Influence: Science and Practice (ISBN 0-321-18895-0) is a Psychology book from 2003 examining the key ways people can be influenced by "Compliance Professionals". The book's author is Robert B. Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. The key premise of the book is that, in a complex world where people are overloaded with more information than they can deal with, people fall back on a decision making approach based on generalizations. These generalizations develop because they allow people to usually act in a correct manner with a limited amount of thought and time. However, they can be exploited and effectively turned into weapons by those who know them to influence others to act certain ways.
The findings in the book are backed up by numerous empirical studies conducted in the fields of Psychology, Marketing, Economics, Anthropology and Social Science.
The author also worked undercover in many compliance fields such as car sales and door-to-door sales.
The key "weapons of influence" outlined are:
Read more about Influence: Science And Practice: Reciprocation, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, Scarcity, Influencing As A Process
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or practice:
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
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“In my practice I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happens slowly instead of all at once. I didn’t seem to mind.... All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts. Grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”
—Daniel Mainwaring (1902–1977)