Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion . . . in 700 words

Robert Cialdini first published Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion in 1984. It was positioned as a book for marketers. It is so much more than that.

The findings and ideas in this 39-year-old book are as accurate and relevant today as they ever were. It is a must-read for anyone in sales, marketing, leadership, politics, community organizing, or parenting. It is also a must-read for those who struggle to understand Donald Trump’s hold on his fan base. Simply put, everyone needs to read this book.

Here is my attempt to capture the main idea from each chapter in one or two sentences.

Chapter One: Weapons of Influence

We are constantly overwhelmed with information so our brains create shortcuts by using external cues as triggers to automate decision-making and avoid the hard work of thinking.

Chapter Two: Reciprocation

The reciprocity rule states that we must repay any favor, gift, etc . . . It is so overpowering that skilled manipulators of the rule can create multiple layers of obligation without giving up anything and still receive a thank you from their unwitting compliance victim.

Chapter Three: Commitment and Consistency

It’s better to believe a lie than go through the hard work of changing your mind and appearing inconsistent to others. The only thing harder than thinking through a decision is rethinking a decision, so humans will avoid it at all costs by doggedly remaining committed to their original course of action even in the face of concrete evidence to the contrary.

Chapter Four: Social Proof

Experience has taught us the best proof that something is correct is whether or not others believe it to be correct so rather than deciding for ourselves we will blindly follow others. Our default assumption is that they have done the hard work of researching their decision. The effect is so strong we will even cling to this “proof” when all other legitimate proof shows it to be faulty.

Chapter Five: Liking

We prefer to say yes to people we like, which is great until someone takes advantage of our default wiring. Our brain takes shortcuts and automatically decides we like someone because they are attractive, appear similar, use compliments, appear familiar, or cooperate with us, which opens us up to manipulation by bad actors.

Chapter Six: Authority

In order to maintain healthy and complex social structures without descending into chaos, we are trained from birth that obedience to proper authority is good and disobedience is bad. Unfortunately, this often causes us to abdicate decision-making and defer all intentional thought to those with legitimate authority, as well as, those with perceived authority without even thinking about it.

Chapter Seven: Scarcity

We will often decide we desire something simply because we cannot have it or we are afraid of losing it vs. any real affinity for the person or thing. We automatically assume that an object in short supply (scarce) must be in high demand, which in turn means it must be valuable and our fear of missing out (loss aversion) compels us to act irrationally to obtain said object

Epilogue: Cialdini was a prophet.

(Remember this book was written in 1984) The amount of information in the world and how accessible it is to us is expanding exponentially. Our brains are already struggling to keep up and deferring to shortcuts that are not in our best interests. The problem will get much much worse as the number of necessary decisions and the volume of information available increases.

Summary:

Your brain’s highest priority is to keep you alive and pass your genes on to the next generation. In pursuit of that aim, it has developed mechanisms to help you make decisions that will most likely achieve that goal without actually thinking. These shortcuts have become automated responses to specific stimuli and in most cases do in fact produce a positive outcome in the form of a sound decision. Unfortunately, because they are automated and unthinking they are extremely vulnerable to manipulation. Psychology has identified a number of very specific compliance tactics that take advantage of our automated responses and proven their efficacy. The evidence that we are under constant attack from agents of compliance using these tactics of manipulation is everywhere.