KeAnZu

1. Never Outshine the Master
• Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
2. Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
• Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
3. Conceal your Intentions
• Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.
4. Always Say Less than Necessary
• When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinx-like. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
5. So Much Depends on Reputation - Guard it with your Life
• Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
6. Court Attention at all Cost
• Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.
7. Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
• Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
8. Make other People come to you - use Bait if Necessary
• When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains - then attack. You hold the cards.
9. Win through your Actions, Never through Argument
• Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
• You can die from someone else’s misery - emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
• To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
• One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift - a Trojan horse - will serve the same purpose.
13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
• If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
• Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.
15. Crush your Enemy Totally
• All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.
16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
• Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
• Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.
18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself - Isolation is Dangerous
• The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere - everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from - it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.
19. Know Who You’re Dealing with - Do Not Offend the Wrong Person
• There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs’ clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then - never offend or deceive the wrong person.
20. Do Not Commit to Anyone
• It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others - playing people against one another, making them pursue you.
21. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker - Seem Dumber than your Mark
• No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart - and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.
22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power
• When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you - surrender first. By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.
23. Concentrate Your Forces
• Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another - intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.
24. Play the Perfect Courtier
• The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.
25. Re-Create Yourself
• Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions - your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
26. Keep Your Hands Clean
• You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
27. Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cult-like Following
• People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.
28. Enter Action with Boldness
• If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.
29. Plan All the Way to the End
• The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.
30. Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
• Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work - it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal
• The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.
32. Play to People’s Fantasies
• The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.
33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
• Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.
34. Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
• The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.
35. Master the Art of Timing
• Never seem to be in a hurry - hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.
36. Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best Revenge
• By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
37. Create Compelling Spectacles
• Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power - everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.
38. Think as you like but Behave like others
• If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
39. Stir up Waters to Catch Fish
• Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.
40. Despise the Free Lunch
• What is offered for free is dangerous - it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price - there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.
41. Avoid Stepping into a Great Man’s Shoes
• What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.
42. Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter
• Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual - the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoned of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them - they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
• Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.
44. Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect
• The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of Mirror Effect.
45. Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
• Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
46. Never appear too Perfect
• Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
47. Do not go Past the Mark you Aimed for; In Victory, Learn when to Stop
• The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.
48. Assume Formlessness
• By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

The 48 Laws of Poweramazon.com

Robert Greene

ISBN 0-140-28019-7

In inner cities, some buildings are beautiful and clean, while others are rotting hulks. Why? Researchers in the field of crime and urban decay discovered a fascinating trigger mechanism, one that very quickly turns a clean, intact, inhabited building into a smashed and abandoned derelict [WK82].

A broken window.

One broken window, left unrepaired for any substantial length of time, instills in the inhabitants of the building a sense of abandonment - a sense that the powers that be don’t care about the building. So another window gets broken. People start littering. Graffiti appears. Serious structural damage begins. In a relatively short space of time, the building becomes damaged beyond the owner’s desire to fix it, and the sense of abandonment becomes reality.

The “Broken Window Theory” has inspired police departments in New York and other major cities to crack down on the small stuff in order to keep out the big stuff. It works: keeping on top of broken windows, graffiti, and other small infractions has reduced the serious crime level.

The Pragmatic Programmeramazon.com

Andrew Hunt, David Thomas

ISBN 0-201-61622-X



Chapter 1 : A Pragmatic Philosophy

pp 4-5

Communication is a two-way street that involves not just getting, but giving as well. Affording your counterpart the chance to obtain information complies with the norm of reciprocity, and can affect their attitude, trust level, and, most of all, expectations. Hence, care must be take early on to send consistent, coherent, and timely messages that are in accordance with your ultimate bargaining objects.

So, what is said and done - or not said and left undone - prior to the bargaining event will have an enormous impact on the final outcome.

