1. The Issue: In this last chapter, the Epilogue, Cialdini sums up his elaboration of the different methods of persuasion used in the society (and by marketeers) with a further caveat and a pep talk on facing the real world so as to avoid being caught on the wrong foot.

2. Major Strengths: The premises Cialdini builds on are factual: that the world has undergone an information revolution in an unprecedented way, and this has made life more complex. And the conclusion that in spite of human progress we tend to stay primitive in our behavioral responses.

3. Major Weakness: Nil

4. Underlying Assumption: The tricks Cialdini has unveiled can be used to your advantage to cope with marketeers who try to deceive you. When you catch on to their tricks, you need to expose them.

5. Questions: Isolated acts of “boycott, threat, confrontation, censure, tirade” etc. to retaliate may not be sufficiently effective. So how to carry out a concentrated “retaliation” which will create impact and bring about positive change?

The Issue: As the access to information grows our thought processes tend to rely more and more on shortcuts in order to make decisions.  When making decisions we rely on a click whirr response.

Major Strength: Using this short-cut method to understand the world around us will work most of the time and we are conditioned to follow this way of thinking without even knowing it, ie the principle of reciprocity, I can think of several situations where I felt the inherent need to reciprocate and I did not even know why.

Major Weakness: In making decisions with a more primitive click-whirr response we lose the ability to fully be a part of the decision making process.  This short cut process has been created by the amount of information we have access to and now there are in fact a bunch of ‘duffers’ sitting behind computer screens.

Underlying Assumption: People will rely on a click whirr response when it comes to decision making, and they will make decisions based in simplicity.

Provocative Questions:  Is there a way to avoid short-cuts in decision making?  How will new technologies affect our decision making capabilities in the future?

The issue: The process people use to make decisions has shifted to a shortcut approach based on commitments, reciprocation, compliance, liking, authority and scarcity.

Major strength: Using shortcuts in decision-making situations help to save time and energy.  Shortcuts allow us to focus on just one single reliable feature in a situation.  This is a sound approach when there is 100% certainty that the feature is in fact reliable.  Having to take shortcuts is a product of ever-advancing technology.

Major weakness: Using shortcuts to make decisions keeps us from being completely engaged in analysis of situations.  The decision-making options talked about throughout the book can be used for exploitation that will lead to poor decisions.  It is safe to assume if the frequency of using shortcuts is increasing so will the frequency of trickery will increase as well.   We have to be on the lookout of people who are looking to make a profit based on our reliability of shortcuts.  According to Cialdini, when we see someone threatening our reliability of shortcuts, we must retaliate.

Underlying assumption: People are always looking for shortcuts to help them make their decisions.  Is this always the case?  This chapter also assumes that we don’t have the ability to multi-task.  Why wouldn’t people be able to use shortcuts while also determining if they are being misguided in some way?

Provocative questions: Do the majority of people use shortcuts to help guide their decisions?  Can we focus on more than one reliable feature to make our decisions?

The Issue: The ever increasing pace of life and bombardment of information is forcing humans to rely more on shortcuts, making them susceptible to those trying to take advantage of such shortcuts.

Major Strength: There is no doubt that the information boom has made decision making more difficult and life faster and busier. Cialdini’s description of the information boom certainly drives the point home and proves that mental shortcut use is on the rise to keep up with societies demands. The drive-it-home quote for me was,

“All this leads to a jarring insight: With the sophist- icated mental apparatus we have used to build world eminence as a species, we have created an environment so complex, fast-paced, and information-laden that we must increasingly deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago transcended” (Cialdini, 2006).

 

Major Weakness: Cialdini’s proposition for fighting those that attempt to exploit our shortcuts was slightly problematic for me. It seemed an agressive solution to a not-so-large problem. Many times when perceived exploitation occurs it could be considered helpful. The salting of the tip jar is just a reminder by the bar tender that you should tip and a “fake” line out a club might be considered okay if the club is just starting, but really is a great venue, they just need to get the word out so that a “real” line forms. Its harder than Cialdini makes it seem to identify the “allies” from the “targets”.

Underlying Assumptions: Humans rely on mental shortcuts to navigate through a sensory and information heavy society.

Questions: Is it really possible to fight those who “counterfeit” information to cue shortcuts, especially with how prevalent the practice is in society? Now that we (our class and those that have read this book) are aware and knowledgable about cues, will we process information from counterfeiters differently? Does this knowledge alone create persuasion knowledge?

