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Hello fellow adults! Anybody else feel like almost every time you have to talk to someone to buy a thing, you're being swindled? If so how do you keep yourself from being taken advantage of? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by Ski@kbin.social to c/AskKbin@kbin.social

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See title.

I constantly feel like any interaction with a sales person is just a big con. Whether it's a car, insurance, an apartment, internet, or a specialty item that I'm interested in but not an expert on. I always feel completely lost and uncomfortable and like no matter what decision I make I'm making the wrong one.

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[–] quaddo@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

First if all, you're not wrong. Depending on the financial risk in play, the anxiety and trust get tossed into a tizzy.

When I say financial risk, if I'm buying a car, we all already know that that's a whole racket. Buying a house, even bigger $$$$ involved. Buying a staple commodity, like a loaf of bread? Meh, it's no biggie.

One big factor in play is our emotional side.

I'll make a suggestion here. Feel free to ignore.

There's a book by Dr Robert Cialdini on persuasion. From what I recall, he got into learning how humans react to certain things, because he felt that he himself was duped into doing/buying things that he later realized he wished he hadn't done/bought. He wanted to better understand the process so that he could be more aware and less vulnerable to the grift. He ended up going into psychology and... well, specializing in the subject.

One sec, there's a website that gives a nice intro to this:

https://www.influenceatwork.com/7-principles-of-persuasion/

[–] deeoh@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

You just persuaded me to go look at that site, so I guess it works.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Influence by Cialdini is really good and reasonably deep. Presuasion (also him) is more accessible and focused a lot more specifically on manipulative sales tactics.

If you read both of those and still want more, Nudge by Richard Thaler is pretty good as well.

Edit: one extra that's not about in person manipulation, but how you're manipulated before the interaction by branding: Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom.