The Power of Persuasion Quotes

“The best way to predict the future," observes magician Gregory Wilson, "is to influence it."17”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“The same goes for authority: looking like the real thing may have more impact than actually being it.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Gullibility can be thought of as a social psychological analog of anosognosia. The chronic patsy refuses to acknowledge his weakness.
His denial is nourishing to his self-esteem. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge," Charles Darwin observed.24 But it also prevents you from avoiding the same mistake next time.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Insuring against losses, however, goes against the grain of the risk principle. It asks people to accept a sure loss (the cost of the policy) rather than to gamble on an uncertain larger loss. Since we like to gamble on losses, this can be a difficult sell.
Most insurance companies today avoid this problem by phrasing their messages in the positive. Insurance is now described not so much as a buffer against unpredictable loss but, instead, as a way of protecting the valuables you possess. Even if you don't currently have valuables to speak of, the companies encourage you to insure against losing the good things you're hoping will come your way in the future. Why gamble on losing your hopes? One company advertises: "Whether you want to secure your family's future or safeguard your auto or home, Prudential has the insurance products to help you achieve your goals." A television commercial for another tells us: "Is it possible to secure a dream? At The Hartford, we do just that." Allstate's motto (right below the "good hands" shtick) goes straight for the buzzwords without bothering over sentence structure: "Succeeding today, planning tomorrow." I doubt anybody has the faintest idea what that actually says, but, for a few cents a day, who wants to gamble with success and tomorrow?”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“One of my art teachers used to say that the frame is as important as the picture. In persuasion, it can be even more important-the triumph of form over content.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“One of the most robust idiosyncrasies of mental arithmetic is that people experience more pain from a loss than they do pleasure from an equal gain. We get more upset over losing $100 than we feel happy
about gaining $100. This is true not only for money but for our lives in general. It's been shown, for example, that bad emotions feel bad more than good emotions feel good: people try harder to escape bad moods than they do to prolong good moods and they remember their bad moods longer than their good ones.5”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Salespeople-no matter whether they work for profit or nonprofit causes-are probably the most empirical of all professionals. "It is an immutable law in business," supersalesman Harold Geneen observed, "that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality." The bottom line is always the same: does it sell? By that criterion, I would grade the Special Olympics appeal a clear success: I ended up writing a check for $30. After all, Roger's my bud. Then again, I signed the check "Robret Lemine.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“And here lies the true value of the $499 espresso machine, which, for all I know, is still gathering dust on the shelf in that same store. Its critical function had less to do with selling itself than to provide contrast with the rest of the product line. How many of its more reasonably priced colleagues did that awkward $499 model help sell? A good decoy is a team player-it makes everything around it look better.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“The most fundamental of context effects is the principle of contrast. The principle relies on the fact that human minds magnify differences:
when two relatively similar stimuli are placed next to each other, they'll be perceived as more different from each other than they actually are. Contrast is not only the most basic of context effects but probably the easiest to achieve. "I don't paint things," Matisse said. "I only paint the difference between things.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Advertising's ultimate triumph of background over content may have been recently achieved in New Zealand, where graphic designer Fiona Jack conducted a peculiar billboard campaign to market her new product, Nothing.6 "I was thinking about advertising and all its strangeness, its coercive ability to sell the most completely bizarre things to people who usually don't need them," Jack observed. "I realized that the ultimate nonexistent product would be nothing." New Zealand's Outdoor Advertising Association became interested in her idea and agreed to feature the slogan "Nothing-What you've been looking for" on twenty-seven billboards around the Auckland area. The billboard company soon began receiving calls from potential customers wanting to know where they could buy some of that Nothing. "The majority of the population," Jack says, "seem to be convinced that it is either a teaser for a campaign, or a new cosmetic product of a similar nature to the `Simple' cosmetic range.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“The human brain is wired to see relationships, not detached elements. The artist Heinz Kusel, who taught color theory for twenty years, explained: "Color by itself doesn't exist. All that we see as color is created by relationships-what the color is next to, what surrounds it. A name for a color is absurd, because its appearance is constantly changing as a result of its environment. There are no fixed colors. In a different context it's changed completely."2”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“One of the most remarkable mind control texts I've come across is the 1963 CIA interrogation manual titled KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, recently made available through the Freedom of Information Act.9 The manual was designed to teach operatives "non-coercive" techniques for eliciting confessions and intelligence information from uncooperative detainees. What makes KUBARK so frightening is that it has no references to electric shocks or rubber hoses or other methods of torture. It's 100 percent applied social psychology.10”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“In other words, when the need for reciprocity was aroused, it didn't matter whether they liked him or not. They "owed," and so they paid. Reciprocity can be a dictatorial force, and it can come in many shapes and sizes.3”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Tada yori takai mono wa nai [Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge].
