Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion

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I had this book for a while but I kept avoiding it, thinking it is another of those badly written self-help books. Making something sooooo drawn out and repetitive to the point of infinity I couldn't make it to the final chapters. By speeding up the narration you can consume this book in a much shorter timeframe and not miss out on anything. It was much easier for me to enjoy Cialdini's inflection and likable Midwestern accent once I switched to 1.

Example: cults, where people who convince or convert others become more convinced (that’s why so many are evangelical). Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Cialdini makes this crucially important subject surprisingly easy. I would not disagree that those are little more than common sense, and one must have read iterations of them in other psychology self-help books.I heard the author on Freakonomics recently and it sounded very interesting, so I purchased the book here immediately.

Even with modern psychology the average person understands so very little about themselves, their drives, why they do what they do, why they like what they like, that they are easily manipulated and exploited. It can even lead to revolt…when something is given and then taken away, people get mad; if something is never given at all, they don’t know what they’re missing. The content of this book is useful for all types of situations in which you interact with people, or even just process information that is brought to you with the intent of getting a certain reaction. However, unlike the previous Audible performance of the 2006 edition, (which has now disappeared from my Library so I'm not sure what it was actually released as an audiobook) this one is read by the author, which I think could be problematic for most listeners. Examples: experiments involving shock therapy where people listened to a guy in a lab coat to inflict pain on another human being (incredible how strong this is).Perhaps he's just as much of a chump when it comes to ideas as he says he is when it comes to complying with the requests of other people. For example, in one experiment, one or more accomplices would look up into the sky; the more accomplices the more likely people would look up into the sky to see what they were seeing.

he identified three agents who apply these principles with various degree of success, a bungler, a smuggler, and a sleuth; this was an alternative approach to give application tips than, say, using to-do and not-to-do lists. Namely you can use the contents to gain the compliance of a subject or notice a party trying to do the same with you.As a reader, you may feel that you already know some of these tricks of the trade, but then author brings out specific edge cases where a particular influence approach may fail because you just are trying to blindly apply the technique without understanding those edge cases.

One, for example, is the mark of authority -- people are more likely to follow directions and suggestions given by someone with a title (Dr. Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. It panders to the audience by using overly simple language and repeating the same idea 5 times to make sure that the reader really understood. I've read influence, the psychology of persuasion so many times I can mostly recite it, so I was wondering how much value there would be in this new and expanded version. The main thing though is the fascinating concepts explained in the book with principles which I think will be very useful for me in my life.Example: introverted pre-schoolers who saw introverted kids become social in a movie were more inclined to go play.