My review of the book “Yes! 50 Scientifically Ways to Be Persuasive.”

We both persuade people and get influenced by others, perhaps every single day, without even realizing it. And some of them are based on ethical principles. But some are not.

Knowing persuasion will make you more resilient against the dark ones. It will also make you more persuasive for your message.

Remember, though; these simple techniques are not to work 100% of the time, like almost everything else. Life is mostly about increasing your chance of success and eliminating ambiguity. Hence, using tools could be better than using nothing at all. Even if the tools are wrong; it is the mindset that counts towards long-term success.

Lots of things in our behaviors are pre-conditioned. For example, our increased liking for people similar to us is a weird one to explain. But, the more someone is like us, the more we potentially believe what they say, hence more persuasive to us. Yes, I can see why we like people similar to us because we are conditioned to think we will have a better time with them. How this makes them more persuasive is still debatable. They being like us does not automatically make them honest. But clearly, our minds like shortcuts and don’t think very deeply. Perhaps, we rely more on how the situation makes us feel than the realities it hides behind. When we feel good, we become more persuadable.

People who helped us before are more inclined to help us again in the future. Why? Again the shortcuts. We all like to decide faster and more accurately. So, our past behaviors tend to determine our future behaviors, which makes sense to a certain degree.

The book does not tell this, but the more I read about persuasion, the more I see the impact of our minds loving being lazy hence relying on shortcuts. Most of the time, the influence comes from priming. The primed mind ends up finding its shortcut, which is the topic used for priming. Anchoring is the same as well. For instance, if you get a simple “yes” to a hypothetical situation, it is more likely that you will get the next yes for a related topic.

Another persuasion is to use the word “because.” It is weird how much it works, even if the reason is utterly whacky. It won’t work all the time, but it works more than it should, it seems. Why? Possibly the shortcuts our minds love again.

Do I recommend this book? Sure.