Pre-suasion

Though I was a huge fan of Influence, I kept pushing Cialdini's latest book Pre-Suasion further into my reading backlog. I figured the first book pretty much covered the most important stuff so well that this new one was bound to be a disappointment.

I don't think my assessment was too far off. There is a lot of repetition in this one, but there was enough new stuff there that I enjoyed finishing it nonetheless. The anecdotes in particular that Cialdini uses to demonstrate his points were superb. He is able to draw on a number of historical examples for illustrative purposes, so one learns not just presuasiveness (sp?) but also a good amount of history.

Cialdini also draws on a great number of studies in support of his arguments. But some of the conclusions were so unbelievable (at least, to me) that it got me wondering about how reproducible some of those studies are. The incentive structure is such that a bunch of smart people are likely fudging a lot of nonsense through the publication establishment cause that's what gets counted, not how reproducible the stuff is. Here's some background on that.

In any case, I still recommend the book, especially if you are in sales.