100 Effective Techniques of Social Influence: When and Why People Comply

100 Effective Techniques of Social Influence provides a revolutionary look into the effectiveness of many techniques of social influence, providing an overview of the ways in which people use techniques to persuade others to meet various requests, suggestions, and commands.

For each technique, the authors explore the idea behind it, what empirical research says about it, and what the psychological mechanism behind its effectiveness is, aka, why it works. The techniques included span across multiple areas in people’s everyday lives, ranging from business negotiations, managements, marketing, and close relationships, to people’s behavior in public as well as in their private sphere. Covering research from the 1970s to the present day, the book describes techniques of social influence with the purpose of provoking certain behaviors, such as convincing an individual to donate to a charity or purchase a certain product. By exclusively focusing on techniques influencing human behaviors, rather than beliefs, biases, or emotions, the authors show how humans can be reliably convinced to behave in a certain way in a huge range of situations and contexts. Rather than being based on anecdotal evidence or legends of famous people, the authors have only included techniques that have been proven to be effective through scientific research.

With each technique described in an engaging manner, this is ideal reading for students and academics in fields such as social psychology, leadership, marketing, sociology, management, and communication. It will also appeal to professionals who need to influence others, and any readers who desire a better and more contemporary understanding of how people interact and influence others on a daily basis.