Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion

I’m often wary of books that look like this for fear of them masquerading as an interesting read before revealing themselves to be nothing more than a spurious collection of sales truisms. 

This book is different.

It walks through theory in an enlightening and surprising kind of way to leave you knowing about techniques that you feel you should have known about all along.  Ideas such as Reciprocity and Consistency and an interesting study of the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic reward – demonstrated through children’s reading programmes – all come together in and easy to understand and difficult to put down volume.

As a basis for understanding behaviour and the various ways in which it can be directly influenced on a one to one basis, I think this is a great book.