Book Review - Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini

I really enjoy learning new things and discovering how things work. I also love to learn new ideas, tricks, techniques, and the such that will benefit my life. I also love to learn the tricks people use to manipulate each other so I can better guard myself from such underhanded schemes. This book has all of the above, and more.

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini is a nonfiction analysis of how to prep an audience for a message so it will have more impact. It is available as an eBook, Audiobook, and those paper things your grandparents used to read..

The Good

Information. The author does an excellent job presenting, explaining, and clarifying different techniques that increase the influence a message will have. This is very practical both to persuade others and to defend yourself from being manipulated.

Clear Explanations and Examples. The author is a scholar, but this is written for the consumer with everything put in very clear terms and not academic speak.

No Obvious Bias. Too many of these types of books are written by liberals trying to force their political leanings down the readers' throat. This author showed no obvious political agenda. It was refreshing to read a book that wasn't part political manifesto.

The Bad

Unsupported Conclusions. Most of the claims the author makes have some scientific backing, but there are a few, especially towards the end, where he just throws out opinions and explanations with nothing more than it sounds good to him to back it up. I wish he had been consistent in his scholarship.

What I Would Like to Have Seen

A little more rigor in the science and testing to make sure the cause was likely what the author assumed it was.

Overall

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini discusses how to prep an audience for a message so it will have more impact. The author cites many examples of when these techniques have been successfully used and many studies to back them up. The explanations are all very clear and easy to understand. This is an excellent book to help one become more aware of techniques others use to influence and manipulate others and guard against it. I give this book 4.5 out of 5 eReaders.