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A review by phire
Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Steve J. Martin, Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini
2.0
Not much new here in terms of ideas of concepts, you'd be better off reading Cialdini's Influence. These are essentially 50 fairly facile and surface-level examples of applications of a core 6-7 ideas. I was most struck by the repeated iteration of "these techniques can be used ethically" throughout the book (every other chapter? every third chapter?) not only because the insistence betrays a shaky confidence in the belief, but also because if only 30-50% of the techniques could be used ethically, did that mean there were lots of techniques that were unethical?
The examples themselves were also pretty broad and while I fully believe that there was at least one valid published study behind each example, they were sketched in such vague terms with so little discussion of either methodology or limitations that I found them fairly unconvincing. Plus, there was an anvil-sized hole in the analysis of any sort of power dynamics or intersectional patterns, which made most of the "try this and you'll be persuasive" conclusions laughably naive. Skip this one.
The examples themselves were also pretty broad and while I fully believe that there was at least one valid published study behind each example, they were sketched in such vague terms with so little discussion of either methodology or limitations that I found them fairly unconvincing. Plus, there was an anvil-sized hole in the analysis of any sort of power dynamics or intersectional patterns, which made most of the "try this and you'll be persuasive" conclusions laughably naive. Skip this one.