This is especially significant when you recognize that the person or group you’ll be trying to influence has erroneous assumptions and unrealistic expectations. As soon as you realize this, you must give them reality-based information in order to alter their thinking. Otherwise, proposed changes when introduced during the formal strategic interaction will be seen as unexpected and unreasonable. Predictably, they will react by saying “no”.

Reminder: It takes a while to digest and get comfortable with anything that’s different. This is the principle of acceptance time, that people need the opportunity to get used to a new idea, concept, or approach.

To illustrate, let’s look at a simple scenario:

Three years ago, you gave a valuable employee a 7 percent salary increase. The next year, this increment was repeated. Again, last year, this person got the same raise in pay.

Since then, however, your business has had reverses and cash flow problems. Let us further stipulate, as lawyers would say, that you cannot increase expenses in the coming fiscal period and that the employee is unaware of these circumstances.

If this is the case, what does he or she expect when the two meet to discuss compensation?

Definitely 7 percent. Truly, this person may be counting on these funds to pay for an expenditure that was already made. If you, in a magnanimious gesture, offered a 5 percent raise out of your own pocket, I suspect the employee would still feel short-changed by 2 percent.

The way to avoid such a dilemma is to share this negative information with the employee as early as possible, months before the formal compensation get-together. Of course, these relevations will cause him to conform to the new reality. More significantly, if you get people involved at the outset by soliciting their input, they tend to be more understanding and supportive of the outcomes.

Consider another example of how lead time can be used to affect expectations and change behaivor.

When I last lived in an apartment building, a neighbor approached me in the elevator and asked, “Does all that racket and merrymaking in 11E keep you up at night?”

“Actually, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Remember, I live in apartment 11B at the other end of the hall.”

“Well, unfortunately, I’m in 11F, right next door to 11E,” he said. “These thirty-year-old kids party and play that rock ‘n’ roll music till 2:00 A.M. I’ve banged on the wall, rung on the phone, and complained but nothing helps.”

From all indications, he was upset or, as kids would say, “ticked to the max.”

Trying to lighten things up, I said, “Maybe you should try to relax and relate to the hullabaloo. It’s rather unique you know, it’s the only music where the melody is played by the drummer.”

He didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor, but I was saved when the elevator doors opened at the lobby.

A month later, at the same place I met him again.

“I’ve got good news and very bad news,” he said. “The thirty-year-olds moved out, but they are being replaced by an even younger and wilder-looking couple.”

“The new ones are musicians. I watched them move in. They have amplifiers and the biggest stereo and speakers I’ve ever seen.”

Feeling compassion for his situation, I decided to give him some unsolicited advice: “Obviously, your past strategy of wall banging and phoning in the midst of a party didn’t work. So why don’t you try something different?”

“If I were you, I would use the current lead time to try to influence their behavior, instead of reacting during the event when you’re upset and emotional.”

“What I would do is buy or bake a pie for the new neighbors. Delivering it in person, I’m sure you’ll get invited into their residence. Once inside, you’ll be able to answer all their questions about local restaurants, shops, transportation, and so on.”

“Then, you might discreetly tell them how happy you are to have them as neighbors, because their predecessors played their music so loud.”

Actually, this counsel comes from my own experience, which has shown me that if desired behaivors are communicated early in the developmental stages of a relationship they have a good chance of taking hold.

Two months later, I received a visit from the beaming occupants of 11E. They indicated that my plan had worked. Not only were they friends of the people next door, but they had attended two of their parties.

Most surprising of all was that they had become big fans of Bruce Springsteen and had tickets for his next concert. As Linda Ellerbee has said, “And so it goes.”

Negotiate This! By Caring, But Not T-H-A-T Muchamazon.com

Herb Cohen

ISBN 0-446-52973-7



Chapter VIII : Information

pp 207-210

I believe it’s always advisable to begin every negotiating encounter in a cooperative fashion. More precisely, that means in an amiable manner with a congenial low-key pose of calculated incompetance.

Although my intention throughout this book is not to be authoritative, experience tells me this is the best way to open. Here’s why:

First of all, if you start cooperative, there’s a good chance the other side will respond in kind. The reason is that in most civilized cultures there is a strong norm of reciprocity. What we call “tit for tat.” Consider if you will what your mother and my mom told us as children, “If you’ll be nice to people, they’ll be nice to you.” A platitude perhaps, but it works about 85 percent of the time.

As for the remaining 15 percent, who are Soviet style win-lose (”rat for tat”) operators, they are most likely to behold your decency as weakness and lick their chops. This minority tends to observe a soft style and easygoing attitude as a bull notices a red cape. What usually happens with these dog-eat-dog types is that they charge, trying to wrap things up quickly. Often they become hostile and confrontational and use all sorts of tactical ploys. but as you know, the countermeasures for any adversarial gambit are to slow down and not to react the way they expect you to. Even if a threat is made, smile and nod your head up and down as if you’re acknowledging a compliment.

As an aside, let me say that the toughest individual to negotiate with is a crazy person. The second most difficult is someone who is irrational. And the third is the “toilsome dummy” who can’t even comprehend when he or she is being threatened. So, should the other party become hostile and hard-nosed, a tincture of insanity, a dash of irrationality, and a dose of dumb make for a countering receipe.

The implication of what I’m saying is that when cornered by an offensive bully, don’t go with your first two options: fight or freeze. But there is a third option that I recommend, which is to flow. By this, I mean lighten up and say to yourself, “This is a game. hey it’s showtime … I’m in the World of Illooshin.” In my own case, when someone has tried to intidiate or manipulate me with a stratagem from “good guy - bad guy” to a last-minute nibble, my usual response is, “Hey I love the way you did that, could you do that again - only a bit slower?” Remember, this is show biz!

While all of these games are being played out, time is passing and the other party is investing in this relationship. And once they invest, it’s hard for them to divest. Indeed, rats and human beings have this in common: The more energy expended in pursuit of a particular goal, the more desirable that goal becomes. Once faced with the reality that their competitive approach will not work and confronted with the prospect of having to start all over again with another mark or target, they often modify their behaivour. Remarkably, they then say to you, “Hey, I was just playing the game. You can’t blame me for trying.”

The second reason you should be cooperative at the outset is, as I said formerly, it’s virtually benign to move from collaborative to conflictive, whereas to reverse the process is exacting, to say the least.

Remember when the Almighty sent Aaron and Moses to negotiate with Pharoh, they did not start with plague ten or plague eight, but opened with a request for a favor on behalf of the Lord. It was only when this was turned down that the negotiation moved from cooperative, gradually increasing the negative consequences with each rejection.

To exemplify this concept, imagine opening a discussion by saying, “Look, I’m going to give it to you straight. If I don’t get A, B, and C right now, I’ll have your job and ruin your damn life.” Can you see going from that to, “Perhaps I came on a bit strong? Would you be good enough, at your leisure, of course, to consider…?” Put it this way: you can’t reverse yourself in this manner and maintain any semblance of credibility.

…

For you are not really selling products or proposals, but you’re selling yourself. The conclusion is inescapable: Your style will supersede the substance of any transaction.

Negotiate This! By Caring, But Not T-H-A-T Muchamazon.com

Herb Cohen

ISBN 0-446-52973-7



Chapter III : Playing the Game

pp 88-90, 97

A new P.T. Barnum Psychology Clinic has just opened at your local shopping mall and is offering a Grand Opening Special on personality tests. You have always wanted to know more about yourself, so you sign up. Here is Barnum’s true-false test.

Questionnaire for Universal Assessment of Zealous Youth (QUAZY)

You turn in your answers. A few minutes later a computer prints out your individual personality profile:

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times, you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extraverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic. (Forer, 1949, p. 120)

Do you agree with this assessment?

An experiment along these lines has been conducted a number of times with psychology classes (Forer, 1949; Marks & Kammann, 1980; Ulrich, Stachnik & Stainton, 1963). Students started by filling out a questionnaire - one that looked fairly reasonable, not something as preposterous as the QUAZY. Several days later, each student received a sealed envelope with his or her name on it. Inside was a “personality profile,” supposedly based on the student’s answers to the questionnaire. The students were asked, “How accurately does this profile desribe you?” About 90% rated it good or excellent. Some expressed amazement at its accuracy: “I didn’t realise until now that psychology was an exact science.” Of course, none of them realised that everyone had received exactly the same personality profile - the same one you just read.

The students accepted this personality profile party because it vaguely and generally describes almost everyone and party because people tend to accept any statement that an “expert” makes about them. Richard Kammann repeated the experiment but substituted a strange, unflattering personality profile that included statements like “Your boundless enthusiasm is a little wearisome to your friends” and “You seem to find it impossible to work out a satisfactory adjustment to your problems.” More than 20% of the students rated this unlikely assortment of statements a “good to excellent” description of their own personality (Marks & Kammann, 1980).

The moral of the story is this: Psychological testing is tricky. If we want to know whether a particular test measures a particular person’s personality, we cannot simply ask whether or not that person thinks it does. Even if a test is totally worthless - horoscopes, palm reading or the QUAZY - many people will describe the results as a “highly accurate” description of themselves. To devise a psychological test that not only appears to work but actually does work, we need to go through some elaborate procedures to design the test carefully and to determine its reliability and validity.

Introduction to PSYCHOLOGY 6edamazon.com

James W. KALAT

ISBN 0-534-53988-2



Chapter 13 : Personality

pp 562-563 (in 3ed)

Early in this century, Mr. von Osten, a German mathematics teacher, set out to prove that his horse, Hans, had great intellectual abilities, particularly in arithmetic. To teach Hans arithmetic, he first showed him a single object, said “One,” and lifted Hans’ foot once. Then he raised Hans’ foot twice for two objects, and so on. Eventually, when von Osten presented a group of objects, Hans tapped his foot by himself, and with practice he managed to tap the correct number of times. With more practice, it was no longer necessary for Hans to see the objects. Von Osten would just call out a number, and Hans would tap the appropriate number of times.

Von Osten moved on to addition and then to subtraction, multiplication, and division. Hans seemed to catch on amazingly quickly, soon responding with 90-95% accuracy. Von Osten began touring Germany to exhibit Hans’ abilities. He would give Hans a question, either orally or in writing, and Hans would tap out the answer. As time passed, Hans’ abilities grew, just from being around humans, without any special training. Soon he was able to add fractions, convert fractions to decimals or vice versa, do simple algebra, tell time to the minute, and give the values of all German coins. Using a number-to-letter code, he could spell out the names of objects and even identify musical notes, such as D or B-flat. (Hans, it seems, had perfect pitch.) He responded correctly even when questions were put to him be persons other than von Osten, in unfamiliar places with von Osten nowhere in sight.

Given this evidence, many people were ready to assume that Hans had great intellectual prowess. But others were not. Why not? Certainly the evidence was replicable. The problem was parsimony. No previous research had led us to assume that a nonhuman animal could perform complex mathematical calculations. Was there a simpler explanation?

Enter Oskar Pfungst. Pfungst (1911) discovered that Hans could not answer a question correctly if the questioner had not calculated the answer first. Evidently the horse was not actually doing the calculations but was somehow getting the answers from the questioner. Next Pfungst learned that Hans had to see the experimenter. When he experimenter stood in plain sight, Hans’ accuracy was 90% or better; when he could not see the experimenter, he either did not answer or made a wild guess.

Eventually Pfungst observed that any questioner who asked Hans a question would lean forward to watch Hans’ foot. Hans had simply learned to start tapping whenever someone stood next to his right forefoot and leaned forward. As soon as Hans had given the correct number of taps, the experimenter would give a slight upward jerk of the head and change facial expression in anticipation that this might be the last tap. (Even skeptical scientists who tested Hans did this involuntarily.) Hans simply continued tapping until he received that cue.

