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Joseph Marks

Steve J. Martin

Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, And Why Hardcover – 19 Sept. 2019

by Stephen Martin (Author), Joseph Marks (Author)

46 ratings

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____________________________
Why are self-confident ignoramuses so often believed?
Why are thoughtful experts so often given the cold shoulder?
And why do apparently irrelevant details such as a person’s height, their relative wealth, or their Facebook photo influence whether or not we trust what they are saying?

When deciding whether or not someone is worth listening to, we think we carefully weigh their words and arguments. But those are far from being the only factors that hold sway with us.

In this groundbreaking new book behavioural experts Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks pinpoint the eight powerful traits that determine who gets heard and who gets ignored. They show how such apparently irrelevant details as a person’s appearance or their financial status influence our response to what they have to say, regardless of its wisdom or foolishness. They explain how trust is won, even when it may not be deserved. They analyse the nature of the charismatic speaker and the verbal and physical cues they employ. And they demonstrate how the tiniest of signals – from the shoes we wear, to the pitch of our voice and the warmth of our smile – can transform how others perceive us and so determine whether they are prepared to pay heed to what we have to say.

Above all, Martin and Marks show how looking and sounding right is often far more persuasive than actually being right.

In a world of ambiguity, uncertainty and fake news they compellingly demonstrate how, increasingly, the Messenger is the Message.
____________________________
‘A tour de force. Timely and thoroughly researched.’
Professor Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-suasion

‘Messengers is engaging, informative and entertaining. It will change the way you think about who you follow and take advice from. But why would you listen to me? Read their book to find out.'
Professor Tali Sharot, author of The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind

'A powerful, profoundly illuminating exploration of one of the most important subjects of our time. Martin and Marks have a terrific talent for combining evidence and research with lively and vivid writing. Trust these messengers!'
Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Conformity

'Fascinating'
The Economist

'Zeitgeisty'
Financial Times, Business Book of the Month

'Messengers is a crucial reminder that the messenger is as important as the message. Superficial indicators count.'
PR Week

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Product details

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Random House Business (19 Sept. 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1847942350
ISBN-13: 978-1847942357
Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.2 x 24 cm
Customer reviews: 46 customer ratings
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 263,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79651 in Society, Politics & Philosophy
- #377 in Business Communication Skills
- #301 in Language Communication Reference

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Review

Steve Martin’s and Joe Marks’ Messengers is engaging, informative and entertaining. It will change the way you think about who you follow and take advice from. But why would you listen to me? Read their book to find out. -- Professor Tali Sharot, author of THE OPTIMISM BIAS and THE INFLUENTIAL MIND

A tour de force. Timely and thoroughly researched.

A powerful, profoundly illuminating exploration of one of the most important subjects of our time. Martin and Marks have a terrific talent for combining evidence and research with lively and vivid writing. Trust these messengers!

A timely book, Evening Standard

A crucial reminder that the messenger is as important as the message, PR Week

About the Author

Stephen Martin (Author)
Steve Martin is the CEO of INFLUENCE AT WORK UK, a renowned behavioural science consultancy and Visiting Professor of Management Practice and Behavioural Science Executive Education at Columbia Business School NY. Together with Dr Noah Goldstein and Dr Robert Cialdini he is co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International bestseller Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion, which to date has sold over a million copies and has been translated into 26 languages. Yes! was long-listed for the Royal Society’s annual prize for science writing and featured in Harvard Business Review’s prestigious ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business’ list.

Steve’s work has featured in broadcast and print media across the world, including BBC TV and Radio, MSNBC, The Times, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, New York Times and Wired. Over 2 million people read his regular business columns, including his ‘Persuasion’ page in the British Airways inflight magazine and his features for the Harvard Business Review. He is a guest lecturer on executive education programmes at the London School of Economics, London Business School and Harvard Business School.

Joseph Marks (Author)
Joseph Marks is a doctoral researcher at University College London. His research focuses on people’s perceptions of themselves and how their environment and others influence their cognition and decisions. He holds a Master’s degree in Social Cognition from University College London and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Birmingham. His research with INFLUENCE AT WORK has been applied across a variety of business and public policy settings, including financial regulation, healthcare and public transport.

From the Publisher

Messengers Stephen Martin Joseph Marks Influencing Social Psychology Business Career Development

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Customer reviews

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4 star		21%
3 star		9%
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L Simpson

Groundbreaking insights

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2019

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A fascinating book that reveals groundbreaking insights around why we are influenced more by certain people delivering a message over others, even if those messages are the same! Essential reading for any leader, entrepreneur, politician or communications specialist... or anyone interested in the unusual political times we are living in! It's very solidly researched, well written, and an enjoyable read!

