Influence
Science and Practice
Fourth Edition
Robert B. Cialdini
Arizona State University
The initial version of Influence was designed for the popular reader, and as such, an
attempt was made to write it in an engaging style. In the subsequent versions, that
style is retained, but in addition, I present the research evidence for my
statements, recommendations, and conclusions. Although they are dramatized and
corroborated through such devices as interviews, quotes, and systematic personal
observations, the conclusions of Influence are based on controlled, psychological
research.
This fact allows the instructor, the student, and the popular reader to feel confident
that the book is not "pop" psychology but represents work that is scientifically
grounded. The subsequent versions also provide new and updated material, chapter
summaries, and study questions to enhance its classroom utility.
A potentially attractive feature of the present version of Influence lies in its ability to
serve as an enjoyable, practical, yet scientifically documented text for both students
and the general reader. For students, one way to view the book, then, is
to see it as a refreshing change of pace (from standard text material) that does not
retreat from scientific respectability. In a related vein, for both students and the
general reader, the book might be seen as a way to demonstrate that, properly
presented, what often seems like dry science can actually prove to be lively, useful,
and relevant to all readers' personal lives.
COMMENT ON THE FOURTH EDITION
OF INFLUENCE: SCIENCE AND PRACTICE_________________
It has been some time since Influence was last published. In the interim, some things
have happened that deserve a place in this new edition. First, we now know more
about the influence process than before. The study of persuasion, compliance, and
change has advanced, and the pages that follow have been adapted to reflect that
progress. In addition to an overall update of the material, I have expanded a feature
that was stimulated by the responses of prior readers.
This feature highlights the experiences of individuals who have read Influence,
recognized how one of the principles worked on (or for) them in a particular instance,
and wrote to me describing the event. Their descriptions, which appear in the
"Reader's Reports" in each chapter, illustrate how easily and frequently we can fall
victim to the influence process in our everyday lives.
An array of people deserve and have my appreciation for their aid in making Influence
possible. Several of my academic colleagues read and provided perceptive comments
on the entire manuscript in its initial draft form, greatly strengthening the
subsequent version. They are Gus Levine, Doug Kenrick, Art Beaman, and Mark
Zanna. In addition, the first draft was read by a few family members and friends—
VII
viii Preface
Richard and Gloria Cialdini, Bobette Gordon, and Ted Hall—who offered not only
much-needed emotional support but insightful substantive commentary as well.
A second, larger group provided helpful suggestions for selected chapters or groups of
chapters: Todd Anderson, Sandy Braver, Catherine Chambers, Judi Cialdini, Nancy
Eisenberg, Larry Ettkin, Joanne Gersten, Jeff Goldstein, Betsy Hans, Valerie Hans,
Joe Hepworth, Holly Hunt, Ann Inskeep, Barry Leshowitz, Darwyn Under, Debbie
Littler, John Mowen, Igor Pavlov, Janis Posner, Trish Puryear, Marilyn Rail, John Reich,
Peter Reingen, Diane Ruble, Phyllis Sensenig, Roman Sherman, and Henry Wellman.
Certain people were instrumental at the beginning stages. John Staley was the first
publishing professional to recognize the project's potential. Jim Sherman, Al Goethals,
John Keating, Dan Wagner, Dalmas Taylor, Wendy Wood, and David Watson provided
early, positive reviews that encouraged author and editors alike. My editors at Allyn
and Bacon, Carolyn Merrill and Jodi Devine, were consistently congenial, helpful, and
insightful. I would like to thank the following users of the third edition for
their feedback during a telephone survey: Emory Griffin, Wheaton College; Robert
Levine, California State, Fresno; Jeffrey Lewin, Georgia State University; David Miller,
Daytona Beach Community College; Lois Mohr, Georgia State University; and Richard
Rogers, Daytona Beach Community College. The third edition benefited substantially
from the reviews of Assaad Azzi, Yale University; Robert M. Brady, University of
Arkansas; Brian M. Cohen, University of Texas at San Antonio; Christian B. Crandall,
University of Florida; Catherine Goodwin, University of Alaska; Robert G. Lowder,
Bradley University; James W. Michael, Jr., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University; Eugene P. Sheehan, University of Northern Colorado; Jefferson A. Singer,
Connecticut College; and Sandi W. Smith, Michigan State University.
Finally, throughout the project, no one was more on my side than Bobette Gor-den,
who lived every word with me.
I wish to thank the following individuals who—either directly or through their course
instructors—contributed the "Reader's Reports" used in this edition: Pat Bobbs, Annie
Carlo, William Cooper, Alicia Friedman, William Graziano, Mark Hastings,
Endayehu Kendie, Danuta Lubnicka, James Michaels, Steven Moysey, Paul Nail, Alan
J. Resnik, Daryl Retzlaff, Geofrey Rosenberger, Dan Swift, and Karla Vasks.
I would also like to invite new readers to contribute similar "Reports" for possible
publication in a future edition. They can be sent to me at the Department of
Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104 or Robert.Cialdini®
ASU.EDU.
Finally, more influence-relevant information can be obtained at Influenceatwork.com.
R.B.C.
Introduction
I can admit it freely now. All my life I've been a patsy. For as long as I can recall, I've
been an easy mark for the pitches of peddlers, fund-raisers, and operators of one sort
or another. True, only some of these people have had dishonorable
motives. The others—representatives of certain charitable agencies, for instance—
have had the best of intentions. No matter. With personally disquieting frequency, I
have always found myself in possession of unwanted magazine subscriptions or
tickets
to the sanitation workers' ball. Probably this long-standing status as sucker accounts
for my interest in the study of compliance: Just what are the factors that cause one
person to say yes to another person? And which techniques most effectively use
these factors to bring about such compliance? I have wondered why it is that a
request stated in a certain way will be rejected, but a request that asks for the same
favor in a slightly different fashion will be successful.
So in my role as an experimental social psychologist, I began to research the
psychology of compliance. At first the research took the form of experiments
performed, for the most part, in my laboratory and on college students. I wanted to
find out
which psychological principles influenced the tendency to comply with a request. Right
now, psychologists know quite a bit about these principles—what they are and how
they work. I have characterized such principles as weapons of influence and will be
discussing some of the most important of them in this book.
After a time, though, I began to realize that the experimental work, while necessary,
wasn't enough. It didn't allow me to judge the importance of the principles in the
world beyond the psychology building and the campus where I was examining them.
It
became clear that if I was to understand fully the psychology of compliance, I would
need to broaden my scope of investigation. I would need to look to the compliance
professionals—the people who had been using the principles on me all my life. They
know what works and what doesn't; the law of survival of the fittest assures it. Their
business is to make us comply, and their livelihoods depend on it. Those who don't
know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.
Of course, the compliance professionals aren't the only ones who know about and use
these principles to help them get their way. We all employ them and fall victim to
them to some degree in our daily interactions with neighbors, friends, lovers, and
family. But the compliance practitioners have much more than the vague and
amateurish understanding of what works than the rest of us have. As I thought about
it, I knew that they represented the richest vein of information about compliance
available
to me. For nearly three years, then, I combined my experimental studies with a
decidedly more entertaining program: I systematically immersed myself in the world
of compliance professionals—salespeople, fund-raisers, advertisers, and others.
My purpose was to observe, from the inside, the techniques and strategies most
commonly and effectively used by a broad range of compliance practitioners. That
ix
program of observation sometimes took the form of interviews with the practitioners
themselves and sometimes with the natural enemies (for example, police bunco-
squad officers, consumer agencies) of certain of the practitioners. At other times, it
involved an intensive examination of the written materials by which compliance
techniques are passed down from one generation to another—sales manuals and the
like.
Most frequently, though, it took the form of participant observation. Participant
observation is a research approach in which the researcher becomes a spy of sorts.
With disguised identity and intent, the investigator infiltrates the setting of
interest and becomes a full-fledged participant in the group to be studied. So when I
wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of encyclopedia (or vacuum cleaner, or
portrait photography, or dance lesson) sales organizations, I would answer a
newspaper ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar
but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public relations, and
fund-raising agencies to examine their techniques. Much of the evidence
presented in this book, then, comes from my experience posing as a compliance
professional, or aspiring professional, in a large variety of organizations dedicated to
getting us to say yes.
One aspect of what I learned in this three-year period of participant observation was
most instructive. Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance
practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall within six basic
categories. Each of these categories is governed by a fundamental psychological
principle that directs human behavior and, in so doing, gives the tactics their power.
This book is organized around these six principles. The principles—reciprocation,
consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity—are each discussed in terms
of their function in the society and in terms of how their enormous force can be
commissioned by a compliance professional who deftly incorporates them into
requests
for purchases, donations, concessions, votes, or assent.1
Finally, each principle is examined as to its ability to produce a distinct kind of
automatic, mindless compliance from people, that is, a willingness to say yes without
thinking first. The evidence suggests that the ever-accelerating pace and
informational crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking
compliance more and more prevalent in the future. It will be increasingly important
for the society, therefore, to understand the how and why of automatic influence.
'it is worth noting that I have not included among the six principles the simple rule of
material self-interest: that people want to get the most and pay the least for their
choices. This omission does not stem from any perception on my part that the
desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs is unimportant in driving our
decisions. Nor does it come from any evidence that I have that compliance
professionals ignore the power of this rule. Quite the opposite: in my investigations, I
frequently
saw practitioners use (sometimes honestly, sometimes not) the compelling "I can
give you a good deal" approach. I chose not to treat the material self-interest rule
separately in this hook because I see it as a motivational given, as a goes-without-
saying factor that deserves acknowledgment, but not extensive description.
x Introduction
CHAPTER
1
Weapons of Influence
1_Weapons_of_Influence-1.jpg
1
Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without
thinking about them.
—ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
I got a phone call one day from a friend who had recently opened an Indian jewelry
store in Arizona. She was giddy with a curious piece of news. Something fascinating
had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to
explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had
been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was
unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the
prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of
standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by
shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales
staff to "push" the items hard—again without success.
Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an
exasperated note to her head saleswoman, "Everything in this display case, price x
Vi," hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she
returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been
sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the
"W in her scrawled message as a "2," the entire allotment had sold at twice the
original price!
That's when she called me. I thought I knew what had happened but told her that, if I
were to explain things properly, she would have to listen to a story of mine. Actually,
it isn't my story; it's about mother turkeys, and it belongs to the relatively
new science of ethology—the study of animals in their natural settings. Turkey
mothers are good mothers—loving, watchful, and protective. They spend much of
their time tending, warming, cleaning, and huddling their young beneath them; but
there is
something odd about their method. Virtually all of this mothering is triggered by one
thing: the "cheep-cheep" sound of young turkey chicks. Other identifying features of
the chicks, such as their smell, touch, or appearance, seem to play minor roles
in the mothering process. If a chick makes the cheep-cheep noise, its mother will care
for it; if not, the mother will ignore or sometimes kill it.
The extreme reliance of maternal turkeys upon this one sound was dramatically
illustrated by animal behaviorist M. W. Fox (1974) in his description of an experiment
involving a mother turkey and a stuffed polecat. For a mother turkey, a polecat is a
natural enemy whose approach is to be greeted with squawking, pecking, clawing
rage. Indeed, the experiments found that even a stuffed model of a polecat, when
drawn by a string to a mother turkey, received an immediate and furious attack.
When,
however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a small recorder that played the
cheep-cheep sound of baby turkeys, the mother not only accepted the oncoming
Weapons of Influence 3
polecat but gathered it underneath her. When the machine was turned off, the
polecat model again drew a vicious attack.
CLICK, WHIRR
How ridiculous a mother turkey seems under these circumstances: She will embrace a
natural enemy just because it goes cheep-cheep and she will mistreat or murder one
of her chicks just because it does not. She acts like an automaton whose maternal
instincts are under the automatic control of that single sound. The ethol-ogists tell us
that this sort of thing is far from unique to the turkey. They have begun to identify
regular, blindly mechanical patterns of action in a wide variety of species.
Called fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of behavior, such as
entire courtship or mating rituals. A fundamental characteristic of these patterns is
that the behaviors comprising them occur in virtually the same fashion and in
the same order every time. It is almost as if the patterns were recorded on tapes
within the animals. When a situation calls for courtship, a courtship tape gets played;
when a situation calls for mothering, a maternal behavior tape gets played. Click
and the appropriate tape is activated; whirr and out rolls the standard sequence of
behaviors.
The most interesting aspect of all this is the way the tapes are activated. When an
animal acts to defend its territory for instance, it is the intrusion of another animal of
the same species that cues the territorial-defense tape of rigid vigilance,
threat, and if need be, combat behaviors; however, there is a quirk in the system. It
is not the rival as a whole that is the trigger; it is, rather, some specific feature, the
trigger feature. Often the trigger feature will be just one tiny aspect of
the totality that is the approaching intruder. Sometimes a shade of color is the trigger
feature. The experiments of ethologists have shown, for instance, that a male robin,
acting as if a rival robin had entered its territory, will vigorously attack
nothing more than a clump of robin red breast feathers placed there. At the same
time, it will virtually ignore a perfect stuffed replica of a male robin without red breast
feathers (Lack, 1943). Similar results have been found in another species of
bird, the bluethroat, where it appears that the trigger for territorial defense is a
specific shade of blue breast feathers (Peipo-nen, 1960).
Before we enjoy too smugly the ease with which trigger features can trick lower
animals into reacting in ways wholly inappropriate to the situation, we should realize
two things. First, the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very
well most of the time. For example, because only normal, healthy turkey chicks make
the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond
maternally to that single cheep-cheep noise. By reacting to just that one stimulus, the
average mother turkey will nearly always behave correctly. It takes a trickster like a
2
4 Chapter 1
scientist to make her tapelike response seem silly. The second important thing to
understand is that we, too, have our preprogrammed tapes; and, although they
usually work to our advantage, the trigger features that activate them can dupe us
into
1
playing the tapes at the wrong times.
This parallel form of human automaticity is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by
social psychologist Ellen Langer and her co-workers (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz,
1978). A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to
do us a
favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have
reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a
small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: "Excuse me, I
have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I'm in a rush?" The
effectiveness of this request plus-reason was nearly total: 94 percent of those asked
let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she
made
the request only: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?"
Under those circumstances only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it
appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional
information provided by the words because I'm in a rush. However, a third type of
request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not
the whole series of words, but the first one, because, that made the difference.
Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer's third type of request used
the word because and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious:
"Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make
some
copies?" The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though
no real reason, no new information was added to justify their compliance. Just as the
cheep-cheep sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from
2
mother turkeys, even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat, so the word because
triggered an automatic compliance response from Langer's subjects, even when they
were given no subsequent reason to comply. Click, whirr.
Although some of Langer's additional findings show that there are many situations in
which human behavior does not work in a mechanical, tape-activated way, she is
convinced that most of the time it does (Langer, 1989). For instance, consider the
strange behavior of those jewelry store customers who swooped down on an
allotment of turquoise pieces only after the items had been mistakenly offered at
double their original price. I can make no sense of their behavior unless it is viewed in
click,
whirr terms.
'Although several important similarities exist between this kind of automaticity in
humans and lower animals, there are some important differences as well. The
automatic behavior patterns of humans tend to be learned rather than inborn, more
flexible
than the lock-step patterns of the lower animals, and responsive to a larger number
of triggers.
2Perhaps the common "because ... just because" response of children asked to
explain their behavior can be traced to their shrewd recognition of the unusual
amount of power adults appear to assign to the word because.
Weapons of Influence 5
1_Weapons_of_Influence-2.jpg
6 Chapter 1
The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were
using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: expensive = good.
Much research shows that people who are unsure of an item's quality often use this
stereotype (for a review, see Olson, 1977). Thus the vacationers, who wanted "good"
jewelry, saw the turquoise pieces as decidedly more valuable and desirable when
nothing about them was enhanced but the price. Price alone had become a trigger
feature
for quality, and a dramatic increase in price alone had led to a dramatic increase in
sales among the quality-hungry buyers.3
READER'S REPORT 1.1
From a Management Doctoral Student
A man who owns an antique jewelry store in my town tells a story of how he learned
the expensive = good lesson of social influence. A friend of his wanted a special
birthday present for his fiancee. So, the jeweler picked out a necklace that would
have
sold in his store for $500 but that he was willing to let his friend have for $250. As
soon as he saw it, the friend was enthusiastic about the piece. But when the jeweler
quoted the $250 price, the man's face fell, and he began backing away from the
deal because he wanted something "really nice" for his intended bride.
When a day later it dawned on the jeweler what had happened, he called his friend
and asked him to come back to the store because he had another necklace to show
him. This time, he introduced the new piece at its regular $500 price. His friend liked
it
enough to buy it on the spot. But before any money was exchanged, the jeweler told
him that, as a wedding gift, he would drop the price to $250. The man was thrilled.
Now, rather than finding the $250 sales price offensive, he was overjoyed— and
grateful—to have it.
Author's note: Notice that, as in the case of the turquoise jewelry buyers, it was
someone who wanted to be assured of good merchandise who disdained the low-
priced item. I'm confident that besides the "expensive = good" rule, there's a flip
side,
"inexpensive = bad" rule that applies to our thinking as well. After all, in English, the
word cheap doesn't just mean inexpensive; it has come to mean inferior, too.
BETTING THE SHORTCUT ODDS
It is easy to fault the tourists for their foolish purchase decisions, but a close look
offers a kinder view. These were people who had been brought up on the rule, "You
3In marketing lore, the classic case of this phenomenon is that of Chivas Regal
Scotch Whiskey, which had been a struggling brand until its managers decided to
raise its price to a level far above its competitors. Sales skyrocketed, even though
nothing
was changed in the product itself (Aaker, 1991).
Weapons of Influence 7
get what you pay for" and who had seen that rule borne out over and over in their
lives. Before long, they had translated the rule to mean expensive = good. The
expensive = good stereotype had worked quite well for them in the past, since
normally the
price of an item increases along with its worth; a higher price typically reflects higher
quality. So when they found themselves in the position of wanting good turquoise
jewelry but not having much knowledge of turquoise, they understandably relied on
the old standby feature of cost to determine the jewelry's merits (Rao & Monroe,
1989).
Although they probably did not realize it, by reacting solely to the price of the
turquoise, they were playing a shortcut version of betting the odds. Instead of
stacking all the odds in their favor by trying painstakingly to master each feature that
indicates the worth of turquoise jewelry, they were counting on just one—the one
they knew to be usually associated with the quality of any item. They were betting
that price alone would tell them all they needed to know. This time, because someone
mistook a "Vz" for a "2," they bet wrong. In the long run, over all the past and future
situations of their lives, betting those shortcut odds may represent the most rational
approach possible.
In fact, automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much human action, because
in many cases, it is the most efficient form of behaving (Gigerenzer & Goldstein,
1996), and in other cases it is simply necessary (Bodenhausen, Macrae, & Sherman,
1999; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated
environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on
this planet. To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can't be expected to recognize and
analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one
day. We haven't the time, energy, or capacity for it. Instead, we must very often use
our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key
features and then to respond without thinking when one or another of these trigger
features is present.
Sometimes the behavior that unrolls will not be appropriate for the situation, because
not even the best stereotypes and trigger features work every time. We will accept
their imperfections since there is really no other choice. Without these features
we would stand frozen—cataloging, appraising, and calibrating—as the time for action
sped by and away. From all indications, we will be relying on these stereotypes to an
even greater extent in the future. As the stimuli saturating our lives continue
to grow more intricate and variable, we will have to depend increasingly on our
shortcuts to handle them all.4
4Take, by way of illustration, the case (Zimmatore, 1983) of the automatic, mindless
consumer response to a standard trigger for buying in our society—the discount
coupon. A tire company found that mailed-out coupons which, because of a printing
error,
offered no savings to recipients produced just as much customer response as did the
error-free coupons that offered substantial savings.
8 Chapter 1
Psychologists have recently uncovered a number of mental shortcuts that we employ
in making our everyday judgments (Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Kahneman, Slovic, &
Tversky, 1982). Termed judgmental heuristics, these shortcuts operate in much the
same
fashion as the expensive = good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well
most of the time but leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes. Especially
relevant to this book are those heuristics that tell us when to believe or do what we
are told. Consider, for example, the shortcut rule that goes, "If an expert said so, it
must be true." As we will see in Chapter 6, there is an unsettling tendency in our
society to accept unthinkingly the statements and directions of individuals who
appear to be authorities on the topic. That is, rather than thinking about an expert's
arguments and being convinced (or not), we frequently ignore the arguments and
allow ourselves to be convinced just by the expert's status as "expert." This tendency
to respond mechanically to one piece of information in a situation is what we have
been calling automatic or click, whirr responding; the tendency to react on the basis
of a thorough analysis of all of the information can be referred to as controlled
responding (Chaiken & Trope, 1999).
1_Weapons_of_Influence-3.jpg
Expensive = Good (Taste)
© The New Yorker Collection 1986, by Gahan Wilson, from cartoonbank.com. All
rights reserved.
Weapons of Influence 9
Quite a lot of laboratory research has shown that people are more likely to deal with
information in a controlled fashion when they have both the desire and the ability to
analyze it carefully; otherwise, they are likely to use the easier click, whirr
approach (for reviews, see Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Petty & Wegener, 1999). For
instance, in one study (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981), students at the University
of Missouri listened to a recorded speech that supported the idea of requiring all
seniors to pass comprehensive examinations before they would be allowed to
graduate. The issue affected some of them personally, because they were told that
the exams could go into effect in the next year—before they had the chance to
graduate. Of
course, this news made them want to analyze the arguments carefully. However, for
other subjects in the study, the issue had little personal importance—because they
were told that the exams would not begin until long after they had graduated;
consequently, they had no strong need to carefully consider the argument's validity.
The study's results were quite straightforward: Those subjects with no personal stake
in the topic were primarily persuaded by the speaker's expertise in the field of
education; they used the "If an expert said so, it must be true" rule, paying little
attention to the strength of the speaker's arguments. Those subjects for whom the
issue mattered personally, on the other hand, ignored the speaker's expertise and
were persuaded primarily by the quality of the speaker's arguments.
So, it appears that when it comes to the dangerous business of click, whirr
responding, we give ourselves a safety net: We resist the seductive luxury of
registering and reacting to just a single (trigger) feature of the available information
when an
issue is important to us. No doubt this is often the case (Leippe & Elkin, 1987). Yet, I
am not fully comforted. Recall that earlier we learned that people are likely to
respond in a controlled, thoughtful fashion only when they have both the desire
and the ability to do so. I have recently become impressed by evidence suggesting
that the form and pace of modern life is not allowing us to make fully thoughtful
decisions, even on many personally relevant topics (Cohen, 1978; Milgram, 1970).
That
is, sometimes the issues may be so complicated, the time so tight, the distractions so
intrusive, the emotional arousal so strong, or the mental fatigue so deep that we are
in no cognitive condition to operate mindfully. Important topic or not, we have
5
to take the shortcut.
Perhaps nowhere is this last point driven home more dramatically than in the life-and-
death consequences of a phenomenon that airline industry officials have labeled
Captainitis (Foushee, 1984). Accident investigators from the Federal Aviation
5It's instructive that even though we often don't take a complex approach to
personally important topics, we wish our advisors—our physicians, accountants,
lawyers, and brokers—to do precisely that for us (Kahn & Baron, 1995). When feeling
overwhelmed
by a complicated and consequential choice, we still want a fully considered, point-by-
point analysis of it—an analysis we may not be able to achieve except, ironically
enough, through a shortcut: reliance on an expert.
10 Chapter 7
Administration have noted that, frequently, an obvious error made by a flight captain
was not corrected by the other crew members and resulted in a crash. It seems that,
despite the clear and strong personal importance of the issues, the crew members
were using the shortcut "If an expert says so, it must be true" rule in failing to attend
or respond to the captain's disastrous mistake (Harper, Kidera, & Cullen, 1971).
An account by John Watson, Jr., the former chairman of IBM, offers graphic evidence
of the phenomenon. During World War II, he was assigned to investigate plane
crashes in which high-ranking officers were killed or injured. One case involved a
famous
air. force general named Uzal Ent whose copilot got sick before a flight. Ent was
assigned a replacement who felt honored to be flying alongside the legendary
general. During takeoff, Ent began singing to himself, nodding in time to a song in his
head.
The new copilot interpreted the gesture as a signal to him to lift the wheels. Even
though they were going much too slowly to fly, he raised the landing gear, causing
the plane to drop immediately onto its belly. In the wreck, a propeller blade sliced
into Ent's back, severing his spine and rendering him a paraplegic. Watson (1990)
described the copilot's explanation for his action:
When I took the copilot's testimony, I asked him, "If you knew the plane wasn 't
going to fly, why did you put the gear up ? "
He said, "I thought the general wanted me to." He was stupid, (p. 117)
Stupid? In that singular set of circumstances, yes. Understandable? In the shortcut-
demanding maze of modern life, also yes.
THE PROFITEERS
It is odd that despite their current widespread use and looming future importance,
most of us know very little about our automatic behavior patterns. Perhaps that is so
precisely because of the mechanistic, unthinking manner in which they occur.
Whatever the reason, it is vital that we clearly recognize one of their properties. They
make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who does know how they work.
To understand fully the nature of our vulnerability, let us take another glance at the
work of the ethologists. It turns out that these animal behaviorists with their recorded
cheep-cheeps and their clumps of colored breast feathers are not the only
ones who have discovered how to activate the behavior tapes of various species. One
group of organisms, often termed mimics, copy the trigger features of other animals
in an attempt to trick these animals into mistakenly playing the right behavior
tapes at the wrong times. The mimics then exploit this altogether inappropriate action
for their own benefit.
Take, for example, the deadly trick played by the killer females of one genus of firefly
(Photuris) on the males of another firefly genus (Photinus). Understandably, the
Photinus males scrupulously avoid contact with the bloodthirsty Photuris fe-
Weapons of Influence 11
males. However, through centuries of natural selection, the Photuris female hunters
have located a weakness in their prey—a special blinking courtship code by which
members of the victims' species tell one another they are ready to mate. By
mimicking
the flashing mating signals of her prey, the murderess is able to feast on the bodies
of males whose triggered courtship tapes cause them to fly mechanically into death's,
not love's, embrace (Lloyd, 1965).6
In the struggle for survival, nearly every form of life has its mimics—right down to
some of the most primitive pathogens. By adopting certain critical features of useful
hormones or nutrients, these clever bacteria and viruses can gain entry into a
healthy host cell. The result is that the healthy cell eagerly and naively sweeps into
itself the causes of such diseases as rabies, mononucleosis, and the common cold
(Goodenough, 1991).7 It should come as no surprise, then, that there is a strong but
sad parallel in the human jungle. We too have profiteers who mimic trigger features
for our own brand of automatic responding. Unlike the mostly instinctive response
sequences of nonhumans, however, our automatic tapes usually develop from
psychological principles or stereotypes we have learned to accept. Although they vary
in their force, some of these principles possess a tremendous ability to direct human
action. We have been subjected to them from such an early point in our lives,
and they have moved us about so pervasively since then, that you and I rarely
perceive their power. In the eyes of others, though, each such principle is a
detectable and ready weapon, a weapon of automatic influence.
There are some people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence
lie and who employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from
social encounter to social encounter, requesting others to comply with their wishes;
their frequency of success is dazzling. The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way
that they structure their requests, the way that they arm themselves with one or
another of the weapons of influence that exist is the social environment. To do
this may take no more than one correctly chosen word that engages a strong
psychological principle and sets rolling one of our automatic behavior tapes. Trust the
Apparently, the tendency of males to be bamboozled by powerful mating signals
extends to humans. Two University of Vienna biologists, Astrid Juette and Karl
Grammer secretly exposed young men to airborne chemicals (called copulins) that
mimic human
vaginal scents. The men then rated the attractiveness of women's faces. Exposure to
the copulins increased the judged attractiveness of all the women and masked the
genuine physical attractiveness differences among them ("For Women," 1999).