-Popular Japanese saying”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Management sometimes exploits this situation by making it appear that the salesperson is an ally of the customer-that the salesperson and, by extension, the store, is your friend. The training manual given to new sales representatives by the retail giant United Colors of Benetton, for example, teaches this: "Selling is actually a way of serving others. By helping your customers find what they want and need, you are creating solutions to existing problems."33 One doubts that the stockholders for Benetton share this altruistic vision of their organization. Ironically, however, the salesmen's very naivete and inexperience may make it seem their message really is delivered in the spirit of education.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“An effective testimonial not only loads the context with credibility but also applies the principle of social proof. In the absence of further information, we look to how others behave to decide what's correct. It's the power of conformity. If other people parked their cars on this street, it must mean it's allowed. Everyone is whispering, so I will, too. All things being equal, we follow the crowd. Clothes, habits, tastes-nearly every human social behavior-are susceptible to the principle. Social proof is especially effective when it comes from people we identify with or want to emulate.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Forthcoming magicians or mentalists will tell you their displays of power require the collaboration of the audience. It's not the reality of the demonstration but the audience's perception of that reality that's being sold. The mentalist knows how to feed and manipulate these perceptions. He plays on your ignorance of subtle clues and methods. He employs the basic principle of magic: disguising the false move to look like the real move. In the end, however, you're the one who must fool yourself. "Homo volt decipi; decipiatur" ("Man wishes to be deceived; deceive him").”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“and straightforward language. The researchers concluded that when the witness spoke simply the jurors could evaluate his argument on its merits. But when he was unintelligible, they had to resort to the mental shortcut
of accepting his title and reputation in lieu of comprehensible facts. And so, another paradox: experts are sometimes most convincing when we don't understand what they're talking about.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“This supports what advertisers have been saying for years: "The more facts you tell, the more you sell., ,7”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“People are perceived as more credible when they make eye contact and speak with confidence, no matter what they have to say. In a mock jury study, researcher Bonnie Erickson and her colleagues had people listen to a witness answer questions about a supposed accident-for example, "Approximately how long did you stay there before the ambulance arrived?" Some jurors heard the witness respond straightforwardly: "Twenty minutes. Long enough to help get Mrs. David straightened out." Others listened to the witness hem and haw: "Oh, it seems like it was about, uh, twenty minutes. Just long enough to help my friend Mrs. David, you know, get straightened out." What the witnesses said turned out to be less important than how they said it: the straightforward, confident witnesses were rated significantly more credible and competent.3”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“It's so effective, in fact, that we often embrace the further shortcut of assuming that people who simply display symbols of authority should be listened to. Studies show that Americans are particularly susceptible to three types of authority symbols: titles, clothing, and luxury cars.1”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Betty's secret? Research shows that three characteristics are related to persuasiveness: perceived authority, honesty, and likability. When someone has any or all of these characteristics, we're not only more willing to agree to that person's request, willing to do so without carefully considering the facts. We assume we're on safe ground and are happy to shortcut the tedious process of informed decision making. As a result, we're more susceptible to messages and requests, no matter their particular content.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“But, as Savan observes in her classic book The Sponsored Life,
as a defense against the power of advertising, irony is a leaky condom-in fact, it's the same old condom that advertising brings over every night. A lot of ads have learned that to break through to the all-important boomer and Xer markets they have to be as cool, hip, and ironic as the target audience like to think of itself as being. That requires at least the pose of opposition to commercial values. The cool commercials-I'm thinking of Nike spots, some Reebooks, most 501s, certainly all MTV promos-flatter us by saying we're too cool to fall for commercial values, and therefore cool enough to want their product.52”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“As the geneticist David Searls observed, "The tendency for an event to occur varies inversely with one's preparation for it.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold

“Social psychologists call the process the fundamental attribution error. When asked to explain other people's problems, we have an uncanny tendency to assign blame to inner qualities: to their personality traits, emotional states, and the like. If I hear you've been suckered by a salesman, I conclude it's because you're easily deceived. When it comes to ourselves, however, we usually blame it on features of the situation. If I get suckered, it's because the salesman rushed me or conned me or I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
― Robert V. Levine, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold