Influence-The Psychology of Persuasion: Robert B. Cialdini

Science/Psychology

 

Influence-The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini, PH.D

 

Ethologists for long have found some strange patterns of behaviour in birds. A mother turkey fawns and takes are of a chic that makes cheep-cheep sounds. Actually, even if a stuffed polecat, a natural enemy of turkey is artificially made to produce the sound, mothering behaviour of the mother turkey is switched on. And if a turkey chick doesn’t utter these magical notes, it is neglected by its mother. This is trigger feature of animal behaviour. ‘Click’ of a particular stimulus ‘whirrs’ the appropriate response, the ‘click-whirr’ pattern. Humans have inherited much of their behaviour from animals, from whom they descended in millions of years. ‘Click-whirr’ pattern of our behaviour has been confirmed by psychologists in many ingenious experiments. In most situations that we face in daily living, this action-reaction form of behaviour serves us well. It is fast and it saves the body precious resources of energy involved in thought process. Energy, that can be utilised for better purpose.

 

Marketing professionals have for long exploited this peculiarity of human behaviour to solicit customers. Most customers do not possess all the knowledge about the good or service that they propose to purchase. In such situations people go by the urging of the trigger factors, if any is detected in the intended purchase. These initiate the automatic whirr response of mind which approves such purchase. Marketing strategists cunningly strive to include these features in their goods/service, presence of which exhorts the mind of buyers to neglect every other feature of the commodity. Robert B. Cialdini, a psychologist, explains the working of these ‘click-whirr’ patterns of human mind, the weapons of influence used by the exploiters. He groups these under six headings and discusses each in a chapter. He cites many psychological experiments done to elucidate these. He illustrates his assertions with some simple imaginary situations too.

 

Book is written in an easy prose. Psychological concepts being invoked are clearly explained. Situations in examples and experiments being referred are familiar to the reader, thus easy to follow and fun to know. It is fascinating to be told about workings of human mind, about its decision-making apparatus which evolved to equip it to make decisions quickly and correctly in most situations an individual faces in his daily life. But which errs heavily when confronted with certain infrequent circumstances. But I am not sure, if we would be able to recall this bias of our mind, when we face these situations in life. Notwithstanding these scruples, book is a rewarding read as it adds to knowledge and is entertaining simultaneously. One class of people who may gain by this book is marketing executives. Enthusiasts of human psychology will find it interesting too. I can’t help suggesting Daniel Kahneman’s incredibly well written book Thinking Fast and Slow that talks about human decision-making apparatus in uncertain situations. In lucidity, simplicity and clarity of exposition of scientific principles for layperson this book of Kahneman, in my opinion, has set a tall benchmark, against which similar books will be compared for a long time.