7As exploitative as these creatures seem, they are topped in this respect by an insect
known as the rove beetle. By using a variety of triggers involving smell and touch,
the rove beetles get two species of ants to protect, groom, and feed them as
larvae and to harbor them for the winter as adults. Responding mechanically to the
beetles' trick trigger features, the ants treat the beetles as though they were fellow
ants. Inside the ant nests, the beetles respond to their hosts' hospitality by
eating ant eggs and young; yet they are never harmed (Holldobler, 1971).
12 Chapter 1
human profiteers to learn quickly exactly how to benefit from our tendency to
respond mechanically according to these principles.
Remember my friend the jewelry store owner? Although she benefited by accident the
first time, it did not take her long to begin exploiting the expensive = good stereotype
regularly and intentionally. Now during the tourist season, she first tries to
speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price
substantially. She claims that this is marvelously cost-effective. When it works on the
unsuspecting vacationers—as it frequently does—it results in an enormous profit
margin.
And even when it is not initially successful, she can then mark the article "Reduced"
and sell it to bargain-hunters at its original price while still taking advantage of their
expensive = good reaction to the inflated figure.
By no means is my friend original in this last use of the expensive = good rule to
snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of
the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men's tailor shop in Rosten's
neighborhood in the 1930s. Whenever Sid had a new customer trying on suits in front
of the shop's three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem and repeatedly
request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit
he liked and asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the
back of the room, "Harry, how much for this suit?" Looking up from his work— and
greatly exaggerating the suit's true price—Harry would call back, "For that
beautiful, all wool suit, forty-two dollars." Pretending not to have heard and cupping
his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, "Forty-two
dollars." At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, "He says
twenty-two dollars." Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the
shop with his expensive = good bargain before poor Sid discovered the "mistake."
JUJITSU
A woman employing the Japanese martial art form called jujitsu would use her own
strength only minimally against an opponent. Instead, she would exploit the power
inherent in such naturally present principles as gravity, leverage, momentum, and
inertia. If she knows how and where to engage the action of these principles she can
easily defeat a physically stronger rival. And so it is for the exploiters of the weapons
of automatic influence that exist naturally around us. The profiteers can
commission the power of these weapons for use against their targets while exerting
little personal force. This last feature of the process gives the profiteers an enormous
additional benefit— the ability to manipulate without the appearance of
manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see their compliance as a result of
the action of natural forces rather than the designs of the person who profits from
that compliance.
An example is in order. There is a principle in human perception, the contrast
principle, that affects the way we see the difference between two things that are pre-
Weapons of Influence 13
sented one after another. Simply put, if the second item is fairly different from the
first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is. So if we lift a light
object first and then lift a heavy object, we will estimate the second
object to be heavier than if we had lifted it without first lifting the light one. The
contrast principle is well established in the field of psychophysics and applies to all
sorts of perceptions besides weight. If we are talking to a very attractive
individual at a party and are then joined by an unattractive individual, the second will
strike us as less attractive than he or she actually is.8
Another demonstration of perceptual contrast is sometimes employed in
psychophysics laboratories to introduce students to the principle. Each student takes
a turn sitting in front of three pails of water—one cold, one at room temperature, and
one hot.
After placing one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, the student is told
to place both hands in the room-temperature water simultaneously. The look of
amused bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though both
hands
are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold water feels as if it is now
in hot water, while the one that was in the hot water feels as if it is now in cold water.
The point is that the same thing—in this instance, room-temperature water—
can be made to seem very different depending on the nature of the event that
precedes it.
Be assured that the nice little weapon of influence provided by the contrast principle
does not go unexploited. The great advantage of this principle is not only that it
works but also that it is virtually undetectable. Those who employ it can cash in
on its influence without any appearance of having structured the situation in their
favor. Retail clothiers are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men's
store and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you were
the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him likely to spend the
most money? Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first.
Common sense might suggest the reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to
purchase a suit, he may be reluctant to spend much more on the purchase of a
sweater; but the clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with what the
contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to
look at
sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison. The
same principle applies to a man who wishes to buy the accessories (shirt, shoes, belt)
to go along with his new suit. Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence
supports the contrast principle prediction. According to sales motivation analysts
8Some researchers warn that the unrealistically attractive people portrayed in the
popular media (actors, actresses, models) may cause us to be less satisfied with the
looks of the genuinely available romantic possibilities around us. For instance, one
study demonstrated that exposure to the exaggerated sexual attractiveness of nude
pinup bodies (in such magazines as Playboy and Play girl) causes people to become
less pleased with the sexual desirability of their current spouse or live-in mate
(Kenrick, Gutierres, & Goldberg, 1989).
14 Chapter 1
1_Weapons_of_Influence-4.jpg
Whitney, Hubin, and Murphy (1965), "The interesting thing is that even when a man
enters a clothing store with the express purpose of purchasing a suit, he will almost
always pay more for whatever accessories he buys if he buys them after the suit
purchase than before."
It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first; to fail
to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle and will also cause the
principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first
and following it with an expensive one will make the expensive item seem even more
costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations. So,
just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear to be hotter or colder
depending on the temperature of previously presented water, it is possible to make
the price of the same item seem higher or lower depending on the price of a
previously presented item.
Clever use of perceptual contrast is by no means confined to clothiers. (See Figure
1.1.) I came across a technique that engaged the contrast principle while I was
investigating, undercover, the compliance tactics of real estate companies. To "learn
the ropes," I accompanied a salesman on a weekend of showing houses to
prospective home buyers. The salesman—we can call him Phil—was to give me tips to
help me through my break-in period. One thing I quickly noticed was that whenever
Phil began
showing a new set of customers potential buys, he would start with a couple of
undesirable houses. I asked him about it, and he laughed. They were what he called
"setup" properties. The company maintained a run-down house or two on its lists at
inflated prices. These houses were not intended to be sold to customers but only to
be shown to them, so that the genuine properties in the company's inventory would
benefit from the comparison. Not all the sales staff made use of the setup houses, but
Phil did. He said he liked to watch his prospects' "eyes light up" when
Weapons of Influence
15
1_Weapons_of_Influence-5.jpg
16 Chapter 1
he showed the places he really wanted to sell them after they had seen the rundown
houses. "The house I got them spotted for looks really great after they've first looked
at a couple of dumps."
Automobile dealers use the contrast principle by waiting until the price of a car has
been negotiated before suggesting one option after another. In the wake of a many-
thousand-dollar deal, the hundred or so dollars extra for a nicety like a CD player
seems almost trivial in comparison. The same will be true of the added expense of
accessories like tinted windows, dual side-view mirrors, better tires, or special trim
that the dealer might suggest in sequence. The trick is to bring up the options
independently of one another so that each small price will seem petty when compared
to the already determined much larger price. As veteran car buyers can attest, many
a budget-sized final price figure has ballooned out of proportion from the addition
of all those seemingly little options. While the customers stand, signed contract in
hand, wondering what happened and finding no one to blame but themselves, the car
dealer stands smiling the knowing smile of the jujitsu master.
READER'S REPORT 1.2
From a University of Chicago Business School Student
While waiting to board a flight at O'Hare, I heard a desk agent announce that the
flight was overbooked and that, if passengers were willing to take a later plane, they
would be compensated with a voucher worth $10,000! Of course, this exaggerated
amount was a joke. It was supposed to make people laugh. It did. But I noticed that
when he then revealed the actual offer (a $200 voucher), there were no takers. In
fact, he had to raise the offer twice, to $300 and then $500, before he got any
volunteers. I was reading your book at the time, and I realized that, although he got
his laugh, according to the contrast principle he screwed up. He'd arranged things so
that compared to $10,000, a couple hundred bucks seemed like a pittance. That
was an expensive laugh. It cost his airline an extra $300 per volunteer.
Author's note: Any ideas on how the desk agent could have used the contrast
principle to his advantage rather than his detriment? Perhaps he could have started
with a $5 joke offer and then revealed the true (and now much more attractive-
sounding) $200
amount. Under those circumstances, I'm pretty sure he would have secured his laugh
and his volunteers.
SUMMARY
Ethologists, researchers who study animal behavior in the natural environment, have
noticed that among many animal species behavior often occurs in rigid and
Weapons of Influence 17
mechanical patterns. Called fixed-action patterns, these mechanical behavior
sequences are noteworthy in their similarity to certain automatic (click, whirr)
responding by humans. For both humans and subhumans, the automatic behavior
patterns tend to
be triggered by a single feature of the relevant information in the situation. This
single feature, or trigger feature, can often prove very valuable by allowing an
individual to decide on a correct course of action without having to analyze carefully
and completely each of the other pieces of information in the situation.
• The advantage of such shortcut responding lies in its efficiency and economy; by
reacting automatically to a usually informative trigger feature, an individual preserves
crucial time, energy, and mental capacity. The disadvantage of such responding
lies in its vulnerability to silly and costly mistakes; by reacting to only a piece of the
available information (even a normally predictive piece), an individual increases the
chances of error, especially when responding in an automatic, mindless
fashion. The chances of error increase even further when other individuals seek to
profit by arranging (through manipulation of trigger features) to stimulate a desired
behavior at inappropriate times.
• Much of the compliance process (wherein one person is spurred to comply with
another person's request) can be understood in terms of a human tendency for
automatic, shortcut responding. Most individuals in our culture have developed a set
of trigger
features for compliance, that is, a set of specific pieces of information that normally
tell us when compliance with a request is likely to be correct and beneficial. Each of
these trigger features for compliance can be used like a weapon (of
influence) to stimulate people to agree to requests.
STUDY QUESTIONS_____________________________________
Content Mastery
1. What are fixed-action patterns among animals? How are they similar to some types
of human functioning? How are they different?
2. What makes automatic responding in humans so attractive? So dangerous?
3. What are the three components of a weapon of automatic influence?
Critical Thinking
1. Suppose you were an attorney representing a woman who broke her leg in a
department store and was suing the store for $10,000 in damages. Knowing only
what you do about perceptual contrast, what could you do during the trial to make
the jury see
$10,000 as a reasonable, even small, award?
18 Chapter /
2. The charity request card in Figure 1.2 seems rather ordinary except for the odd
sequencing of the donation request amounts. Explain why, according to the contrast
principle, placing the smallest donation figure between two larger figures is an
effective tactic to prompt more and larger donations.
3. What points do the following quotes make about the dangers of click-whirr
responding?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are sometimes right." Winston
Churchill
4. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
1_Weapons_of_Influence-6.jpg
CHAPTER
2
Reciprocation
The Old Give and Take . and Take
2_Reciprocation-1.jpg
19
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Several years ago, a university professor tried a little experiment. He sent Christmas
cards to a sample of perfect strangers. Although he expected some reaction, the
response he received was amazing—holiday cards addressed to him came pouring
back
from people who had never met nor heard of him. The great majority of those who
returned cards never inquired into the identity of the unknown professor. They
received his holiday greeting card, click, and whirr, they automatically sent cards in
return
(Kunz & Woolcott, 1976).
While small in scope, this study shows the action of one of the most potent of the
weapons of influence around us—the rule of reciprocation. The rule says that we
should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If a woman does
us a
favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we
should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party,
we should be sure to invite them to one of ours. By virtue of the reciprocity rule,
then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and the
like. So typical is it for indebtedness to accompany the receipt of such things that a
phrase like "much obliged" has become a synonym for "thank you," not only in
the English language but in others as well.
The impressive aspect of reciprocation with its accompanying sense of obligation is its
pervasiveness in human culture. It is so widespread that, after intensive study, Alvin
Gouldner (1960), along with other sociologists, report that all human
1
societies subscribe to the rule. Within each society it seems pervasive also; it
permeates exchanges of every kind. Indeed, it may well be that a developed system
of indebtedness flowing from the rule of reciprocation is a unique property of human
culture. The noted archaeologist Richard Leakey ascribes the essence of what makes
us human to the reciprocity system. He claims that we are human because our
ancestors learned to share food and skills "in an honored network of obligation"
(Leakey &
Lewin, 1978). Cultural anthropologists view this "web of indebtedness" as a unique
adaptive mechanism of human beings, allowing for the division of labor, the exchange
of diverse forms of goods and different services, and the creation of
Certain societies have formalized the rule into ritual. Consider for example the Vartan
Bhanji, an institutionalized custom of gift exchange common to parts of Pakistan and
India. In commenting upon the Vartan Bhanji, Gouldner (1960) remarks:
It is . .. notable that the system painstakingly prevents the total elimination of
outstanding obligations. Thus, on the occasion of a marriage, departing guests are
given gifts of sweets. In weighing them out, the hostess may say, "These five are
yours," meaning "These are a repayment for what you formerly gave me," and then
she adds an extra measure, saying, "These are mine." On the next occasion, she will
receive these back along with an additional measure which she later returns, and so
on.
(p. 175)
20
Reciprocation 21
interdependencies that bind individuals together into highly efficient units (Ridley,
1997; Tiger & Fox, 1989).
It is a sense of future obligation that is critical to produce social advances of the sort
described by Tiger and Fox. A widely shared and strongly held feeling of future
obligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution because it meant
that one person could give something (for example, food, energy, care) to another
with confidence that the gift was not being lost. For the first tune in evolutionary
history, one individual could give away any of a variety of resources without
actually giving them away. The result was the lowering of the natural inhibitions
against transactions that must be begun by one person's providing personal resources
to another. Sophisticated and coordinated systems of aid, gift giving, defense, and
trade became possible, bringing immense benefits to the societies that possessed
them. With such clearly adaptive consequences for the culture, it is not surprising
that the rule for reciprocation is so deeply implanted in us by the process of
socialization we all undergo. I know of no better illustration of the way reciprocal
obligations can reach long and powerfully into the future than the perplexing story of
$5,000 of relief aid that was exchanged between Mexico and Ethiopia. In 1985,
Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its
economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and
internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and
starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a
$5,000 relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember
my feeling of amazement, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading
insisted
that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red
Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year's earthquakes in
Mexico City.
It is both a personal bane and a professional blessing that whenever I am confused
by some aspect of human behavior, I feel driven to investigate further. In this
instance, I was able to track down a fuller account of the story. Fortunately, a
journalist who had been as bewildered as I by the Ethiopians' actions had asked for
an explanation. The answer he received offered eloquent validation of the reciprocity
rule: Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent
to Mexico because, in 1935, Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia when it was invaded by
Italy ("Ethiopian Red Cross," 1985). So informed, I remained awed, but I was no
longer puzzled. The need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural differences,
long
distances, acute famine, many years, and immediate self-interest. Quite simply, a
half-century later, against all countervailing forces, obligation triumphed.
HOW THE RULE WORKS
Make no mistake, human societies derive a truly significant competitive advantage
from the reciprocity rule and, consequently, they make sure their members are
trained to comply with and believe in it. Each of us has been taught to live up to the
rule,
22 Chapter 2
and each of us knows the social sanctions and derision applied to anyone who violates
it. Because there is a general distaste for those who take and make no effort to give
in return, we will often go to great lengths to avoid being considered a
moocher, ingrate, or freeloader. It is to those lengths that we will often be taken and,
in the process, be "taken" by individuals who stand to gain from our indebtedness.
To understand how the rule of reciprocation can be exploited by one who recognizes it
as the weapon of influence it certainly is, we might closely examine an experiment
conducted by psychologist Dennis Regan (1971). A subject who participated in the
study rated, along with another subject, the quality of some paintings as part of an
experiment on "art appreciation." The other rater—we can call him Joe—was only
posing as a fellow subject and was actually Dr. Regan's assistant. For our purposes,
the
experiment took place under two different conditions. In some cases, Joe did a small,
unsolicited favor for the true subject. During a short rest period, Joe left the room for
a couple of minutes and returned with two bottles of Coca-Cola, one for the
subject and one for himself, saying "I asked him [the experimenter] if I could get
myself a Coke, and he said it was OK, so I bought one for you, too." In other cases,
Joe did not provide the subject with a favor; he simply returned from the two-minute
break empty-handed. In all other respects, however, Joe behaved identically.
Later on, after the paintings had all been rated and the experimenter had
momentarily left the room, Joe asked the subject to do him a favor. He indicated that
he was selling raffle tickets for a new car and that if he sold the most tickets, he
would
win a $50 prize. Joe's request was for the subject to buy some raffle tickets at 25
cents apiece: "Any would help, the more the better." The major finding of the study
concerns the number of tickets subjects purchased from Joe under the two conditions.
Without question, Joe was more successful in selling his raffle tickets to the subjects
who had received his earlier favor. Apparently feeling that they owed him something,
these subjects bought twice as many tickets as the subjects who had not been
given the prior favor. Although the Regan study represents a fairly simple
demonstration of the workings of the rule of reciprocation, it illustrates several
important characteristics of the rule that, upon further consideration, help us to
understand
how it may be profitably used.
The Rule Is Overpowering
One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device for gaining
another's compliance is its power. The rule possesses awesome strength, often
producing a yes response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of
indebtedness, would have surely been refused. Some evidence of how the rule's force
can overpower the influence of other factors that normally determine compliance with
a request can be seen in a second result of the Regan study. Besides his interest
in the impact of the reciprocity rule on compliance, Regan was also investigating how
liking for a person affects the tendency to comply with that person's request. To mea-
Reciprocation 23
sure how liking toward Joe affected the subjects' decisions to buy his raffle tickets,
Regan had them fill out several rating scales indicating how much they had liked Joe.
He then compared their liking responses with the number of tickets they had
purchased from Joe. There was a significant tendency for subjects to buy more raffle
tickets from Joe the more they liked him. This alone is hardly a startling finding, since
most of us would have guessed that people are more willing to do a favor for
someone they like.
The interesting finding of the Regan experiment, however, was that the relationship
between liking and compliance was completely wiped out in the condition under which
subjects had been given a Coke by Joe. For those who owed him a favor, it made no
difference whether they liked him or not; they felt a sense of obligation to repay him,
and they did. The subjects who indicated that they disliked Joe bought just as many
of his tickets as did those who indicated that they liked him. The rule for
reciprocity was so strong that it simply overwhelmed the influence of a factor— liking
for the requester—that normally affects the decision to comply.
Think of the implications. People we might ordinarily dislike—unsavory or unwelcome
sales operators, disagreeable acquaintances, representatives of strange or unpopular
organizations—can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely
by providing us with a small favor prior to their requests. Let's take a recent historical
example. The Hare Krishna Society is an Eastern religious sect with centuries-old
roots traceable to the Indian city of Calcutta. Its spectacular modern-day
story occurred in the 1970s when it experienced a remarkable growth, not only in
followers, but also in wealth and property. The economic growth was funded through
a variety of activities, the principal and most visible of which was society members'
requests for donations from passers by in public places. During the early history of
the group in this country, the solicitation for contributions was attempted in a fashion
memorable for anyone who saw it. Groups of Krishna devotees—often with shaved
heads, and wearing ill-fitting robes, leg wrappings, beads, and bells— would canvass
a city street, chanting and bobbing in unison while begging for funds.
Although highly effective as an attention-getting technique, this practice did not work
especially well for fund-raising. The average American considered the Krishnas weird,
to say the least, and was reluctant to provide money to support them. It
quickly became clear to the society that it had a considerable public-relations
problem. The people being asked for contributions did not like the way the members
looked, dressed, or acted. Had the society been an ordinary commercial organization,
the
solution would have been simple—change the things the public does not like. The
Krishnas are a religious organization, however, and the way members look, dress,
and act is partially tied to religious factors. Since religious factors are typically
resistant to change because of worldly considerations, the Krishna leadership was
faced with a real dilemma. On the one hand were beliefs, modes of dress, and
hairstyles that had religious significance. On the other, and threatening the
organization's
financial welfare, were the less-than-positive feelings of the American public toward
these things. What's a sect to do?
24 Chapter 2
Reciprocation 25
The Krishnas' resolution was brilliant. They switched to a fund-raising tactic that
made it unnecessary for their targets to have positive feelings toward the fundraisers.
They began to employ a donation-request procedure that engaged the rule for
reciprocation, which, as demonstrated by the Regan study, was strong enough to
overcome dislike for the requester. The new strategy still involved the solicitation of
contributions in public places with much pedestrian traffic (airports were a
favorite), but, before a donation was requested, the target person was given a "gift"—
a book
2_Reciprocation-2.jpg
(usually the Bhagavod Gita), the Back to Godhead magazine of the society, or, in the
most cost-effective version, a flower. The unsuspecting passersby who suddenly
found flowers pressed into their hands or pinned to their jackets were under no
circumstances allowed to give them back, even if they asserted that they did not want
them. "No, it is our gift to you," said the solicitor, refusing to take it back. Only after
the Krishna member had thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to
bear on the situation was the target asked to provide a contribution to the society.
This bene-factor-before-beggar strategy was wildly successful for the Hare Krishna
Society, producing large-scale economic gains and funding, the ownership of temples,
businesses, houses, and property in 321 centers in the United States and abroad.
As an aside, it is instructive that the reciprocation rule has outlived its usefulness for
the Krishnas, not because the rule itself has become any less potent societally, but
because we have found ways to prevent the Krishnas from using it on us.
After once falling victim to their tactic, many travelers became alert to the presence
of robed Krishna Society solicitors in airports and train stations, adjusting their paths
to avoid an encounter and preparing beforehand to ward off a solicitor's
"gift." Although the society tried to counter this increased vigilance by instructing
members to be dressed and groomed in modern styles to avoid immediate
recognition when soliciting (some actually carried flight bags or suitcases), even
disguise did
not work especially well for the Krishnas. Too many individuals now know better than
to accept unrequested offerings in public places such as airports. In addition, after a
flood of complaints, airports began banning the Society's fund-raising efforts
from their premises.
As a result, the Krishnas experienced a severe financial reversal. In North America,
nearly 30 percent of their temples have been closed for economic reasons, and the
number of devotees staffing the remaining temples has plummeted from a high of
5,000
to an estimated 800. The Krishnas are a resilient group, though. Officials admit that
the organization is struggling to maintain its long-standing presence in North
America, but they report that it is thriving in the newly opened "markets" of Eastern
Europe—where, apparently, people haven't yet caught on to the Krishnas' strategic
benevolence.
Although the Krishnas have moved on to "greener" pastures, we would be foolish to
think that they've taken all the effective reciprocation tactics with them. Survey
researchers have discovered that sending a monetary gift (a silver dollar or a $5
check) in an envelope with a mailed questionnaire greatly increases survey
completion rates, compared to offering the same monetary amount as an after-the-
fact reward (Church, 1993; Warriner, Goyder, Gjertsen, Horner, & McSpurren, 1996).
Indeed, one
study showed that mailing a $5 "gift" check along with an insurance survey was twice
as effective as offering a $50 payment for sending back a completed survey (James &
Bolstein, 1992). Similarly, food servers have learned that simply giving customers
a candy or mint along with their bill significantly increases tips (Lynn & McCall, 1998).
In general, business operators have found that, after accepting a gift, customers are
willing to purchase products and services they would have otherwise declined
(Gruner, 1996).
26 Chapter 2
It appears that the give-and-take of social interaction is recognized well before
adulthood. One fifth-grade teacher wrote to me about a test she gives her students
on the proper use of the past, present, and future tenses. To the question, The future
of "I give" is_____?, one enterprising young man wrote, "I take." He may have gotten
that particular grammatical rule wrong, but he got a larger societal rule precisely
right.
Politics
Politics is another arena in which the power of the reciprocity rule shows itself.
Reciprocation tactics appear at every level:
• At the top, elected officials engage in "logrolling" and the exchange of favors that
makes politics the place of strange bedfellows, indeed. The out-of-character vote of
one of our elected representatives on a bill or measure can often be understood
as a favor returned to the bill's sponsor. Political analysts were amazed at Lyndon
Johnson's success in getting so many of his programs through Congress during his
early administration. Even members of Congress who were thought to be strongly
opposed
to the proposals were voting for them. Close examination by political scientists has
found the cause to be not so much Johnson's political savvy as the large score of
favors he had been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of
power in the House and Senate. As president, he was able to produce a truly
remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in those favors. It is
interesting that this same process may account for the problems Jimmy Carter had in
getting
his programs through Congress during his early administration, despite heavy
Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Carter came to the presidency
from outside the Capitol Hill establishment. He campaigned on his outside-
Washington
identity, saying that he was indebted to no one. Much of his legislative difficulty upon
arriving may be traced to the fact that no one there was indebted to him. Much the
same may be said about the first-term legislation record of Washington outsider
Bill Clinton.
• At another level, we can see the recognized strength of the reciprocity rule in the
desire of corporations and individuals to provide judicial and legislative officials with
gifts and favors and in the series of legal restrictions against such gifts
and favors. Even with legitimate political contributions, the stockpiling of obligations
often underlies the stated purpose of supporting a favorite candidate. One look at the
lists of companies and organizations that contribute to the campaigns of
both major candidates in important elections gives evidence of such motives. A
skeptic, requiring direct evidence of the quid pro quo expected by political
contributors, might look to the remarkably bald-faced admission by businessman
Roger Tamraz at
congressional hearings on campaign finance reform. When asked if he felt he received
a good return on his contribution of $300,000, he smiled and replied, "I think next
time, I'll give $600,000."
Reciprocation 27
Honesty of this sort is rare in politics. For the most part, the givers and takers join
voices to dismiss the idea that campaign contributions, free trips, and Super Bowl
tickets would bias the opinions of "sober, conscientious" government officials.
As the head of one lobbying organization insisted, there is no cause for concern
because "These [government officials] are smart, mature, sophisticated men and
women at the top of their professions, disposed by training to be discerning, critical,
and
alert" (Barker, 1998). And, of course, the politicians concur. Regularly, we hear them
proclaiming total independence from the feelings of obligation that influence everyone
else. One of my own state representatives left no room for doubt when
describing his accountability to gift-givers, "It gets them exactly what it gets
everybody else: nothing" (Foster, 1991).
Excuse me if I, as a scientist, laugh. Sober, conscientious scientists know better. One
reason they know better is that these "smart, mature, sophisticated men and women
at the top of their [scientific] professions" have found themselves to be as
susceptible as anyone else to the process. Take the case of the medical controversy
surrounding the safety of calcium-channel blockers, a class of drugs for heart disease.
One study discovered that 100 percent of the scientists who found and published
results supportive of the drugs had received prior support (free trips, research
funding, or employment) from the pharmaceutical companies; but only 37 percent of
those critical of the drugs had received any such prior support (Stelfox, Chua,
O'Rourke,
& Detsky, 1998). If scientists, "disposed by training to be discerning, critical, and
alert," can be swayed by the insistent undertow of exchange, we should fully expect
that politicians will be, too. Elected and appointed officials often see
themselves as immune to the rules that apply to rest of us—parking regulations and
the like. But, to indulge them in this conceit when it comes to the rule of reciprocity is
not only laughable, it's dangerous.
The Not-So-Free Sample
Of course, the power of reciprocity can be found in the merchandising field as well.
Although the number of examples is large, let's examine a pair of familiar ones. As a
marketing technique, the free sample has a long and effective history. In most
instances, a small amount of the relevant product is given to potential customers to
see if they like it. Certainly this is a legitimate desire of the manufacturer—to expose
the public to the qualities of the product. The beauty of the free sample,
however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule. In true
jujitsu fashion, a promoter who provides free samples can release the natural in-
debting force inherent in a gift, while innocently appearing to have only the
intention to inform.
