Influence

I can see how "Influence" may have once been viewed as the definitive study of the "science" of influence and persuasion, but its dependence on a steady stream of questionable behavioral science experiments and dubious after-the-fact interpretations ("I offered my college students a bonus test point if they got their parents to complete a survey and the 92% response rate proves the principle of kinship unity!") makes it hard to take seriously. There's value and insight here, but a good summary of the book would probably be a better place to extract it.

The fundamentals of persuasion.

I was surprised a book on this topic could feel so outdated. This is mainly because most of its content is now common knowledge. Things like singling out a person in a crowd for help, servers upselling for a higher bill, attractive people being more persuasive, MLM companies utilizing personal connections, and censorship backfiring are things people are very familiar with today. We know scarcity and limited time offers create desire, because QVC has been running these methods into the ground for decades (and was launched 2 years after this book came out).

It’s a good refresher and there’s definitely interesting bits. The six principles of persuasion could be summarized to less than a tenth of the book though.

well done, even for a business book

I've been reading a number of books on human behavior and marketing, and this book was extremely highly recommended, so I picked it up. I would certainly recommend this book to anybody, whether you're interested in marketing or not. The author looks at a list of factors that can unconsciously influence people's decisions. He presents the research clearly and with easily understood examples, and concludes each chapter with advice on how to identify when someone is trying to influence you in these ways, and how to defend yourself from being unwillingly influenced or pressured. He also discusses how knowledge of these ways we are influenced can be used ethically to improve our communications (both personal and in regard to marketing). A very interesting and enlightening book.