How To Win Friends And Influence People (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
This book presents one of the classic statements of popular psychology oriented around positive self-image, self reliance, and cooperative relationships with others. It is one of the most popular and influential books of its type ever and provided the foundations for contemporary self-help celebrities, such as Oprah Winfrey, as well as much of current motivational and organizational psychology that one finds in current business school curricula.What to make of it? I tend to side with the critics, who are numerous. It is difficult to argue with the basic points of the book, taken at a surface level. Most people enjoy being respected, agreed with, and successful. Confidence and self-reliance are no doubt important personal characteristics in personal success. Many people do not enjoy conflict or being disagreed with and would prefer instead cooperative relations with others. OK, but so what?The problem comes once it is realized that Carnegie is highlighting an ambivalence that is inherent in many of our social relationships. On the one hand, we can interact with people on their own terms and without expectations of obligations, duties, or norms of reciprocity. We can deal with and respect people as they are. On the other hand, however, much of what we do in social life involves either trying to accomplish something through other people or having other people trying to use us to accomplish something of importance to them. In trying to balance these two aspects of social relations, most of us become aware of the need to balance. We do not usually treat commercial relationships as close friends. We do not draw up elaborate performance-based contracts with loved ones such as family members. The problem is that people who expect to be treated as independent persons do not appreciate being used by others for some personal end. It is conceptually difficult to see how someone can be both taken authentically and respected as a person while at the same time being viewed as an agent for someone else. Family members and loved ones do not like to be used. Commercial partners do not appreciate being treated as friends when more immediate personal goals were the basis for interactions.Many adults learn to balance these differing perspectives towards others. Sometimes we treat others at arms length while at other times friendships can develop. Carnegie's classic work calls on the reader to both treat people on their own terms and also to attempt to influence them to get their cooperation in attaining one's objectives. Without more specification of how and where to balance, however, the book becomes a more cynical effort to redefine the problem of positive social relations in the form of a solution -- in order to influence people and get your way, treat them authentically. The rub, of course, is how to go about doing this. It is akin to arguing that the solution to poverty is easy -- just get some money!The faux sincerity and false positivity in the service of influencing others come across as phony and manipulative after a while. This recalls another old maxim - if something seems to good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. The oversimplified examples and testimonials also get old in a hurry. The reduction of large business enterprises and their managers to a series of positive work interactions with employees is simplistic at well. The details matter, individual skills matter, industry structures matter, history matters. It is nice to imagine that a positive attitude can conquer all and bring one riches. That lets a lot of other factors off the hook for explaining success or failure. But wishing it is so does not make it so. The more I read it, the more it sounds like a text on manipulation and less like an industrial manual.
This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about them and compliment them on it, talk about their interests only and, practically, act like a people pleaser all the time.It might sound like a harmless, or even attractive idea in theory, but choosing to apply it in your every day life can lead to dangerous results. Case in point: after being a smiley happy person with loads of friends for about a year, the unpleasant realization began to creep in, that by being so agreeable to everybody else, I rarely ever got my way. I also sustained friendships with people who were self-centered, so talking about their interests was all we got to do together, which drained me of my energy. The worst thing still, is that by trying to find something to like about every person, I completely disregarded their glaring faults. It didn't matter that those people did have redeeming qualities - they weren't redeeming enough! I ended up with a bunch of friends I didn't really want and, because I was so preoccupied with "winning" those friendships I missed out on the chance to form relationships with good people. I suppose, for somebody who is a better judge of character, the principles outlined in this book *could* be of some value. But that's really just me trying to find something positive (using the "principles") in a book that I am still trying to UNlearn.If you want to win friends, you have to do it the hard way, by being yourself and risking rejection (and daring to do some rejection of your own, as well). And if you want to influence people the only fair way to do it is through honesty. All the rest is manipulation and pretending. Do not read this book, you'll only learn how to manipulate yourself & others. Do not read it out of fear of rejection & low self-esteem, there are better ways to gain some courage in approaching people. This will harm you in the long run.Thank you for reading this review.
What do You think about How To Win Friends And Influence People (1998)?
