The Psychology of Persuasion

Don Surber believes that Hillary has a secret weapon:

Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert," revealed that the reason Hillary rose in the polls this summer was not any faltering by Donald Trump but rather by her hiring Robert Cialdini to run her psy ops. The 71-year-old Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University helped elect Barack Obama president eight years ago.

Trump was winning the battle of persuasion so decisively that Adams predicted a landslide. Now Adams is not so sure because since bringing Cialdini aboard this spring, Hillary upped her game, Adams said in an interview with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal.

From that interview:
“You saw right after Trump did his convention speech that all of the [Clinton] surrogates used the same word almost instantly. You know, ‘dark’? So somebody with skill had obviously gotten word out to use that word. And if you look at it, it’s the same engineering as Trump’s. It’s a higher level than what you normally see. ‘Dark’ is a Rorschach test. . . . Anything you see Trump do—from getting mad at a baby, to saying something about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton, to his immigration plans—they all seem like they could fit into this ‘dark’ label, once you’ve heard it. It was a fresh word you don’t hear in politics . . . and it fits all future confirmation bias. So anything he does in the future, you’re going to say, ‘Yeah, that was a little dark.’ ”

He thinks “dark” was “probably the work of a trained cognitive psychologist, behavioral psychologist—someone who has deep skills. I’ve referred to who I think it is as Godzilla. And I think Godzilla entered the race sometime around June.” I ask for Godzilla’s real name, and Mr. Adams answers: Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist at Arizona State University. Mr. Adams describes Mr. Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” first published in 1984, as “the flagship book” on the subject.
By surrogates, Adams means the entire press corps. Ted Cruz was right when he called the media Hillary's Super PAC.