
Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion - Tomte
http://www.2uo.de/influence/
======
hedgew
Becoming better or more successful by reading about biases seems difficult.
After reading Kahneman, Ariely, and others, I've sort of come to the
conclusion that a lot of people naturally behave in a way that exploits
others' biases. These people gain a slight edge (or many) in life. However,
learning to avoid or exploit biases is very difficult - unless you just have
the kind of personality that already benefits from many biases.

For example, Steve Jobs could be thought of as having a personality which
benefits from many biases. A few that I remember instantly: overconfidence
bias (others believe you more if you're confident) and halo effect (one
positive thing, like good looks, makes people think that you're good in other
things too). Probably many others. Any one of these alone - probably wouldn't
result in much. He hit a delicate balance, and his personality just worked
out. He probably didn't know anything about bias research, and emulating the
success of his personality by studying biases would be nigh impossible. Of
course, biases aren't the sole reason for his success, but can explain parts
of his life, and how he influenced people.

So studying biases helps us a little. You learn to understand human behavior a
little better. You can maybe fine-tune some parts of your personality. Most
stereotypical geeks for example, probably don't act confidently enough. But
changing your behavior radically to avoid or exploit biases is still very
difficult.

~~~
lsc
>Becoming better or more successful by reading about biases seems difficult.

Recognizing biases in yourself can also be really useful. If you know that
this thing you are feeling is irrational and that negotiators are trained to
make you feel that thing, you become much less vulnerable to manipulation.

Re-read the bits on Consistency - more than once a good negotiator has gained
significant advantage over me using techniques under that heading.

~~~
visakanv
"Seems difficult" – You bet!

Also, the trick is to go beyond reading. Most people read once or twice, go
"ah, that makes sense", and then forget about it except when it's pointed out
to them a little too late.

Benjamin Franklin had this stuff figured out. If you want to become better or
more successful, it has to become a part of your regular study and practice.
You have to revisit the principles over and over again. You have to analyze
your day each day and ask yourself what you could've done better, and decide
how you're going to do things differently the next time around. So on and so
forth.

~~~
lsc
>You have to analyze your day each day and ask yourself what you could've done
better, and decide how you're going to do things differently the next time
around. So on and so forth.

If you are negotiating big things every day, you are... well, really you are a
professional negotiator and you probably shouldn't be listening to me. If you
are a professional negotiator and you aren't better at negotiating than I
am... you had better find another line of work.

I mean, yeah, we all negotiate little things every day, but for most technical
people, even most technical people who do a little business, we have a few big
negotiations every now and then, negotiations which can have serious negative
consequences if we screw them up, and then a bunch of little negotiations
every day that don't matter nearly as much as our technical performance.

I think those big negotiations, yeah, going over what happened, especially
after a big screwup is a good idea, yeah, but it's not something that is going
to happen every day. It doesn't make sense for me to spend too much time
thinking about the guy who talked me into co-locating a server at cost
yesterday. It's super minor compared to, say, developing a better burn-in
procedure or figuring out how to set up customer-accessible zfs backups.

I also think that it's good, I mean, if you are not a negotiation specialist,
to make it clear that you will give a go/no go some time _after_ the
negotiation, after you give it time to let your emotions settle and look at it
more objectively. Remember that when negotiating in real time, if you are a
primarily technical person, you are probably dealing with a professional
negotiator, and should assume that they are as good at their job as you are at
yours; this means that they are going to dramatically outclass you as a
negotiator.

------
visakanv
A colleague of mine is really passionate about Cialdini's work, and he
actually put together over 50+ examples of the principles of Persuasion used
in marketing, sorted by category. [1]

I personally found it quite useful to peg the principles to real-world ideas,
and the visuals help with memory/recall.

As I mentioned in another comment– it's pretty easy to look at a principle in
action and go, "Yeah, that makes sense." The real challenge is to then look at
your own material critically, and see where you can implement it, what you're
doing well, what you're missing out on, and how you can do better. That takes
a lot of rigorous attentiveness and practice.

The really cool thing is– as long as you're not making stuff up (eg: faking
social proof for a product that nobody actually likes), you're going to
legitimately improve perceptions of your product. For instance, if you do a
search for your product on Twitter and you find that there are people saying
positive things about it, it's totally worth quoting those tweets on your
signup page! And so on.

___

[1]
[http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/cialdini/](http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/cialdini/)

------
robgibbons
I had a copy of this book before my car was broken into and my belongings were
stolen. I was about 75% through the book. I had to wonder if there was
something in that book that could ironically explain the break-in.

If you liked this book, here are a few others I enjoyed that cover similar
themes. They are all more or less about the psychology underlying every human
interaction.

\- How to Win Friends and Influence People (a classic by Dale Carnegie)

\- Meta-Talk (Gerard I. Nierenberg, Henry H. Calero)

\- Games People Play (Eric Berne)

\- What Every Body is Saying (Joe Nevarro, Marvin Karlins)

\- Conversationally Speaking (Alan Garner)

These books provide a great foundation for anyone who needs to deal with
people on a daily basis (ie. everyone), and are especially useful if you want
to be aware of fast-talkers trying to take advantage of you.

