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 enlarge | Author: Robert B. Cialdini
Publisher: Collins Business
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.49
You Save: $8.46 (47%)
New (55) Used (23) from $9.40
Rating:  270 reviews
Sales Rank: 353
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 006124189X
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.852
EAN: 9780061241895
ASIN: 006124189X
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Manipulation of "Click-Whir" Automatic Subconcious Responses October 30, 2008
Elliot L. Janes (Oregon City, OR USA)
Excellent book, essentially a thesis on the subconcious underpinnings that causes different persuasive techniques to work. The concept is that the world we live in is so full of information that it is impossible to make all or even most decisions based upon our concious decision making process. Instead, throughout the course of our life our subconcious has developed methods that help us quickly process data. We do this all the time and don't even think about it, because it is part of our auto pilot (click-whir as Caldini calls it). You did this today when you instinctively avoided eye contact with a person you perceived as a begger. Stimulus results in response - automatically. Most of these unconcious decisions are in our best interest. However, Caldini points out ways in which our subconcious filter can be manipulated and all of his examples are exemplified by real life event examples and controlled experiment examples. Some of these are frightening and even disturbing (not just the tests but the real life stuff too-things like forseeable waves of suicides and avoidable fatal airplane crashes, amazing stuff).
Personally I am a small business owner and prior to reading this book I had already been applying some of these tactics in my business but I never knew why. I only new that when I do x I make a sale, or I advertise this way because the experts say so and it does seem to work. After reading Influence (2 1/2 times so far) and referring to it regularly I now understand why those tactics that I used everyday worked. It is a tremendous guide for me as I read a plethora of "normal" marketing books (by normal I mean without the psychological slant)and am able to understand the psychology behind any marketing strategies or tactics they suggest.
I will close with an example of ONE of the principles in the book "social proof." Prior to reading the book I already had my walls covered with pictures of my clients taken in my office, I have a tax preparation office with a niche of serving the Latino community. We always made sure they were smiling, many times I would be interacting with their little kid in some way when the picture was taken, other times the client would be shaking my hand as we both smile at the camera but in all cases they were sitting at my desk smiling. I also had pictures of clients posted in the lobby with a brief testimonial about the big refund we had got them and what they are going to do with the money. I had learned to do this because others businesses have had success with this. When I read this book Caldini opened my eyes to what I was doing to the subconcious of my clients. All of us tend to believe and trust people similar to ourselves. So as my clients sit at my desk the thought of distrust never even enters their mind. They are too surrounded by people just like them who were obviously happy with my services (smiling). By the way I do not consider what I do manipulating. In Caldini's book you will read some disturbing accounts of manipulation by immoral people. Obviously I set the stage for my pictures and testimonials etc but this is merely good marketing. Every picture on my wall is an actual client and they truly are happy with the service. We just help them smile.
I will end now, I promise, with this last example. I just watched Barak Obama's nationwide 30 minute infomercial. This example is about marketing so wherever you land politically set politics aside for a moment(I voted for the other guy but that's beside the point). The 30 minutes was a collage of all sorts of different interviews, speeches, illustrations, and yes testimonials. As a matter of fact there were more testimonials than any other type of clip. The testimonials appeared random but I assure you they were far from random. They were all designed to bring credibility to the claims Barak had just made or dramatic emphasis to the problem he that he is going to "change." Also the person giving was far from random. In the first 10 seconds of each clip I could tell who the campaign was targeting. There were many testimonials from black, and latino voters (a key target for the Obama campain). He also had quite a few small business owners on there in an attempt to push back against the "Joe the Plumber" campaign of McCain. He had a testimonial from a retired brigadeer General assuring us that Obama is not too inexperienced but has the solution to the war. I would love to be a fly on the wall of each American's home as this played. I know I would have seen many examples of people's heads bobbing in affirmation as the testimonials played of the people "most similar" to them. Speaking of head bobbing did you see the little rally's he had with "heartland looking Americans" around him all bobbing there heads as he talked about the breakdown of healthcare or whatever the topic was. That's an entire different tactic and for that one I'll let you read the book.
Everyone Should Read This October 28, 2008
Mark Diggler (Tampa Bay, FL)
I bought this book based on a reference in Secrets of the A Game by Logan Edwards. This is a fascinating book on mass psychology and you'll be left rethinking old assumptions and filtering life through a new lens. It's that powerful.
I originally purchased this book to help with attracting women, but I actually got much more out of it. Of course, it DID help out with attracting women, but I also learned a lot about group dynamics and mass psychology. I highly recommend it.
 Insightful October 14, 2008
T. Hooper (Osaka, Japan)
This books looks at the various ways in which salespeople and other influencers use techniques in order to get us to do things we normally wouldn't want to do. These sales techniques are foolproof and usually have the desired effect. The author provides lots of personal experiences and even joined certain sales organizations in order to find out their techniques. You'll be fascinated by what he has to say.
One thing to note is that the approach of this book is how to resist sales techniques, not how to use them. So if you're thinking of getting this to improve your sales skills, you'll definitely learn about the techniques and you'll learn some of the strategies that people use to resist them, but you won't get any advice on how to use the techniques.
Another thing that distracted from this book is that a lot of the illustrations look like they're from the late 70's or early 80's. Even though this is the latest volume, it still looks a bit old. It would have been nice if they updated some of the photos to reflect modern sensibilities. Despite this, the content itself remains very up to date, so while the old photos are distracting, they don't ruin the book.
Good background October 8, 2008
Mr. Na Riva (Cape Town, South Africa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book gives a very good background to persuasion. At times it goes into a bit too much detail, but still definitely worth the read.
What's the difference between several version of the book? October 6, 2008
Albert S (Sunnyvale, CA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read Influence: the new psychology of modern persuasion, a 1984 Quill version. I wonder what's the difference between different versions about this or similar book? Is 1984 content outdated?
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