psychology of persuasion are so well-known today, partly due to Cialdini's influence (the first edition was 1984), that I'm not sure I learned anything new from reading this book. But, he is a fine writer and tells a good story, making the reading worth its while.
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