Influence Persuasion

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini was first published in 1984, with revisions in 1994 and 2007. This review is based on the 2007 version. The general message of this book is for the reader to gain an understanding of why people ‘say yes’. Cialdini states that he intended this book to be for the average reader and thus it was attempted to make the book engaging. The goal of Influence is to for the reader use the six universal principles of persuasion and how to protect himself/herself when others are using them against him/her. In order to make the material more engaging Cialdini uses interviews, quotes, and observations to extrapolate the six principles of persuasion. The research, however, is based on controlled,

Cialdini used the example of canned laughter as a technique that television shows use to make people laugh longer and rate the shows as being more humorous. Cialdini uses the principle of social proof to explain that person A is watching person B for a response, likewise person B is watching person A for a response. The conundrum of the above scenario is often called the bystander effect. One of the most popular bystander effect cases is that of the murder of Catherine Genovese, where her murder took place publicly for over thirty minutes with thirty-eight witnesses. The shocking bystander effect is that not one of the thirty-eight witnesses called the police. Each and every person assumed that someone else would call for help, but since every person assumed this help never

Each wallet contained $2, a check for $26.50, and a letter. The letter indicated that the wallet had found by a bystander who was in the process of returning it, when apparently the first finder had lost it as well. The independent variable of the experiment was the form of how the letter was written: Standard English versus broken English, presumably from a foreigner. The results found that when a person feels similar to the first finder they will continue through with the return process 70% of the time. When the second finder feels dissimilar, however, the wallet is then only returned %30 of the time. The results suggests that people are more likely to copy the behaviors of people that are similar to themselves. Social proof is a core concept of my promotional plan for Blackberry phones. The contract buy out that was mentioned above is targeted in large cities that contain opinion leaders for this product category. If the opinion leaders were to switch to using Blackberry devices, the principle of social proof implies that others will adopt Blackberry to match the social norms. The reliance on this principle is crucial for the success of the promotional