Sue Cartwright

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Sue is Currently Reading

Sue Cartwright is currently reading

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

by Robert B. Cialdini (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: psychology, mind, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in June 2013

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Sue Cartwright said: " A phenomenal book that provides example after example of how human beings are continuously duped into making automatic decisions without thinking them through, resulting in an invaluable series of lessons to be learned about self awareness.

Robert is A phenomenal book that provides example after example of how human beings are continuously duped into making automatic decisions without thinking them through, resulting in an invaluable series of lessons to be learned about self awareness.

Robert is a brilliant writer who well earns his accolade as the 'seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion' as he sets out how the five psychological principles of consistency, reciprocation, social proof, liking and scarcity direct human behaviour to give these tactics their power.

The ability for each of these principles to produce a distinct kind of automatic, mindless compliance from people to willingly say 'yes' without giving it a second thought is explained. Quite astounding and entertaining at the same time - a real eye opener and highly recommended for anyone who wants to take control over their decision making and indeed, understand how to achieve buy-in from others to do what they want them to do.

I first read this book in March 2012 and read it again this year as part of my research for my new blog.

What really caught my eye, the second time round, is the last chapter on Authority - How To Say No. This in view of the fact that it is now common knowledge that too many 'Social Media Consultants' who claim to be 'experts' are actually nothing of the kind.

Robert writes: 'We particularly mis-perceive the profound impact of authority (and its symbols) on our actions, we are at the disadvantage of being insufficiently cautious about its presence in compliance situations. A fundamental form of defence against this problem. When this awareness is coupled with a recognition of how easily authority symbols can be faked, the benefit will be a properly guarded approach to situations involving authority-influence attempts.'

He goes on to say that the best way to protect ourselves is to ask two questions: 1) Is this authority truly an expert? (to focus our attention on acquiring evidence of credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the topic in hand thus avoiding automatic deference), and 2) How truthful can we expect the expert to be here? (To focus on their trustworthiness in the situation as we seem to be swayed more by experts who seem to be impartial than by those who have something to gain by convincing us). ...more "

Feb 16, 2026 12:29PM · see review