Dennis's Reviews > Die Psychologie des Überzeugens

OT: Influence: Science and Practice
(first published in 1984)

This book deals with the techniques used to get people to agree to something, and with the psychological processes behind it. It also shows how to defend against certain communication techniques, or how to use them yourself to achieve the desired outcome in negotiations. But not only in a professional context. 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.

It’s the third time I’ve been reading this. It was first brought to my attention by a colleague a little over a decade ago, and I’m still a little baffled by his decision to lend me his copy. After all our respective jobs meant that we were often pitted against each other in negotiations. I guess he was just pretty confident in his negotiation skills. He told me he reads the book once a year.

Cialdini’s book looks at what he calls the six weapons of influence:

1. Reciprocation
2. Commitment and consistency
3. Social proof
4. Friendship/liking
5. Authority
6. Scarcity

There are others. But he sees those six as the most effective ones. And he has studied them for quite some time. The main point, as I take it, is that we are living in an age where we have access to more and more information all the time. Therefore we often have to rely on short-cuts to come to decisions. And while this is working just fine most of the time, sometimes someone comes along who knows how these short-cuts work and tries to exploit them. Watch out for those guys!

Some of the things described in this book are quite obvious. And Cialdini also uses repetition to drive home his point. However, after reading this for a third time already, and also considering I’ve been working in an environment where I was trained extensively in all matters of communication, I can’t really blame the book for not telling me something new. At this point it’s a little hard to tell how much of this seems obvious to me because of previous reads, or previous training, or just because it’s, well, obvious. But I remember clearly how I gobbled it all up, when I read this for the first time, and it’s also clear to me that some of it has made its way into how I use to communicate ever since.

This third read was a nice refresher. And it was again fun, mainly because of Cialdini’s humorous and sometimes self-deprecating approach to the subject matter, a certain fascination with his methods of research and study, and most of all because of all the real-life examples he uses to illustrate the concept. A couple of those are well-known instances of people having done something that seems to be completely illogical at first. Until you understand who or what made them do it. Other examples of such behavior you will not have heard of, but they also are often quite entertaining. Many of them are fascinating and some are also shocking or even tragic. Sometimes our short-cuts can trip us up badly. Sometimes it’s just about seeing the signs. The shortest way to a decision is not always the best one.