Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

One The Illusion of Invulnerability

Or, How Can Everyone Be Less Gullible Than Everyone Else? 5

Two Whom Do We Trust? Experts, Honesty, and Likability

Or, the Supersalesmen Don’t Look Like Salesmen at All 29

Three Killing You with Kindness

Or, Beware of Strangers Bearing Unexpected Gifts 65

Four The Contrast Principle

Or, How Black Gets Turned into White 91

Five $2 + $2 = $ 5

Or, Learning to Avoid Stupid Mental Arithmetic 113

Six The Hot Button

Or, How Mental Shortcuts Can Lead You into Trouble 137

Seven Gradually Escalating the Commitments

Or, Making You Say Yes by Never Saying No 159

Eight Winning Hearts and Minds

Or, the Road to Perpetual Persuasion 187

Nine Jonestown

Or, the Dark End of the Dark Side of Persuasion 209

Ten The Art of Resistance

Or, Some Unsolicited Advice for Using and Defending against Persuasion 227

Notes 245

Index 267

About the Author

ROBERT LEVINE is Professor and former Chairperson of the Psychology Department at California State University, Fresno. He has published articles in Psychology Today, Discover, American Demographics, NY Times, Utne Reader and American Scientist. He has received awards for his teaching, research and writing, including being named the university's "Outstanding Professor." Dr. Levine has been a Visiting Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niteroi, Brazil, at Sapporo Medical University in Japan, and at Stockholm University in Sweden. He serves on boards of professional organizations in the U.S. Germany and Taiwan.

Reviews

This valuable and nonacademic guide reveals the extent to which we are surrounded by persuasion, and how we can resist. Levine (A Geography of Time), a professor of psychology at Cal State Fresno, opens by demonstrating that all of us (including himself) can be persuaded under the right circumstances. He goes on to study financial manipulation and the use of the sense of obligation (which exists in all cultures, even if it is most strongly visible in Japan), and then proceeds to a nuts-and-bolts analysis of salesmanship by describing what he learned and did (and had done to him) as an automobile salesman. He offers an admirably concise and unemotional analysis of the famous Milgram experiment, involving the (claimed) administration of ever-stronger electric shocks to test the impulse to obedience. Inevitably, he moves to cults, the Moonies and the ultimate persuasion horror story, Jonestown. Not so inevitably, he avoids hysteria and demonization, even of Jim Jones, and points out that brute force is required at the extreme end of the persuasion spectrum. Levine's final chapter offers ways of dealing with unwelcome persuasion while remaining part of a society in which some persuasion is part of almost any social interaction. The final results are bout as far as possible from the shrill Hidden Persuaders tradition or the cult deprogrammers who become cult gurus themselves-and quite persuasive about the author's credentials, common sense and ethics. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.