Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #363 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Synopsis
"Influence", the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes" - and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader - and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of "Influence" will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.

Customer Reviews

It is a great book but not 100% what im after, reccomend it though..
This book is definetly worth gettin because it is an interesting read and the author clearly knows what he is talking about. What i like about the book is it is based on research and science, not half guesses and assumptions.

It does make you more aware of sales techniques and how to not fall victim to their techniques. I do think some chapters he tends to go on abit too much for the sake of making the chapter and book longer ( feels that way when you read it) because when you read the book you will find a summary at the end of each chapter which explains 40 pages worth on 1 page.

Though he does go deep into the principles and logic of the science of persuasion if you think that you will become a master persuader after reading this then you will be dissapointed. I have seen Derren Brown and other masters of NLP influence people ( with extraordinary skill ) into making decisions with indirect suggestions, clever word play and body lanuguage without them even realising and this is the type of persuasion that interests me and this book does not go into any of this really.

As i said some interesting facts and research and a good read but for the reason above is why i rated it 3 stars

Wonderful book
I read this book in less than 4 days.
I reckon this is a must read not just for Marketers but everyone involved in business.

I found the informal style really engaging but yet rigorous and supported by plenty of facts and research.
I have already started to spot at work some of the topics discussed and I am starting to use some of the tecniques.

I can only highly reccomend this enjoyable and interesting reading, especially if you liase with people in your daily job.

Not bad, but...
This is not a bad book. Actually, I'm ok with having bought it here at Amazon. However, that was not my impression when I started in the first chapter; I thought "oh no, not again, another book of a wannabe self-proclaimed "guru"". From chapter 3 onwards it became better, but I have one serious problem with this book: I do understand Cialdini is an academic, but I really wish he would stop cluttering up the text with all these side steps to academic research; it's annoying. Just pose your statements, explain them short and clear, and put all your detailed explanations of academic research that supports your statements in the footnotes. This is your typical book where you have to turn back two pages constantly to see "what was his main argument?". This book could be considerably shorter, *still preservering the same value when it comes to insight", and would make for much more pleasant reading (Mind you, I hold a PhD myself, I know this is academic writing. That's fine when your audience is the academical world, but that is clearly not what the intended audience of this book is). To conclude: there are some valuable lessons contained in this book, it is worth the money, but it needs to be less on the academical details, because that distracts.