The issue:

Even though we have a higher brain capacity, and ought to know better, sometimes humans have a click → whirr response to judging others on only one prominent feature. Furthermore, with the technological strides of the last 100 years the amount of information available to digest is overwhelmingly large. Many times this large amount of information will lead us back to making decisions based on our primal animal instincts. Nine times out of ten this works, but sometimes it can be a huge mistake if it doesn’t. Cialdini exclaims that we must fight against those who use our click → whirr instincts to their profitable advantage.

Major strength:

I definitely agree with Cialdini on the need for our animal instincts to kick in due to the overflow of information. I feel that way right now finishing up the iMedia program. I would love to take another 3 months and finish all my assignment perfectly, but it’s not possible with three weeks left. I’m having to make decisions on what to focus on based on limited information and hope it leads to a job and a bright future.

Major weakness:

I’m not sure how easily we can ‘fight’ against the corporations who exploit our click → whirr instincts. I don’t really blame them for doing this. They’re just trying to make money too and employ people and have a successful organization. If I happen to laugh at a TV show, because there’s a laugh track, or buy a skin cream because Reese Witherspoon says it’s amazing, then so be it.

Underlying assumption:

That corporations are intentionally marketing all products to take advantage of consumers.

Provocative questions:

• In what way can Web 2.0 help consumers ‘fight back’ again corporations trying to take advantage of consumers?
• What will our click → whirr instincts look like in 100 years? 20 years? Even 5 years? Are we basically always going to react to things the way our ancestors did?

The issue: The pace of modern life makes it necessary to rely on shortcuts when forming opinions or making decisions.

Major strength: I thought it was important that Cialdini noted the burgeoning amount of information in our world.  We don’t really notice it, but we are truly bombarded with information every second of every day.  Someone is always making a new discovery or completing a new study which changes how we think or act.  Twitter is a good example of this; you just couldn’t follow everyone on Twitter because the sheer amount of information would be impossible to ever process.

Major weakness: I find Cialdini’s call to action a bit extreme.  Yes, advertisers are exploiting our natural habits, but don’t we all do it? Should we really blame them for being smart enough to recognize how people think and knowing how to make a living off of this information?  I like to think that we are all smart enough to overcome these habits of ‘click-whirr’ in the most important situations, but maybe times when we succumb to the persuaders are times when it doesn’t really matter to us.

Underlying assumption: Civilized, modern life is defined by novelty, transience, diversity, and acceleration, which is why we cannot take the time and process the entirety of any situation presented to us.

Provocative questions: If the amount of information in the world have grown, shouldn’t our brains have evolved in some way to meet this new need? Is this where people say we have shorter attention spans, to try and process as much information as possible, though perhaps not as deeply as before? Wouldn’t stopping to recognize persuasion techniques require us to slow down the process through which we examine a situation; basically not changing anything from when the pace of life was slower and people could take more time to process all the information presented to them? Has there ever been a time where we have been truly able to process all the information in a given situation?

The Issue: Because of the rapid increase in technology and the cognitive overload associated with it, the prevalence of shortcut decision making is increasing.

Major Strengths: Cialdini argues that the shortcut technique allows us to handle the abundance of change, choice, and challenge associated with modern life. Our mental capacity cannot handle the outside environment, or the advancements in technology. Therefore, we naturally look for shortcuts to help us understand.

Major Weaknesses: While nothing is specifically wrong with taking a mental shortcut, shortcuts can also be used to our disadvantage. Our normal trustworthy cues can be taken advantage of. They can be used to counsel us poorly and led us to decisions they would normally not make. Cialdini calls the people skilled in getting a certain reaction out of a public, compliance practitioners. These practitioners use automatic responses or click-whirrs to influence publics. As a public, we need to learn how to oppose these automatic responses and recognize when it is necessary to do so.

Underlying Assumptions: When we are overloaded with information, we naturally take mental shortcuts as a way to understand it. However, people need to recognize when these natural responses are being used to influence them in negative ways.

Provocative Questions:

Will technology ever advance to the point where we can’t use mental shortcuts any longer?

Issue: The pace of modern life (time, energy, social interaction, responsibilities, etc.) demand that we frequently use informational decision-making shortcuts to accomplish the mounds of tasks that we have before us each day. Humans are unconstrained in the ability to take into account a multitude of relevant facts, which in turn lead to unsound decision-making choices. Humans must sometimes turn off the time-consuming, sophisticated, fully informed brand of decision making to a more automatic, primitive, single-feature type of responding so we can just make it through the day.

Major Strengths: Crucial developments in our ability to collect, store, retrieve, and communicate information have been key factors in bringing challenge to the tactics employed by our ‘Compliance Practitioner’s’. These tactics can become our allies in our adaptive process of exchange and should be use, with regularity, to boycott, threat, confront, censure and tirade all abuses of the social proof principles employed by ‘Influencers’ who are only for profit through the misuse of the social proof principles.

Major Weakness: When we are rushed, stressed, uncertain, indifferent, distracted, or fatigued, we focus even less on the information available to us, thus making ill-informed or bad decisions. Humans have created a world so fast paced, complex and rich with information that our minds must deal with it in a primitive way each and everyday at an ever-increasing level. Technology evolves faster than our natural capacity to retain and process these large amounts of information, which in turn becomes increasingly inadequate to handle the surfeit of change, choice, and challenge that is characteristic of modern life (Cialdini 208). Humans have shaped their reality by creating a world so complex and information laden that it has lead to deficiencies in our cognitive abilities, which in turn opens us up to the poor choices through the ‘click-whirr’ process and to ‘erroneous actions and wrongheaded decisions’ (Cialdini 209).

Underlying Assumption: I can assume that the underlying assumption is that the ‘Influencers’, those who want to influence our decision making choices mainly for the profitability factor, employ weapons of mass influence and take advantage of our ‘shortcuts’. We must employ our own weapons and undercut the tricks and tactics use by the influencers at every moment we see the abuse of social rules for profit. With so much information and so many decisions to make on a daily basis it would be folly not to understand and fight back against the profiteers who would exploit our ‘shortcuts’

Provocative Question(s): The more complicated the world becomes the frequency of automatic decision-making shortcuts will be employed by individuals on an ever-increasing basis. Are we able to consume, absorb, retain, and then communicate all of the information available to us in a relevant way that isn’t time consuming and always focusing on a single, usually unreliable feature of the situation?

ISSUE: We automatically employ shortcuts using the principles from reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.

MAJOR STRENGTH: Cialdini argues that the problem we are currently facing is an abundance of information, not a lack of interest. Information is constantly changing, and what is important to society is always changing. Rather than becoming a call-to-action encouraging people to be more informed, Cialdini recognizes that it would be impossible to always know everything. To attempt to keep up with this fast-paced information highway, we have to use shortcuts, even if we aren’t always aware we’re using them. Cialdini argues that utilizing this knowledge of cognitive shortcuts can be beneficial for businesses, but can also be done in an exploitive way.

MAJOR WEAKNESS: I would argue that our information-loaded society today is not the only reason shortcuts are utilized. It used to be that overweight people were assumed to be rich because their size implied they could afford to consistently eat large meals. No one would take the time to determine if this was true for every single person they met, just as I’m sure doctors have always had some level of authority. Shortcuts aren’t just used because of information overload; they’re used because not everything is a significant enough decision to spend time deliberating on.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION: Shortcuts are employed because we are too inundated with messages and information to not use shortcuts when making decisions.

PROVACATIVE QUESTIONS:
-We will continue to develop shorter shortcuts as we move forward in technology and information?
-As we depend more heavily on shortcuts, will we become more or less aware that we use them?
-Will Cialdini’s six principles always hold true, or as we develop will we put less emphasis on authority or being liked?

The issue: This ending chapter wraps up the weapons of influence that we use as mental shortcuts or single triggers to comply with. The weapons include reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity.

Major strength: Cialdini explains why we have become vulnerable to these weapons of influence and does not blame stupidity or ignorance on society. We are constantly experiencing advances in technology where we are exposed to more and more information with many alternatives to receive the same information. It would take forever for us to completely process a piece of information, so we use a single, highly representative piece of the total. Some compliance professionals are looking to help make our lives a little bit easier, while others try to take advantage of the decision-overloaded environment. Cialdini wants us to be able to see the difference between the two and react responsibly.

Major weakness: I agree that we should try to defend against those who try to take advantage of individuals using the weapons of influence, but to the extent Cialdini explains is a little intense. Refusing to watch a show just because they use canned laughter or not tipping a bartender who ‘salts’ the tip jar is a little extreme. Yes, these tricks are deceptive and try to exploit us, but should I really not tip the bartender for his service? I think it is more important to recognize these principles at wok than to completely boycott against them.

Underlying assumption: Mental shortcuts help us make decisions in a world where we are overloaded with information. Whether or not these shortcuts are intentional through the work of exploiters, individuals need to recognize the difference in order to not get taken advantage of.

Provocative questions: If this book were written today (with the increase of social media platforms) how would Cialdini’s principles have changed? Would they have changed? Do we intentionally overload ourselves with information–with things such as Twitter where we receive continuously updated information?