Invisible Influence
Book

Invisible Influence

The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior

Jonah Berger
Simon & Schuster, 2016

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Editorial Rating

9
getAbstract International Book Award Winner 2016

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, presents a basic primer about the forces of “social influence” and peer pressure. He explains how other people shape your thoughts, purchases and actions. Berger brings the right credentials; on his own and with partners, he has run studies to gauge the influence of social forces. He writes with a clear, straightforward style, packs in a lot of information, and simplifies complex ideas, as if trying to serve both marketing professionals and his marketing students. As in a classroom, he poses rhetorical questions. Berger covers a wide range of influence scenarios, showing great passion for his field. getAbstract recommends his text to marketing students and professors and to marketers as a reminder of how malleable human behavior can be.

Summary

“Social Influence”

Other people constantly shape how you think, behave, dress, drive and manifest your identity through what you choose to purchase. This social influence is the water in which everyone swims, but you may not see it. Most people recognize how social influence affects everybody else, but firmly believe it has no impact on themselves. Social influence leads you to mimic other people and leads others to mimic you. If they want you to like them, people will – consciously or not – imitate your posture, gestures, smiles and tone of voice. Such mimicry – and your desire to copy others or to want them to copy you – drives your purchasing choices. It also affects what becomes popular in society and the scale of its popularity.

People like those who like them. That applies to their facial features, style of dress, and racial or genetic traits. You can use this phenomenon effectively as a negotiation tactic, since negotiators who mimic their opponents are “five times as likely” to get what they want. If your opponent rubs his face, rub yours. If she scratches her neck, do the same. Mimicry “generates rapport” and subtly conveys that you’re in the same “tribe...

About the Author

Jonah Berger, who also wrote the bestseller Contagious, is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Science and the Harvard Business Review.

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