~~~
dzordzduan
You will like this list [http://www.social-engineer.org/resources/seorg-book-
list/](http://www.social-engineer.org/resources/seorg-book-list/)

------
nexussays
It's frustrating to see the Milgram experiment universally misunderstood: "In
the Milgram experiment the participants continued to give (ostensible)
electric shocks despite very strong signs that the experiment has gone too
far, just because the supervisor in the lab coat told them so."

That statement is false. It is _one_ of the potential interpretations of the
result, but it is not the dominant view (though it is conventional wisdom).
Look at the actual script the (actor) scientists told the participants and
look at the data of how many participants tend to object and when.

People do not inflict the fake punishment "just because the supervisor in the
lab coat told them so" they are doing it because they are repeatedly told that
the participant is OK and that this is part of the experiment; they know that
they themselves are not scientists so have reason to defer to the expert; and
they have a social understanding that an experiment which literally killed one
of the participants would probably not clear the ethic committee.

~~~
jamesk_au
For anyone else interested, here are some examples[1] of the ways in which the
experimenter strayed from the script:

 _" In listening to the original recordings of the experiments, it's clear
that Milgram's experimenter John Williams deviated significantly from the
script in his interactions with subjects. Williams – with Milgram's approval –
improvised in all manner of ways to exert pressure on subjects to keep
administering shocks.

He left the lab to 'check' on the learner, returning to reassure the teacher
that the learner was OK. Instead of sticking to the standard four verbal
commands described in accounts of the experimental protocol, Williams often
abandoned the script and commanded some subjects 25 times and more to keep
going. Teachers were blocked in their efforts to swap places with the learner
or to check on him themselves.

The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with Milgram's
experiments comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you
listen to these recordings."_

You can watch one of the examples in this video[2] (at 1:30). Having
administered several shocks already, the man playing the role of the teacher
asks the experimenter, "Who's going to take responsibility if anything happens
to that gentleman?" The experimenter begins his reply by saying, "I'm
responsible for anything that happens to him," which was contrary to the
script, and the teacher continues with the shocks.

Later studies have attempted to replicate some of the results though,[3][4] so
that is not the end of the story.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-
shocki...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-
truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5cjyokVUs&t=87](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5cjyokVUs&t=87)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Replications](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Replications)

[4]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-
one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/)

~~~
Tomte
Thanks! The replies of you two are about the best you can hope for when
posting your own article here.

(I won't change the article because I'm representing Cialdini's book here, not
further research, but those comments were very interesting)

------
sivers
My notes from the book, if you're considering reading it, or want a future
reminder:

[http://sivers.org/book/Influence](http://sivers.org/book/Influence)

------
rbt_frost
How reproducible is the empirical research this book bases its claims on? If
it's about par for the course in social psych, take a peek at the Many Labs
projects.... many of these clever, thought-provoking experiments have turned
out to be clever, thought-provoking false positives.

------
tomc1985
These tactics are everywhere money is involved. These are used against me
dozens of times a day, in advertisements, marketing, and just going about my
business.

I think that everyone has a duty to render themselves immune to these and
other tactics. It's idealistic, for sure, but a lot of today's societal woes
make sense in the context of people mindlessly acting out others' persuasions
beyond the scope of their own rational self-interest. It's especially
sickening just how many of these people see only the emotional content of the
arguments presented to them and nothing else....

------
Phithagoras
A good follow-up book, which is more general in its scope but mentions similar
behaviors, is "The Social Animal" by Elliot Aronson.

------
agumonkey
I like to read about this, because I'm often confused about human behavior.
Sometimes I'm tempted to leverage it, but I can't shake the feeling of how
shallow and amoral it is, or just even dehumanizing. That said, there are
times when you need to ensure certain things for yourself, free for all, and
it become a competitive advantage.

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tezza
95% of people make any decision based on what their peer group does. Only 5%
make up their own mind on any given issue.

This changes issue by issue and people who make up their own mind on some
issues, follow the 95% peer group on others.

This is the most revelatory insight for me from a book packed to the brim with
insights and science and evidence and wit

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Xcelerate
Funny, I just purchased that book a few weeks ago. It's very interesting to
me; I hadn't realized humans are so susceptible to manipulation (including
me).

I wish you could just hand someone a list of logical, rational arguments and
they would read the list and change their mind, but no, things don't work that
way.

~~~
ChristianGeek
If you want to see how susceptible we are are to manipulation, go see a good
magic show (no pun intended).

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lscore720
I think this is useful for learning how to defend against those trying to
influence you. As one of the top salespeople in my field, I can confidently
say this tactic is not a necessity.

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sk5t
Of current relevance, Cialdini discusses the statistical effect of publicized
suicides on imitative suicides, and particularly on suicides by airline
pilots. Disquieting stuff.

