How to Win Friends and Influence People quiz
Dale Carnegie · 1936
Ten questions on Dale Carnegie's key ideas, each with a short explanation. Read it a while ago? Take the quiz before you look at the summary: what you can recall now is what you'll keep.
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Question 1 of 10
A colleague missed a deadline and cost your team a client. You have drafted a sharp email. What would Carnegie have you do?
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B. Hold it back and try to see why they did it Don't criticize, condemn or complain is Carnegie's first rule: criticism makes people defend themselves, not change. His example is Lincoln, who wrote General Meade a scathing letter after Gettysburg and never sent it; it was found among his papers. Trying to understand someone does more than condemning them.
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Question 2 of 10
Why does Carnegie argue that criticism rarely changes anyone's behavior?
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D. It makes people defensive, so they justify themselves His opening case is "Two Gun" Crowley, a killer who saw himself as kind-hearted. If even criminals blame everyone but themselves, ordinary people will too. Criticism wounds pride and stirs resentment, so it produces self-defense rather than change.
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Question 3 of 10
According to Carnegie, what separates honest appreciation from flattery?
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A. Whether you sincerely mean what you say The test is sincerity. Flattery is praise handed out to get something, and Carnegie warns that people see through it sooner or later. Appreciation comes from noticing what is genuinely good in someone. Praising effort over talent is Carol Dweck's idea, from Mindset.
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Question 4 of 10
Carnegie loves strawberries and cream, yet he baits his fishing hook with worms. What's the lesson?
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C. Talk about what others want, not what you want The fish don't care what you like. Carnegie argues that the only way to influence people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it. Emerson and his son couldn't force a calf into the barn; their maid led it in by thinking of what the calf wanted.
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Question 5 of 10
At a dinner party, Carnegie spent hours talking with a botanist, who later praised him to their host as a fine conversationalist. Why?
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A. Carnegie had mostly listened and let him talk Carnegie knew nothing about botany and hardly said a word. He listened with real interest, and the botanist took that attention as a compliment. Encourage people to talk about themselves, Carnegie argues, and they'll think you're good company.
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Question 6 of 10
A friend says: "I'd make more friends if I were more interesting." What would Carnegie tell them?
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D. Focus on being interested in others instead Carnegie argues that taking a real interest in others wins friends far faster than trying to get them interested in you. His model is a dog, which wins people over without impressing anyone, just by being glad to see them.
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Question 7 of 10
Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman were ruining each other's profits in a sleeping-car price war. What made Pullman willing to discuss a merger?
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C. Carnegie proposed naming the new company after him When Pullman asked what the merged company would be called, Carnegie said: the Pullman Palace Car Company. Pullman invited him to his room to talk it over. Carnegie had learned the power of names as a boy, promising to name his rabbits after the neighborhood boys who gathered food for them.
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Question 8 of 10
At a team lunch, a colleague confidently gets a minor fact wrong. It changes nothing. What does the book suggest?
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B. Let it go: proving them wrong only costs goodwill Carnegie once corrected a dinner guest who credited a Shakespeare line to the Bible. His friend, who knew Shakespeare well, sided with the guest, then asked why he needed to prove a man wrong. You can't win an argument: even when you're right, you lose the goodwill.
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Question 9 of 10
You're proposing a change to a skeptical client. How does the book suggest you open?
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A. With points you agree on, so they start saying yes Once someone says no, pride makes them defend it. So start with what you both agree on and build a run of yeses. Socrates, Carnegie notes, asked questions his opponents had to agree with until they accepted a conclusion they would have rejected at the start.
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Question 10 of 10
Your company's most brilliant engineer is a poor department head, and he's very sensitive. Which move fits the book?
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C. Give him a new title and let someone else lead General Electric faced this with Charles Steinmetz, a genius at electricity but a weak department head. They made him Consulting Engineer, a new title for work he already did, and gave the department to someone else. He stayed happy because he could save face.
How to Win Friends and Influence People in one paragraph
How to Win Friends and Influence People argues that dealing with people is a skill you can learn, and that it counts for more in a career than technical knowledge. Dale Carnegie's method rests on one shift: start from what the other person wants, not from what you want. Everyone longs to feel important, so he trades criticism for sincere appreciation, self-display for real interest, and arguments for persuasion that lets people keep their pride. Each principle comes with stories from business, politics and his own classes.
The 9 key ideas of How to Win Friends and Influence People
Criticism backfires
Almost nobody sees themselves as the villain. Even the gunman "Two Gun" Crowley, Carnegie notes, believed he had a kind heart. So criticism rarely changes behavior: it puts people on the defensive, wounds their pride and leaves resentment that can last for years. Try to understand why someone acted as they did instead. Lincoln, furious that General Meade let Lee escape after Gettysburg, wrote him a scathing letter and never sent it.
Appreciation, not flattery
Carnegie borrows from John Dewey the idea that the deepest human urge is the desire to be important. Honest appreciation feeds that hunger, which is why the steel executive Charles Schwab credited his way with people to praise and encouragement, not fault-finding. Flattery is a counterfeit of it, and the difference is sincerity. Appreciation comes from noticing what is genuinely good in someone; flattery is cheap praise handed out to get something.
Start with what they want
Carnegie loves strawberries and cream, but when he goes fishing he baits the hook with worms, because that's what the fish want. People are no different: the way to move someone is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it. When Ralph Waldo Emerson and his son pushed and pulled a stubborn calf, it dug in its heels. Their maid let it suck her finger and led it into the barn.
