These are my reading notes and thoughts on the book titled Influence by Robert Cialdini.
Chapter 1 – Weapons of influence
In this chapter, Cialdini prepares us for what’s to come. The book will be about weapons of influence, tools that provoke automatic, preprogrammed and involuntary responses in human beings.
In other words, tool that make others comply.
These automatic responses, originally created for our survival, now exist to help us cope with a complex world and allow us to make the best decisions in the shortest amount of time. For example, we tend to believe that an expensive item is of higher quality than a cheaper one. It’s not always true, but following this rule over a lifetime will net positive results.
Employees often complain that E&C programs are burdensome and get in the way of business. Of course, we disagree. So the question is, could we use some of these weapons to make employees believe what we believe?
That’s the question I will try to answer as I read this book.
The Ethical Leader 