The Power of Persuasion

AlexisKai writes "The Ten-Second Review: Robert Levine's The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold is an engaging, highly readable survey of the sophisticated methods of persuasion we encounter in various situations. From television to telemarketing and from self-deception to suicide cults, Levine takes a hard look at all the ways we attempt to persuade each other - and how and why they work (or don't). Robert Levine is a professor of psychology at Cal State Fresno; his previous books include The Geography of Time, about the differences in the perception of time and its passage in various cultures and cities around the world." For those with a longer attention span, AlexisKai's review continues below. The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold author Robert Levine pages 278 publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. rating 8 reviewer Colin Cannell ISBN 0471266345 summary An engaging, highly readable survey of the sophisticated methods of persuasion we encounter in various situations. From television to telemarketing and from self-deception to suicide cults, Levine takes a hard look at all the ways we attempt to persuade each other - and how and why they work (or don't).

The book is quite balanced in its approach and unusual in that it looks at the art of persuasion through the lens of psychological field research. Levine doesn't merely muse about the vagaries of the mind; he gets out there and investigates it. He takes a job selling knives from a "multi-level marketing" company. He interviews former car salesmen, entrepreneurs, and marketing directors. His students conduct experimental bake sales.

The Power of Persuasion is at its most interesting when it shows how human behavior frequently travels outside the lines of economic theory. Chapter 6, "The Hot Button," details the situations in which we're likely to do something irrational, like buy the most expensive of four very similar-looking toasters, because a decision-making shortcut in our brain has been tripped (in this case, we equate higher price with higher quality despite there being little evidence for that).

The Power of Persuasion covers a certain amount of ground that has already been covered by such books as Robert Steiner's Don't Get Taken and Gerald Zaltman's How Customers Think. What I liked about this particular book's approach is that it takes a position between the two previously mentioned: for the most part it neither condemns the act of persuasion nor celebrates it. Levine is usually content simply to observe how persuasion is done and occasionally marvel at the way, say, a door-to-door salesman often has greater insight into the human brain than a psychologist.

Levine's writing style is fairly consistent throughout the book. In each chapter, he takes a particular theme or area of the art of persuasion and breaks it down to show what psychological and cultural forces are at work. He does this through well-reasoned arguments interspersed with amusing anecdotes, factoids, and citations of interesting studies and statistics.

For example, in the first chapter, "The Illusion of Invulnerability," he uses the metaphor of Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above-average, to describe how people consistently underestimate the extent to which they are personally influenced by advertising and the likelihood that they would fall for deceptive claims and scams. He punctuates this with a story of how he was preparing a university course on the use of mind control in social psychology and became so wrapped up in his thoughts about totalitarian governments and secret police that a man claiming to be a chimney sweep was able to hoodwink him out of $250. After this, he said, he realized that "it's the people we're unprepared for who present the greatest threat. The fast-talking salesman puts us on alert. But the nice guys, the friendly thieves who sell beneath the threshold of our awareness, put us at their mercy."

The following chapters deal with other facets of persuasion, including:

• The illusion of authority, i.e. "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."
• The use of generosity or kindness to create a sense of obligation.
• Contrasting what you're selling with something very similar or very different to create a "false dilemma" in the buyer.
• Moving from "Yes, I'll look at your brochure" to "Yes, I'll sign over my life savings to you" through a series of "gradually escalating commitments."
• One of my favorite chapters, and one that I identified with personally, is "$2 + $2 = $5," which takes a look at "The Ten Rules of Framing." Just like the lottery is "a tax on people who are bad at math," the rules of framing take advantage of the way we perceive numbers emotionally to subtly influence us toward decisions that don't necessarily make logical or financial sense.

Rule #1, for example, is "Separate Gains." Levine cites studies showing that people would prefer to win a $50 prize and a $25 prize rather than a single $75 prize. "This is because we respond less to the cumulative total of the gains than the fact that it is a gain," says Levine. "Every gain brings pleasure." This is why you always see Sports Illustrated offering you a "free" book, video, or football helmet mug, even though most of us would be better off if they would forget the video and just lower their subscription price. "The company wants you to file the gift in your unexpected windfall account," Levine writes, "where its perceived value is psychologically inflated, rather than mentally bunching it together with the other products into one big purchase."

In fact, I found a number of "hey, someone else wonders about that too" topics in The Power of Persuasion, such as the idea of the JND, or Just Noticeable Difference. This is the idea that you can quantify how much something can be changed before people notice that it has done so.If our product costs $5.49, and we raise the price to $5.59, will customers care? What about $5.99? Levine looks at how the JND is different at different price points and in different circumstances.

There are a few problems with the book:

• It includes some minor factual errors, such as the paragraphs in which Levine discusses the ad campaign that introduced "Infinity," which he describes as Toyota's luxury car brand. (I assume he means Infiniti, which is actually Nissan's luxury marque).
• The penultimate chapter is entirely devoted to an analysis of Jim Jones and the cult of Jonestown, whose members committed mass suicide in 1978. The analysis is interesting, and someone who hasn't studied Jonestown will find a good introduction here, but I wasn't convinced it deserved a chapter to itself. Levine's rationale appears to be that Jonestown represents the logical extreme, the "dark end of the dark side of persuasion," and there but for the grace of God go we, etc.
• The last chapter, "The Art of Resistance," turns toward the advocacy that I was so relieved not to find in the rest of the book. It contains advice on "asking disconfirming questions," avoiding groupthink, and being sure to practice "persuasion with integrity." This advice is very intelligent and well-founded, but most Slashdot readers will probably find themselves being told things they already know.

I would strongly recommend The Power of Persuasion to anyone whose job involves selling, who has ever wondered why in the world they bought that sweater/car/time-share, who lives in a capitalist economy, or who is just looking to fill a few hours with a fascinating book. It's an insightful, scientific look at a force that permeates the existence of anyone who has to interact with other people but that we rarely take the time to examine.

Besides being a cracking good read, it's fully footnoted, indexed, and so stuffed with information as to make a worthy addition to anyone's reference library. The next time you wonder what possessed you to pay $50 for a medallion commemorating the series finale of Friends, you'll know where to turn.

You can purchase The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Way ahead of you

[sxltrex]

Kevin Nealon was way ahead of the author (your place or mine?). I mean, he was doing that persuasive thing (watch Saturday Night Live) for years, and I'm sure he (Kevin Nealon is God) didn't have to read a book to figure it out.