A favorite place for free samples is the supermarket, where customers are frequently
given small amounts of a certain product to try. Many people find it difficult to accept
samples from the always smiling attendant, return only the toothpicks or cups,
and walk away. Instead, they buy some of the product, even if they might not have
liked it very much. A highly effective variation on this marketing procedure is
28 Chapter 2
2_Reciprocation-3.jpg
illustrated in the case, cited by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders (1957), of
the Indiana supermarket operator who sold an astounding 1,000 pounds of cheese in
a few hours one day by putting out the cheese and inviting customers to cut off
slivers for themselves as free samples.
A different version of the free-sample tactic is used by the Amway Corporation, a
rapid-growth company that manufacturers and distributes household and personal-
Reciprocation 29
care products in a vast national network of door-to-door neighborhood sales. The
company, which has grown from a basement-run operation to a $1.5 billion yearly
sales business, makes use of the free sample in a device called the BUG. The BUG
consists
of a collection of Amway products—bottles of furniture polish, detergent, or shampoo,
spray containers of deodorizers, insect killers, or window cleaners— carried to a
customer's home in a specially designed tray or just a polyethylene bag. The
confidential Amway Career Manual then instructs the salesperson to leave the BUG
with the customer "for 24,48, or 72 hours, at no cost or obligation to her. Just tell her
you would like her to try the products.... That's an offer no one can refuse." At
the end of the trial period, the Amway representative is to return and pick up orders
for the products the customer wishes to purchase. Since few customers use up the
entire contents of even one of the product containers in such a short time, the
salesperson may then take the remaining product portions in the BUG to the next
potential customer down the line or across the street and start the process again.
Many Amway representatives have several BUGS circulating in their districts at one
time.
Of course, by now you and I know that the customer who has accepted and used the
BUG products has been trapped by the reciprocity rule. Many such customers yield to
a sense of obligation to order the products that they have tried and partially
consumed
—and, of course, by now the Amway Corporation knows that to be the case. Even in a
company with as excellent a growth record as Amway, the BUG device has created a
big stir. Reports by state distributors to the parent company record a remarkable
effect:
Unbelievable! We've never seen such excitement. Product is moving at an
unbelievable rate, and we've only just begun. . .. Local distributors took the BUGS,
and we've had an unbelievable increase in sales [from Illinois distributor]. The most
fantastic
retail idea we've ever had!. . . On the average, customers purchased about half the
total amount of the BUG when it is picked up.... In one word, tremendous! We've
never seen a response within our entire organization like this [from Massachusetts
distributor].
The Amway distributors appear to be bewildered—happily so, but nonetheless
bewildered—by the startling power of the BUG. Of course, by now you and I should
not be.
The reciprocity rule governs many situations of a purely interpersonal nature where
neither money nor commercial exchange is at issue. Perhaps my favorite illustration
of the enormous force available from the reciprocation weapon of influence comes
from such a situation. The European scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1975) provides the
account of a German soldier during World War I whose job was to capture enemy
soldiers for interrogation. Because of the nature of the trench warfare at that time, it
was
extremely difficult for armies to cross the no-man's-land between opposing front
lines, but it was not so difficult for a single soldier to crawl across and slip into an
30 Chapter 2
enemy trench position. The armies of the Great War had experts who regularly did so
to capture enemy soldiers, who would then be brought back for questioning. The
German expert had often successfully completed such missions in the past and was
sent on
another. Once again, he skillfully negotiated the area between fronts and surprised a
lone enemy soldier in his trench. The unsuspecting soldier, who had been eating at
the time, was easily disarmed. The frightened captive, with only a piece of bread
in his hand, then performed what may have been the most important act of his life.
He gave his enemy some of the bread. So affected was the German by this gift that
he could not complete his mission. He turned from his benefactor and recrossed the
no-
man's-land empty-handed to face the wrath of his superiors.
An equally compelling point regarding the power of reciprocity comes from an account
of a woman who saved her own life, not by giving a gift as did the captured soldier,
but by refusing a gift and the powerful obligations that went with it. In November
1978 Jim Jones the leader of Jonestown, Guyana, called for the mass suicide of all
residents, most of whom compliantly drank and died from a vat of poison-laced Kool-
Aid. Diane Louie, a resident, however, rejected Jones's command and made her way
out
of Jonestown and into the jungle. She attributes her willingness to do so to her earlier
refusal to accept special favors from him when she was in need. She turned down his
offer of special food while she was ill, because "I knew once he gave me those
privileges, he'd have me. I didn't want to owe him nothin' " (Anderson & Zimbardo,
1984).
The Rule Enforces Uninvited Debts
Earlier we suggested that the power of the reciprocity rule is such that, by first doing
us a favor, strange, disliked, or unwelcome others can enhance the chance that we
will comply with one of their requests. However, there is another aspect of the
rule, in addition to its power, that allows this phenomenon to occur. A person can
trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor (Paese & Gilin, 2000).
Recall that the rule states only that we should provide to others the kind of
actions they have provided us; it does not require us to have asked for what we have
received in order to feel obligated to repay. For instance, the American Disabled
Veterans organization reports that its simple mail appeal for donations produces a
response rate of about 18 percent. But when the mailing also includes an unsolicited
gift (gummed, individualized address labels), the success rate nearly doubles to 35
percent. This is not to say that we might not feel a stronger sense of obligation
to return a favor we have requested, but such a request is not necessary to produce
our feeling of indebtedness.
If we reflect for a moment about the social purpose of the reciprocity rule, we can see
why this is the case. The rule was established to promote the development of
reciprocal relationships between individuals so that one person could initiate such a
relationship without the fear of loss. If the rule is to serve that purpose, then an un-
Reciprocation 31
invited first favor must have the ability to create an obligation. Recall, also, that
reciprocal relationships confer an extraordinary advantage upon cultures that foster
them and that, consequently, there will be strong pressures to ensure that the
rule does serve its purpose. Little wonder, then, that influential French anthropologist
Marcel Mauss (1954), in describing the social pressures surrounding the gift-giving
process in human culture, says that there is an obligation to give, an
obligation to receive, and an obligation to repay.
Although an obligation to repay constitutes the essence of the reciprocity rule, it is
the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. An obligation to
receive reduces our ability to choose those to whom we wish to be indebted and
puts the power in the hands of others. Let's reexamine a pair of earlier examples to
see how the process works. First, in the Regan study, we find that the favor causing
subjects to double the number of raffle tickets purchased from Joe was not one
they had requested. Joe had voluntarily left the room and returned with one Coke for
himself and one for the subject. There was not a single subject who refused the Coke.
It is easy to see why it would have been awkward to turn down Joe's favor: Joe
had already spent his money; a soft drink was an appropriate favor in the situation,
especially since Joe had one himself; it would have been considered impolite to reject
Joe's thoughtful action. Nevertheless, receipt of that Coke produced a feeling
of indebtedness that became clear when Joe announced his desire to sell some raffle
tickets. Notice the important asymmetry here—all the genuinely free choices were
Joe's. He chose the form of the initial favor, and he chose the form of the return
favor. Of course, one could say that the subject had the choice of refusing both of
Joe's offers, but those would have been tough choices. To have said no at either point
would have required the subject to go against the natural cultural forces
favoring reciprocation.
The extent to which even an unwanted favor, once received, can produce
indebtedness is aptly illustrated in the soliciting technique of the Hare Krishna
Society. During systematic observation of the Krishnas' soliciting strategy, I recorded
a variety
of responses from target persons. One of the most regular was as follows:
An airport visitor—a businessman—is hurriedly walking along through a densely
peopled area. The Krishna solicitor steps in front of him and hands him a flower. The
man, reacting with surprise, takes it.2 Almost immediately,
2Surprise is an effective compliance producer in its own right. People who are
surprised by a request will often comply because they are momentarily unsure of
themselves and, consequently, influenced easily. For example, social psychologists
Stanley
Milgram and John Sabini (1975) have shown that people riding on the New York
subway were twice as likely to give up their seats to a person who surprised them
with the request, "Excuse me. May I have your seat?" than to one who forewarned
them first by
mentioning to a fellow passenger that he or she was thinking of asking for someone's
seat (56 versus 28 percent).
32 Chapter 2
he tries to give it back, saying he does not want the flower. The Krishna member
responds that it is a gift from the Krishna Society and that it is the man's to keep . . .
however, a donation to further the Society's good works would be appreciated.
Again the target protests, "I don't want this flower. Here, take it." And again the
solicitor refuses, "It's our gift to you, sir." There is visible conflict on the
businessman's face. Should he keep the flower and walk away without giving
anything in
return, or should he yield to the pressure of the deeply ingrained reciprocity rule and
provide a contribution? By now, the conflict has spread from his face to his posture.
He leans away from his benefactor, seemingly about to break free, only to be
drawn back again by the pull of the rule. Once more his body tilts away, but it's no
use; he cannot disengage. With a nod of resignation, he fishes in his pocket and
comes up with a dollar or two that is graciously accepted. Now he can walk away
freely, and he does, "gift" in hand, until he encounters a waste container—where he
throws the flower, with force.
Purely by accident, I happened to witness a scene that demonstrates that the
Krishnas know very well how frequently their gifts are unwanted by the people who
receive them. While spending a day observing a soliciting Krishna group at Chicago's
O'Hare
International Airport a few years ago, I noticed that one of the group members would
frequently leave the central area and return with more flowers to resup-ply her
companions. As it happened, I had decided to take a break just as she was leaving on
one of her supply missions. Having nowhere to go, I followed her. Her journey turned
out to be a garbage route. She went from trash can to trash can beyond the
immediate area to retrieve all the flowers that had been discarded by Krishna targets.
She
then returned with the cache of recovered flowers (some that had been recycled who
knows how many times) and distributed them to be profitably cycled through the
reciprocation process once more. What really impressed me about all this was that
most of
the discarded flowers had brought donations from the people who had cast them
away. The nature of the reciprocity rule is such that a gift so unwanted that it was
thrown away at the first opportunity had nonetheless been effective and exploitable.
The ability of uninvited gifts to produce feelings of obligation is recognized by a
variety of organizations besides the Krishnas. How many times has each of us
received small gifts through the mail—personalized address labels, greeting cards,
key
rings—from charitable agencies that ask for funds in an accompanying note? I have
received five in just the past year, two from disabled veterans' groups and the others
from missionary schools and hospitals. In each case, there was a common thread in
the accompanying message. The goods that were enclosed were to be considered a
gift from the organization; and money I wished to send should not be regarded as
payment but rather as a return offering. As the letter from one of the missionary
programs
stated, the packet of greeting cards I had been sent was not to be directly paid for
Reciprocation 33
but was designed "to encourage your [my] kindness." If we look past the obvious tax
advantage, we can see why it would be beneficial for the organization to have the
cards viewed as a gift instead of merchandise: There is a strong cultural pressure to
reciprocate a gift, even an unwanted one; but there is no such pressure to purchase
an unwanted commercial product.
The Rule Can Trigger Unequal Exchanges
There is yet another feature of the reciprocity rule that allows it to be exploited for
profit. Paradoxically, although the rule developed to promote equal exchanges
between partners, it can be used to bring about decidedly unequal results. The rule
demands that one sort of action be reciprocated with a similar sort of action. A favor
is to be met with another favor; it is not to be met with neglect and certainly not with
attack; however, considerable flexibility is allowed. A small initial favor
can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a substantially larger return favor.
Since, as we have already seen, the rule allows one person to choose the nature of
the indebting first favor and the nature of the debt-canceling return favor, we could
easily be manipulated into an unfair exchange by those who might wish to exploit the
rule.
Once again, we turn to the Regan experiment for evidence. Remember in that study,
Joe gave one group of subjects a bottle of Coca-Cola as an initiating gift and later
asked all subjects to buy some of his raffle tickets at 25 cents apiece. What I have
so far neglected to mention is that the study was done in the late 1960s, when the
price of a Coke was a dime. On the average, subjects who had been given a 10-cent
drink bought two of Joe's raffle tickets, although some bought as many as seven.
Even
if we look just at the average, though, we can tell that Joe made quite a deal. A 500
percent return on investment is respectable indeed!
In Joe's case, though, even a 500 percent return amounted to only 50 cents. Can the
reciprocity rule produce meaningfully large differences in the sizes of the exchanged
favors? Under the right circumstances, it certainly can. Take, for instance, the
account of a student of mine concerning a day she remembers ruefully.
About one year ago, I couldn't start my car. As I was sitting there, a guy in the
parking lot came over and eventually jump-started the car. I said thanks, and he said
you 're welcome; as he was leaving, I said that if he ever needed a favor to stop
by. About a month later, the guy knocked on my door and asked to borrow my car for
two hours as his was in the shop. I felt somewhat obligated but uncertain, since the
car was pretty new and he looked very young. Later, I found out that he was
underage
and had no insurance. Anyway, I lent him the car. He totaled it.
How could it happen that an intelligent young woman would agree to turn over her
new car to a virtual stranger (and a youngster at that) because he had done her a
34 Chapter 2
small favor a month earlier? Or, more generally, why should it be that small first
favors often stimulate larger return favors? One important reason concerns the clearly
unpleasant character of the feeling of indebtedness. Most of us find it highly
disagreeable to be in a state of obligation. It weighs heavily on us and demands to be
removed. It is not difficult to trace the source of this feeling. Because reciprocal
arrangements are so vital in human social systems, we have been conditioned to
feel uncomfortable when beholden. If we were to ignore the need to return another's
initial favor, we would stop one reciprocal sequence dead and make it less likely that
our benefactor would do such favors in the future. Neither event is in the best
interests of society. Consequently, we are trained from childhood to chafe,
emotionally, under the saddle of obligation. For this reason alone, then, we may be
willing to agree to perform a larger favor than the one we received, merely to relieve
ourselves of the psychological burden of debt.
There is another reason as well. A person who violates the reciprocity rule by
accepting without attempting to return the good acts of others is disliked by the social
group. The exception, of course, occurs when a person is prevented from repayment
by
reasons of circumstance or ability. For the most part, however, there is a genuine
distaste for an individual who fails to conform to the dictates of the reciprocity rule.3
Moocher and ingrate are unsavory labels to be scrupulously shunned. So
undesirable are they that people will sometimes agree to an unequal exchange in
order to dodge them.
In combination, the reality of internal discomfort and the possibility of external shame
can produce a heavy psychological cost. When seen in the light of this cost, it is not
so puzzling that, in the name of reciprocity, we will often give back more
than we have received. Neither is it so odd that we will often avoid asking for a
needed favor if we will not be in a position to repay it (De Paulo, Nadler, & Fisher,
1983; Greenberg & Shapiro, 1971; Riley & Eckenrode, 1986). The psychological cost
may simply outweigh the material loss.
The risk of still other kinds of losses may also persuade people to decline certain gifts
and benefits. Women frequently comment on the uncomfortable sense of obligation
they can feel to return the favors of a man who has given them an expensive
present or paid for a costly evening out. Even something as small as the price of a
drink can produce a feeling of debt. A student in one of my classes expressed it quite
plainly in a paper she wrote: "After learning the hard way, I no longer let a guy
I meet in a club buy me a drink because I don't want either of us to feel that I am
obligated sexually." Research suggests that there is a basis for her concern. If, in-
3
Interestingly enough, a cross-cultural study has shown that those who break the
reciprocity rule in the reverse direction—by giving without allowing the recipient an
opportunity to repay—are also disliked for it. This result was found to hold for each
of the three nationalities investigated—Americans, Swedes, and Japanese (Gergen,
Ellsworth, Maslach, & Seipel, 1975).
Reciprocation 35
2_Reciprocation-4.jpg
stead of paying for them herself, a woman allows a man to buy her drinks, she is
immediately judged (by both men and women) as more sexually available to him
(George, Gournic, & McAfee, 1988).
The rule for reciprocity applies to most relationships; however, in its purest form
reciprocity is unnecessary and undesirable in certain long-term relationships such as
families or established friendships. In these "communal" relationships (Clark &
Mills, 1979; Mills & Clark, 1982), what is exchanged reciprocally is the willingness to
provide what the other needs, when it is needed (Clark, Mills, & Corcoran, 1989).
Under this form of reciprocity, it is not necessary to calculate who has given
more or less but only whether both parties are living up to the more general rule
(Clark, 1984; Clark & Waddell, 1985; Clark, Mills, & Powell, 1986). Still, it appears
that persistent inequities can lead to dissatisfactions, even in friendships.
36 Chapter 2
READER'S REPORT 2.1
From a State of Oregon Employee
The person who used to have my job told me during my training that I would like
working for my boss because he is a very nice and generous person. She said that he
always gave her flowers and other gifts on different occasions. She decided to stop
working because she was going to have a child and wanted to stay home; otherwise I
am sure she would have stayed on at this job for many more years.
I have been working for this same boss for six years now, and I have experienced the
same thing. He gives me and my son gifts for Christmas and gives me presents on
my birthday. It has been over two years since I have reached the top of my
classification for a salary increase. There is no promotion for the type of job I have
and my only choice is to take a test with the state system and reapply to move to
another department or maybe find another job in a private company. But I find
myself resisting trying to find another job or move to another department. My boss is
reaching retirement age and I am thinking maybe I will be able to move out after he
retires because for now I feel obligated to stay since he has been so nice to me.
Author's note: I am struck by this reader's language in describing her current
employment options, saying that she "will be able" to move to another job only after
her boss retires. It seems that his small kindnesses have nurtured a binding sense of
obligation that has made her unable to seek a better paying position. There is an
obvious lesson here for managers wishing to instill loyalty in employees. But there is
a larger lesson for all of us, as well: Little things are not always little—not
when they link to the big rules of life, like reciprocity.
RECIPROCAL CONCESSIONS
There is a second way to employ the reciprocity rule to get someone to comply with a
request. It is more subtle than the direct route of providing that person with a favor
and then asking for one in return, yet in some ways it is much more effective. A
personal experience I had a few years ago gave me firsthand evidence of just how
well this compliance technique works.
I was walking down the street when I was approached by an 11- or 12-year-old boy.
He introduced himself and said he was selling tickets to the annual Boy Scouts Circus
to be held on the upcoming Saturday night. He asked if I wished to buy any tickets
at $5 apiece. Since one of the last places I wanted to spend Saturday evening was
with the Boy Scouts, I declined. "Well," he said, if you don't want to buy any tickets,
how about buying some of our chocolate bars? They're only $1 each." I bought a
couple and, right away, realized that something noteworthy had happened. I knew
that to be the case because (a) I do not like chocolate bars; (b) I do like dol-
Reciprocation 37
lars; (c) I was standing there with two of his chocolate bars; and (d) he was walking
away with two of my dollars.
To try to understand precisely what had happened, I went to my office and called a
meeting of my research assistants. In discussing the situation, we began to see how
the reciprocity rule was implicated in my compliance with the request to buy the
candy bars. The general rule says that a person who acts in a certain way toward us
is entitled to a similar return action. We have already seen that one consequence of
the rule is an obligation to repay favors we have received. Another consequence of
the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a
concession to us. As my research group thought about it, we realized that was exactly
the position the Boy Scout had put me in. His request that I purchase some $1
chocolate bars had been put in the form of a concession on his part; it was presented
as a retreat from his request that I buy some $5 tickets. If I were to live up to the
dictates of the reciprocation rule, there had to be a concession on my part. As
we have seen, there was such a concession: I changed from noncompliant to
compliant when he moved from a larger to a smaller request, even though I was not
really interested in either of the things he offered.
It was a classic example of the way a weapon of influence can infuse a compliance
request with its power. I had been moved to buy something, not because of any
favorable feelings toward the item, but because the purchase request had been
presented in a
way that drew force from the reciprocity rule. It had not mattered that I do not like
chocolate bars; the Boy Scout had made a concession to me, click, and whirr, I
responded with a concession of my own. Of course, the tendency to reciprocate with a
concession is not so strong that it will work in all instances on all people; none of the
weapons of influence considered in this book is that strong. However, in my exchange
with the Boy Scout, the tendency had been sufficiently powerful to leave me
in mystified possession of a pair of unwanted and overpriced candy bars.
Why should I feel obliged to reciprocate a concession? The answer rests once again in
the benefit of such a tendency to the society. It is in the interest of any human group
to have its members working together toward the achievement of common goals.
However, in many social interactions the participants begin with requirements and
demands that are unacceptable to one another. Thus, the society must arrange to
have these initial, incompatible desires set aside for the sake of socially beneficial
cooperation. This is accomplished through procedures that promote compromise.
Mutual concession is one important such procedure.
The reciprocation rule brings about mutual concession in two ways. The first is
obvious; it pressures the recipient of an already-made concession to respond in kind.
The second, while not so obvious, is pivotally important. Because of a recipient's
obligation to reciprocate, people are freed to make the initial concession and, thereby,
to begin the beneficial process of exchange. After all, if there were no social obligation
to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice?
To do so would be to risk giving up something and getting nothing back. However,
with
38 Chapter 2
Reciprocation 39
the rule in effect, we can feel safe making the first sacrifice to our partner, who is
obligated to offer a return sacrifice.
REJECTION-THEN-RETREAT_______________________________
Because the rule for reciprocation governs the compromise process, it is possible to
use an initial concession as part of a highly effective compliance technique. The
technique is a simple one that we will call the rejection-then-retreat technique,
although it is also known as the door-in-the-face technique. Suppose you want me to
agree to a certain request. One way to increase the chances that I will comply is first
to make a larger request of me, one that I will most likely turn down. Then,
after I have refused, you make the smaller request that you were really interested in
all along. Provided that you structured your requests skillfully, I should view your
second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a
concession of my own—compliance with your second request.
Was that the way the Boy Scout got me to buy his candy bars? Was his retreat from
the $5 request to the $1 request an artificial one that was intentionally designed to
sell candy bars? As one who has still refused to discard even his first Scout merit
badge, I genuinely hope not. Whether or not the large-request-then-small-request
sequence was planned, its effect was the same. It worked! Because it works, the
rejection-then-retreat technique can and will be used purposely by certain people to
get
their way. First let's examine how this tactic can be used as a reliable compliance
device. Later we will see how it is already being used. Finally we can turn to a pair of
little-known features of the technique that make it one of the most influential
compliance tactics available.
Remember that after my encounter with the Boy Scout, I called my research
assistants together to try to understand what had happened to me—and, as it turned
out, to eat the evidence. Actually, we did more than that. We designed an experiment
to test
the effectiveness of the procedure of moving to a desired request after a larger
preliminary request had been refused. We had two purposes in conducting the
experiment. First, we wanted to see whether this procedure worked on people besides
me. (It
certainly seemed that the tactic had been effective on me earlier in the day, but then
I have a history of falling for compliance tricks of all sorts.) So the question remained,
"Does the rejection-then-retreat technique work on enough people to make
it a useful procedure for gaining compliance?" If so, it would definitely be something
to be aware of in the future. Our second reason for doing the study was to determine
how powerful a compliance device the technique was. Could it bring about
compliance with a genuinely sizable request? In other words, did the smaller request
to which the requester retreated have to be a small request? If our thinking about
what caused the technique to be effective was correct, the second request did not
actually have to be small; it only had to be smaller than the initial one. It was our
suspicion that the critical aspect of a requester's retreat from a larger to a smaller
favor was its appearance as a concession. So the second request could be an
objectively large one—as long as it was smaller than the first request—and the
technique would still work.
After a bit of thought, we decided to try the technique on a request that we felt few
people would agree to perform. Posing as representatives of the "County Youth
Counseling Program," we approached college students walking on campus and asked
if they
would be willing to chaperon a group of juvenile delinquents on a day trip to the zoo.
This idea of being responsible for a group of juvenile delinquents of unspecified age
for hours in a public place without pay was hardly an inviting one for these
students. As we expected, the great majority (83 percent) refused. Yet we obtained
very different results from a similar sample of college students who were asked the
very same question with one difference. Before we invited them to serve as unpaid
chaperons on the zoo trip, we asked them for an even larger favor—to spend two
hours per week as counselors to juvenile delinquents for a minimum of two years. It
was only after they refused this extreme request, as all did, that we made the small,
zoo-trip request. But presenting the zoo trip as a retreat from our initial request, our
success rate increased dramatically. Three times as many of the students approached
in this manner volunteered to serve as zoo chaperons (Cialdini, Vincent, Lewis,
Catalan, Wheeler, & Darby, 1975).
Be assured that any strategy able to triple the percentage of compliance with a
substantial request (from 17 to 50 percent in our experiment) will be used often in a
variety of natural settings. Labor negotiators, for instance, often use the tactic of
making extreme demands that they do not expect to win but from which they can
retreat and draw real concessions from the opposing side. It would appear, then, that
the procedure would be more effective the larger the initial request, since there would
be more room available for illusory concessions. This is true only up to a point,
however. Research conducted at Barllan University in Israel on the rejection-then-
retreat technique shows that if the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as
unreasonable, the tactic backfires (Schwarzwald, Raz, & Zvibel, 1979). In such cases,
the party who has made the extreme first request is not seen to be bargaining in
good faith. Any subsequent retreat from that wholly unrealistic initial position is
not viewed as a genuine concession and, thus, is not reciprocated. The truly gifted
negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated just enough to allow for
a series of small reciprocal concessions and counteroffers that will yield a
desirable final offer from the opponent (Thompson, 1990).
I witnessed another form of the rejection-then-retreat technique in my investigations
of door-to-door sales operations. These organizations used a less engineered, more
opportunistic version of the tactic. Of course, the most important goal for a door-
to-door salesperson is to make the sale. However, the training programs of each of
the companies I investigated emphasized that a second important goal was to obtain
from prospects the names of referrals—friends, relatives, or neighbors, on whom the
salesperson could call. For a variety of reasons, which we will discuss in Chapter 5,
the percentage of successful door-to-door sales increases impressively when the
40
Chapter 2
sales representative is able to mention the name of a familiar person who
"recommended" the sales visit.
Never as a sales trainee was I taught to get the sales pitch refused so that I could
then retreat to a request for referrals. In several such programs, though, I was
trained to take advantage of the opportunity to secure referrals offered by a
customer's purchase refusal: "Well, if it is your feeling that a fine set of encyclopedias
is not right for you at this time, perhaps you could help me by giving me the names
of some others who might wish to take advantage of our company's great offer.
What would be the names of some of these people you know?" Many individuals who
would not otherwise subject their friends to a high-pressure sales presentation do
agree to supply referrals when the request is presented as a concession from a
purchase
request they have just refused.
Reciprocal Concessions, Perceptual Contrast, and the Watergate Mystery
We have already discussed one reason for the success of the rejection-then-retreat
technique—its incorporation of the reciprocity rule. This larger-then-smaller-request
Reciprocation 41
strategy is effective for a pair of other reasons as well. The first concerns the
perceptual contrast principle we encountered in Chapter 1. That principle accounted
for, among other things, the tendency of a man to spend more money on a sweater
following his purchase of a suit than before: After being exposed to the price of the
larger item, he sees the price of the less expensive item as appearing smaller by
comparison. In the same way, the larger-then-smaller request procedure uses the
contrast principle to make the smaller request look even smaller by comparison with
the larger one. If I want you to lend me $5,1 can make the request seem smaller
than it is by first asking you to lend me $10. One of the beauties of this tactic is
that, by first requesting $10 and then retreating to $5,1 will have simultaneously
engaged the force of both the reciprocity rule and the contrast principle. Not only will
my $5 request be viewed as a concession to be reciprocated, it will also look
like a smaller request than if I had just asked for $5 straightaway.
In combination, the influences of reciprocity and perceptual contrast can present a
fearsomely powerful force. Embodied in the rejection-then-retreat sequence, they are
jointly capable of genuinely astonishing effects. It is my feeling that they
provide the only really plausible explanation of one of the most baffling political
actions of our time: the decision to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic
National Committee that led to the ruin of Richard Nixon's presidency. One of
the participants in that decision, Jeb Stuart Magruder, upon hearing that the
Watergate burglars had been caught, responded with appropriate bewilderment, "How
could we have been so stupid?" Indeed, how?
To understand how enormously ill-conceived an idea it was for the Nixon
administration to undertake the break-in, let's review a few facts:
• The idea was that of G. Gordon Liddy, who was in charge of intelligence-gathering
operations for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). Liddy had gained a
reputation among administration higher-ups as "flaky," and there were questions
about
his stability and judgment.
• Liddy's proposal was extremely costly, requiring a budget of $250,000 in un-
traceable cash.
• In late March, when the proposal was approved in a meeting of the CREEP director,
John Mitchell, and his assistants Magruder and Frederick LaRue, the outlook for a
Nixon victory in the November election could not have been brighter. Edmund Muskie,
the only announced candidate the early polls had given a chance of unseating the
president, had done poorly in the primaries. It looked very much as though the most
defeatable candidate, George McGovern, would win the Democratic nomination. A
Republican victory seemed assured.
• The break-in plan itself was a highly risky operation requiring the participation and
discretion of ten men.
• The Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Lawrence O'Brien, whose
Watergate office was to be burglarized and bugged, had no information damaging
enough to defeat the incumbent president. Nor were the Democrats likely to get any,
unless the
administration did something very, very foolish.
2_Reciprocation-5.jpg
42 Chapter 2
Despite the obvious counsel of the previously mentioned reasons, the expensive,
chancy, pointless, and potentially calamitous proposal of a man whose judgment was
known to be questionable was approved. How could it be that intelligent,
accomplished men
such as Mitchell and Magruder would do something so very, very foolish? Perhaps the
answer lies in a little-discussed fact: The $250,000 plan they approved was not
Liddy's first proposal. In fact, it represented a significant concession on his part
from two earlier proposals of immense proportions. The first of these plans, made two
months earlier in a meeting with Mitchell, Magruder, and John Dean, described a $1
million program that included (in addition to the bugging of the Watergate) a
specially equipped communications "chase plane," break-ins, kidnapping and mugging
squads, and a yacht featuring "high-class call girls" to blackmail Democratic
politicians. A second Liddy plan, presented a week later to the same group of Mitchell,
Magruder, and Dean, eliminated some of the program and reduced the cost to
$500,000. It was only after these initial proposals had been rejected by Mitchell that
Liddy submitted his "bare-bones" $250,000 plan, in this instance to Mitchell,
Magruder,
and Frederick LaRue. This time the plan, still stupid but less so than the previous
ones, was approved.
Could it be that I, a longtime patsy, and John Mitchell, a hardened and canny
politician, might both have been so easily maneuvered into bad deals by the same
compliance tactic—I by a Boy Scout selling candy and he by a man selling political
disaster?
If we examine the testimony of Jeb Magruder, considered by most Watergate
investigators to provide the most faithful account of the crucial meeting at which
Liddy's plan was finally accepted, there are some instructive clues. First, Magruder
(1974)
reports that "no one was particularly overwhelmed with the project"; but "after
starting at the grandiose sum of $1 million, we thought that probably $250,000 would
be an acceptable figure.. .. We were reluctant to send him away with nothing."
Mitchell, caught up in the "feeling that we should leave Liddy a little something .. .
signed off on it in the sense of saying, 'Ok, let's give him a quarter of a million dollars
and let's see what he can come up with.' " In the context of Liddy's
initial extreme requests, it seems that "a quarter of a million dollars" had come to be
"a little something" to be left as a return concession. With the clarity afforded by
hindsight, Magruder has recalled Liddy's approach in as succinct an
illustration of the rejection-then-retreat technique as I have ever heard. "If he had
come to us at the outset and said, 'I have a plan to burglarize and wiretap Larry
O'Brien's office,' we might have rejected the idea out of hand. Instead he came to
us with his elaborate call-girl/kidnapping/mugging/sabotage/wiretapping scheme....
He had asked for the whole loaf when he was quite content to settle for half or even a
quarter."
It is also instructive that, although he finally deferred to his boss's decision, only one
member of the group, Frederick LaRue, expressed any direct opposition to the
proposal. Saying with obvious common sense, "I don't think it's worth the risk," he
must have wondered why his colleagues, Mitchell and Magruder, did not share his
perspective. Of course, there could be many differences between LaRue and the other
two men that may have accounted for their differing opinions regarding the advis-
Reciprocation 43
ability of Liddy's plan. But one stands out: Of the three, only LaRue had not been
present at the prior two meetings, where Liddy had outlined his much more ambitious
programs. Perhaps, then, only LaRue was able to see the third proposal for the
clunker that it was and to react to it objectively, uninfluenced by the reciprocity and
perceptual contrast forces acting upon the others.
Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't
A bit earlier we said that the rejection-then-retreat technique had, in addition to the
reciprocity rule, a pair of other factors working in its favor. We have already discussed
the first of those factors, the perceptual contrast principle. The
additional advantage of the technique is not really a psychological principle, as in the
case of the other two factors. Rather, it is more of a purely structural feature of the
request sequence. Let's once again say that I wish to borrow $5 from you.
By beginning with a request for $10, 1 really can't lose. If you agree to it, I will have
received from you twice the amount I would have settled for. If, on the other hand,
you turn down my initial request, I can retreat to the $5 favor that I desired
from the outset and, through the action of the reciprocity and contrast principles,
greatly enhance my likelihood of success. Either way, I benefit; it's a case of heads I
win, tails you lose.
The clearest utilization of this aspect of the large-then-small-request sequence occurs
in the retail store sales practice of "talking the top of the line." Here the prospect is
invariably shown the deluxe model first. If the customer buys, there is
frosting on the store's cake. However, if the customer declines, the salesperson
effectively counteroffers with a more reasonably priced model. Some proof of the
effectiveness of this procedure comes from a report in Sales Management magazine,
reprinted without comment in Consumer Reports:
If you were a billiard-table dealer, which would you advertise—the $329 model or the
$3,000 model? The chances are you would promote the low-priced item and hope to
trade the customer up when he comes to buy. But G. Warren Kelley, new business
promotion manager at Brunswick, says you would be wrong.... To prove his point,
Kelley has actual sales figures from a representative store. . . . During the first week
customers .. . were shown the low end of the line ... and then encouraged to
consider more expensive models—the traditional trading-up approach.... The average
table sale that week was $550. . .. However, during the second week, customers .. .
were led instantly to a $3,000 table, regardless of what they wanted to see . . . and
then allowed to shop the rest of the line, in declining order of price and quality. The
result of selling down was an average sale of over $1,000. ("Quote," 1975, p. 62)
Given the remarkable effectiveness of the rejection-then-retreat technique, one might
think that there could be a substantial disadvantage as well. The victims of the
44
Chapter 2
strategy might resent having been cornered into compliance. The resentment could
show itself in a couple of ways. First, the victim might decide not to live up to the
verbal agreement made with the requester. Second, the victim might come to distrust
the manipulative requester, deciding never to deal with that person again. If either or
both of these events occurred with any frequency, a requester would want to give
serious second thought to the use of the rejection-then-retreat procedure. Research
indicates, however, that these victim reactions do not occur with increased frequency
when the rejection-then-retreat technique is used. Somewhat astonishingly, it
appears that they actually occur less frequently! Before trying to understand why this
should be, let's first look at the evidence.
Here's My Blood, and Do Call Again
A study published in Canada (Miller, Seligman, Clark, & Bush, 1976) throws light on
the question of whether a victim of the rejection-then-retreat tactic will follow through
with the agreement to perform a requester's second favor. In addition to
recording whether target persons said yes or no to the desired request (to work for
two hours a day without pay in a community mental health agency), this experiment
also recorded whether they showed up to perform their duties as promised. As usual,
the procedure of starting with a larger request (to volunteer for two hours of work per
week in the agency for at least two years) produced more verbal agreement to the
smaller, retreat request (76 percent), than did the procedure of asking for the
smaller request alone (29 percent). The important result, though, concerned the
show-up rate of those who volunteered; and, again, the rejection-then-retreat
procedure was the more effective one (85 versus 50 percent).
A different experiment examined whether the rejection-then-retreat sequence caused
victims to feel so manipulated that they would refuse any further requests. In this
study (Cialdini & Ascani, 1976), the targets were college students who were each
asked to give a pint of blood as part of the annual campus blood drive. Targets in one
group were first asked to give a pint of blood every six weeks for a minimum of three
years. The other targets were asked only to give a single pint of blood. Those
of both groups who agreed and later appeared at the blood center were then asked if
they would be willing to give their phone numbers so they could be called upon to
donate again in the future. Nearly all the students who were about to give a pint of
blood as a result of the rejection-then-retreat technique agreed to donate again (84
percent), while less than half of the other students who appeared at the blood center
did so (43 percent). Even for future favors, the rejection-then-retreat strategy
proved superior.
The Sweet, Secret Side Effects
Strangely enough, then, it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic not only spurs
people to agree to a desired request but actually to carry out the request and, finally,
to volunteer to perform further requests. What could there be about the
technique
Reciprocation 45
that makes people who have been duped into compliance so likely to continue to
comply? For an answer, we might look at a requester's act of concession, which is the
heart of the procedure. We have already seen that, as long as it is not viewed as an
obvious trick, the concession will likely stimulate a return concession. What we have
not yet examined, however, is a little-known pair of positive by-products of the act of
concession: feelings of greater responsibility for and satisfaction with the
arrangement. It is this set of sweet side effects that enables the technique to move
its victims to fulfill their agreements and to engage in further such agreements.
The desirable side effects of making concessions during an interaction with other
people are nicely shown in studies of the way people bargain with each other. One
experiment, conducted by social psychologists at UCLA, offers an especially apt
demonstration (Benton, Kelley, & Liebling, 1972). A subject in that study faced a
"negotiation opponent" and was told to bargain with the opponent concerning how to
divide between themselves a certain amount of money provided by the
experimenters. The
subject was also informed that if no mutual agreement could be reached after a
certain period of bargaining, no one would get any money. Unknown to the subject,
the opponent was really an experimental assistant who had been previously
instructed to
bargain with the subject in one of three ways. With some of the subjects, the
opponent made an extreme first demand, assigning virtually all of the money to
himself and stubbornly persisted in that demand throughout the negotiations. With
another group
of subjects, the opponent began with a demand that was moderately favorable to
himself; he, too, steadfastly refused to move from that position during the
negotiations. With a third group, the opponent began with the extreme demand and
then gradually
retreated to the more moderate one during the course of the bargaining.
There were three important findings that help us to understand why the rejection-
then-retreat technique is so effective. First, compared to the two other approaches,
the strategy of starting with an extreme demand and then retreating to the more
moderate one produced the most money for the person using it. This result is not
very surprising in light of the previous evidence we have seen for the power of larger-
then-smaller-request tactics to bring about profitable agreements. It is the pair of
additional findings of the study that are more striking.
Responsibility
The requester's concession within the rejection-then-retreat technique not only
caused targets to say yes more often, it also caused them to feel more responsible for
having "dictated" the final agreement. Thus the uncanny ability of the rejection-
then-retreat technique to make its targets meet their commitments becomes
understandable: A person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be
more likely to live up to that contract.
Satisfaction
Even though, on the average, they gave the most money to the opponent who used
the concessions strategy, the subjects who were the targets of this strategy were the
46 Chapter 2
most satisfied with the final arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has
been forged through the concessions of one's opponents is quite satisfying. With this
in mind, we can begin to explain the second previously puzzling feature of the
rejection-then-retreat tactic—the ability to prompt its victims to agree to further
requests. Since the tactic uses a concession to bring about compliance, the victim is
likely to feel more satisfied with the arrangement as a result. It stands to
reason that people who are satisfied with a given arrangement are more likely to be
willing to agree to similar arrangements. As one study of retail sales showed, feeling
responsible for getting a better deal led to more satisfaction with the process
and more repurchases of the product (Schindler, 1998).
DEFENSE _
Against a requester who employs the rule for reciprocation, you and I face a
formidable foe. By presenting us with either an initial favor or an initial concession,
the requester will have enlisted a powerful ally in the campaign for our compliance. At
first glance, our fortunes in such a situation would appear dismal. We could comply
with the requester's wish and, in so doing, succumb to the reciprocity rule. Or, we
could refuse to comply and thereby suffer the brunt of the rule's force upon our
deeply conditioned feelings of fairness and obligation. Surrender or suffer heavy
casualties. Cheerless prospects indeed.
Fortunately, these are not our only choices. With the proper understanding of the
nature of our opponent, we can come away from the compliance battlefield unhurt
and sometimes even better off than before. It is essential to recognize that the
requester
who invokes the reciprocation rule (or any other weapon of influence) to gain our
compliance is not the real opponent. Such a requester has chosen to become a jujitsu
warrior who aligns himself or herself with the sweeping power of reciprocation and
then merely releases that power by providing a first favor or concession. The real
opponent is the rule. If we are not to be abused by it, we must take steps to defuse
its energy.
Rejecting the Rule
How does one go about neutralizing the effect of a social rule like the one for
reciprocation? It seems too widespread to escape and too strong to overpower once it
is activated. Perhaps the answer, then, is to prevent its activation. Perhaps we can
avoid a confrontation with the rule by refusing to allow a requester to commission its
force against us in the first place. Perhaps by rejecting a requester's initial favor or
concessions to us, we can evade the problem. Perhaps; but then, perhaps not.
Invariably declining a requester's initial offer of a favor or sacrifice works better in
theory than in practice. The major problem is that when it is first presented, it is
difficult to know whether such an offer is honest or whether it is the initial
step in an exploitation at-
Reciprocation 47
tempt. If we always assume the worst, it would not be possible to receive the benefits
of any legitimate favors or concessions offered by individuals who had no intention of
exploiting the reciprocity rule.
I have a colleague who remembers with anger how his 10-year-old daughter's
feelings were terribly hurt by a man whose method of avoiding the jaws of the
reciprocity rule was to refuse her kindness. The children of her class were hosting an
open house
at school for their grandparents, and her job was to give a flower to each visitor
entering the school grounds. The first man she approached with a flower growled at
her, "Keep it." Not knowing what to do, she extended it toward him again, only to
have
him demand to know what he had to give in return. When she replied weakly,
"Nothing. It's a gift," he fixed her with a disbelieving glare, insisting that he
recognized "her game," and brushed on past. The girl was so stung by the experience
that she
could not approach anyone else and had to be removed from her assignment — one
she had anticipated fondly. It is hard to know whom to blame more, the insensitive
man or the exploiters who had abused his tendency to reciprocate a gift until his
response
had soured to a refusal. No matter whom you find more blameworthy, the lesson is
clear. We will always encounter authentically generous individuals as well as many
people who try to play fairly by the reciprocity rule rather than to exploit it. They
will doubtless become insulted by someone who consistently rejects their efforts;
social friction and isolation could well result. A policy of blanket rejection, then, seems
ill advised.
Another solution holds more promise. It advises us to accept the offers of others but
to accept those offers only for what they fundamentally are, not for what they are
represented to be. If a person offers us a nice favor, let's say, we might well
accept, recognizing that we have obligated ourselves to a return favor sometime in
the future. To engage in this sort of arrangement with another is not to be exploited
by that person through the rule for reciprocation. Quite the contrary; it is to
participate fairly in the "honored network of obligation" that has served us so well,
both individually and societally, from the dawn of humanity. However, if the initial
favor turns out to be a device, a trick, an artifice designed specifically to
stimulate our compliance with a larger return favor, that is a different story. Our
partner is not a benefactor but a profiteer; and it is here that we should respond to
the action on precisely those terms. Once we have determined that the initial
offer was not a favor but a compliance tactic, we need only react to it accordingly to
be free of its influence. As long as we perceive and define the action as a compliance
device instead of a favor, the giver no longer has the reciprocation rule as
an ally: The rule says that favors are to be met with favors; it does not require that
tricks be met with favors.
Smoking Out the Enemy
A practical example may make things more concrete. Let's suppose that a woman
phoned one day and introduced herself as a member of the Home Fire Safety
Association in your town. Suppose she then asked if you would be interested in
learning
48 Chapter 2
about home fire safety, having your house checked for fire hazards, and receiving a
home fire extinguisher—all free of charge. Let's suppose further that you were
interested in these things and made an evening appointment to have one of the
association's inspectors come over to provide them. When the inspector arrived, he
gave you a small hand extinguisher and began examining the possible fire hazards of
your home. Afterward he gave you some interesting, though frightening, information
about general fire dangers, along with an assessment of your home's vulnerability.
Finally he suggested that you obtain a home fire warning system for your house and
left.
Such a set of events is not implausible. Various cities and towns have nonprofit
associations, usually made up of fire department personnel working on their own
time, that provide free home fire-safety inspections of this sort. Were these events to
occur, you would clearly have received a favor from the inspector. In accordance with
the reciprocation rule, you should stand more ready to provide a return favor if you
were to see him in need of aid at some point in the future. An exchange of favors
of this kind would be in the best tradition of the reciprocity rule.
A similar set of events with, however, a different ending is also possible. Rather than
leaving after recommending a fire-alarm system, the inspector launches into a sales
presentation intended to persuade you to buy an expensive, heat-triggered alarm
system manufactured by the company he represents. Door-to-door home fire-alarm
companies will frequently use this approach. Typically, their product, while effective
enough, will be overpriced. Trusting that you will not be familiar with the retail
costs of such a system and that, if you decide to buy one, you will feel obligated to
the company that provided you with a free extinguisher and home inspection, these
companies will pressure you for an immediate sale. Using this free-information-and-
inspection gambit, fire-protection sales organizations have flourished around the
country.4
If you were to find yourself in such a situation with the realization that the primary
motive of the inspector's visit was to sell you a costly alarm system, your most
effective next action would be a simple, private maneuver. It would involve the
mental act of redefinition. Merely define whatever you have received from the
inspector— extinguisher, safety information, hazard inspection—not as gifts but as
sales devices, and you will be free to decline (or accept) the purchase offer without
even
a tug from
4
A variety of other business operations use the no-cost information offer extensively.
Pest exterminator companies, for instance, have found that most people who agree to
a free home examination give the extermination job to the examining company,
provided they are convinced that it is needed. They apparently feel an obligation to
give their business to the firm that rendered the initial, complimentary service.
Knowing that such customers are unlikely to comparison shop for this reason,
unscrupulous pest control operations will take advantage of the situation by citing
higher-than-competitive prices for work commissioned in this way.
Reciprocation 49
the reciprocity rule: A favor rightly follows a favor—not a piece of sales strategy. If
the inspector subsequently responds to your refusal by proposing that you, at least,
provide the names of some friends he might call on, use your mental maneuver
again. Define this retreat to a smaller request as what you recognize it to be—a
compliance tactic. Once this is done, there would be no pressure to offer the names
as a return concession, since the reduced request would not be viewed as a real
concession. At this point, unhampered by an inappropriately triggered sense of
obligation, you may once again be as compliant or noncompliant as you wish.
Provided you are so inclined, you might even turn the inspector's own weapon of
influence against him. Recall that the rule for reciprocation entitles a person who has
acted in a certain way to a dose of the same thing. If you have determined that the
"fire inspector's" gifts were used, not as genuine gifts, but to make a profit from you,
then you might want to use them to make a profit of your own. Simply take whatever
the inspector is willing to provide—safety information, home extinguisher— thank
him politely, and show him out the door. After all, the reciprocity rule asserts that if
justice is to be done, exploitation attempts should be exploited.
READER'S REPORT 2.2
From a Former Television and Stereo Salesperson
For quite a while, I worked for a major retailer in their television and stereo
department. Continued employment was based on the ability to sell service contracts
which are warranty extensions offered by the retailer. Once this fact was explained to
me I devised the following plan that used the rejection-then-retreat technique,
although I didn't know its name at the time.
A customer had the opportunity to buy from one to three years' worth of service
contract coverage at the time of the sale, although the credit I got was the same
regardless of the length of coverage. Realizing that most people would not be willing
to
buy three years' worth of coverage, initially, I would advocate to the customer the
longest and most expensive plan. This gave me an excellent opportunity later, after
being rejected in my sincere attempt to sell the three-year plan, to retreat to the
one-year extension and its relatively small price, which I was thrilled to get. This
technique proved highly effective, as I sold sales contracts to an average of 70
percent of my customers, who seemed very satisfied in the process, while others in
my
department clustered around 40 percent. I never told anyone how I did it until now.
Author's note: Notice how, as is usually the case, use of the rejection-then-retreat
tactic also engages the action of the contrast principle. Not only did the initial higher
request make the lower one seem like a retreat, it made that second request
seem smaller, too.
CHAPTER
3
Commitment and Consistency
Hobgoblins of the Mind
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-1.jpg
52
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
—LEONARDO DA VINCI
A study done by a pair of Canadian psychologists (Knox & Inkster, 1968) uncovered
something fascinating about people at the racetrack: just after placing bets they are
much more confident of their horses' chances of winning than they are immediately
before laying down the bets. Of course, nothing about the horse's chances actually
shifts; it's the same horse, on the same track, in the same field; but in the minds of
those bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased.
Although a bit puzzling at first glance, the reason for the dramatic change has to do
with a common weapon of social influence. Like the other weapons of influence, this
one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite
simply, our desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done.
Once we make a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal
pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause
us
to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision. We simply convince ourselves that
we have made the right choice and, no doubt, feel better about our decision (Fazio,
Blascovich, & Driscoll, 1992).
By way of illustration, let's examine the story of my neighbor Sara and her live-in
boyfriend, Tim. After they met, they dated for a while, even after Tim lost his job, and
eventually moved in together. Things were never perfect for Sara: She wanted
Tim to marry her and to stop his heavy drinking; Tim resisted both ideas. After an
especially difficult period of conflict, Sara broke off the relationship and Tim moved
out. At the same time, an old boyfriend of Sara's called her. They started seeing
each other socially and quickly became engaged and made wedding plans. They had
gone so far as to set a date and issue invitations when Tim called. He had repented
and wanted to move back in. When Sara told him her marriage plans, he begged her
to
change her mind; he wanted to be together with her as before. Sara refused, saying
she didn't want to live like that again. Tim even offered to marry her, but she still said
she preferred the other boyfriend. Finally, Tim volunteered to quit drinking
if she would only relent. Feeling that under those conditions Tim had the edge, Sara
decided to break her engagement, cancel the wedding, retract the invitations, and let
Tim move back in with her.
Within a month, Tim informed Sara that he didn't think he needed to stop drinking
after all. A month later, he decided that they should "wait and see" before getting
married. Two years have since passed; Tim and Sara continue to live together exactly
as before. Tim still drinks, and there are still no marriage plans, yet Sara is more
devoted to him than she ever was. She says that being forced to choose taught her
that Tim really is number one in her heart. So, after choosing Tim over her other
boyfriend, Sara became happier, even though the conditions under which she had
made her choice have never been fulfilled. Obviously, horse-race bettors are not
alone in their willingness to believe in the correctness of a difficult choice once made.
Indeed, we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts
53
54 Chapter 3
and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided (Conway & Ross,
1984; Goethals & Reckman, 1973; Rosenfeld, Kennedy, & Giacalone, 1986). For
instance, immediately after casting a ballot, voters believe more strongly that their
candidate
will win (Regan & Kilduff, 1988).
WHIRRING ALONG
Psychologist? have long understood the power of the consistency principle to direct
human action. Prominent early theorists such as Leon Festinger (1957), Fritz Heider
(1946), and Theodore Newcomb (1953) viewed the desire for consistency as a central
motivator of behavior. Is this tendency to be consistent really strong enough to
compel us to do what we ordinarily would not want to do? There is no question about
it. The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of social
influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best
interest.
Consider what happened when researchers staged thefts on a New York City beach to
see if onlookers would risk personal harm to halt the crime. In the study, an
accomplice of the researchers would put a beach blanket down five feet from the
blanket of a
randomly chosen individual—the experimental subject. After several minutes of
relaxing on the blanket and listening to music from a portable radio, the accomplice
would stand up and leave the blanket to stroll down the beach. Soon thereafter, a
researcher, pretending to be a thief, would approach, grab the radio, and try to hurry
away with it. As you might guess, under normal conditions, subjects were very
reluctant to put themselves in harm's way by challenging the thief—only four people
did
so in the 20 times that the theft was staged. But when the same procedure was tried
another 20 times with a slight twist, the results were drastically different. In these
incidents, before leaving the blanket, the accomplice would simply ask the
subject to please "watch my things," something everyone agreed to do. Now,
propelled by the rule for consistency, 19 of the 20 subjects became virtual vigilantes,
running after and stopping the thief, demanding an explanation, often restraining the
thief physically or snatching the radio away (Moriarty, 1975).
To understand why consistency is so powerful a motive, we should recognize that, in
most circumstances, consistency is valued and adaptive. Inconsistency is commonly
thought to be an undesirable personality trait (Allgeier, Byrne, Brooks, & Revnes,
1979; Asch, 1946). The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don't match is seen
as confused, two-faced, even mentally ill. On the other side, a high degree of
consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is the
heart
of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty. A quote attributed to the great British
chemist, Michael Faraday, suggests the extent to which being consistent is
approved—sometimes more than being right. When asked after a lecture if he meant
to imply
that a hated academic rival was always wrong, Faraday glowered at the questioner
and replied, "He's not that consistent."
Commitment and Consistency 55
Certainly, then, good personal consistency is highly valued in our culture—and well it
should be. Most of the time we will be better off if our approach to things is well laced
with consistency. Without it our lives would be difficult, erratic, and
disjointed (Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne, & Ilardi, 1997).
The Quick Fix
Since it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we fall into the habit of
being automatically consistent even in situations where it is not the sensible way to
be. When it occurs unthinkingly, consistency can be disastrous.
Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions.
First, like most other forms of automatic responding, it offers a shortcut through the
complexities of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about issues, stubborn
consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We don't have to think hard about
the issues anymore. We don't really have to sift through the blizzard of information
we encounter every day to identify relevant facts; we don't have to expend the
mental energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don't have to make any further tough
decisions. Instead, all we have to do when confronted with the issues is click on our
consistency tape, whirr, and we know just what to believe, say, or do. We need only
believe, say, or do whatever is consistent with our earlier decision.
The allure of such a luxury is not to be minimized. It allows us a convenient, relatively
effortless, and efficient method for dealing with the complexities of daily life that
make severe demands on our mental energies and capacities. It is not hard to
understand, then, why automatic consistency is a difficult reaction to curb. It offers
us a way to evade the rigors of continuing thought. With our consistency tapes
operating, we can go about our business happily excused from having to think too
much.
As Sir Joshua Reynolds noted, "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort
to avoid the real labor of thinking."
The Foolish Fortress
There is a second, more perverse attraction of mechanical consistency as well.
Sometimes it is not the effort of hard, cognitive work that makes us shirk thoughtful
activity but the harsh consequences of that activity. Sometimes it is the cursedly
clear and unwelcome set of answers provided by straight thinking that makes us
mental slackers. There are certain disturbing things we simply would rather not
realize. Because it is a preprogrammed and mindless method of responding,
automatic
consistency can supply a safe hiding place from troubling realizations. Sealed within
the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be impervious to the sieges of reason.