Take a real interest in others
A dog makes friends without trying to impress anyone: it is simply delighted to see you. Carnegie argues that genuine interest in other people wins more friends than any effort to get them interested in you. Smile, ask about their lives and talk about what they care about. Theodore Roosevelt, he notes, would stay up the night before a visit reading about whatever his guest was most interested in.
Remember people's names
To most people, their own name matters more than any other word. Remembering and using it is a quiet compliment; forgetting or misspelling it is a small slight. Jim Farley, who helped elect Franklin Roosevelt, said he could call tens of thousands of people by their first names. Andrew Carnegie ended a price war with George Pullman by proposing to call their merged business the Pullman Palace Car Company.
Let them do the talking
People are far more interested in themselves than in you, so a good listener is welcome almost anywhere. Encourage others to talk about themselves and what they've done. After a dinner party where Carnegie hardly spoke and simply listened to a botanist for hours, the botanist told their host what a fine conversationalist Carnegie was. Close, genuine attention is itself one of the highest compliments you can pay.
You can't win an argument
Lose an argument and you've lost; win it and the other person feels humiliated and resents you. Either way, nobody changes their mind. Carnegie learned this when he insisted to a dinner guest that a quotation came from Shakespeare, and a friend who knew Shakespeare well sided with the guest to spare him. Never tell people flatly that they're wrong, and when you are wrong, admit it quickly and fully.
Make agreement easy
To win people over, begin in a friendly way and open with points they can say yes to, as Socrates did, rather than points of disagreement. Let them do most of the talking, and let them feel the idea is their own. Appeal to nobler motives, dramatize your ideas and tap the wish to excel: Schwab chalked one shift's output on a mill floor, and the next shift set out to beat it.
Correct without humiliating
When you need to change someone's behavior, begin with honest praise, point out mistakes indirectly and mention your own errors first. Ask questions instead of giving orders, and above all let people save face. Schwab, finding men smoking under a No Smoking sign, handed each a cigar and asked them to smoke it outside. Praise every improvement, and give people a fine reputation to live up to.
Has it held up?
The book's advice on attention has aged well. In studies of live conversations, people who asked more questions, especially follow-up questions, were better liked by their partners. Talking about yourself seems to be rewarding in itself: in one set of experiments it engaged the brain's reward system, and people gave up small amounts of money for the chance to do it. Hearing your own name also triggers a distinct brain response compared with other names, though that shows the name grabs attention, not that using it makes people like you.
The shakiest claim is that flattery fails. A 2010 study found that even flattery with an obvious ulterior motive left a favorable gut impression after people had consciously discounted it. That cuts both ways: the techniques can work whether or not you mean them. Critics have long called the book manipulative for exactly that reason, and a 1977 American Quarterly essay by Gail Thain Parker is devoted to its problem with sincerity.
Some of it is simply dated. Most examples are salesmen, executives and famous men of the early 20th century, and the 1981 revision updated the language and many anecdotes, and dropped the original sections on business letters and married life.
Sources
- Carmody, D. P., & Lewis, M. (2006). Brain activation when hearing one's own and others' names. Brain Research, 1116(1), 153–158.
- Chan, E., & Sengupta, J. (2010). Insincere flattery actually works: A dual attitudes perspective. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(1), 122–133.
- Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452.
- Parker, G. T. (1977). How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dale Carnegie and the problem of sincerity. American Quarterly, 29(5), 506–518.
- Tamir, D. I., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012). Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(21), 8038–8043.
How to Win Friends and Influence People book club questions
10 questions for a book club or a class, from first reactions to where the book can be argued with. They work best once everyone has finished it. For questions that work with any nonfiction book and a plan for the evening, see our book club questions guide.
- Which of Carnegie's principles struck you as plain common sense, and which felt surprising or uncomfortable when you first read them? Why do you think that is?
- Carnegie argues that skill with people counts for more in a career than technical knowledge. Does that match what you have seen at work or school, and has it changed since 1936?
- Carnegie opens with "Two Gun" Crowley, a killer who saw himself as kind-hearted. Think of someone whose behavior frustrates you: how would they explain it, and does that change how you would approach them?
- Carnegie advises letting the other person feel that an idea is theirs. Is stepping back so someone else takes credit generous or sneaky, and when have you seen it work?
- Carnegie baits his hook with worms, not the strawberries and cream he likes. Where is the line between understanding what someone wants and using it to get your own way?
- The book says you can't win an argument, yet some disagreements really matter. When is it worth standing your ground, and how could you do it while letting the other person save face?
- A 2010 study found that even flattery with an obvious motive left a favorable gut impression. If the techniques work whether or not you mean them, why does Carnegie's insistence on sincerity still matter?
- Critics have called the book manipulative since the 1930s. How would you answer that charge, and how much does the answer depend on who is using the techniques and why?
- Which principle, such as remembering names or letting others do most of the talking, do you find hardest to practice? What gets in your way, and what would a week of trying it look like?
- Schwab handed cigars to men smoking under a No Smoking sign instead of scolding them. Think of a correction you need to make at home or work: how could you make it without humiliating anyone?
How to remember How to Win Friends and Influence People
Taking the quiz above was already the most useful thing you can do with a book you've read. Pulling an idea out of memory strengthens it far more than reading a summary again; psychologists call it active recall. The questions you got wrong are the ideas that were slipping away.
What keeps them is timing. Memory fades on a curve, quickly at first, so the next review works best in about three days, then a week later, then a few weeks after that. Our review schedule calculator gives you the exact dates, and how to remember what you read covers the whole method.