In short, Hans was indeed a clever horse. But what he did could be explained in simple terms that did not involve mathematical calculations of any other advanced cognitive process. We prefer the explanation in terms of facial expressions because it is more parsimonious.

Introduction to PSYCHOLOGY 6edamazon.com

James W. KALAT

ISBN 0-534-53988-2



Chapter 2 : Scientific Methods in Psychology

pp 36-37 (in 3ed)

First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a tune or sing. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy. Here is the way the psychologist and philosopher William James put it:

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there…”

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. It depends on inner conditions.

It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have an equal amount of money and prestige - and yet one may be miserable and the other happy. Why? Because of a different mental attitude. I have seen just as many happy faces among the poor peasants toiling with their primitive tools in the devasting heat of the tropics as I have seen in airconditioned offices in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

“There is nothing good or bad,” said Shakespeare, “but thinking makes it so.”

Abe Lincoln once remarked that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He was right. I saw a vivid illustration of that truth as I was walking up the stairs of the Long Island Railroad station in New York. Directly in front of me thirty or forty crippled boys on canes and crutches were struggling up the the stairs. One boy had to be carried up. I was astonished at their laughter and gaiety. I spoke about it to one of the men in charge of the boys. “Oh, yes,” he said, “when a boy realizes that he is going to be a cripple for life, he is shocked at first; but after he gets over the shock, he usually resigns himself to his fate and then becomes as happy as normal boys.”

I felt like taking my hat off to those boys. They taught me a lesson I hope I shall never forget.

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART TWO - Six ways to make people like you

2 - A simple way to make a good first impression

pp 70-71

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is the secret set down in his own words - words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live by them:

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.”

“There is nothing else that so kills the ambition of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART ONE - Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

2 - The Big Secret of Dealing with People

pp 24-25

On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln lay dying in a hall bedroom of a cheap lodging house directly across from Ford’s Theater, where John Wilkes Booth had shot him. Lincoln’s long body lay stretched diagonally across a sagging bed that was too short for him. A cheap reproduction of Rosa Bonheur’s famous painting The Horse Fair hung above the bed, and a dismal gas jet flickered yellow light.

As Lincoln lay dying, Secretary of War Stanton said, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men that the world has ever seen.”

What was the secret of Lincoln’s success in dealing with people? I studied the life of Abraham Lncoln for ten years and devoted all of three years to writing and rewriting a book entitled Lincoln the Unknown. I believe I have made as detailed and exhaustive a study of Lincoln’s personality and home life as it is possible to make. I made a special study of Lincoln’s method of dealing with people. Did he indulge in criticism? Oh, yes. As a young man in the Pigeon Creek Valley of Indiana, he not only criticized but he wrote letters and poems ridiculing people and dropped these letters on the country roads where they were sure to be found. One of these letters aroused resentments that burned for a lifetime.

Even after Lincoln had become a practicing lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, he attacked his opponents openly in letters published in the newspapers. But he did this just once too often.

In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lampooned him through an anonymous letter published in the Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter. Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation. He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse, started after Lincoln, and challenged him to a duel. Lincoln didn’t want to fight. He was opposed to dueling, but he couldn’t get out of it and save his honor. He was given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, on the appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but, at the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped the duel.

That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealng with people. Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he almost never criticized anyone for anything.

Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a new general at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and each one in turn-McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Meade-blundered tragically and drove Lincoln to despair. Half the nation savagely condemned these incompetant generals but Lincoln, “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace. One of his favorite quotations was “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

…

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it. But why not start on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others-yes, and a lot less dangerous. “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbour’s roof,” said Confucius “when your own doorstep is unclean.”

…

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism-no mattter how certain that we are that it is justified.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was the American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, “…and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain-and most fools do.

