Cynical Psychology
Jun. 12th, 2014 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselDec 2013
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie - Vermillion, 2006
* *
This is the original self-help bible, written in the 1930s but still in print today. It consists of four sections (handling people, making people like you, winning people to your way of thinking and changing people without giving offence) with thirty chapters, each describing a principle such as "Don't criticise, condemn or complain", "Smile" or "Get the other person saying 'yes' immediately". The format of each one is the same - the principle is described and then illustrated with anecdotes mostly taken from attendees to Carnegie's courses where use of the principle won a sale or resolved a tricky situation.
What is interesting to me is not so much the individual advice, which ranges all the way from anodyne through sensible to outright deceitful ("let the other person feel that the idea was theirs"), but the underlying mind-set revealed by it. There is a peculiar - and characteristically American - mixture of optimism and cynicism. On the "winning friends" side, much of the advice seems good - it relates to thinking about people and their wants and expressing yourself in their terms (this seems very obvious, but it is surprising how many corporations expect customers to conform to their way of doing things rather than the other way round). Nor can anyone object to treating people's opinions with respect and enabling them to change their mind without losing face.
But then you have the whole "influencing people" thing, which is considerably dodgier and puts the "winning friends" suggestions in a much more cynical light. The text is also saying "conceal your opinions and aims, say what the other person wants to hear and twist their words to suit your purposes". The rest consists of fairly basic psychological tricks like using someone's name and smiling.
The advice is also much easier to give than to use in practice. It's all very well to say "Talk in terms of the other person's interests" but ultimately it comes down to saying the right thing at the right time. It's what we call charisma or social intelligence, and while it certainly isn't totally hardwired, it comes much more easily to some people than to others.
The evidence Carnegie gives for the efficacy of his advice consists of anecdotes from former members of his training course. Clearly some individuals learned useful lessons, but I can’t help thinking of the very large number of people (perhaps the majority) for whom the advice didn’t work and who wasted their money. I've always thought it ironic that all self-help books and courses involve dependence on someone else's advice. "Self-help" is one thing it's not.
I would be less cynical if there were objective evidence that Carnegie's approaches work, but googling the book's title with "evidence of effectiveness" gives no meaningful results. It has also dated somewhat. It was written in the far, far slower world of the 1930s, when an enterprising salesman could take the time to scope out their prospective client's interests and learn to talk to them in their own language. Personally, when someone tries to sell something to me I give them less than a minute, which is not long enough for them to apply Carnegie's techniques.
And there is one area where the messages of this book have had a particularly unfortunate effect, and that is on modern management style. While suggestions like "Ask questions instead of giving orders" may be sensible from a psychological point of view, they result in an eager-to-please mentality where people are afraid to point out problems for fear of giving offence. Criticism can sting and one's first instinct is to reject it, but I for one find that the least helpful reviews of work I have done are those that just comment on the good things and don't suggest any ways of improving it. People-pleasing isn't always a good thing. Just look at what passes for governance in most modern democracies.
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie - Vermillion, 2006
* *
This is the original self-help bible, written in the 1930s but still in print today. It consists of four sections (handling people, making people like you, winning people to your way of thinking and changing people without giving offence) with thirty chapters, each describing a principle such as "Don't criticise, condemn or complain", "Smile" or "Get the other person saying 'yes' immediately". The format of each one is the same - the principle is described and then illustrated with anecdotes mostly taken from attendees to Carnegie's courses where use of the principle won a sale or resolved a tricky situation.
What is interesting to me is not so much the individual advice, which ranges all the way from anodyne through sensible to outright deceitful ("let the other person feel that the idea was theirs"), but the underlying mind-set revealed by it. There is a peculiar - and characteristically American - mixture of optimism and cynicism. On the "winning friends" side, much of the advice seems good - it relates to thinking about people and their wants and expressing yourself in their terms (this seems very obvious, but it is surprising how many corporations expect customers to conform to their way of doing things rather than the other way round). Nor can anyone object to treating people's opinions with respect and enabling them to change their mind without losing face.
But then you have the whole "influencing people" thing, which is considerably dodgier and puts the "winning friends" suggestions in a much more cynical light. The text is also saying "conceal your opinions and aims, say what the other person wants to hear and twist their words to suit your purposes". The rest consists of fairly basic psychological tricks like using someone's name and smiling.
The advice is also much easier to give than to use in practice. It's all very well to say "Talk in terms of the other person's interests" but ultimately it comes down to saying the right thing at the right time. It's what we call charisma or social intelligence, and while it certainly isn't totally hardwired, it comes much more easily to some people than to others.
The evidence Carnegie gives for the efficacy of his advice consists of anecdotes from former members of his training course. Clearly some individuals learned useful lessons, but I can’t help thinking of the very large number of people (perhaps the majority) for whom the advice didn’t work and who wasted their money. I've always thought it ironic that all self-help books and courses involve dependence on someone else's advice. "Self-help" is one thing it's not.
I would be less cynical if there were objective evidence that Carnegie's approaches work, but googling the book's title with "evidence of effectiveness" gives no meaningful results. It has also dated somewhat. It was written in the far, far slower world of the 1930s, when an enterprising salesman could take the time to scope out their prospective client's interests and learn to talk to them in their own language. Personally, when someone tries to sell something to me I give them less than a minute, which is not long enough for them to apply Carnegie's techniques.
And there is one area where the messages of this book have had a particularly unfortunate effect, and that is on modern management style. While suggestions like "Ask questions instead of giving orders" may be sensible from a psychological point of view, they result in an eager-to-please mentality where people are afraid to point out problems for fear of giving offence. Criticism can sting and one's first instinct is to reject it, but I for one find that the least helpful reviews of work I have done are those that just comment on the good things and don't suggest any ways of improving it. People-pleasing isn't always a good thing. Just look at what passes for governance in most modern democracies.
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Date: 2014-06-13 02:08 pm (UTC)