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Martyn Jackson

Simple advice you should listen to

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2020

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Simple but great examples of what we all need to do to improve our business. Would recommend

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bucksdaisy

easy order, good price, speedy delivery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2019

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Easy to order, good price and speedy delivery - what more could you ask for?

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Amazon Customer

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 September 2019

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Engaging and brilliantly informative.

2 people found this helpful

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Joe

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 November 2019

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And very soothing voice

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Tom Williams

Some interesting stuff but overpromised and underdelivered

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 October 2019

The subtitle of Messengers is ‘Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, And Why’. In a world that has given us Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, learning the answer to this question seems worth the effort involving reading the book, but having finished it I’m not sure that I’m any clearer.

This is a pop psychology book with all the strengths and weaknesses of that genre. It starts out with a lot of anecdotes – some mind-blowingly banal (somebody who tweeted something on the same day that Barrack Obama tweeted something very similar got millions fewer re-tweets) and some quite fascinating (employees of an Indian entrepreneur with a caring management style offered to work for nothing when her business was in trouble).

Anecdotes, though, obviously don’t make up a convincing argument so the book quotes lots of psychological experiments, some by the authors and some from other sources. The problem with this approach is that you have to take an awful lot on trust. I’m sensitive to this because my degree was in Experimental Psychology and I’m aware that very small differences in the way an experiment was conducted can have quite profound influences on the outcome. It’s difficult to be confident in the results of an experiment which has been reported in a few short paragraphs. This is an inevitable problem with this kind of book and does not reflect badly on the authors, but it does mean that if you accept their arguments you will trust the research and if you don’t you will (probably at least sometimes justifiably) dismiss the research. In fairness, research studies are well footnoted and you can follow them all up, but it is unlikely that the non-specialist reader that this book is clearly aimed at will ever do that. You have to take a lot on trust and, ironically, one of the main messages of the book is that humans are terribly bad at judging when they can take stuff on trust and when they should be more sceptical.

Leaving these reservations aside, what does it tell us? Very crudely put, it suggests that we pay more attention to the characteristics of the messenger than we do to the characteristics of the message. We like leaders to be tall and square jawed, or empathetic and caring. It’s an analysis that explains the appeal of Donald Trump. He is a classic alpha male – bombastic, dominant, and pugilistic. Some of this, according to the book, is innate. He was born with a face shape that is associated with dominance. (There is a photograph that illustrates how facial height to width ratio is calculated, enabling this to be quantified.) Some of it may have been learned over his lifetime: the way he stands, the amount he gestures with his arms, the deep timbre of his voice. Perhaps it’s significant that when comedians who do not share his political approach mimic him they tend to emphasise the speech mannerism where his voice can suddenly move into quite a high register. Or perhaps it’s not – the authors don’t mention this.

That’s part of the trouble. Human behaviour is complex. Few people are consistent. Boris Johnson is often compared to Donald Trump, but untidy blonde hair is not the attribute that the authors think is important. On the attributes they do think important – posture, vocal mannerisms, etc – Boris is almost the antithesis of Trump. He bumbles on, waffles and, to a degree, charms – but he hardly fits the stereotype of an alpha male.

In fairness to the authors, they do acknowledge the complexities that underlie many of the behaviours they analyse – but perhaps still not enough. So, for example, at one point they write:

[Apologies] are … immensely powerful social tools, critical to the repairing or re-establishing of relationships. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provided a formidable demonstration of this when, in the course of a four minute speech in February 2008 he issued a public apology for the way in which indigenous Australians had been treated years before he himself had achieved public office. He recognised, he said, that he needed to “apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians”.

Much later, in a separate discussion of apologies, the authors point out (in line, as it happens, with my own review of the literature1) that an apology is only likely to be affected if it is “made quickly… made sincerely. And it needs to be made in a way that shows remorse and commitment to change in the future.” Kevin Rudd’s four minute speech could not possibly have met these criteria and yet the authors explicitly link it to “the highest satisfaction rating of any Australian Prime Minister”.

Obviously there is more going on than can be covered in one relatively short volume. In fact some of the simplifications border on the absurd. At one point the book argues that an experiment showed that facial features are so crucial that “a glance at the faces of candidates running for election was all that was needed to make an informed, and largely accurate, estimate of who would (and indeed did) win.” Whilst what a candidate looks like can be a significant factor, the suggestion that facial appearance can be used to accurately predict the outcome of real elections would, if true, suggest that the selection of legislators by popular ballot is an idea that needs to be reviewed. Personally I am not suggesting that we abolish democracy, but that we view statements like this with grave suspicion.

There is usable, and indeed valuable, stuff in this book. It does no harm for us to be reminded how much we allow irrelevant assessments of people’s social class, dominance, or empathy to affect what should be rational judgements. This can even extend to favouring loan offers which are accompanied by a photograph of an attractive woman rather than an attractive interest rate. There are practical lessons to be learned, too. My wife does some university lecturing and I have passed on the information that lecturers who make more arm movements whilst speaking are perceived as better teachers by their students. In the new world of university education, where student assessment is critical to career advancement, I can confidently predict a fair amount from arm waving next term.

