Book Review: The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

Abstract

A few days back, I (the first author) had a heated discussion with my friend who believes that Psychology is not a science. Despite my presentation of multiple facts, findings, and arguments, I failed to convince her. Humans have successfully eradicated smallpox, landed on Mars, build jet engines, and complex internet. All it has been the result of cooperation, rational, and objective thinking. On the other hand, from politics to general discourse, people show irrational behavior, often fueled by prejudice, biases, gut feelings, conspiracy theories, etc. Why do people deny facts and scientific findings? Searching for the answer; I decided to read Tali Sharot's book: "The Influential Mind." Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University College London where she runs "Affective Brain Lab, " investigating the neuroscience of motivation and emotion. Her previous book "The Optimism Bias" explores the basis of excessive positive thinking in humans (Sharot, 2011). Her new book "The Influential Mind" aims to explain the phenomenon of influence (changing others' mind) from three different perspectives (a) why we often fail to influence others, (b) what we can learn to influence others, and (c) how to recognize when others influence us. Sharot emphasizes that the only way to change others' mind is to align ourselves with them over seven core elements that regulate a person's' thoughts and actions. These seven core elements are prior beliefs, emotions, incentives, sense of agency, curiosity, state of mind, and the knowledge and acts of other people. The first core element "prior" (our beliefs) is the key to effective communication. Because we do not want to change our beliefs easily, we take interest mostly in those communications which are in agreement with those beliefs. Further, if disagreement occurs, we tend to counter-argue and try to support our belief with new data from sources like the internet. Sharot argues that only offering facts and figures supporting our view and showcasing errors in other's arguments is not the best strategy. Instead, she suggests that building common grounds is necessary to influence others in any communication. Since facts alone do not change people's mind, Sharot argues that people are influenced instantly, regularly, and unconsciously by other's "emotions, " and this is the second core element. Sharot emphasizes that positively framing our views is more powerful compared to negative. But why? It has been shown that less attentional resources are required to process positive information than