The Archive of Human Exploits

Svengali

Welcome to my "Archive of Human Exploits." I have always been fascinated with the 'dark arts' of psychology – and defense against those dark arts. That interest intensified around the time I joined the infomercial industry, where practitioners are accused of employing hypnotic powers of persuasion. As infomercial producer John Miller once put it to me: "They claim we have Svengali-like powers." Rather than finding that idea disturbing, I found it fascinating.

The thinkers who have the most to do with my fascination are the Old Masters of advertising (Claude Hopkins, Albert Lasker, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves, John Caples, Joseph Sugarman), Dr. Robert Cialdini, Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler, and cartoonist turned political commentator Scott Adams.

This archive will be my way of keeping track of what I have learned and what I continue to learn. Check back often for new exploits and articles.

EXPLOITS (click to read)

• Anchoring
• Arousal
• Authority
• Clickbait
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Confirmation Bias
• Consensus
• Consistency
• Default Effect
• Desirability Bias
• Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Endowment Effect
• Fake Because
• Fear
• Gell-Mann Amnesia
• High-Ground Maneuver
• Inattentional Blindness
• Least Reinforcing Syndrome
• Left-Digit Bias
• Liking
• Loss Aversion
• MySide Bias
• Outrage
• Peacocking
• Preference Falsfication
• Reciprocity
• Scarcity
• Selection Bias
• Similarity Attraction Effect
• Social Proof
• Social Risk
• Spotlight Effect
• Survivorship Bias
• Unity
• Urgency
• Value Comparison

ARTICLES (click to read)

• The Best Book on Negotiation
• The Seven Principles of Persuasion
  
• How to Persuade Like President Trump
  
• The 7 Deadly Sins Are 7 Keys to Persuasion
  
• Clickbait: Dissecting the Need to Stay Informed
• Now That's a Barnum Move!
• Sex Sells, But Fear is Stronger
• Fear, Sex & Cuts