One night at an introductory lecture given by the Transcendental Meditation program,
I witnessed an illustration of the way people will hide inside the walls of consistency
to protect themselves from the troublesome consequences of thought. The lecture
itself was presided over by two earnest young men and was designed to
56
Chapter 3
recruit new members into the program. The men claimed that the program offered a
unique brand of meditation (TM) which would allow us to achieve all manner of
desirable things, ranging from simple inner peace to more spectacular abilities— to fly
and
pass through walls—at the program's advanced (and more expensive) stages.
I had decided to attend the meeting to observe the kind of compliance tactics used in
recruitment lectures of this sort and had brought along an interested friend, a
university professor whose areas of specialization were statistics and symbolic logic.
As the meeting progressed and the lecturers explained the theory behind TM, I
noticed my logician friend becoming increasingly restless. Looking more and more
pained and shifting about constantly in his seat, he was finally unable to resist. When
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-2.jpg
Commitment and Consistency 57
the leaders called for questions at the end of the lecture, he raised his hand and
gently but surely demolished the presentation we had just heard. In less than two
minutes, he pointed out precisely where and why the lecturers' complex argument
was
contradictory, illogical, and unsupportable. The effect on the discussion leaders was
devastating. After a confused silence, each attempted a weak reply only to halt
midway to confer with his partner and finally to admit that my colleague's points were
good ones "requiring further study."
More interesting to me, though, was the effect upon the rest of the audience. At the
end of the question period, the two recruiters were faced with a crowd of audience
members submitting their $75 down payments for admission to the TM program.
Nudging,
shrugging, and chuckling to one another as they took in the payments, the recruiters
betrayed signs of giddy bewilderment. After what appeared to have been an
embarrassingly clear collapse of their presentation, the meeting had somehow turned
into a
great success, generating mystifyingly high levels of compliance from the audience.
Although more than a bit puzzled, I chalked up the audience response to a failure to
understand the logic of my colleague's arguments. As it turned out, however, just
the reverse was the case.
Outside the lecture room after the meeting, we were approached by three members
of the audience, each of whom had given a down payment immediately after the
lecture. They wanted to know why we had come to the session. We explained, and we
asked the
same question of them. One was an aspiring actor who wanted desperately to
succeed at his craft and had come to the meeting to learn if TM would allow him to
achieve the necessary self-control to master the art; the recruiters had assured him
that it
would. The second described herself as a severe insomniac who hoped that TM would
provide her with a way to relax and fall asleep easily at night. The third served as
unofficial spokesman. He was failing his college courses, because there didn't seem
to be enough time to study. He had come to the meeting to find out if TM could help
by training him to need fewer hours of sleep each night; the additional time could
then be used for study. It is interesting to note that the recruiters informed him as
well as the insomniac that Transcendental Meditation techniques could solve their
respective, though opposite, problems.
Still thinking that the three must have signed up because they hadn't understood the
points made by my logician friend, I began to question them about aspects of his
argument. To my surprise, I found that they had understood his comments quite well;
in
fact, all too well. It was precisely the cogency of his argument that drove them to sign
up for the program on the spot. The spokesman put it best: "Well, I wasn't going to
put down any money tonight because I'm really quite broke right now; I was
going to wait until the next meeting. But when your buddy started talking, I knew I'd
better give them my money now, or I'd go home and start thinking about what he
said and never sign up."
All at once, things began to make sense. These were people with real problems, and
they were desperately searching for a way to solve those problems. They were
seekers who, if our discussion leaders were to be believed, had found a potential
58 Chapter 3
solution in TM. Driven by their needs, they very much wanted to believe that TM was
their answer.
Now, in the form of my colleague, intrudes the voice of reason, showing the theory
underlying their newfound solution to be unsound. Panic! Something must be done at
once before logic takes its toll and leaves them without hope once again. Quickly,
quickly, walls against reason are needed; and it doesn't matter that the fortress to be
erected is a foolish one. "Quick, a hiding place from thought! Here, take this money.
Whew, safe in the nick of time. No need to think about the issues any longer."
The decision has been made, and from now on the consistency tape can be played
whenever necessary: 'TM? Certainly I think it will help me; certainly I expect to
continue; certainly I believe in TM. I already put my money down for it, didn't I?" Ah,
the
comforts of mindless consistency. "I'll just rest right here for a while. It's so much
nicer than the worry and strain of that hard, hard search."
Seek and Hide
If, as it appears, automatic consistency functions as a shield against thought, it
should not be surprising that such consistency can also be exploited by those who
would prefer that we respond to their requests without thinking. For the profiteers,
whose interest will be served by an unthinking, mechanical reaction to their requests,
our tendency for automatic consistency is a gold mine. So clever are they at
arranging to have us play our consistency tapes when it profits them that we seldom
realize that we have been taken. In fine jujitsu fashion, they structure their
interactions with us so that our own need to be consistent leads directly to their
benefit.
Certain large toy manufacturers use just such an approach to reduce a problem
created by seasonal buying patterns. Of course, the boom time for toy companies
occurs before and during the Christmas holiday season. Their problem is that toy
sales then go
into a terrible slump for the next couple of months. Their customers have already
spent the amount in their toy budgets and are stiffly resistant to their children's pleas
for more.
So the toy manufacturers are faced with a dilemma: how to keep sales high during
the peak season and, at the same time, retain a healthy demand for toys in the
immediately following months. Their difficulty certainly doesn't lie in motivating kids
to
want more toys after Christmas. The problem lies in motivating postholiday spent-out
parents to buy another plaything for their already toy-glutted children. What could
the toy companies possibly do to produce that unlikely behavior? Some have tried
greatly increased advertising campaigns, others have reduced prices during the slack
period, but neither of those standard sales devices has proved successful. Both tactics
are costly, and have been ineffective in increasing sales to desired levels.
Parents are simply not in a toy-buying mood, and the influences of advertising or
reduced expense are not enough to shake that stony resistance.
Certain large toy manufacturers, however, think they have found a solution. It's an
ingenious one, involving no more than a normal advertising expense and an un-
Commitment and Consistency 59
derstanding of the powerful pull of the need for consistency. My first hint of the way
the toy companies' strategy worked came after I fell for it and then, in true patsy
form, fell for it again.
It was January, and I was in the town's largest toy store. After purchasing all too
many gifts there for my son a month before, I had sworn not to enter that store or
any like it for a long, long time. Yet there I was, not only in the diabolic place
but also in the process of buying my son another expensive toy—a big, electric road-
race set. In front of the road-race display I happened to meet a former neighbor who
was buying his son the same toy. The odd thing was that we almost never saw each
other anymore. In fact, the last time had been a year earlier in the same store when
we were both buying our sons an expensive post-Christmas gift—that time a robot
that walked, talked, and laid waste. We laughed about our strange pattern of seeing
each other only once a year at the same time, in the same place, while doing the
same thing. Later that day, I mentioned the coincidence to a friend who, it turned
out, had once worked in the toy business.
"No coincidence," he said knowingly.
"What do you mean, 'No coincidence'?"
"Look," he said, "let me ask you a couple of questions about the road-race set you
bought this year. First, did you promise your son that he'd get one for Christmas?"
"Well, yes I did. Christopher had seen a bunch of ads for them on the Saturday
morning cartoon shows and said that was what he wanted for Christmas. I saw a
couple of ads myself and it looked like fun; so I said OK."
"Strike one," he announced. "Now for my second question. When you went to buy
one, did you find all the stores sold out?"
"That's right, I did! The stores said they'd ordered some but didn't know when they'd
get any more in. So I had to buy Christopher some other toys to make up for the
road-race set. But how did you know?"
"Strike two," he said. "Just let me ask one more question. Didn't this same sort of
thing happen the year before with the robot toy?"
"Wait a minute ... you're right. That's just what happened. This is incredible. How did
you know?"
"No psychic powers; I just happen to know how several of the big toy companies jack
up their January and February sales. They start prior to Christmas with attractive TV
ads for certain special toys. The kids, naturally, want what they see and extract
Christmas promises for these items from their parents. Now here's where the genius
of the companies' plan comes in: They undersupply the stores with the toys they've
gotten the parents to promise. Most parents find those toys sold out and are forced to
substitute other toys of equal value. The toy manufacturers, of course, make a point
of supplying the stores with plenty of these substitutes. Then, after Christmas, the
companies start running the ads again for the other, special toys. That juices up
the kids to want those toys more than ever. They go running to their parents whining,
'You promised, you promised,' and the adults go trudging off to the store to live up
dutifully to their words."
60 Chapter 3
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-3.jpg
"Where," I said, beginning to seethe now, "they meet other parents they haven't seen
for a year, falling for the same trick, right?"
"Right. Uh, where are you going?"
"I'm going to take the road-race set right back to the store." I was so angry I was
nearly shouting.
"Wait. Think for a minute first. Why did you buy it this morning?"
"Because I didn't want to let Christopher down and because I wanted to teach him
that promises are to be lived up to."
"Well, has any of that changed? Look, if you take his toy away now, he won't
understand why. He'll just know that his father broke a promise to him. Is that what
you want?"
Commitment and Consistency 61
"No," I said, sighing, "I guess not. So, you're telling me that the toy companies
doubled their profits on me for the past two years, and I never even knew it; and now
that I do, I'm still trapped—by my own words. So, what you're really telling me is,
'Strike three.' " He nodded, "And you're out."
In the years since, I have observed a variety of parental toy-buying sprees similar to
the one I experienced during that particular holiday season—for Beanie Babies, Tickle
Me Elmo dolls, Furbies, etc. But, historically, the one that best fits the
pattern is that of the Cabbage Patch Kids, $25 dolls that were promoted heavily
during mid-1980s Christmas seasons but were woefully undersupplied to stores.
Some of the consequences were a government false advertising charge against the
Kids' maker
for continuing to advertise dolls that were not available; frenzied groups of adults
battling at toy outlets or paying up to $700 apiece at auction for dolls they had
promised their children; and an annual $150 million in sales that extended well
beyond the Christmas months. During the 1998 holiday season, the least available
toy that everyone wanted was the Furby, created by a division of toy giant Hasbro.
When asked what frustrated, Furby-less parents should tell their kids, a Hasbro
spokeswoman advised the kind of promise that has profited toy manufacturers for
decades, "I'll try, but if I can't get it for you now, I'll get it for you later" (Tooher,
1998).
COMMITMENT IS THE KEY
Once we realize that the power of consistency is formidable in directing human action,
an important practical question immediately arises: How is that force engaged? What
produces the click that activates the whirr of the powerful consistency tape?
Social psychologists think they know the answer: commitment. If I can get you to
make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the
stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment.
Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are
stubbornly consistent with the stand.
As we've already seen, social psychologists are not the only ones who understand the
connection between commitment and consistency. Commitment strategies are aimed
at us by compliance professionals of nearly every sort. Each of the strategies is
intended to get us to take some action or make some statement that will trap us into
later compliance through consistency pressures. Procedures designed to create
commitment take various forms. Some are bluntly straightforward; others are among
the
most subtle compliance tactics we will encounter. On the blunt side, consider the
approach of Jack Stanko, used-car sales manager for an Albuquerque auto dealership.
While leading a session called "Used Car Merchandising" at a National Auto Dealers
Association convention in San Francisco, he advised 100 sales-hungry dealers as
follows: "Put 'em on paper. Get the customer's OK on paper. Get the money up front.
Control 'em. Control the deal. Ask 'em if they would buy the car right now if the price
is right. Pin 'em down" (Rubinstein, 1985). Obviously, Mr. Stanko—an expert
62 Chapter 3
in these matters—believes that the way to customer compliance is through their
commitments, thereby to "control 'em" for profit.
Commitment practices involving substantially more finesse can be just as effective.
For instance, suppose you wanted to increase the number of people in your area who
would agree to go door-to-door collecting donations for your favorite charity. You
would be wise to study the approach taken by social psychologist Steven J. Sherman.
He simply called a sample of Bloomington, Indiana, residents as part of a survey he
was taking and asked them to predict what they would say if asked to spend three
hours collecting money for the American Cancer Society. Of course, not wanting to
seem uncharitable to the survey-taker or to themselves, many of these people said
that they would volunteer. The consequence of this subtle committment procedure
was a
700 percent increase in volunteers when, a few days later, a representative of the
American Cancer Society did call and ask for neighborhood canvassers (Sherman,
1980). Using the same strategy, but this time asking citizens to predict whether they
would vote on election day, other researchers have been able to increase significantly
the turnout at the polls among those called (Greenwald, Carnot, Beach, & Young,
1987; Spangenberg & Greenwald, in press). Courtroom combatants appear to have
adopted
this practice of extracting a lofty initial commitment that is designed to spur future
consistent behavior. When screening potential jurors before a trial, Jo-Ellen
Demitrius, the woman currently reputed to be the best consultant in the business of
jury selection asks an artful question: "If you were the only person who believed in
my client's innocence, could you withstand the pressure of the rest of the jury to
change your mind?" How could any self-respecting prospective juror say no? And,
having made the promise, how could any self-respecting selected juror repudiate it
later?
Perhaps an even more crafty commitment technique has been developed by
telephone solicitors for charity. Have you noticed that callers asking you to contribute
to some cause or another these days seem to begin things by inquiring about your
current
health and well-being? "Hello, Mr./Ms. Targetperson," they say. "How are you feeling
this evening?," or "How are you doing today?" The caller's intent with this sort of
introduction is not merely to seem friendly and caring. It is to get you to respond
—as you normally do to such polite, superficial inquiries—with a polite, superficial
comment of your own: "Just fine" or "Real good" or "I'm doing great, thanks." Once
you have publicly stated that all is well, it becomes much easier for the solicitor
to corner you into aiding those for whom all is not well: "I'm glad to hear that,
because I'm calling to ask if you'd be willing to make a donation to help out the
unfortunate victims of..."
The theory behind this tactic is that people who have just asserted that they are
doing/feeling fine—even as a routine part of a sociable exchange—will consequently
find it awkward to appear stingy in the context of their own admittedly favored
circumstances. If all this sounds a bit far-fetched, consider the findings of consumer
researcher Daniel Howard (1990), who put the theory to test. Residents of Dallas,
Texas, were called on the phone and asked if they would agree to allow a
representative of the Hunger Relief Committee to come to their homes to sell them
cookies, the pro-
Commitment and Consistency 63
ceeds from which would be used to supply meals for the needy. When tried alone,
that request (labeled the standard solicitation approach) produced only 18 percent
agreement. However, if the caller initially asked, "How are you feeling this evening?"
and waited for a reply before proceeding with the standard approach, several
noteworthy things happened. First, of the 120 individuals called, most (108) gave the
customary favorable reply ("Good," "Fine," "Real well," etc.). Second, 32 percent of
the
people who got the How-are-you-feeling-tonight question agreed to receive the
cookie seller at their homes, nearly twice the success rate of the standard solicitation
approach. Third, true to the consistency principle, almost everyone (89 percent) who
agreed to such a visit did in fact make a cookie purchase when contacted at home.
The question of what makes a commitment effective has numerous answers. A
variety of factors affects the ability of a commitment to constrain our future behavior.
One large-scale program designed to produce compliance illustrates how several of
the
factors work. The remarkable thing about this program is that it was systematically
employing these factors decades ago, well before scientific research had identified
them.
During the Korean War, many captured American soldiers found themselves in
prisoner-of-war camps run by the Chinese Communists. It became clear early in the
conflict that the Chinese treated captives quite differently than did their allies, the
North
Koreans, who favored harsh punishment to gain compliance. Specifically avoiding the
appearance of brutality, the Red Chinese engaged in what they termed their "lenient
policy," which was, in reality, a concerted and sophisticated psychological assault
on their captives. After the war, American psychologists questioned the returning
prisoners intensively to determine what had occurred, in part because of the
unsettling success of some aspects of the Chinese program. For example, the Chinese
were very
effective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in striking contrast to the
behavior of American POWs in World War II. For this reason, among others, escape
plans were quickly uncovered and the escapes themselves almost always
unsuccessful.
"When an escape did occur," wrote psychologist Edgar Schein (1956), a principal
American investigator of the Chinese indoctrination program in Korea, "the Chinese
usually recovered the man easily by offering a bag of rice to anyone turning him in."
In
fact, nearly all American prisoners in the Chinese camps are said to have collaborated
with the enemy in one way or another.1
An examination of the prison-camp program shows that the Chinese relied heavily on
commitment and consistency pressures to gain the desired compliance from their
captives. Of course, the first problem facing the Chinese was to find a way to
It is important to note that the collaboration was not always intentional. The
American investigators defined collaboration as "any kind of behavior which helped
the enemy," and it thus included such diverse activities as signing peace petitions,
running errands, making radio appeals, accepting special favors, making false
confessions, informing on fellow prisoners, divulging military information, etc.
64
Chapter 3
get any collaboration at all from the Americans. These prisoners had been trained to
provide nothing but name, rank, and serial number. Short of physical brutalization,
how could the captors hope to get such men to give military information, turn in
fellow prisoners, or publicly denounce their country? The Chinese answer was
elementary: Start small and build.
For instance, prisoners were frequently asked to make statements that were so mildly
anti-American or pro-Communist that they seemed inconsequential ("The United
States is not perfect." "In a Communist country, unemployment is not a problem.").
Once
these minor requests had been complied with, however, the men found themselves
pushed to submit to related, yet more substantive, requests. A man who had just
agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States was not perfect might
then be
asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he
had so explained, he might be asked to make a list of these "problems with America"
and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion
group with other prisoners. "After all, it's what you really believe, isn't it?" Still later,
he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these
problems in greater detail.
The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti-American radio
broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp but to other POW camps in North
Korea as well as to American forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a
"collaborator," having given aid and comfort to the enemy. Aware that he had written
the essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change
his self-image to be consistent with the deed and with the new "collaborator" label,
often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration. Thus, while "only a few
men were able to avoid collaboration altogether," according to Schein, "the majority
collaborated at one time or another by doing things which seemed to them trivial
but which the Chinese were able to turn to their own advantage.... This was
particularly effective in eliciting confessions, self-criticism, and information during
interrogation" (1956).
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-4.jpg
Commitment and Consistency 65
Other groups of people interested in compliance are also aware of the usefulness and
power of this approach. Charitable organizations, for instance, will often use
progressively escalating commitments to induce individuals to perform major favors.
Research has shown that such trivial first commitments as agreeing to be interviewed
can begin a "momentum of compliance" that induces such later behaviors as organ or
bone marrow donations (Carducci, Deuser, Bauer, Large, & Ramaekers, 1989;
Schwartz,
1970).
Many business organizations employ this approach regularly as well. For the
salesperson, the strategy is to obtain a large purchase by starting with a small one.
Almost any small sale will do because the purpose of that small transaction is not
profit,
it is commitment. Further purchases, even much larger ones, are expected to flow
naturally from the commitment. An article in the trade magazine American Salesman
put it succinctly:
The general idea is to pave the way for full-line distribution by starting with a small
order.... Look at it this way—when a person has signed an order for your
merchandise, even though the profit is so small it hardly compensates for the time
and
effort of making the call, he is no longer a prospect— he is a customer (Green, 1965,
p. 14).
The tactic of starting with a little request in order to gain eventual compliance with
related larger requests has a name: the foot-in-the-door technique. Social scientists
first became aware of its effectiveness in 1966 when psychologists Jonathan
Freedman and Scott Fraser published an astonishing set of data. They reported the
results of an experiment in which a researcher, posing as a volunteer worker, had
gone door to door in a residential California neighborhood making a preposterous
request
of homeowners. The homeowners were asked to allow a public-service billboard to be
installed on their front lawns. To get an idea of the way the sign would look, they
were shown a photograph depicting an attractive house, the view of which was almost
completely obscured by a very large, poorly lettered sign reading DRIVE CAREFULLY.
Although the request was normally and understandably refused by the great majority
of the residents in the area (only 17 percent complied), one particular group of
people reacted quite favorably. A full 76 percent of them offered the use of their front
yards.
The prime reason for their startling compliance has to do with something that had
happened to them about two weeks earlier: They had made a small commitment to
driver safety. A different "volunteer worker" had come to their doors and asked them
to
accept and display a little three-inch-square sign that read BE A SAFE DRIVER. It was
such a trifling request that nearly all of them had agreed to it, but the effects of that
request were enormous. Because they had innocently complied with a trivial
safe-driving request a couple of weeks before, these homeowners became remarkably
willing to comply with another such request that was massive in size.
Freedman and Fraser didn't stop there. They tried a slightly different procedure on
another sample of homeowners. These people first received a request to sign
66 Chapter 3
a petition that favored "keeping California beautiful." Of course, nearly everyone
signed since state beauty, like efficiency in government or sound prenatal care, is one
of those issues no one opposes. After waiting about two weeks, Freedman and
Eraser sent a new "volunteer worker" to these same homes to ask the residents to
allow the big DRIVE CAREFULLY sign to be erected on their lawns. In some ways, the
response of these homeowners was the most astounding of any in the study.
Approximately
half of these people consented to the installation of the DRIVE CAREFULLY billboard,
even though the small commitment they had made weeks earlier was not to driver
safety but to an entirely different public-service topic, state beautification.
At first, even Freedman and Eraser were bewildered by their findings. Why should the
little act of signing a petition supporting state beautification cause people to be so
willing to perform a different and much larger favor? After considering and
discarding other explanations, Freedman and Fraser came upon one that offered a
solution to the puzzle: Signing the beautification petition changed the view these
people had
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-5.jpg
Commitment and Consistency 67
of themselves. They saw themselves as public-spirited citizens who acted on their
civic principles. When, two weeks later, they were asked to perform another public
service by displaying the DRIVE CAREFULLY sign, they complied in order to be
consistent
with their newly formed self-images. According to Freedman and Fraser:
What may occur is a change in the person's feelings about getting involved or taking
action. Once he has agreed to a request, his attitude may change, he may become, in
his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to
requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who
cooperates with good causes, (p. 201)
What the Freedman and Fraser findings tell us, then, is to be very careful about
agreeing to trivial requests. Such an agreement can not only increase our compliance
with very similar, much larger requests, it can also make us more willing to perform a
variety of larger favors that are only remotely connected to the little one we did
earlier. It's this second, general kind of influence concealed within small commitments
that scares me.
It scares me enough that I am rarely willing to sign a petition anymore, even for a
position I support. Such an action has the potential to influence not only my future
behavior but also my self-image in ways I may not want. Further, once a person's
self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who
wants to exploit that new image.
Who among Freedman and Eraser's homeowners would have thought that the
"volunteer worker" who asked them to sign a state beautification petition was really
interested in having them display a safe-driving billboard two weeks later? Who
among them could
have suspected that their decision to display the billboard was largely a result of
signing the petition? No one, I'd guess. If there were any regrets after the billboard
went up, who could they conceivably hold responsible but themselves and their own
damnably strong civic spirits? They probably never even considered the guy with the
"keeping California beautiful" petition and all that knowledge of social jujitsu.
Hearts and Minds
Notice that all of the foot-in-the-door experts seem to be excited about the same
thing: You can use small commitments to manipulate a person's self-image; you can
use them to turn citizens into "public servants," prospects into "customers," prisoners
into "collaborators." Once you've got a person's self-image where you want it, that
person should comply naturally with a whole range of requests that are consistent
with this new self-view.
Not all commitments affect self-image, however. There are certain conditions that
should be present for a commitment to be effective in this way: they should be
active, public, effortful, and freely chosen. The major intent of the Chinese was not
68
Chapter 3
simply to extract information from their prisoners. It was to indoctrinate them, to
change their attitudes and perceptions of themselves, of their political system, of
their country's role in the war, and of communism. Dr. Henry Segal, chief of the
neuro-psychiatric evaluation team that examined returning POWs at the end of the
Korean War, reported that war-related beliefs had been substantially shifted.
Significant inroads had been made in the political attitudes of the men:
Many expressed antipathy toward the Chinese Communists but at the same time
praised them for "the fine job they had done in China." Others stated that "although
communism won't work in America, I think it's a good thing for Asia." (Segal, 1954,
p. 360)
_
It appears that the real goal of the Chinese was to modify, at least for a time, the
hearts and minds of their captives. If we measure their achievement in terms of
"defection, disloyalty, changed attitudes and beliefs, poor discipline, poor morale,
poor esprit, and doubts as to America's role," Segal concluded, "their efforts were
highly successful." Let's examine more closely how they managed it.
The Magic Act
Our best evidence of people's true feelings and beliefs comes less from their words
than from their deeds. Observers trying to decide what people are like look closely at
their actions. Researchers have discovered that people themselves use this same
evidence—their own behavior—to decide what they are like; it is a primary source of
information about one's own beliefs, values, and attitudes (Bern, 1972; Vallacher &
Wegner, 1985).
The rippling impact of behavior on one's self-concept and future behavior can be seen
in research investigating the effect of active versus passive commitments (Allison &
Messick, 1988; Fazio, Sherman, & Herr, 1982). For instance, in one study, college
students volunteered for an AIDS education project in the local schools. The
researchers arranged for half to volunteer actively by filling out a form stating that
they wanted to participate. The other half volunteered passively by failing to fill out
a form stating that they didn't want to participate. Three to four days later, when
asked to begin their volunteer activity, the great majority (74 percent) who actually
appeared for duty came from the ranks of those who had actively agreed to
participate. What's more, those who volunteered actively were more likely to explain
their decisions by implicating their personal values, preferences, and traits (Cioffi &
Garner, 1996). In all, it seems that active commitments give us the kind of
information we use to shape self-image, which then shapes future actions, which
solidify the new self-image.
Understanding fully this route to altered self-perception, the Chinese set about
arranging the prison-camp experience so that their captives would consistently act in
desired ways. Before long, the Chinese knew, these actions would begin to take
Commitment and Consistency 69
their toll, causing the prisoners to change their views of themselves to align with what
they had done.
Writing was one sort of committing action that the Chinese urged incessantly upon
the captives. It was never enough for prisoners to listen quietly or even to agree
verbally with the Chinese line; they were always pushed to write it down as well.
Schein (1956) describes a standard indoctrination session tactic of the Chinese:
A further technique was to have the man write out the question and then the [pro-
Communist] answer. If he refused to write it voluntarily, he was asked to copy it from
the notebooks, which must have seemed like a harmless enough concession, (p. 161)
Oh, those "harmless" concessions. We've already seen how apparently trifling
commitments can lead to further consistent behavior. As a commitment device, a
written declaration has some great advantages. First, it provides physical evidence
that an act
has occurred. Once a prisoner wrote what the Chinese wanted, it was very difficult for
him to believe that he had not done so. The opportunities to forget or to deny to
himself what he had done were not available, as they were for purely verbal
statements. No; there it was in his own handwriting, an irrevocably documented act
driving him to make his beliefs and his self-image consistent with what he had
undeniably done. Second, a written testament can be shown to other people. Of
course, that
means it can be used to persuade those people. It can persuade them to change their
own attitudes in the direction of the statement. More importantly for the purpose of
commitment, it can persuade them that the author genuinely believes what was
written.
People have a natural tendency to think that a statement reflects the true attitude of
the person who made it. What is surprising is that they continue to think so even
when they know that the person did not freely choose to make the statement. Some
scientific evidence that this is the case comes from a study by psychologists Edward
Jones and James Harris (1967), who showed people an essay that was favorable to
Fidel Castro and asked them to guess the true feelings of its author. Jones and Harris
told some of these people that the author had chosen to write a pro-Castro essay;
they told other people that the author had been required to write in favor of Castro.
The strange thing was that even those people who knew that the author had been
assigned to do a pro-Castro essay guessed that the writer liked Castro. It seems that
a statement of belief produces a click, whirr response in those who view it. Unless
there is strong evidence to the contrary, observers automatically assume that
someone who makes such a statement means it (Allison, Mackie, Muller, & Worth,
1993).
Think of the double-barreled effects on the self-image of a prisoner who wrote a pro-
Chinese or anti-American statement. Not only was it a lasting personal reminder of
his action, it was also likely to persuade those around him that it reflected his
actual beliefs. As we will see in Chapter 4, what those around us think is true of us is
enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true. For
70 Chapter 3
example, one study found that one week after hearing that they were considered
charitable people, homemakers in New Haven, Connecticut, gave much more money
to a canvasser from the Multiple Sclerosis Association (Kraut, 1973). Apparently the
mere
knowledge that someone viewed them as charitable caused these people to make
their actions consistent with that view.
Savvy politicians have long used the committing character of labels to great
advantage. One of the best at it was former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. Before
international negotiations began, Sadat would assure his bargaining opponents that
they and
the citizens of their country were widely known for their cooperativeness and fairness.
With this kind of flattery, he not only created positive feelings, he also connected his
opponent's identities to a course of action that served his goals.
According to master-negotiator, Henry Kissinger (1982), Sadat was successful
because he got others to act in his interests by giving them a reputation to uphold.
Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by
consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into
line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to
adjust this image according to the way others perceive us (Schlenker, Dlugolecki, &
Doherty, 1994). Because others see us as believing what we have written (even when
we've had little choice in the matter), we once again experience a pull to bring
self-image into line with the written statement.
In Korea, several subtle devices were used to get prisoners to write, without direct
coercion, what the Chinese wanted. For example, the Chinese knew that many
prisoners were anxious to let their families know that they were alive. At the same
time,
the men knew that their captors were censoring the mail and that only some letters
were being allowed out of camp. To ensure that their own letters should be released,
some prisoners began including in their messages peace appeals, claims of kind
treatment, and statements sympathetic to communism. The hope was that the
Chinese would want such letters to surface and would, therefore, allow their delivery.
Of course, the Chinese were happy to cooperate because those letters served their
interests
marvelously. First, their worldwide propaganda effort benefited greatly from the
appearance of pro-Communist statements by American servicemen. Second, in the
service of prisoner indoctrination, the Chinese had, without raising a finger of physical
force, gotten many men to go on record supporting the Communist cause. A similar
technique involved political essay contests that were regularly held in camp. The
prizes for winning were invariably small—a few cigarettes or a bit of fruit—but were
sufficiently scarce that they generated a lot of interest from the men. Usually the
winning essay was one that took a solidly pro-Communist stand ... but not always.
The Chinese were wise enough to realize that most of the prisoners would not enter a
contest that they thought they could win only by writing a Communist tract.
Moreover, the Chinese were clever enough to know how to plant in the captives small
commitments to communism that could be nurtured into later bloom. So,
occasionally, the
winning essay was one that generally supported the United States but that bowed
once or twice to the Chinese view. The effects of this strategy were exactly what the
Chinese wanted. The men continued to participate voluntarily in the contests because
Commitment and Consistency 71
they saw that they could win with essays highly favorable to their own country.
Perhaps without realizing it, however, they began to shade their essays a bit toward
communism in order to have a better chance of winning. The Chinese were ready to
pounce
on any concession to Communist dogma and to bring consistency pressures to bear
upon it. In the case of a written declaration within a voluntary essay, they had a
perfect commitment from which to build toward collaboration and conversion.
Other compliance professionals also know about the committing power of written
statements. The enormously successful Amway Corporation, for instance, has a way
to spur their sales personnel to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of the
staff
are asked to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to those goals by
personally recording them on paper:
One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal,
the important thing is that you set it, so you've got something for which to aim—and
that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So
set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that
down. You'll be off and running.
If the Amway people have found "something magical about writing things down," so
have other business organizations. Some door-to-door sales companies use the magic
of written commitments to battle the "cooling-off' laws that exist in many states. The
laws are designed to allow customers a few days after agreeing to purchase an item
to cancel the sale and receive a full refund. At first this legislation hurt the hard-sell
companies deeply. Because they emphasize high-pressure tactics, their
customers often buy, not because they want the products but because they are duped
or intimidated into the sale. When the laws went into effect, these customers began
canceling in droves.
The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts the number of
such cancellations drastically. They merely have the customer, rather than the
salesperson, fill out the sales agreement. According to the sales-training program of a
prominent encyclopedia company, that personal commitment alone has proved to be
"a very important psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their
contracts." Like the Amway Corporation, these organizations have found that
something
special happens when people put their commitments on paper: They live up to what
they have written down.
Another common way for businesses to cash in on the "magic" of written declarations
occurs through the use of an innocent-looking promotional device. Before I began to
study weapons of social influence, I used to wonder why big companies such as
Procter & Gamble and General Foods are always running those "25-, 50-, or 100-
words or less" testimonial contests. They all seem to be alike. A contestant is to
compose a short personal statement that begins with the words, "I like the product
because
..." and goes on to laud the features of whatever cake mix or floor wax happens to be
at issue. The company judges the entries and awards prizes to the winners. What
puzzled me was what the companies got out of the deal. Often
72 Chapter 3
the contest requires no purchase; anyone submitting an entry is eligible. Yet, the
companies appear to be willing to incur the costs of contest after contest.
I am no longer puzzled. The purpose behind the testimonial contest—to get as many
people as possible to endorse a product—is the same as the purpose behind the
political essay contests: to get endorsements for Chinese communism. In both
instances the
process is the same. Participants voluntarily write essays for attractive prizes that
they have only a small chance to win. They know that for an essay to have any
chance of winning at all, however, it must include praise for the product. So they
search to find praiseworthy features of the product, and they describe them in their
essays. The result is hundreds of POWs in Korea or hundreds of thousands of people
in America who testify in writing to the products' appeal and who, consequently,
experience that magical pull to believe what they have written.
The Public Eye
One reason that written testaments are effective in bringing about genuine personal
change is that they can so easily be made public. The prisoner experience in Korea
showed the Chinese to be quite aware of an important psychological principle: Public
commitments tend to be lasting commitments. The Chinese constantly arranged to
have the pro-Communist statements of their captives seen by others. They were
posted around camp, read by the author to a prisoner discussion group, or even read
on the camp
radio broadcast. As far as the Chinese were concerned, the more public the better.
Why?
Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain
that stand in order to look like a consistent person (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma,
1971; Schlenker et al., 1994). Remember that earlier in this chapter I described
how desirable good personal consistency is as a trait; how someone without it may be
judged as fickle, uncertain, pliant, scatterbrained, or unstable; how someone with it is
viewed as rational, assured, trustworthy, and sound. Given this context, it is
hardly surprising that people try to avoid the look of inconsistency. For appearances'
sake, then, the more public a stand, the more reluctant we will be to change it.
An illustration of the way public commitments can lead to consistent further action
was provided in a famous experiment performed by two prominent social
psychologists, Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955). The basic procedure was to
have college
students first estimate in their minds the length of lines they were shown. At this
point, one sample of the students had to commit themselves publicly to their initial
judgments by writing their estimates down, signing their names to them, and turning
them in to the experimenter. A second sample of students also committed themselves
to their first estimates, but they did so privately by writing them down on a Magic
Writing Pad and then erasing them by lifting the Magic Pad's plastic cover before
anyone could see what they had written. A third set of students did not commit
themselves to their initial estimates at all; they just kept the estimates in mind
privately.
In these ways, Deutsch and Gerard had cleverly arranged for some students to
commit themselves publicly, some privately, and some not at all, to their initial de-
Commitment and Consistent
73
cisions. What Deutsch and Gerard wanted to find out was which of the three types of
students would be most inclined to stick with their first judgments after receiving
information that those judgments were incorrect. Therefore, all the students were
given new evidence suggesting that their initial estimates were wrong, and they were
then given the chance to change their estimates.
The results were quite clear. The students who had never written down their first
choices were the least loyal to those choices. When new evidence was presented that
questioned the wisdom of decisions that had never left their heads, these students
were the most influenced by the new information to change what they had viewed as
the "correct" decision. Compared to these uncommitted students, those who had
merely written their decisions for a moment on a Magic Pad were significantly less
willing
to change their minds when given the chance. Even though they had committed
themselves under anonymous circumstances, the act of writing down their first
judgments caused them to resist the influence of contradictory new data and to
remain consistent
with their preliminary choices. However, Deutsch and Gerard found I that, by far, it
was the students who had publicly recorded their initial positions who
most resolutely refused to shift from those positions later. Public commitments had
hardened them into the most stubborn of all.
This sort of stubbornness can occur even in situations in which accuracy should be
more important than consistency. In one study, when 6- or 12-person experimental
juries were deciding a close case, hung juries were significantly more frequent if the
jurors had to express their opinions with a visible show of hands rather than by secret
ballot. Once jurors had stated their initial views publicly, they were reluctant to allow
themselves to change publicly. Should you ever find yourself as the
foreper-son of a jury under these conditions, you could reduce the risk of a hung jury
by choosing a secret rather than public balloting technique (Kerr & MacCoun, 1985).
The Deutsch and Gerard finding that we are truest to our decisions if we have bound
ourselves to them publicly can be put to good use. Consider the organizations
dedicated to helping people rid themselves of bad habits. Many weight-reduction
clinics,
for instance, understand that often a person's private decision to lose weight will be
too weak to withstand the blandishments of bakery windows, wafting cooking scents,
and late-night Sara Lee commercials. So they see to it that the decision is
buttressed by the pillars of public commitment. They require their clients to write
down an immediate weight-loss goal and show that goal to as many friends, relatives,
and neighbors as possible. Clinic operators report that frequently this simple
technique works where all else has failed.
Of course, there's no need to pay a special clinic in order to engage a visible
commitment as any ally. One San Diego woman described to me how she employed a
public promise to help herself finally stop smoking:
/ remember it was after I heard about another scientific study showing that smoking
causes cancer. Every time one of those things came out, I used to get determined to
quit, but I never could. This time, though, I decided I had to do
74 Chapter 3
something. I'm a proud person. It matters to me if other people see me in a bad
light. So I thought, "Maybe I can me that pride to help me dump this damn habit." So
I made a list of all the people who 1 really wanted to respect me. Then I went out and
got some blank business cards and I wrote on the back of each card, "I promise you
that I will never smoke another cigarette."
Within a week, I had given or sent a signed card to everybody on my list—my dad,
my brother back East, my boss, my best girlfriend, my ex-husband, everybody but
one—the guy I was dating then. I was just crazy about him, and I really wanted him
to value
me as a person. Believe me, I thought twice about giving him a card because I knew
that if I couldn't keep my promise to him I'd die. But one day at the office—he
worked in the same building as I did—I just walked up to him, handed him the card,
and
walked away without saying anything.
Quitting "cold turkey" was the hardest thing I've ever done. There must have been a
thousand times when I thought I had to have a smoke. But whenever that happened,
I'd just picture how all the people on my list would think less of me if I couldn't
stick to my guns. And that's all it took, I've never taken another puff.2
READER'S REPORT 3.1
From a Canadian University Professor
I just read a newspaper article on how a restaurant owner used public commitments
to solve a big problem of customers who didn't show-up for their table reservations. I
don't know if he read your book or not first, but he did something that fits
perfectly with the commitment/consistency principle you talk about. He told his
receptionists to stop saying, "Please call us if you change your plans," and to start
asking, "Will you please call us if you change your plans?" and to wait for a
response. His no-show rate immediately dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent.
Author's note: What was it about this subtle shift that led to such a dramatic
difference? For me, it was the receptionist's request for (and pause for) the caller's
promise. By spurring patrons to make a public commitment, this approach increased
the
chance that they would follow through on it. By the way, the canny proprietor was
Gordon Sinclair of Gordon's restaurant in Chicago.
2This public commitment tactic may work especially well for individuals with high
levels of pride or public self-consciousness (Feingstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). For
example, it worked successfully for Charles DeGaulle, whose remarkable
achievements
for France were said to be matched only by his ego. When asked to explain why
announcing to everyone that he would stop his heavy smoking obliged him to quit
forever, he is reported to have replied gravely, "DeGaulle cannot go back on his
word" (Quoted
in D. Cook, 1984).
Commitment and Consistency 75
The Effort Extra
The evidence is clear that the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater is
its ability to influence the attitudes of the person who made it. We can find that
evidence quite nearby or as far away as the back regions of the primitive world.
Let's begin close to home with the entertainment section of tomorrow's newspaper,
where an important piece of information is missing from ads for popular music
concerts—the price. Why should it be that concert promoters are increasingly hiding
the cost
of admission from fans? Perhaps they're afraid that their ever-higher prices will scare
ticket buyers away. But, interested fans will find out the price of a seat as soon as
they call or visit a ticket outlet, right? True, but promoters have recognized
that potential concertgoers are more likely to buy tickets after that call or visit than
before. Even phoning to inquire about ticket prices constitutes an initial commitment
to the concert. Combine that with the time and effort expended waiting
interminably on hold after speed-redialing through jammed phone lines, and the
promoters have fans precisely where they want them once the cost is revealed—at
the end of an active, public, effortful commitment to the event.
More far-flung illustrations of the power of effortful commitments exist, as well. There
is a tribe in southern Africa, the Thonga, that requires each of its boys to go through
an elaborate initiation ceremony before he can be counted a man of the
tribe. As with boys in many other primitive tribes, a Thonga boy endures a great deal
before he is admitted to adult membership in the group. Anthropologists Whiting,
Kluckhohn, and Anthony (1958) have described this three-month ordeal in brief but
vivid terms:
When a boy is somewhere between 10 and 16 years of age, he is sent by his parents
to "circumcision school," which is held every 4 or 5 years. Here in company with his
age-mates he undergoes severe hazing by the adult males of the society. The
initiation begins when each boy runs the gauntlet between two rows of men who beat
him with clubs. At the end of this experience he is stripped of his clothes and his hair
is cut. He is next met by a man covered with lion manes and is seated upon a
stone facing this "lion man." Someone then strikes him from behind and when he
turns his head to see who has struck him, his foreskin is seized and in two
movements cut off by the "lion man." Afterward he is secluded for three months in
the "yard of
mysteries," where he can be seen only by the initiated.
During the course of his initiation, the boy undergoes six major trials: beatings,
exposure to cold, thirst, eating of unsavory foods, punishment, and the threat of
death. On the slightest pretext, he may be beaten by one of the newly initiated men,
who is assigned to the task by the older men of the tribe. He sleeps without covering
and suffers bitterly from the winter cold. He is forbidden to drink a drop of water
during the whole three months. Meals are often made nauseating by the half-
digested grass from the stomach of an antelope, which is poured over his food. If he
is caught
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-6.jpg
76
Chapter 3
breaking any important rule governing the ceremony, he is severely punished. For
example, in one of these punishments, sticks are placed between the fingers of the
offender, then a strong man closes his hand around that of the novice, practically
crushing his fingers. He is frightened into submission by being told that informer
times boys who had tried to escape or who had revealed the secrets to women or to
the uninitiated were hanged and their bodies burned to ashes, (p. 360)
On the face of it, these rites seem extraordinary and bizarre. Yet, at the same time,
they are remarkably similar in principle and even in detail to the common initiation
ceremonies of school fraternities. During the traditional "Hell Week" held yearly
on college campuses, fraternity pledges must persevere through a variety of activities
designed by the older members to test the limits of physical exertion, psychological
strain, and social embarrassment. At week's end, the boys who have persisted
through the ordeal are accepted for full group membership. Mostly their tribulations
have left them no more than greatly tired and a bit shaky, although sometimes the
negative effects are more serious.
What is interesting is how closely the particular features of Hell Week tasks match
those of tribal initiation rites. Recall that anthropologists identified six major trials to
be endured by a Thonga initiate during his stay in the "yard of mysteries."
A scan of newspaper reports shows that each trial also has its place in the hazing
rituals of Greek-letter societies:
• Beatings. Fourteen-year-old Michael Kalogris spent three weeks in a Long Island
hospital recovering from internal injuries suffered during a Hell Night initiation
ceremony of his high-school fraternity, Omega Gamma Delta. He had been
administered the
"atomic bomb" by his prospective brothers, who told him to hold his hands over his
head and keep them there while they gathered around to slam fists into his stomach
and back simultaneously and repeatedly.
• Exposure to cold. On a winter night, Frederick Bronner, a California junior college
student, was taken 3,000 feet up and 10 miles into the hills of a national forest by his
prospective fraternity brothers. Left to find his way home wearing only a
thin sweat shirt and slacks, Fat Freddy, as he was called, shivered in a frigid wind
until he tumbled down a steep ravine, fracturing bones and hurting his head.
Prevented by his injuries from going on, he huddled there against the cold until he
died
of exposure.
• Thirst. Two Ohio State University freshmen found themselves in the "dungeon" of
their prospective fraternity house after breaking the rule requiring all pledges to crawl
into the dining area prior to Hell Week meals. Once locked in the house storage
closet, they were given only salty foods to eat for nearly two days. Nothing was
provided for drinking purposes except a pair of plastic cups in which they could catch
their own urine.
Commitment and Consistency 77
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-7.jpg 3_Commitment_and_Consistency-8.jpg
78
Chapter 3
• Eating of unsavory foods. At Kappa Sigma house on the campus of the University of
Southern California, the eyes of eleven pledges bulged when they saw the sickening
task before them. Eleven quarter-pound slabs of raw liver lay on a tray. Thick cut
and soaked in oil, each was to be swallowed whole, one to a boy. Gagging and
choking repeatedly, young Richard Swanson failed three times to down his piece.
Determined to succeed, he finally got the oil-soaked meat into his throat where it
lodged and,
despite all efforts to remove it, killed him.
• Punishment. In Wisconsin, a pledge who forgot one section of a ritual incantation to
be memorized by all initiates was punished for his error. He was required to keep his
feet under the rear legs of a folding chair while the heaviest of his
fraternity brothers sat down and drank a beer. Although the pledge did not cry out
during the punishment, a bone in each of his feet was broken.
• Threats of death. A pledge of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was taken to a beach area of
New Jersey and told to dig his "own grave." Seconds after he complied with orders to
lie flat in the finished hole, the sides collapsed, suffocating him before his
prospective fraternity brothers could dig him out.
There is another striking similarity between the initiation rites of tribal and fraternal
societies: They simply will not die. Resisting all attempts to eliminate or suppress
them, such hazing practices have been phenomenally resilient. Authorities, in
the form of colonial governments or university administrations, have tried threats,
social pressures, legal actions, banishments, bribes, and bans to persuade groups to
remove the hazards and humiliations from their initiation ceremonies. None has been
successful. Oh, there may be a change while the authority is watching closely, but
this is usually more apparent than real—the harsher trials occurring under more
secret circumstances until the pressure is off when they can surface again.
On some college campuses, officials have tried to eliminate dangerous hazing
practices by substituting a "Help Week" of civic service or by taking direct control of
the initiation rituals. When such attempts are not slyly circumvented by fraternities,
they are met with outright physical resistance. For example, in the aftermath of
Richard Swanson's choking death at USC, the university president issued new rules
requiring that all pledging activities be reviewed by school authorities before going
into effect and that adult advisers be present during initiation ceremonies. According
to one national magazine, "the new 'code' set off a riot so violent that city police and
fire detachments were afraid to enter campus."
Resigning themselves to the inevitable, other college representatives have given up
on the possibility of abolishing the degradations of Hell Week. "If hazing is a universal
human activity, and every bit of evidence points to this conclusion, you most
likely won't be able to ban it effectively. Refuse to allow it openly and it will go
underground. You can't ban sex, you can't prohibit alcohol, and you probably can't
eliminate hazing!" (Gordon & Gordon, 1963).
What is it about hazing practices that make them so precious to these societies? What
could make the groups want to evade, undermine, or contest any effort to ban
Commitment and Consistency 79
the degrading and perilous features of their initiation rights? Some have argued that
the groups themselves are composed of psychological or social miscreants whose
twisted needs demand that others be harmed and humiliated. The evidence, however,
does
not support such a view. Studies done on the personality traits of fraternity members,
for instance, show them to be, if anything, slightly healthier than other college
students in their psychological adjustment (for a review, see C. S. Johnson, 1972).
Similarly, fraternities are known for their willingness to engage in beneficial
community projects for the general social good. What they are not willing to do,
however, is substitute these projects for their initiation ceremonies. One survey at the
University of Washington (Walker, 1967) found that, of the fraternity chapters
examined, most had a type of Help Week tradition but that this community service
was in addition to Hell Week. In only one case was such service directly related to
initiation procedures.
The picture that emerges of the perpetrators of hazing practices is of normal
individuals who tend to be psychologically stable and socially concerned but who
become aberrantly harsh as a group at only one time—immediately before the
admission of new
members to the society. The evidence, then, points to the ceremony as the culprit.
There must be something about its rigors that is vital to the group. There must be
some function to its harshness that the society will fight relentlessly to maintain.
What?
My own view is that the answer appeared in 1959 in the results of a study little
known outside of social psychology. A pair of young researchers, Elliot Aronson and
Judson Mills, decided to test their observation that "persons who go through a great
deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons
who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort." The real stroke of inspiration
came in their choice of the initiation ceremony as the best place to examine this
possibility. They found that college women who had to endure a severely
embarrassing initiation ceremony in order to gain access to a sex discussion group
convinced themselves that their new group and its discussions were extremely
valuable, even
though Aronson and Mills had rehearsed the other group members to be as "worthless
and uninteresting" as possible. Different coeds who went through a much milder
initiation ceremony or went through no initiation at all, were decidedly less positive
about the "worthless" new group they had joined. Additional research showed the
same results when coeds were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to
get into a group (Gerard & Mathewson, 1966). The more electric shock a woman
received as
part of the initiation ceremony, the more she later persuaded herself that her new
group and its activities were interesting, intelligent, and desirable.
Now the harassments, the exertions, even the beatings of initiation rituals begin to
make sense. The Thonga tribesman with tears in his eyes, watching his 10-year-old
son tremble through a night on the cold ground of the "yard of mysteries," the
college sophomore punctuating his Hell Night paddling of his fraternity "little brother"
with bursts of nervous laughter, these are not acts of sadism. They are acts of group
survival. They function, oddly enough, to spur future society members to find
the
80 Chapter 3
group more attractive and worthwhile. As long as it is the case that people like and
believe in what they have struggled to get, these groups will continue to arrange
effortful and troublesome initiation rites. The loyalty and dedication of those who
emerge will increase to a great degree the chances of group cohesiveness and
survival. Indeed, one study of 54 tribal cultures found that those with the most
dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group
solidarity
(Young, 1965). Given Aronson and Mills' demonstration that the severity of an
initiation ceremony significantly heightens the newcomer's commitment to the group,
it is hardly surprising that groups will oppose all attempts to eliminate this crucial
link to their future strength.
Military groups and organizations are by no means exempt from these same
processes. The agonies of "boot camp" initiations to the armed services are legendary
and effective. The novelist William Styron testified to this effectiveness after
recounting
the misery of his own U.S. Marine concentration-camp-like "training nightmare:"
There is no ex-Marine of my acquaintance . . . who does not view the training as a
crucible out of which he emerged in some way more resilient, simply braver and
better for the wear (Styron, 1977, p. 3).
Although the rigors of basic training are widely approved by military brass, a policy of
"zero tolerance" is said to exist for incidents of aberrantly harsh hazing like those
contained in two videotapes uncovered by TV news sources in 1997. The tapes
depicted the practice of "blood pinning," in which marine paratroopers who have
completed 10 training jumps receive their golden wing pins. The pins, each with a
pair of half-inch points protruding from the back, are affixed to an initiate's shirt and
then ground, punched, slammed, and slapped into his chest while he writhes and
screams (Gleick, 1997). Despite claims of outrage and disgust from military leaders in
the aftermath, only one of the 30 marines caught perpetrating the pain was
recommended
for discharge. A few were assigned to receive counseling, while the participation of
most (20) was simply ignored. Official pronouncements of "zero tolerance"
notwithstanding, I find it instructive that the slaps delivered to the initiates were
thunderous and to the heart. But, to the initiators, they were light and to the wrist.
Once again, it appears that, for groups concerned about fostering a lasting sense of
solidarity and distinction, the hardship of demanding initiation activities will
not be easily undermined.
The Inner Choice
Examination of such diverse activities as the indoctrination practices of the Chinese
Communists and the initiation rituals of college fraternities provides some valuable
information about commitment. It appears that the commitments most effective in
changing a person's self-image and future behavior are those that are active, public,
and
Commitment and Consistency 81
effortful. However, there is another property of effective commitment more important
than the other three combined. To understand what it is, we first need to solve a pair
of puzzles in the actions of Communist interrogators and college fraternity
brothers.
The first puzzle comes from the refusal of fraternity chapters to allow public-service
activities to be part of their initiation ceremonies. Recall Walker's survey (1967),
which reported that community projects, though frequent, were nearly always
separated from the membership-induction program. Why? If an effortful commitment
is what fraternities are after in their initiation rites, surely they could structure
enough distasteful and strenuous civic activities for their pledges; there is plenty
of exertion and unpleasantness to be found in the world of old-age-home repairs,
mental-health-center yard work, and hospital bedpan duty. Besides, community-
spirited endeavors of this sort would do much to improve the highly unfavorable
public and
media image of fraternity Hell Week rites; a survey (Phalen, 1951) showed that for
every positive newspaper story concerning Hell Week, there were five negative
stories. If only for public-relations reasons, then, fraternities should want to
incorporate community-service efforts into their initiation practices. But they don't.
To examine the second puzzle, we need to return to the Chinese prison camps of
Korea and the political essay contests held for American captives. The Chinese
wanted as many Americans as possible to enter these contests so that, in the
process, they
might write comments favorable to the Communist view. If, however, the idea was to
attract large numbers of entrants, why were the prizes so small? A few extra
cigarettes or a little fresh fruit were often all that a contest winner could expect. In
the
setting, even these prizes were valuable, but, still, there were much larger rewards—
warm clothing, special mail privileges, increased freedom of movement in camp—that
the Chinese could have used to increase the number of essay writers. Yet they
specifically chose to employ the smaller rather than the larger, more motivating
rewards.
Although the settings are quite different, the surveyed fraternities refused to allow
civic activities into their initiation ceremonies for the same reason that the Chinese
withheld large prizes in favor of less powerful inducements: They wanted the
participants to own what they had done. No excuses, no ways out were allowed. A
pledge who suffered through an arduous hazing could not be given the chance to
believe he did so for charitable purposes. A prisoner who salted his political essay
with
ami-American comments could not be permitted to shrug it off as motivated by a big
reward. No, the fraternity chapters and Chinese Communists were playing for keeps.
It was not enough to wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be
made to
take inner responsibility for their actions.
Given the Chinese Communist government's affinity for the political essay contest as
a commitment device, it should come as no surprise that a wave of such contests
appeared in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre in Tiannanmen Square, where pro-
democracy protesters were gunned down by government soldiers. In Beijing alone,
nine state-run newspapers and television stations sponsored essay competitions on
the "quelling of the counterrevolutionary rebellion." Still acting in accord
82 Chapter 3
with its long-standing and insightful de-emphasis of rewards for public commitments,
the Beijing government left the contest prizes unspecified.
Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior
when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside
pressure. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform
certain
actions, but it won't get us to accept inner responsibility for the acts.3 Consequently,
we won't feel committed to them. The same is true of a strong threat; it may
motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.
All
this has important implications for rearing children. It suggests that we should never
heavily bribe or threaten our children to do the things we want them truly to believe
in. Such pressures will probably produce temporary compliance with our wishes.
However, if we want more than just that, if we want our children to believe in the
correctness of what they have done, if we want them to continue to perform the
desired behavior when we are not present to apply those outside pressures, then we
must
somehow arrange for them to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want
them to take. An experiment by Jonathan Freedman (1965) gives us some hints
about what to do and what not to do in this regard.
Freedman wanted to see if he could prevent second-to-fourth-grade boys from
playing with a fascinating toy, just because he had said that it was wrong to do so
some six weeks earlier. Anyone familiar with seven- to nine-year-old boys must
realize the
enormity of the task, but Freedman had a plan. If he could first get the boys to
convince themselves that it was wrong to play with the forbidden toy, perhaps that
belief would keep them from playing with it thereafter. The difficulty was making the
boys believe that it was wrong to amuse themselves with the toy—an extremely
expensive, battery-controlled robot.
Freedman knew it would be easy enough to have a boy obey temporarily. All he had
to do was threaten the boy with severe consequences should he be caught playing
with the toy. As long as he was nearby to deal out stiff punishment, Freedman figured
that
few boys would risk operating the robot. He was right. After showing a boy an array
of five toys and warning him, "It is wrong to play with the robot. If you play with the
robot, I'll be very angry and will have to do something about it," Freedman left
the room for a few minutes. During that time, the boy was observed secretly through
a one-way mirror. Freedman tried this threat procedure on 22 different boys, and 21
of them never touched the robot while he was gone.
So a strong threat was successful while the boys thought they might be caught and
punished. Of course, Freedman had already guessed that. He was really interested in
the effectiveness of the threat in guiding the boys' behavior later on, when he was no
longer around. To find out what would happen then, he sent a young
sin fact large material rewards may even reduce or "undermine" our inner
responsibility for an act, causing a subsequent reluctance to perform it when the
reward is no longer present (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Higgins, Lee, Kwon, & Trope, 1995;
Lepper &
Greene, 1978).
Commitment and Consistency 83
woman back to the boys' school about six weeks after he had been there. She took
the boys out of the class one at a time to participate in an experiment. Without ever
mentioning any connection with Freedman, she escorted each boy back to the room
containing the five toys and gave him a drawing test. While she was scoring the test,
she told the boy that he was free to play with any toy in the room. Of course, almost
all of the boys played with a toy. The interesting result was that, of the boys
who played with a toy, 77 percent chose to play with the robot that had been
forbidden to them earlier. Freedman's severe threat, which had been so successful six
weeks before, was almost totally unsuccessful when he was no longer able to back it
up
with punishment.
However, Freedman wasn't finished yet. He changed his procedure slightly with a
second sample of boys. These boys, too, were initially shown the array of five toys by
Freedman and warned not to play with the robot while he was briefly out of the room
because "It is wrong to play with the robot." This time, Freedman provided no strong
threat to frighten a boy into obedience. He simply left the room and observed through
the one-way mirror to see if his instruction against playing with the forbidden
toy was enough. It was. Just as with the other sample, only 1 of the 22 boys touched
the robot during the short time Freedman was gone.
The real difference between the two samples of boys came six weeks later, when they
had a chance to play with the toys while Freedman was no longer around. An
astonishing thing happened with the boys who earlier had been given no strong
threat against
playing with the robot: When given the freedom to play with any toy they wished,
most avoided the robot, even though it was by far the most attractive of the five toys
available (the others were a cheap plastic submarine, a child's baseball glove
without a ball, an unloaded toy rifle, and a toy tractor). When these boys played with
one of the five toys, only 33 percent chose the robot.
Something dramatic had happened to both groups of boys. For the first group, it was
the severe threat they heard from Freedman to back up his statement that playing
with the robot was "wrong." It had been quite effective, while Freedman could catch
them violating his rule. Later, though, when he was no longer present to observe the
boys' behavior, his threat was impotent and his rule was, consequently, ignored. It
seems clear that the threat had not taught the boys that operating the robot was
wrong, only that it was unwise to do so when the possibility of punishment existed.
For the other boys, the dramatic event had come from inside, not outside. Freedman
had instructed them, too, that playing with the robot was wrong, but he had added no
threat of punishment should they disobey him. There were two important results.
First, Freedman's instruction alone was enough to prevent the boys from operating
the robot while he was briefly out of the room. Second, the boys took personal
responsibility for their choices to stay away from the robot during that time. They
decided
that they hadn't played with it because they didn't want to. After all, there were no
strong punishments associated with the toy to explain their behavior otherwise. Thus,
weeks later, when Freedman was nowhere around, they still ignored the
\
84
Chapter 3
robot because they had been changed inside to believe that they did not want to play
with it.
Adults facing the child-rearing experience can take a cue from the Freedman study.
Suppose a couple wants to impress upon their daughter that lying is wrong. A strong,
clear threat ("It's bad to lie, honey, so if I catch you at it, I'll cut your tongue
out") might well be effective when the parents are present or when the girl thinks she
can be discovered. However, it will not achieve the larger goal of convincing her that
she does not want to lie because she thinks it's wrong. To do that, a much
subtler approach is required. A reason must be given that is just strong enough to get
her to be truthful most of the time but is not so strong that she sees it as the obvious
reason for her truthfulness. It's a tricky business because this barely
sufficient reason changes from child to child. For one child, a simple appeal may be
enough ("It's bad to lie, honey, so I hope you won't do it"); for another, it may be
necessary to add a somewhat stronger reason (" ... because if you do, I'll be
disappointed in you"); for a third child, a mild form of warning may be required as
well (" . .. and I'll probably have to do something I don't want to do"). Wise parents
will know which kind of reason will work on their own children. The important
thing is to use a reason that will initially produce the desired behavior and will, at the
same time, allow a child to take personal responsibility for that behavior. Thus, the
less detectable outside pressure such a reason contains, the better.
Selecting just the right reason is not an easy task for parents, but the effort should
pay off. It is likely to mean the difference between short-lived compliance and long-
term commitment. As Samuel Butler wrote more than 300 years ago, "He who agrees
against his will / Is of the same opinion still."
Growing Legs to Stand On
For a pair of reasons we have already talked about, compliance professionals love
commitments that produce inner change. First, that change is not just specific to the
situation where it first occurred; it covers a whole range of related situations,
too. Second, the effects of the change are lasting. So, once people have been induced
to take actions that shift their self-images to that of, let's say, public-spirited citizens,
they are likely to be public-spirited in a variety of other
circumstances where their compliance may also be desired. And they are likely to
continue their public-spirited behavior for as long as their new self-images hold.
There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner change—they "grow
their own legs." There is no need for the compliance professional to undertake a
costly and continuing effort to reinforce the change; the pressure for consistency will
take care of all that. After people come to view themselves as public-spirited citizens,
they will automatically begin to see things differently. They will convince themselves
that it is the correct way to be and will begin to pay attention to facts
they hadn't noticed before about the value of community service. They will make
themselves
Commitment and Consistency 85
available to hear arguments they hadn't heard before favoring civic action and will
find such arguments more persuasive than before. In general, because of the need to
be consistent within their system of beliefs, they will assure themselves that their
choice to take public-spirited action was right. What is important about this process of
generating additional reasons to justify the commitment is that the reasons are new.
Thus, even if the original reason for the civic-minded behavior were taken
away, these newly discovered reasons alone might be enough to support their
perceptions that they had behaved correctly.
The advantage to an unscrupulous compliance professional is tremendous. Because
we build new struts to undergird choices we have committed ourselves to, an
exploitative individual can offer us an inducement for making such a choice. After the
decision
has been made, the individual can remove that inducement, knowing that our
decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs. Car dealers frequently try
to benefit from this process through a trick they call "throwing a low-ball." I first
encountered the tactic while posing as a sales trainee at a local Chevrolet dealership.
After a week of basic instruction, I was allowed to watch the regular salespeople
perform. One practice that caught my attention right away was the low-ball.
For certain customers, a very good price, perhaps as much as $400 below
competitors' prices, is offered on a car. The good deal, however, is not genuine; the
dealer never intends it to go through. Its only purpose is to cause prospects to decide
to buy
one of the dealership's cars. Once the decision is made, a number of activities
develop the customer's sense of personal commitment to the car—a fistful of
purchase forms are filled out, extensive financing terms are arranged, sometimes the
customer is
encouraged to drive the car for a day before signing the contract, "so you can get the
feel of it and show it around the neighborhood and at work." During this time, the
dealer knows, customers typically develop a range of new reasons to support their
choice and to justify the investments they have now made (Brockner & Rubin, 1985;
Teger, 1980).
Then something happens. Occasionally an "error" in the calculations is discovered—
maybe the salesperson forgot to add the cost of the air conditioner, and if the buyer
still requires air-conditioning, $400 must be added to the price. To throw
suspicion off themselves, some dealers let the bank handling the financing find the
mistake. At other times, the deal is disallowed at the last moment; the salesperson
checks with his or her boss, who cancels it because "the dealership would be losing
money." For only another $400 the car can be had, which, in the context of a
multithousand-dol-lar deal, doesn't seem too steep since, as the salesperson
emphasizes, the cost is equal to competitors' and "This is the car you chose, right?"
Another, even more insidious form of low-balling occurs when the salesperson makes
an inflated trade-in offer on the prospect's old car as part of the buy/trade package.
The customer recognizes the offer as overly generous and jumps at the deal. Later,
before the contract is signed, the used-car manager says that the salesperson's
86 Chapter 3
estimate was $400 too high and reduces the trade-in allowance to its actual, blue-
book level. The customer, realizing that the reduced offer is the fair one, accepts it as
appropriate and sometimes feels guilty about trying to take advantage of the
salesperson's high estimate. I once witnessed a woman provide an embarrassed
apology to a salesman who had used the last version of low-balling on her—this while
she was signing a new-car contract giving him a huge commission. He looked hurt but
managed a forgiving smile.
No matter which variety of low-balling is used, the sequence is the same: An
advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase decision. Then, sometime
after the decision has been made, but before the bargain is sealed, the original
purchase
advantage is deftly removed. It seems almost incredible that a customer would buy a
car under these circumstances. Yet it works—not on everybody, of course, but it is
effective enough to be a staple compliance procedure in many car showrooms.
Automobile dealers have come to understand the ability of a personal commitment to
build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the
commitment. Often these justifications provide so many strong legs for the decision
to stand
on that when the dealer pulls away only one leg, the original one, there is no
collapse. The loss can be shrugged off by the customer who is consoled, even made
happy, by the array of other good reasons favoring the choice. It never occurs to the
buyer
that those additional reasons might never have existed had the choice not been made
in the first place.
After watching the low-ball technique work so impressively in the car showroom, I
decided to test its effectiveness in another setting where I could see if the basic idea
worked with a bit of a twist. That is, the car salespeople I observed threw the
low-ball by proposing sweet deals, getting favorable decisions as a result, and then
taking away the sweet part of the offers. If my thinking about the essence of the low-
ball procedure was correct, I recognized that I should be able to get the tactic
to work in a somewhat different way: I could offer a good deal, which would produce
the crucial decisional commitment, and then I could add an unpleasant feature to the
arrangement. Because the effect of the low-ball technique was to get an individual
to stick with a deal, even after circumstances had changed to make it a poor one, the
tactic should work whether a positive aspect of the deal was removed or a negative
aspect was added.
So, to test this latter possibility, my colleagues John Cacioppo, Rod Bassett, John
Miller, and I ran an experiment designed to get Introductory Psychology students at
Ohio State University to agree to perform an unpleasant activity: to wake up very
early to participate in a 7:00 A.M. study "on thinking processes." When calling one
sample of students, we immediately informed them of the 7:00 A.M. starting time.
Only 24 percent were willing to participate. However, when calling a second sample of
students, we threw a low-ball: We first asked if they wanted to participate in a study
of thinking processes, and after they responded—56 percent of them positively—we
mentioned the 7:00 A.M. start time and gave them the chance to change their minds.
None of them did. What's more, in keeping with their commitment to
Commitment and Consistency 87
participate, 95 percent of the low-balled students did come to the Psychology Building
at 7:00 A.M. as promised. I know this to be the case because I recruited two research
assistants to be on site at that time to conduct the thinking processes
4
experiment and to take the names of the students who appeared.
The impressive thing about the low-ball tactic is its ability to make a person feel
pleased with a poor choice. Those who have only poor choices to offer us are
especially fond of the technique. We can find them throwing low-balls in business,
social,
and personal situations. For instance, there's my neighbor Tim, a true low-ball
aficionado. Recall that he's the one who, by promising to change his ways, got his
girlfriend, Sara, to cancel her impending marriage to another and take him back.
Since
her decision to choose Tim, Sara has become more devoted to him than ever, even
though he has not fulfilled his promises. She explains this by saying that she has
allowed herself to see all sorts of positive qualities in Tim she had never recognized
before.
I know full well that Sara is a low-ball victim. Just as I had watched buyers fall for the
give-it-and-take-it-away-later strategy in the car showroom, I watched her fall for the
same trick with Tim. For his part, Tim remains the guy he has always
been. Because the new attractions Sara has discovered (or created) in him are quite
real for her, she now seems satisfied with the same arrangement that was
unacceptable before her enormous commitment. The decision to choose Tim, poor as
it may have
been objectively, has grown its own supports and appears to have made Sara
genuinely happy. I have never mentioned to Sara what I know about low-balling. The
reason for my silence is not that I think her better off in the dark on the issue. As a
general guiding principle, more information is always better than less information. It's
just that, if I said a word, I am confident she would hate me for it.
Standing Up for the Public Good
Depending on the motives of the person wishing to use them, any of the compliance
techniques discussed in this book can be employed for good or for ill. It should not be
surprising, then, that the low-ball tactic can be used for more socially
beneficial purposes than selling new cars or reestablishing relationships with former
lovers. One research project done in Iowa (Pallak, Cook, & Sullivan, 1980), for
example,
There is no foundation to the rumor that, in recruiting my research assistants for this
task, I first asked if they wanted to administer a study on thinking processes and,
after they agreed, informed them of the 7:00 A.M. starting time.
In addition to the just-described study, several other experiments have attested to
the effectiveness of the low-ball procedure in a variety of circumstances (see
Brownstein & Katzev, 1985; Burger & Petty, 1981; Joule, 1987; see Cialdini,
Cacioppo,
Bassett, & Miller 1978 for full details).
88 Chapter 3
shows how the low-ball procedure can influence homeowners to conserve energy. The
project began at the start of the Iowa winter when residents who heated their homes
with natural gas were contacted by an interviewer. The interviewer gave them some
energy-conservation tips and asked them to try to save fuel in the future. Although
they all agreed to try, when the researchers examined the utility records of these
families after a month and again at winter's end, it was clear that no real savings
had occurred. The residents who had promised to make a conservation attempt used
just as much natural gas as did a random sample of their neighbors who had not been
contacted by an interviewer. Good intentions coupled with information about saving
fuel, then, were not enough to change habits.
Even before the project began, Pallak and his research team had recognized that
something more would be needed to shift long-standing energy-use patterns. So they
tried a slightly different procedure on a comparable sample of Iowa natural-gas users.
These people, too, were contacted by an interviewer, who provided energy-saving
hints and asked them to conserve, but for these families, the interviewer offered
something else: Those residents agreeing to save energy would have their names
publicized
in newspaper articles as public-spirited, fuel-conserving citizens. The effect was
immediate. One month later, when the utility companies checked their meters, the
homeowners in this sample had saved an average of 422 cubic feet of natural gas
apiece.
The chance to have their names in the paper had motivated these residents to
substantial conservation efforts for a period of a month.
Then the rug was pulled out. The researchers extracted the reason that had initially
caused the people to save fuel. Each family that had been promised publicity received
a letter saying it would not be possible to publicize its name after all.
At the end of the winter, the research team examined the effect the letter had on the
natural-gas usage of the families. Did they return to their old, wasteful habits when
the chance to be in the newspaper was removed? Hardly. For each of the remaining
winter months, these families actually conserved more fuel than they had during the
time they thought they would be publicly celebrated for it! In terms of percentage of
energy savings, they had managed a 12.2 percent gas savings during the first month
because they expected to see themselves lauded in the paper. However, after the
letter arrived informing them to the contrary, they did not return to their previous
energy-use levels; instead, they increased their savings to a 15.5 percent level for
the rest of the winter.
Although we can never be completely sure of such things, one explanation for their
persistent behavior presents itself immediately. These people had been low-balled
into a conservation commitment through a promise of newspaper publicity. Once
made,
that commitment started generating its own support: The homeowners began
acquiring new energy habits, began feeling good about their public-spirited efforts,
began convincing themselves of the vital need to reduce American dependence on
foreign fuel,
began appreciating the monetary savings in their utility bills, began feeling proud of
their capacity for self-denial, and most important, began viewing themselves as
conservation-minded. With all these new reasons present to justify the commitment
Commitment and Consistency 89
3_Commitment_and_Consistency-9.jpg
90 Chapter 3
to use less energy, it is no wonder that the commitment remained firm even after the
original reason, newspaper publicity, had been kicked away.
Strangely enough, though, when the publicity factor was no longer a possibility, these
families did not merely maintain their fuel-saving effort, they heightened it. Any of a
number of interpretations could be offered for that still stronger effort,
but I have a favorite. In a way, the opportunity to receive newspaper publicity had
prevented the homeowners from fully owning their commitment to conservation. Of
all the reasons supporting the decision to try to save fuel, it was the only one that
had come from the outside; it was the only one preventing the homeowners from
thinking that they were conserving gas because they believed in it. So when the letter
arrived canceling the publicity agreement, it removed the only impediment to these
residents' images of themselves as fully concerned, energy-conscious citizens. This
unqualified, new self-image then pushed them to even greater heights of
conservation. Much like Sara, they appeared to have become committed to a choice
through an
5
initial inducement and were still more dedicated to it after the inducement had been
removed.
DEFENSE
The only effective defense I know against the weapons of influence embodied in the
combined principles of commitment and consistency is an awareness that, although
consistency is generally good, even vital, there is a foolish, rigid variety to be
shunned. We must be wary of the tendency to be automatically and unthinkingly
consistent, for it lays us open to the maneuvers of those who want to exploit the
mechanical commitment-consistency sequence for profit.
Since automatic consistency is so useful in allowing us an economical and appropriate
way of behaving most of the time, however, we can't decide merely to eliminate it
from our lives altogether. The results would be disastrous. If, rather than whirring
along in accordance with our prior decisions and deeds, we stopped to think through
the merits of each new action before performing it, we would never have time to
accomplish anything significant. We need even that dangerous, mechanical brand of
consistency. The only way out of the dilemma is to know when such consistency
5Fortunately, it is not necessary to use so deceptive an approach as the low-ball
technique to employ the power of the commitment/consistency principle in public-
service campaigns. An impressive series of studies by Richard Katzev and his
students at
Reed College has demonstrated the effectiveness of commitment tactics like written
pledges and foot-in-the-door procedures in increasing such energy conservation
behaviors as recycling, electricity usage, and bus ridership (Bachman & Katzev, 1982;
Katzev & Johnson, 1983, 1984; Katzev & Pardini, 1988; Pardini & Katzev, 1983-84).
Commitment and Consistency 91
is likely to lead to a poor choice. There are certain signals—two separate kinds of
signals—to tip us off. We register each type in a different part of our bodies.
Stomach Signs
The first signal is easy to recognize. It occurs right in the pit of our stomachs when
we realize we are trapped into complying with a request we know we don't want to
perform. It has happened to me a hundred times. An especially memorable instance,
though, took place on a summer evening well before I began to study compliance
tactics. I answered my doorbell to find a stunning young woman dressed in shorts
and a revealing halter top. I noticed, nonetheless, that she was carrying a clipboard
and
was asking me to participate in a survey. Wanting to make a favorable impression, I
agreed and, I do admit, stretched the truth in my interview answers in order to
present myself in the most positive light. Our conversation went as follows:
Stunning Young Woman: Hello! I'm doing a survey on the entertainment habits of city
residents, and I wonder if you could answer a few questions for me. Cialdini: Do come
in.
SYW: Thank you. I'll just sit right here and begin. How many times per week would
you say you go out to dinner?
C: Oh, probably three, maybe four times a week. Whenever I can, really; I love fine
restaurants.
SYW: How nice. And do you usually order wine with your dinner?
C: Only if it's imported.
SYW: I see. What about movies? Do you go to the movies much?
C: The cinema? I can't get enough of good films. I especially like the sophisticated
kind with the words on the bottom of the screen. How about you? Do you like to see
films?
SYW: Uh ... yes, I do. But let's get back to the interview. Do you go to many
concerts?
C: Definitely. The symphonic stuff mostly, of course. But I do enjoy a quality pop
group as well.
SYW: (writing rapidly). Great! just one more question. What about touring
performances by theatrical or ballet companies? Do you see them when they're in
town? C: Ah, the ballet—the movement, the grace, the form—I love it. Mark me down
as loving the
ballet. See it every chance I get.
SYW: Fine. Just let me recheck my figures here for a moment, Mr. Cialdini. C:
Actually, it's Dr. Cialdini. But that sounds so formal. Why don't you call me Bob?
SYW: All right, Bob. From the information you've already given me, I'm pleased to
say you
could save up to $1,200 a year by joining Clubamerica! A small membership fee
entitles you to discounts on most of the activities you've mentioned. Surely
92 Chapter 3
someone as socially vigorous as yourself would want to take advantage of the
tremendous savings our company can offer on all the things you've already told me
you do.
C: (trapped like a rat). Well... uh ... I... uh ... I guess so.
I remember quite well feeling my stomach tighten as I stammered my agreement. It
was a clear call to my brain, "Hey, you're being taken here!" But I couldn't see a way
out. I had been cornered by my own words. To decline her offer at that point would
have meant facing a pair of distasteful alternatives: If I tried to back out by
protesting that I was not actually the man-about-town I had claimed to be during the
interview, I would come off a liar; trying to refuse without that protest would make
me
come off a fool for not wanting to save $1,200.1 bought the entertainment package,
even though I knew I had been set up. The need to be consistent with what I had
already said snared me.
No more, though. I listen to my stomach these days, and I have discovered a way to
handle people who try to use the consistency principle on me. I just tell them exactly
what they are doing. This tactic has become the perfect counterattack for me.
Whenever my stomach tells me I would be a sucker to comply with a request merely
because doing so would be consistent with some prior commitment I was tricked into,
I relay that message to the requester. I don't try to deny the importance of
consistency; I just point out the absurdity of foolish consistency. Whether, in
response, the requester shrinks away guiltily or retreats in bewilderment, I am
content. I have won; an exploiter has lost.
I sometimes think about the way it would be if that stunning young woman of years
ago were to try to sell me an entertainment-club membership now. I have it all
worked out. The entire interaction would be the same, except for the end:
SYW: ... Surely someone as socially vigorous as yourself would want to take
advantage of the tremendous savings our company can offer on all the things you've
already told me you do.
C: (with great self-assurance). Quite wrong. You see, I recognize what has gone on
here. I know that your story about doing a survey was just a pretext for getting
people to tell you how often they go out and that, under those circumstances, there is
a
natural tendency to exaggerate. And I refuse to allow myself to be locked into a
mechanical sequence of commitment and consistency when I know it's wrong-
headed. No click, whirr for me. SYW: Huh?
C: Okay, let me put it this way: (1) It would be stupid of me to spend money on
something I don't want. (2) I have it on excellent authority, direct from my stomach,
that I don't want your entertainment plan. (3) Therefore, if you still believe that I
will buy it, you probably also still believe in the Tooth Fairy. Surely, someone as
intelligent as yourself would be able to understand that. SYW: (trapped like a
stunning young rat) Well... uh ... I... uh ... I guess so.
Commitment and Consistency 93
Heart-of-Hearts Signs
Stomachs are not especially perceptive or subtle organs. Only when it is obvious that
we are about to be conned are they likely to register and transmit that message. At
other times, when it is not clear that we are being taken, our stomachs may never
catch on. Under those circumstances we have to look elsewhere for a clue. The
situation of my neighbor Sara provides a good illustration. She made an important
commitment to Tim by canceling her prior marriage plans. The commitment has
grown its own
supports, so that even though the original reasons for the commitment are gone, she
remains in harmony with it. She has convinced herself with newly formed reasons
that she did the right thing, so she stays with Tim. It is not difficult to see why
there would be no tightening in Sara's stomach as a result. Stomachs tell us when we
are doing something we think is wrong for us. Sara thinks no such thing. To her mind,
she has chosen correctly and is behaving consistently with that choice.
Yet, unless I badly miss my guess, there is a part of Sara that recognizes her choice
as a mistake and her current living arrangement as a brand of foolish consistency.
Where, exactly, that part of Sara is located we can't be sure, but our language
does give it a name: heart of hearts. It is, by definition, the one place where we
cannot fool ourselves. It is the place where none of our justifications, none of our
rationalizations penetrate. Sara has the truth there, although right now she can't
hear its signal clearly through the noise and static of the new support apparatus she
has erected.
If Sara has erred in her choice of Tim, how long can she go without clearly
recognizing it, without having a massive heart-of-hearts attack? There is no telling.
One thing is certain, however: As time passes, the various alternatives to Tim are
disappearing. She had better determine soon whether she is making a mistake.
Easier said than done, of course. She must answer an extremely intricate question:
"Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same
choice?" The problem lies in the "knowing what I now know" part of the question, just
what
does she now know, accurately, about Tim? How much of what she thinks of him is
the result of a desperate attempt to justify the commitment she made? She claims
that, since her decision to take him back, he cares for her more, is trying hard to stop
his excessive drinking, has learned to make a wonderful omelet, etc. Having tasted a
couple of his omelets, I have my doubts. The important issue, though, is whether she
believes these things, not just intellectually—but in her heart of hearts.
There may be a little device Sara can use to find out how much of her current
satisfaction with Tim is real and how much is foolish consistency. Psychological
evidence indicates that we experience our feelings toward something a split second
before we
can intellectualize about it (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). My suspicion is that the
message sent by the heart of hearts is a pure, basic feeling. Therefore, if we train
ourselves to be attentive, we should register the feeling ever so slightly before our
94 Chapter 3
cognitive apparatus engages. According to this approach, were Sara to ask herself the
crucial "would I make the same choice again?" question, she would be well advised to
look for and trust the first flash of feeling she experienced in response. It
would likely be the signal from her heart of hearts, slipping through undistorted just
before the means by which she could kid herself flooded in.6
I have begun using the same device myself whenever I even suspect I might be
acting in a foolishly consistent manner. One time, for instance, I had stopped at the
self-service pump of a filling station advertising a price per gallon a couple of cents
below the rate of other stations in the area; but with pump nozzle in hand, I noticed
that the price listed on the pump was two cents higher than the display sign price.
When I mentioned the difference to a passing attendant, who I later learned was
the owner, he mumbled unconvincingly that the rates had changed a few days ago,
but there hadn't been time to correct the display. I tried to decide what to do. Some
reasons for staying came to mind—"I really do need gasoline badly." "This pump is
available, and I am in sort of a hurry." "I think I remember that my car runs better on
this brand of gas."
I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere justifications for
my decision to stop there. So I asked myself the crucial question, "Knowing what I
know about the real price of this gasoline, if I could go back in time, would I make
the same choice again?" Concentrating on the first burst of impression I sensed, I
received a clear and unqualified answer. I would have driven right past. I wouldn't
even have slowed down. I knew then that, without the price advantage, those other
reasons would not have brought me there. They hadn't created the decision; the
decision had created them.
