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The Psychology of Persuasion

October 18, 2004 - by Robert E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail: views@aol.com


In 2000, Herb Sorensen of Sorensen Associates, recommended a book he thought I would find interesting. The book is Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion, written by Dr. Robert B. Cialdini. Actually, Herb wanted to make sure I read the book, so he sent me a copy. I read it in January of 2001 and found it interesting but I put it aside. However, during the past two years, my wife and I have been involved in four, large, fund-raising projects. This involvement and some of the methods used in the fund raising stimulated a renewed interest in Cialdini's book. During the past couple of days I have gone back and re-read the book. There are a number of topics in the book I plan to reference in future Views.

I did not get through the Introduction of the book before I found a concept deserving of repeating. It is not a new concept but one that was utilized somewhat differently from uses I have experienced.

As a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, Dr Cialdini wanted to explore the factors that cause one person to say "yes" under one set of circumstances and "no" when faced with the same request under a different set of conditions. His first approach was to conduct a series of experiments, as typical of college research, among students. It didn't take him long to realize that to fully understand the psychology of compliance, he needed to broaden his scope of investigation. What was impressive was "who" he decided to research and "where" he decided to conduct his studies.

Rather than focusing on the general population, he decided to investigate, as he calls them, the "compliance professional." That meant that he was going to study the sales operators, fund raisers, recruiters, advertisers and others. His program, as he called it, was a "program of observation." Sound familiar? In other words, get out from behind your desk and go into the real world to find out what is really happening. He not only researched the "compliance professionals," but he even researched the practitioners' natural enemies, police bunco-squad officers, and consumer protection agencies. He not only collected and studied sales manuals and fund raising outlines, he answered newspaper ads for sales trainees and had them teach him their methods.

This book is loaded with real world examples and experiments. I highly recommend the book to anyone in marketing as well as those in fund raising. The book can be purchased through amazon.com for as little as $7.50.



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