Utter dreck! Anyone who thinks this book offers important wise advice on friendship is an idiot.Dale Carnegie was nothing but a huckstering sophist, and a very repulsive one at that. For those of you who may not know, Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People is a handbook on how to exploit friendship for the sake of financial and political gain. Now fans of this book (why such people are allowed to read, much less vote, I do not know) will say this book helped them overcome their shyness and make real friendships. But Dale Carnegie is not interested in real friendship. His only concern is to exploit friendship for financial and political gain. One need not be Einstein to know this. One need only read all the garish claims on the back of the book (I have an earlier edition than the one usually found in bookstores today) such as, say, "Increase your earning power" "(Carnegie's book will) [m]ake you a better salesman, a better executive." If the book were really about true friendship, as its many lobotomized fans insist, then one would expect the blurbs to claim that the book will make the reader a better friend, not a better salesman. A true friend cares about his friends, but a salesman cares about his profit, and if friendship come between him and his profit, then so much for friendship. Dale Carnegie's groupies are utterly oblivious to his promotion of such shameless exploitation, which is as obvious as a communal bedpan. And they are also utterly oblivious to historical facts. Had they some historical knowledge, then these sycophants-in-training surely would have read Dale Carnegie's pilpul with slightly less pollyannish gullibility. For instance, if they knew anything about the Age of the Robber Barons, they might have found Dale Carnegie's depiction of Andrew Carnegie as a man truly concerned for the lot of his fellow man a bit hard to stomach. Sure, Andrew Carnegie smiled a lot and presented a friendly appearance to the press and public, and that was enough for Dale. Dale--like all other sophists, politicians, and prostitutes--cared only for appearances, but underneath the accommodating demeanor of Andrew Carnegie was a heart as hard as the steel his factories forged. Andrew Carnegie would publicly declare his support for rights of the worker and yet let his Manager Frick hire Pinkerton Guards to massacre the union workers. Andrew Carnegie would snatch good PR with his various philanthropies but also poured much of his money into the American Eugenics Movement which managed to get laws passed all over this country that mandated the sterilization of cripples like me. American Eugenics also had a profound influence upon German Eugenics, an influence which one can see documented in the minutes of The Nuremberg Trials. I hope even Carnegie groupies are not that ignorant not to know that influence, however nice, pleasant, and smiling it may be, is bad when it leads to genocide. Yet, I suspect those who swear by this book will continue to have nothing but admiration for Dale Carnegie, whose sycophantic adulation for the ruthless rich who killed off unionized workers and funded the genocide of the weak should offend, repel, and disgust anyone with even a modicum of human thought and decency. Carnegie fans are idiots.
—Paul Rhodes
For a book to have been in print continuously for nearly 80 years, it must be doing something right. Many of the principles are still applicable, but Carnegie’s case studies struck me as hopelessly outdated as well as exclusively American (the Teapot Dome scandal?!). In teaching public speaking to thousands of businessmen, he developed pointed advice for how to get people to like you and do what you want. Examples: show genuine interest in others and draw out their stories, express sincere appreciation, and try to see things from the other person’s point of view. Although he insists this is not about trickery or flattery, I still sensed a hint of manipulation. A lot of what he says just seems like common sense, but he spells it out and puts it all together in a helpful, reader-friendly format. He also draws on anecdote and experience, much like contemporary self-help authors like Gretchen Rubin and Brené Brown.
—Rebecca Foster
I've read this book through several times over, but I carry it with me on my daily commute so that I can go back and read another chapter if it's been a while.This book has been out there for some time, but its advice still applies today. This is my best example of how his advice helped:I was arguing with a bank branch manager who was telling me that the check I was depositing was going to be subject to special holds. At the time, not being able to use the money wasn't critical, but it was inconvenient, and damned annoying since I knew there wasn't any problem with the check. I had raised a points regarding the source of funding, rules on clearing, and level of customer service I was receiving. The manager responded with several points, including, how this was for my protection. My annoyance was heading into anger when I remembered Dale Carnegie's advice to avoid getting into an argument. Once you're in a argument, he said, you're not going to win, no matter how effectively you press your point. I hadn't avoided the argument, but I could still keep from making things worse. I took the check back, and then stopped at the branch that was close to my home (the first branch was close to where I work). There, the branch manager politely asked about the nature of this check. I told him, and things proceeded normally.This book provides Dale Carnegie's advice and techniques for interacting with people, but, even more than that, it invites you to adopt an outlook and understanding that people do things based on their beliefs of their valid needs. If you respect that when you're dealing people, you're much more likely to have a better, agreeable outcome.
—RC Langilll
