Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Cialdini relates an exchange between Joe Pyne, a 1960s TV host, and rock musician Frank Zappa, in which they exchange insults. In his section “Primitive Automaticity,” Cialdini notes that the dialogue illuminates an underlying theme. He writes, “[O]ften when we make a decision about someone or something, we don’t use all the relevant available information […] An isolated piece of information, even though it normally counsels correctly, can lead to clearly stupid mistakes” (438). Humans clearly have the advantage over other species because, while we do use shortcuts to make decisions, we also have the ability to go back and examine our decisions rationally.

In “Modern Automaticity,” Cialdini posits that the explosion of information overwhelms people, saying, “We now live in a world where most of the information is less than 15 years old” (440). The Information Age has never been called the Knowledge Age because we are not absorbing this information and turning it into knowledge. He writes in “Shortcuts Shall Be Sacred” that this crush of information forces us to make rapid decisions without taking in all pertinent information. Due to this, we must rely upon these shortcuts to make important decisions. The main problem he sees is that profiteers will try to co-opt our shortcuts to use them against us.