‘’The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought And Sold’’, Robert Levine

Regular readers may remember in a pique of introspection a whole ago I started trying to work out better ways to influence people at work - in a nice way, like. This book was part of that Saturday-morning haul from the biggest bookshop stocking English books in Athens where I indulged in a bit of retail therapy (self-help books are the new grey, I hear). However this one was quite a lot more interesting – taking a psychologist’s approach, it analyses how we are persuaded to think and behave by various people, media and organizations. Working in marketing it’s a fascinating area although pretty unnerving when you consider it relies on either the goodness of the persuader or the resistance of the persuadee to avoid sinister results. Ah, it’s just like reading No Logo; I’m a sucker for punishment.

Many of the approaches are very familiar to me from day-to-day work. Levine starts by exploring the ‘’Illusion of Invulnerability’’, that common belief that whilst everyone else is influenced by advertising and so on, *I* am clever enough to not be influenced. Thus, when people are asked if they are swayed by advertising, 99% of the time they say ‘’no I’m not’’, despite the patent reality that there would be no multi-billion dollar advertising industry if this were true. (Incidentally it always makes me chuckle when friends say ‘’oh I don’t care about branding or marketing, I just buy from the Body Shop and Morrisons’’. Suckers). So the first thing is clear – we are in fact particularly vulnerable to persuasion precisely because we see it as no threat due to our superior intelligence.

There are many, many other fascinating principles which quickly bring personal experiences to mind. Like the ‘reciprocity principle’ which is so prevalent in the West – if someone gives you something, then you ‘’owe’’ them and feel morally obliged to repay the favour when you are in that position. So want to get someone to do something? Given them something first and they won’t be able to resist. Then there’s the ‘contrast principle’ – the decision you’re making, particularly when it comes to cost, is significantly influenced by what you’re comparing it to. I have a particularly inane habit of not buying CDs because I perceive GBP10 to be ‘’expensive’’ for music (no idea why) whereas I will happily but a GBP40 skirt without flinching. In fact I had a classic experience of value ‘’framing’’ this week when I was looking in the Sales for a new digital camera – Jessops had one reduced from GBP200 to GBP125 which I liked and thought was a great bargain but I didn’t get around to buying it. Then I had a quick check in Duty Free at the airport and found it there – also for GBP125, but this time it said the ‘’reduction’’ was only GBP50 from GBP175. Suddenly, it wasn’t half as attractive. It’s such basic psychology but it’s stunning how affected we are, even when we know we’re being influenced.

Anyway, this is thoroughly recommended both for the cynical marketeer (great P&G word, that; makes me feel like a Mouseketeer) and the assailed and concerned consumer. I will leave you to read whilst I stare out of the window and consider for the 37th time this week whether to chuck it all in.