Overall, though, I found this an irritating book – neither an easily read series of anecdotes nor a serious academic study, it repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. If, however, you honestly believe that you would never form your initial (and surprisingly firm) view of somebody based on the logo on their polo shirt, then perhaps you need to read it.

[I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley.]

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Daisy

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 September 2019

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

This was a fascinating book bringing together research about the people who influence our lives and who we choose to listen to, and why. In Part One, 'hard' messengers are discussed. These are people who are seen as having socio-economic status, competence, dominance and attractiveness. In this context, it's explained why for example, celebrities are used to endorse high-end products such as perfume, They are selling the illusion that by buying those products, the consumer can achieve status themselves. Dominance is a trait that Donald Trump has in spades, and helps to explain his inexplicable rise to the presidency.

In Part Two, 'soft' messengers are examined. These messengers still have influence over us, but tend to convey traits such as warmth, vulnerability, trustworthiness and charisma. Various examples are cited from years of research and it is fascinating to reflect on the influences that shape us, whether it be in personal relationships, in our career choices, in who we vote for and the products we buy.

Anyone who has an interest in psychology and current affairs, will thoroughly enjoy this well-researched and well-written book.

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A. T.

Interesting, but perhaps a little too superficial

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2019

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

An interesting read altogether, although I sometimes found it too ‘light’ and superficial. Perhaps because of the many anecdotes it contains? On the one hand, they do help in getting the point, for sure, but after a while I felt that the book would be definitely more of an introduction (with the research quoted in it having to become the actual focus at some point) than a reference all of itself. Perhaps that was the goal all along, though.

In any case, I did find this research thought-provoking. It’s not the first time that I’m faced with concepts such as ‘we believe ourselves super good at judging people, circumstances etc, but in fact we’re lousier at it than we’d think’; and, let’s be honest, when I look around me at the kind of messages we get, at who broadcasts them, at how people listen to them… Yes, I’m willing to believe that -who- delivers the message is often better heard than the message itself (or allows for the message to be misunderstood in part). Is that a constant? Not necessarily, since behaviours, physical traits, and how we read them are much more complex than meet the eye; but it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that, yes, we may just as well be influenced by a “dominant” or “handsome” appearance rather than by sound judgement, while remaining convinced our decision is perfectly rational and informed. If this only leads to think twice and get back to finding facts and information before deciding, it’s a good thing.

(I must also admit that the book gives a few good ideas about things like posture and tone of voice to use if wanting to impress people or convey a specific meaning. After all, once aware of what people in general tend to respond to, well, might as well try to use it and see if it helps when trying to convince them myself, right?)

Conclusion: 3 to 3.5 stars. It was informative in a general way, yet I think it would’ve benefitted from a deeper analysis as well.

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Francis Shaw

Interesting read

Reviewed in Germany on 22 February 2020

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I enjoyed this book. It's good for all of us to reflect often on who we listen to and why as it can identify where and why we might be stuck or present new opportunities for consideration. It would have been interesting if the author had also included a chapter on what we listen to within ourselves based on our experiences. Perhaps the next book!

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Aurelien

Nothing really new and difficult to read

Reviewed in Germany on 26 February 2020

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After reading the book I still don't quite know what to think about the book. It is undeniably well researched, the topic is very interesting .... but .... I found it:
1- not really well written. Many studies are compiled, I didn't however see or could read the "red line". Sentences are over-complicated, maybe a category of why some messages are being read and others not is missing in this book: simplicity
2- not bringing any new stuff on the table. I should habe read the content table before buying it and I would have saved a few hours of reading.

It's still a 3* to me probably because I have other recent bad reads on my mind, otherwise it would probably have ranked in my personal list even below.

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Vikrama D.

Good Book

Reviewed in India on 9 May 2020

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This is a good book. More a 101 on the topic. What would have made it great for me was if the book delved into more complex situations like how can you appear connected, dominant in a tough situation. Messengers don't start with zero. They also start with a negative. That's perhaps on the new edition. Enjoyed reading it. Made tonnes of notes too.

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For Anyone Who Uses Words

Reviewed in the United States on 27 October 2019

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Extremely clear and valuable explanation of how the various qualities of the messenger changes the impact of the message.

3 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Breaks down the simplicity/complexity of listnerd

Reviewed in the United States on 24 December 2019

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Good for anybody. Especially people who fail to get their point across. Offers context to our simplistic/pre-wired world view through numerous real world examples and data --> there is a reason why things are how they are...

2 people found this helpful

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Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, And Why Hardcover – 19 Sept. 2019

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