I first began to understand this system of persuasion through the research and writing of Professor Charles Cialdini (Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion) and Scott Adams (Win Bigly) whose books have become for me two more don’t-leave-the-house-before-you-read-it musts.

Michael Pantalon is a research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and a leading authority on “motivational interviewing.

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.

Introduction:

“First and foremost, thank you for opening this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed living, learning, and gathering it.

For Proust, a man’s interior inverse comprises a miracle, an infinity that never ceases to amaze us. But that is not what amazes Kafka. He does not ask what internal motivations determine man’s behaviour. He asks a question that is radically different: What possibilities remain for man in a world where the external determinants have become so overpowering that internal impulses no longer carry weight? Indeed, how could it have changed K.’s destiny and attitude if he had had homosexual inclinations or an unhappy love affair behind him? In no way.