Did the Wrong People Make Robert Cialdini’s Influence a Best-Seller?
In the introduction to his classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Robert B. Cialdini presents the primary reason for his writing it: “All my life I’ve been a patsy.” He writes that he has “been an easy mark” with “disquieting frequency,” and proposes that his “long-standing status as sucker” had a lot to do with starting the research than resulted in the book.
To study what he terms compliance, Cialdini, a Ph.D. social psychologist, performed various experiments. Later, he delved into the materials used by practitioners of influence, such as salespeople, fund-raisers, con artists, and advertisers. He conducted interviews, but he also often worked jobs for a time.
His intention in writing Influence was to educate the general public about the practices of professional persuaders. But what happened was something else.
According to an AP article from 1989, the audience that learned the most from Influence in its first five years were salesmen, who discovered the book served as an excellent guidebook in the tactics of manipulation. Though they understood that what they did worked, they wanted to know why, and Cialdini had given them a veritable instruction manual.
Ever since, they have been more than willing to pay Cialdini for his time, and handsomely. And Influence is consistently rated among the top business books by people from Daniel Pink to Charlie Munger to James Clear.
“IBM flew me to Monte Carlo for a month — twice — for big educational conferences,” Cialdini told the AP. “That’s the kind of boondoggle I always read about somebody else getting, but I got it, and they paid me money besides.”
Being no fool, Cialdini knew that authors have no guarantee of initial or lasting success, so he has embraced his new audience, even writing a “prequel” years later called Pre-Suasion. Especially in the age of online influencers, being known as the “Godfather of Influence” can only help continue his career as a keynote speaker, a sideline that nets him upward of $50,000 per appearance.
To look at Dr. Cialdini’s website, you would never imagine he had any other career path in mind. He still promotes his availability for speaking engagements, where he teaches professionals how to use his findings to make more money.
One cannot fault him for accepting this windfall, as many know that writing is not a quick path to riches or prestige. But it does make me wonder what would have happened if he had decided to continue on his original course of teaching regular folks how to avoid the pull of persuasion instead of making its practitioners better at it.
