An accessible, well-researched inquiry into how minds get changed.
A social psychologist considers why and how we make decisions.
In his previous book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984), Cialdini (Emeritus, Psychology and Marketing/Arizona State Univ.) aimed to help consumers “resist influence attempts employed in an undue or unwelcome way.” A bestseller, that book led to requests from people “ravenously interested in learning how to harness persuasion” in business or their personal lives, which inspired this illuminating, easy-to-digest follow-up. Although aimed at persuaders, the book also gives insight to consumers about the forces that shape decision-making. Drawing on studies in psychology, business, and the social sciences, which comprise the majority of his 90-page bibliography, Cialdini makes two central arguments: persuaders must trigger in their audience associations favorable to change, and “the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is not the one that counsels most wisely” but rather “one that has been elevated in attention…at the time of the decision.” The book is filled with anecdotes and punctuated by cartoons (“Doonesbury” and “Dilbert” make appearances), advertisements, and, occasionally, graphs. Although some findings seem common-sensical—to get consumers to buy French wine, play French background music before they decide—others surprised even the author. If we want people “to feel warmly toward us, we can hand them a hot drink,” for example; and because the concept of weight “is linked metaphorically to the concept of seriousness,” manufacturers making e-readers as light as possible may “lessen the seeming value of the presented material” and “the perceived intellectual depth of its author.” Late in the book, Cialdini confronts the ethics of his entire enterprise: is he, in fact, “doing more harm than good” by imparting means of tricking consumers? Unethical business practices eventually undermine an organization by creating a corrosive “culture of dishonesty," he asserts; but he concedes that his “argument against duplicity” may not convince profit-hungry business leaders.
An accessible, well-researched inquiry into how minds get changed.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0979-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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