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Book Description

A look behind the curtain of shilling and pitch to see how we are manipulated everyday Robert Levine offers readers an incisive new take on the mindsets of those who prod, praise, debase, and manipulate others to do things they never thought they'd do - and are sometimes later sorry they did. He takes a hands-on approach by attending training sessions for magicians honing their craft and by taking jobs as a door-to-door salesman and a used car salesman. Levine explores the remarkable effect and power of subtlety on effective persuasion, the great illusion of personal vulnerability, and the unlikely similarities across a wide range of persuasive strategies, from parents to con men to lovers to religious leaders. Robert Levine (Fresno, CA) is Professor and former chairperson of the Psychology Department at California State University, Fresno. He has published articles in Psychology Today, Discover, American Demographics, The New York Times, Utne Reader, and American Scientist. His book, A Geography of Time, was the subject of feature stories around the world, including Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, CNN, the BBC, ABC's Primetime, and NPR's All Things Considered and Marketplace.

From Publishers Weekly

This valuable and nonacademic guide reveals the extent to which we are surrounded by persuasion, and how we can resist. Levine (A Geography of Time), a professor of psychology at Cal State Fresno, opens by demonstrating that all of us (including himself) can be persuaded under the right circumstances. He goes on to study financial manipulation and the use of the sense of obligation (which exists in all cultures, even if it is most strongly visible in Japan), and then proceeds to a nuts-and-bolts analysis of salesmanship by describing what he learned and did (and had done to him) as an automobile salesman. He offers an admirably concise and unemotional analysis of the famous Milgram experiment, involving the (claimed) administration of ever-stronger electric shocks to test the impulse to obedience. Inevitably, he moves to cults, the Moonies and the ultimate persuasion horror story, Jonestown. Not so inevitably, he avoids hysteria and demonization, even of Jim Jones, and points out that brute force is required at the extreme end of the persuasion spectrum. Levine's final chapter offers ways of dealing with unwelcome persuasion while remaining part of a society in which some persuasion is part of almost any social interaction. The final results are bout as far as possible from the shrill Hidden Persuaders tradition or the cult deprogrammers who become cult gurus themselves-and quite persuasive about the author's credentials, common sense and ethics.

Book Dimension

length: (cm)22.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)14.7