How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleamazon.com

Dale Carnegie

ISBN 0-671-72365-0



PART ONE - Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1 - “If You Want To Gather Honey, Don’t Kick over the Beehive”

pp 8-13

Although this is a simple point, it can often escape us when we experience the heightened desirability that scarce items naturally possess. I can cite a family example. My brother Richard supported himself through school by employing a compliance trick that cashed in handsomely on the tendency of most people to miss that simple point. In fact, his tactic was so effective that he had to work only a few hours each weekend for his money, leaving the rest of the time free for his studies.

Richard sold cars, but not in a showroom nor on a car lot. He would buy a couple of used cars sold privately through the newspaper on one weekend and, adding nothing but soap and water, would sell them at a decided profit through the newspaper on the following weekend. To do this, he had to know three things. First, he had to know enough about cars to buy those that were offered for sale at the bottom of their blue-book price range but could be legitimately resold for a higher price. Second, once he got the car, he had to know how to write a newspaper ad that would stimulate substantial buyer interest. Third, once a buyer arrived, he had to know how to use the scarcity principle to generate more desire for the car than it perhaps deserved. Richard knew how to do all three. For our purposes, though, we need to examine his craft with just the third.

For a car he purchased on the prior weekend, he would place an ad in the Sunday paper. Because he knew how to construct a good ad, he usually received an array of calls from potential buyers on Sunday morning. Each prospect who was interested enough to want to see the car was given an appointment time - the same appointment time. So if six people were scheduled, they were all scheduled for, say, two o’clock that afternoon. This little device of simultaneous scheduling paved the way for later compliance because it created an atmosphere of competition for a limited resource.

Typically, the first prospect to arrive would begin a studied examination of the car and engage in standard car-buying behaviour, such as pointing out any blemishes or deficiences or asking if the price was negotiable. The psychology of the situation changed radically, however, when the second buyer drove up. The availablity of the car to either prospect suddenly became limited by the presence of the other. Often the earlier arrival, inadvertently stoking the sense of rivalry, would assert his right to primary consideration. “Just a minute now. I was here first.” If he didn’t assert that right, Richard would do it for him. Addressing the second buyer, Richard would say, “Excuse me, but this other gentleman was here before you. So can I ask you to wait on the other side of the driveway for a few minutes until he’s finished looking at the car? Then, if decides he doesn’t want it or if he can’t make up his mind, I’ll show it to you.”

Richard claims that it was possible to watch the agitiation grow on the first buyer’s face. His leisurely assessment of the car’s pros and cons had suddenly become a now-or-never, limited time only rush to decision over a contested resource. If he didn’t decide for the car - at Richard’s asking price - in the next few minutes, he might lose it for good to that … that … lurking newcomer over there. For his part, the second buyer would be equally agitated by the combination of rivalry and restricted availability. He would pace on the periphery, visibly straining to get at this now more desirable hunk of metal. Should two-o’clock appointment number one fail to buy or even fail to decide quickly enough, two-o’clock appointment number two was ready to pounce.

If these conditions alone were not enough to secure a favorable purchase decision immediately, the trap snapped surely shut as soon as the third two-o’clock appointment arrived on the scene. According to Richard, stacked-up competition was usually too much for the first prospect to bear. He would end the pressure quickly by either agreeing to Richard’s price or by leaving abruptly. In the latter instance, the second arrival would strike at the chance to buy out of a sense of relief coupled with a new feeling of rivalry with that … that … lurking newcomer over there.

All those buyers who contributed to my brother’s college education failed to recognise a fundamental fact about their purchases: The increased desire that spurred them to buy had little to do with the merits of the car. That failure of recognition occured for two reasons. First, the situation Richard arranged for them produced an emotional reaction that made it difficult for them to think straight. Second, as a consequence, they never stopped to think that the reason they wanted the car in the first place was to use it, not merely to have it. And the competition-for-a-scarce-resource pressures of possessing it. Those pressures did not affect the value of the car in terms of the real purpose for which they wanted it.

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasionamazon.com

Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D

ISBN 0-688-12816-5



Chapter 7 Scarcity : The rule of the few

pp 268-270