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I feel terrible writing this review, and it breaks my heart. This book just isn’t that great. Some backstory, I used to love this book. I’ve worked in marketing for years, and I love psychology. This was the first book that introduced me to using psychology for marketing based on “evidence-based” research. Jonah Berger is a professor and Wharton, and I’ve read all of his books. I decided to give this one another read as a refresher since it’s been a few years, and I was just in shock reading some of the nonsense in this book. So, what’s my problem? Well, learning about the difference between good and bad science is what did it. It ruined this book for me. Social sciences already have a bad reputation, but the studies used in this book are absolutely ridiculous. As I was reading, I was like, “There’s no way in hell that this would have consistent results.” Aside from that, there was so much selection bias and survivorship bias in this book that it was bonkers. The issue is that so much of what Jonah Berger teaches is subjective as well, so it’s extremely hard to falsify. In between the bad science, there’s a lot of practical advice for getting people to talk about your “thing”. The issue is when it tries to use research to back it up. If you want to read it, go for it. I don’t think it’s a waste of time, but just be extremely skeptical of the research used in this book. And now, I’m going to reread his other books to see if they’re just as bad.
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