Influence - The Psychology Of Persuasion

SUMMARY

Dr Robert Cialdini has examined the science behind making people comply with your requests. These requests may be made as part of your job as a salesperson, fund-raiser, recruiter, politician or even as an average individual trying to derive the best outcome for oneself by influencing others to comply with your 'requests'. What makes this book different and authoritative is that Cialdini is a distinguished researcher in this field and has interacted with practitioners intensively in order to produce this work.

Key Insights:

The weapons of Influence:

Owing to the process of evolution and psychological development, we have a few fixed patterns in our behaviour. These patterns get triggered with certain fixed inputs and the author calls them 'click and whirr'. It is like pressing a certain button a gadget of the human mind, clicking, producing the desired outcome, whirr. This is also a result of the need for shortcuts for humans to make sense of the complex world and automate the decisions at the mental level. For example, when you ask for a favour, the chances of the other person agreeing to your request increase manifold if you provide a reason. Similarly, people equate expensive to good and happily buy things priced at much higher prices than their genuine price.