That settled, there was another decision to be faced. Since I was already there
holding the hose, wouldn't it be better to use it than to suffer the inconvenience of
going elsewhere to pay the same price? Fortunately, the station attendant-owner
came
over and helped me make up my mind. He asked why I wasn't pumping any gas. I
told him I didn't like the price discrepancy and he said with a snarl, "Listen, nobody's
gonna tell me how to run my business. If you think I'm cheating you, just put that
hose down right now and get off my property as fast as you can do it, bud." Already
certain he was a cheat, I was happy to act consistently with my belief and his wishes.
I dropped the hose on the spot. . . and drove over it on my way to the closest
exit. Sometimes consistency can be a marvelously rewarding thing.
6This is not to say that what we feel about an issue is always different from or always
to be trusted more than what we think about it. However, the data are clear that our
emotions and beliefs often do not point in the same direction. Therefore, in
situations involving a commitment likely to have generated supporting
rationalizations, feelings may well provide the truer counsel. This would be especially
so when, as in the question of Sara's happiness, the issue at hand concerns an
emotion (Wilson
et al., 1989).
Commitment and Consistency
95
READER'S REPORT 3.2
From a Woman Living in Portland, Oregon
I was walking through downtown Portland on my way to a lunch appointment when a
young, attractive man stopped me with a friendly smile and a powerful line. "Excuse
me," he said, "I'm involved in a contest and I need a good-looking woman like
yourself
to help me win." I was truly skeptical since I know there are many women more
attractive than myself running around; however, I was caught off guard and was
curious to find out what he wanted. He explained that he would receive points for a
contest by
getting total strangers to give him a kiss. Now, I consider myself to be a fairly level-
headed person who shouldn't have believed his line, but he was quite persistent, and
since I was almost late for my lunch appointment, I thought, "What the heck,
I'll give the guy a kiss and get out of here." So I did something totally against my
common sense and pecked this total stranger on the cheek in the middle of downtown
Portland!
I thought that would be the end of it, but I soon learned that it was just the
beginning. Much to my distress, he followed the kiss with the line, "You are a great
kisser, but the real contest I am involved in is to sell magazine subscriptions. You
must be an active person. Would any of these magazines interest you?" At this point I
should have slugged the guy and walked away, but somehow, because I had complied
with his initial request, I felt a need to be consistent and I complied with his
second request. Yes, much to my own disbelief, I actually subscribed to SKI magazine
(which I occasionally enjoy reading, but had no intention to subscribing to), gave him
a $5 initial subscription fee and left as quickly as possible, feeling quite
frustrated with what I had just done and not understanding why I had done it.
Although it still pains me to think about it, in reflecting on the incident after reading
your book I've now figured out what happened. The reason this tactic worked so
effectively is because once small commitments have been made (in this case, giving
a kiss), people tend to add justifications to support the commitment, and then are
willing to commit themselves further. In this situation, I justified complying with the
second request because it was consistent with my initial action. If I had only
listened to my "stomach signs," I could have saved myself a lot of humiliation.
Authors'note: By extracting a kiss, the salesman exploited the consistency principle in
two ways. First, by the time he asked for her aid in the magazine contest, his
prospect had already gone on record—with that kiss—as agreeing to help him win a
contest. Second, it seems only natural (i.e., congruent) that if a woman feels
positively enough toward a man to kiss him, she should feel positively toward helping
him out.
SUMMARY
Psychologists have long recognized a desire in most people to be and look consistent
within their words, beliefs, attitudes, and deeds. This tendency for consistency is fed
from three sources. First, good personal consistency is highly
96
Chapter 3
valued by society. Second, aside from its effect on public image, generally consistent
conduct provides a beneficial approach to daily life. Third, a consistent orientation
affords a valuable shortcut through the complexity of modern existence. By
being consistent with earlier decisions, one reduces the need to process all the
relevant information in future similar situations; instead, one merely needs to recall
the earlier decision and to respond consistently with it.
• Within the realm of compliance, securing an initial commitment is the key. After
making a commitment (that is, taking a stand or position), people are more willing to
agree to requests that are in keeping with the prior commitment. Thus, many
compliance professionals try to induce people to take an initial position that is
consistent with a behavior they will later request from these people. Not all
commitments are equally effective, however, in producing consistent future action.
Commitments are most effective when they are active, public, effortful, and viewed
as internally motivated (uncoerced).
• Commitment decisions, even erroneous ones, have a tendency to be self-
perpetuating because they can "grow their own legs." That is, people often add new
reasons and justifications to support the wisdom of commitments they have already
made. As a
consequence, some commitments remain in effect long after the conditions that
spurred them have changed. This phenomenon explains the effectiveness of certain
deceptive compliance practices such as "throwing the low-ball."
• To recognize and resist the undue influence of consistency pressures on our
compliance decisions, we should listen for signals coming from two places within us:
our stomachs and our heart of hearts. Stomach signs appear when we realize that we
are
being pushed by commitment and consistency pressures to agree to requests we
know we don't want to perform. Under these circumstances, it is best to explain to
the requester that such compliance would constitute a brand of foolish consistency in
which
we prefer not to engage. Heart-of-heart signs are different. They are best employed
when it is not clear to us that an initial commitment was wrongheaded. Here, we
should ask ourselves a crucial question, "Knowing what I know, if I could go back in
time, would I make the same commitment?" One informative answer may come as
the first flash of feeling registered.
STUDY QUESTIONS Content Mastery
\. Why do we want to look and be consistent in most situations?
2. Why do we find even rigid, stubborn consistency desirable in many situations?
3. Which four factors cause a commitment to affect a person's self-image and
consequent future action?
Commitment and Consistency 97
4. What makes written commitments so effective?
5. What is the relationship between the compliance tactic of low-balling and the term
"growing its own legs"?
Critical Thinking
1. Suppose you were advising American soldiers on a way to avoid consistency
pressures like those used to gain collaboration from the POWs during the Korean War.
What would vou tell them?
2. In referring to the fierce loyalty of Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners, one
commentator has said, "if you can persuade your customers to tattoo your name on
their chests, you'll probably never have to worry about them shifting brands." Explain
why
this would be true. In your answer, make reference to each of the four factors that
maximize the power of a commitment on future action.
3. Imagine that you are having trouble motivating yourself to study for an important
exam that is less than a week away. Drawing upon your knowledge of the
commitment process, describe what you would do to get yourself to put in die
necessary study
time. Be sure to explain why your chosen actions ought to work.
4. Think about the traditional large wedding ceremony that is characteristic of most
cultures. Which features of that kind of event can be seen as commitment-enhancing
devices for the couple and their families?
5. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
I
CHAPTER
4
Social Proof
Truths Are Us
4_Social_Proof-1.jpg
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
—WALTER LIPPMANN
I don't know anyone who likes canned laughter. In fact, when I surveyed the people
who came into my office one day—several students, two telephone repairmen, a
number of university professors, and the janitor—the reaction was invariably critical.
Television, with its incessant system of laugh tracks and technically augmented mirth,
received the most heat. The people I questioned hated canned laughter. They called it
stupid, phony, and obvious. Although my sample was small, I would bet that it
closely reflects the negative feelings of most of the American public toward laugh
tracks.
Why, then, is canned laughter so popular with television executives? They have won
their exalted positions and splendid salaries by knowing how to give the public what it
wants. Yet they religiously employ the laugh tracks that their audiences find
distasteful, and they do so over the objections of many of their most talented artists.
It is not uncommon for acclaimed directors, writers, or actors to demand the
elimination of canned responses from the television projects they undertake. These
demands are only sometimes successful, and when they are, it is not without a battle,
as has been the case with ABC's critically acclaimed situation-comedy Sports Night.
Although the show's producers pressed from the start for laugh-track-free airings,
network officials have relented in only one instance—when an episode explored the
sensitive issue of sexual assault (Collins, 1998).
What can it be about canned laughter that is so attractive to television executives?
Why are these shrewd and tested people championing a practice that their potential
watchers find disagreeable and their most creative talents find personally
insulting? The answer is both simple and intriguing: They know what the research
says. Experiments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience
to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented and to rate the
material as funnier (Fuller & Sheehy-Skeffington, 1974; Smyth & Fuller, 1972). In
addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor
jokes (No-sanchuk & Lightstone, 1974).
In light of these data, the actions of television executives make perfect sense. The
introduction of laugh tracks into their comic programming increases the humorous
and appreciative responses of an audience, even—and especially—when the material
is of
poor quality. Is it any surprise, then, that television, glutted as it is with artless
situation-comedies, is saturated with canned laughter? Those executives know
precisely what they are doing.
With the mystery of the widespread use of laugh tracks solved, we are left with a
more perplexing question: Why does canned laughter work on us the way it does? It
is no longer the television executives who appear peculiar; they are acting logically
and in their own interests. Instead, it is the behavior of the audience that seems
strange. Why should we laugh more at comedy material afloat in a sea of
mechanically fabricated merriment? And why should we think that comic flotsam
funnier? The
executives aren't really fooling us. Anyone can recognize dubbed laughter. It is
99
100 Chapter 4
so blatant, so clearly counterfeit, that there can be no confusing it with the real thing.
We know full well that the hilarity we hear is irrelevant to the humorous quality of the
joke it follows, is created not spontaneously by a genuine audience but
artificially by a technician at a control board. Yet, transparent forgery that it is, it
works on us!
THE PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL PROOF
To discover why canned laughter is so effective, we first need to understand the
nature of yet another potent weapon of influence: the principle of social proof. This
principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people
think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes
correct behavior. We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that
we see others performing it. Whether the question is what to do with an
empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of
highway, or how to eat the chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us
will be important guides in defining the answer.
www.Forbidden-Poker-Secrets.com
Click for The Secret to Online Poker Success...
The tendency to see an action as appropriate when others are doing it works quite
well normally. As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social
evidence than by acting contrary to it. Usually, when a lot of people are doing
something, it is the right thing to do. This feature of the principle of social proof is
simultaneously its major strength and its major weakness. Like the other weapons of
influence, it provides a convenient shortcut for determining the way to behave
but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of
profiteers who lie in wait along its path.
In the case of canned laughter, the problem comes when we begin responding to
social proof in such a mindless and reflexive fashion that we can be fooled by partial
or fake evidence. Our folly is not that we use others' laughter to help decide what is
humorous; that is in keeping with the well-founded principle of social proof. The folly
is that we do so in response to patently fraudulent laughter. Somehow, one
disembodied feature of humor—a sound—works like the essence of humor. The
example from
Chapter 1 of the turkey and the polecat is instructive. Because the peculiar cheep-
cheep of turkey chicks is normally associated with newborn turkeys, their mothers will
display or withhold maternal care solely on the basis of that sound. Remember how,
consequently, it was possible to fool a mother turkey with a stuffed polecat as long as
the replica played the recorded cheep-cheep of a baby turkey. The simulated chick
sound was enough to start the mother turkey's maternal tape whirring.
The lesson of the turkey and the polecat illustrates uncomfortably well the
relationship between the average viewer and the laugh-track-playing television
executive. We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of
others as evidence of
what deserves laughter that we too can be made to respond to the sound, and not
the substance, of the real thing. Much as a cheep-cheep noise removed from the
reality of a chick can stimulate a female turkey to mother, so can a recorded ha-ha
removed
from the reality of a genuine audience stimulate us to laugh. The televi-
Social Proof 101
sion executives are exploiting our preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react
automatically on the basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our
tapes. Click, whirr.
People Power
Television executives are hardly alone in their use of social evidence for profit. Our
tendency to assume that an action is more correct if others are doing it is exploited in
a variety of settings. Bartenders often salt their tip jars with a few
dollar bills at the beginning of an evening to simulate tips left by prior customers and
thereby to give the impression that tipping with folding money is proper barroom
behavior. Church ushers sometimes salt collection baskets for the same reason and
with the same positive effect on proceeds. Evangelical preachers are known to seed
their audience with ringers, who are rehearsed to come forward at a specified time to
give witness and donations. For example, a research team at Arizona State
University infiltrated the Billy Graham organization and reported on such advance
preparations prior to one of his Crusade visits: "By the time Graham arrives in town
and makes his altar call, an army of six thousand wait with instructions on when to
come forth at varying intervals to create the impression of a spontaneous mass
outpouring" (Al-theide & Johnson, 1977).
Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the "fastest-growing" or "largest-
selling" because they don't have to convince us directly that the product is good; they
need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough. The producers
of charity telethons devote inordinate amounts of time to the incessant listing of
viewers who have already pledged contributions. The message being communicated
to the holdouts is clear: "Look at all the people who have decided to give. It must be
the
correct thing to do." Certain nightclub owners manufacture a brand of visible social
proof for their clubs' quality by creating long waiting lines outside when there is
plenty of room inside. Salespeople are taught to spice their pitches with numerous
accounts of individuals who have purchased the product. Sales and motivation
consultant Cavett Robert captures the principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees:
"Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are
persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer."
Researchers, too, have employed procedures based on the principle of social proof—
sometimes with astounding results.1 One psychologist in particular, Albert Bandura,
has led the way in developing such procedures to eliminate undesirable
A program of investigation conducted by Kenneth Craig and his associates
demonstrates how the experience of pain can be affected by the principle of social
proof. In one study (Craig & Prkachin, 1978), subjects who received a series of
electric shocks
felt less pain (as indicated by self-reports, psychophysical measures of sensory
sensitivity, and such physiological responses as heart rate and skin conductivity)
when they were in the presence of another subject who was tolerating the shocks as
if
they were not painful.
102 Chapter 4
4_Social_Proof-2.jpg
behavior. Bandura and his colleagues have shown how people suffering from phobias
can be rid of these extreme fears in an amazingly simple fashion. For instance, in an
early study (Bandura, Grusec, & Menlove, 1967), nursery-school-age children, chosen
because they were terrified of dogs, merely watched a little boy playing happily with a
dog for 20 minutes a day. This exhibition produced such marked changed
Social Proof 103
in the reactions of the fearful children that, after only four days, 67 percent of them
were willing to climb into a playpen with a dog and remain confined there petting and
scratching the dog while everyone else left the room. Moreover, when the
researchers tested the children's fear levels again, one month later, they found that
the improvement had not diminished during that time; in fact, the children were more
willing than ever to interact with dogs. An important practical discovery was
made in a second study of children who were exceptionally afraid of dogs (Bandura &
Menlove, 1968): To reduce these children's fears, it was not necessary to provide live
demonstrations of another child playing with a dog; film clips had the same
impact. The most effective clips were those depicting a variety of other children
interacting with their dogs. Apparently, the principle of social proof works best when
the proof is provided by the actions of many other people.2
The powerful influence of filmed examples in changing the behavior of children can be
used as therapy for various other problems. Some striking evidence is available in the
research of psychologist Robert O'Connor (1972) on socially withdrawn preschool
children. We have all seen children of this sort: terribly shy, standing alone at the
fringes of the games and groupings of their peers. O'Connor worried that this early
behavior was the beginning of what could become a long-term pattern of isolation,
which in turn could create persistent difficulties in social comfort and adjustment
throughout adulthood. In an attempt to reverse the pattern, O'Connor made a film
containing 11 different scenes in a nursery-school setting. Each scene began by
showing
a different solitary child watching some social activity and then actively participating,
to everyone's enjoyment. O'Connor selected a group of the most severely withdrawn
children from four preschools and showed them this film. The impact was
impressive. After watching the film, the isolates immediately began to interact with
their peers at a level equal to that of the normal children in the schools. Even more
astonishing was what O'Connor found when he returned to the schools six weeks
later to observe. While the withdrawn children who had not seen O'Connor's film
remained as isolated as ever, those who hod viewed it were now leading their schools
in amount of social activity. It seems that this 23-minute movie, viewed
Any reader who doubts that the seeming appropriateness of an action is importantly
influenced by the number of others performing it might try a small experiment. Stand
on a busy sidewalk, pick an empty spot in the sky or on a tall building, and stare
at it for a full minute. Very little will happen around you during that time—most
people will walk past without glancing up, and virtually no one will stop to stare with
you. Now, on the next day, go to the same Place and bring along four friends to
look upward too. Within 60 seconds, a crowd of passers by will have stopped to crane
their necks skyward with the group. For those pedestrians who do not join you, the
pressure to look up at least briefly will be nearly irresistable; if the results of
your experiment are like those of one performed by three social psychologists in New
York, you and your friends will cause 80 percent of all passersby to lift their gaze to
your empty spot (Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz, 1969).
104 Chapter 4
4_Social_Proof-3.jpg
just once, was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behavior.
Such is the potency of the principle of social proof.3
After the Deluge
When it comes to illustrating the strength of social proof, there is one illustration that
is far and away my favorite. Several features account for its appeal: It offers a su-
3Other research besides O'Connor's suggests that there are two sides to the filmed-
social-proof coin, however. The dramatic effect of filmed depictions on what children
find appropriate has been a source of great distress for those concerned with
frequent depictions of violence and aggression on television (Eron & Huesmann,
1985). Although the consequences of televised violence on the aggressive actions of
children are far from simple (Freedman, 1984), the data from a well-controlled
experiment
by psychologists Robert Liebert and Robert Baron (1972) have an ominous look.
Some children were shown excerpts from a television program in which people
intentionally harmed each other. Afterward, these children acted in a significantly
more harmful
way toward other children than did those who had watched a nonviolent television
program (a horse race). The finding that children act more aggressively toward one
another after seeing aggression on television held true for the two age groups tested
(5- to 6- and 8- to 9-year-olds) and for both girls and boys.
Social Proof 105
perb example of the much underused method of participant observation, in which a
scientist studies a process by becoming immersed in its natural occurrence; it
provides information of interest to such diverse groups as historians, psychologists,
and
theologians; and, most important, it shows how social evidence can be used on us—
not by others, but by ourselves—to assure us that what we prefer to be true will seem
to be true.
The story is an old one, requiring an examination of ancient data, for the past is
dotted with millennial religious movements. Various sects and cults have prophesied
that on a particular date there would arrive a period of redemption and great
happiness for those who believed in the group's teachings. In each instance it has
been predicted that the beginning of a time of salvation would be marked by an
important and undeniable event, usually the cataclysmic end of the world. Of course,
these
predictions have invariably proved false, to the acute dismay of the members of such
groups.
However, immediately following the obvious failure of the prophecy, history records
an enigmatic pattern. Rather than disbanding in disillusion, the cultists often become
strengthened in their convictions. Risking the ridicule of the populace, they
take to the streets, publicly asserting their dogma and seeking converts with a fervor
that is intensified, not diminished, by the clear disconfirmation of a central belief. So
it was with the Montanists of second-century Turkey, with the Anabaptists
of sixteenth-century Holland, with the Sabbataists of seventeenth-century Izmir, and
with the Millerites of nineteenth-century America. And, thought a trio of interested
social scientists, so it might be with a doomsday cult based in modern-day
Chicago. The scientists—Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter—who
were then colleagues at the University of Minnesota, heard about the Chicago group
and felt it worthy of close study. Their decision to investigate by joining the group,
incognito, as new believers and by placing additional paid observers among its ranks
resulted in a remarkably rich firsthand account of the goings-on before and after the
day of predicted catastrophe (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1964).
The cult of believers was small, never numbering more than 30 members. Its leaders
were a middle-aged man and woman, whom for purposes of publication, the
researchers renamed Dr. Thomas Armstrong and Mrs. Marian Keech. Dr. Armstrong, a
physician on the
staff of a college student-health service, had a long-held interest in mysticism, the
occult, and flying saucers; as such, he served as a respected authority on these
subjects for the group. Mrs. Keech, though, was the center of attention and activity.
Earlier in the year she had begun to receive messages from spiritual beings, whom
she called the Guardians, located on other planets. It was these messages, flowing
through Marian Keech's hand via the device of "automatic writing," that formed the
bulk
of the cult's religious belief system. The teachings of the Guardians were loosely
linked to traditional Christian thought.
The transmissions from the Guardians, always the subject of much discussion and
interpretation among the group, gained new significance when they began to foretell
of a great impending disaster—a flood that would begin in the Western Hemisphere
and
eventually engulf the world. Although the cultists were understandably
106 Chapter 4
alarmed at first, further messages assured them that they and all those who believed
in the lessons sent through Mrs. Keech would survive. Before the calamity, spacemen
were to arrive and carry off the believers in flying saucers to a place of safety,
presumably on another planet. Very little detail was provided about the rescue except
that the believers were to make themselves ready for pickup by rehearsing certain
passwords to be exchanged ("I left my hat at home." "What is your question?" "I am
my own porter.") and by removing all metal from their clothes—because the wearing
or carrying of metal made saucer travel "extremely dangerous."
As Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter observed the preparations during the weeks
prior to the flood date, they noted with special interest two significant aspects of the
members' behavior. First, the level of commitment to the cult's belief system was
very high. In anticipation of their departure from doomed Earth, irrevocable steps
were taken by the group members. Most incurred the opposition of family and friends
to their beliefs but persisted, nonetheless, in their convictions, often when it
meant losing the affections of these others. In fact, several of the members were
threatened by neighbors or family with legal actions designed to have them declared
insane. Dr. Armstrong's sister filed a motion to have his two younger children
removed
from his custody. Many believers quit their jobs or neglected their studies to devote
full time to the movement. Some even gave or threw away their personal belongings,
expecting them shortly to be of no use. These were people whose certainty that they
had the truth allowed them to withstand enormous social, economic, and legal
pressures and whose commitment to their dogma grew as they resisted each
pressure.
The second significant aspect of the believers' preflood actions was a curious form of
inaction. For individuals so clearly convinced of the validity of their creed, they did
surprisingly little to spread the word. Although they initially publicized
the news of the coming disaster, they made no attempt to seek converts, to proselyte
actively. They were willing to sound the alarm and to counsel those who voluntarily
responded to it, but that was all.
The group's distaste for recruitment efforts was evident in various ways besides the
lack of personal persuasion attempts. Secrecy was maintained in many matters—
extra copies of the lessons were burned, passwords and secret signs were instituted,
the
contents of certain private tape recordings were not to be discussed with outsiders
(so secret were the tapes that even longtime believers were prohibited from taking
notes of them). Publicity was avoided. As the day of disaster approached, increasing
numbers of newspaper, television, and radio reporters converged on the group's
headquarters in the Keech house. For the most part, these people were turned away
or ignored. The most frequent answer to their questions was, "No comment."
Although
discouraged for a time, the media representatives returned with a vengeance when
Dr. Armstrong's religious activities caused him to be fired from his post on the college
health service staff; one especially persistent newsman had to be threatened with
a lawsuit. A similar siege was repelled on the eve of the flood when a swarm of
reporters
Social Proof 107
pushed and pestered the believers for information. Afterward, the researchers
summarized the group's preflood stance on public exposure and recruitment in
respectful tones: "Exposed to a tremendous burst of publicity, they had made every
attempt to
dodge fame; given dozens of opportunities to proselyte, they had remained evasive
and secretive and behaved with an almost superior indifference" (Festinger et al.,
1964).
Eventually, when all the reporters and would-be converts had been cleared from the
house, the believers began making their final preparations for the arrival of the
spaceship scheduled for midnight that night. The scene as viewed by Festinger,
Riecken,
and Schachter must have seemed like absurdist theater. Otherwise ordinary people—
housewives, college students, a high-school boy, a publisher, a physician, a
hardware-store clerk and his mother—were participating earnestly in tragic comedy.
They took
direction from a pair of members who were periodically in touch with the Guardians;
Marian Keech's written messages were being supplemented that evening by "the
Bertha," a former beautician through whose tongue the "Creator" gave instruction.
They
rehearsed their lines diligently, calling out in chorus the responses to be made before
entering the rescue saucer: "I am my own porter." "I am my own pointer." They
discussed seriously whether the message from a caller identifying himself as Captain
Video—a TV space character of the time—was properly interpreted as a prank or a
coded communication from their rescuers.
In keeping with the admonition to carry nothing metallic aboard the saucer, the
believers wore clothing from which all metal pieces had been torn out. The metal
eyelets in their shoes had been ripped away. The women were braless or wore
brassieres
whose metal stays had been removed. The men had yanked the zippers out of their
pants, which were supported by lengths of rope in place of belts.
The group's fanaticism concerning the removal of all metal was vividly experienced by
one of the researchers who remarked, 25 minutes before midnight, that he had
forgotten to extract the zipper from his trousers. As the observers tell it, "this
knowledge produced a near panic reaction. He was rushed into the bedroom where
Dr. Armstrong, his hands trembling and his eyes darting to the clock every few
seconds, slashed out the zipper with a razor blade and wrenched its clasps free with
wire-
cutters." The hurried operation finished, the researcher was returned to the living
room—a slightly less metallic but, one supposes, much paler man.
As the time appointed for their departure grew very close, the believers settled into a
lull of soundless anticipation. Luckily, the trained scientists gave a detailed account of
the events that transpired during this momentous period.
The last ten minutes were tense ones for the group in the living room. They had
nothing to do but sit and wait, their coats in their laps. In the tense silence two clocks
ticked loudly, one about ten minutes faster than the other. When the faster of
the two pointed to twelve-five, one of the observers remarked aloud on the fact. A
chorus of people replied that midnight had not yet come. Bob Eastman affirmed that
the slower clock was
108 Chapter 4
correct; he had set it himself only that afternoon. It showed only four minutes before
midnight.
These four minutes passed in complete silence except for a single utterance. When
the [slower] clock on the mantel showed only one minute remaining before the guide
to the saucer was due, Marian exclaimed in a strained, high-pitched voice: "And not a
plan has gone astray!" The clock chimed twelve, each stroke painfully clear in the
expectant hush. The believers sat motionless.
One might have expected some visible reaction. Midnight had passed and nothing had
happened. The cataclysm itself was less than seven hours away. But there was little
to see in the reactions of the people in the room. There was no talking, no sound.
People sat stock-still, their faces seemingly frozen and expressionless. Mark Post war
the only person who even moved. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes but
did not sleep. Later, when spoken to, he answered monosyllabically but otherwise lay
immobile. The others showed nothing on the surface, although it became clear later
that they had been hit hard....
Gradually, painfully, an atmosphere of despair and confusion settled over the group.
They reexamined the prediction and the accompanying messages. Dr. Armstrong and
Mrs. Keech reiterated their faith. The believers mulled over their predicament and
discarded explanation after explanation as unsatisfactory. At one point, toward 4
A.M., Mrs. Keech broke down and cried bitterly. She knew, she sobbed, that there
were some who were beginning to doubt but that the group must beam light to those
who
needed it most and that the group must hold together. The rest of the believers were
losing their composure, too. They were all visibly shaken and many were close to
tears. It was now almost 4:30 A.M. and still no way of handling the disconfirmation
had been found. By now, too, most of the group were talking openly about the failure
of the escort to come at midnight. The group seemed near dissolution. (Festinger et
al., 1964, pp. 162-163, 168)
In the midst of gathering doubt, as cracks crawled through the believers' confidence,
the researchers witnessed a pair of remarkable incidents, one after another. The first
occurred at about 4:45 A.M. when Marian Keech's hand suddenly began
transcribing through "automatic writing" the text of a holy message from above.
When read aloud, the communication proved to be an elegant explanation for the
events of that night. "The little group, sitting alone all night long, had spread so much
light that God had saved the world from destruction." Although neat and efficient, this
explanation was not wholly satisfying by itself; for example, after hearing it, one
member simply rose, put on his hat and coat, and left, never to return.
Something additional was needed to restore the believers to their previous levels of
faith.
Social Proof 109
It was at this point that the second notable incident occurred to supply that need.
Once again, the words of those who were present offer a vivid description:
The atmosphere in the group changed abruptly and so did their behavior. Within
minutes after she had read the message explaining the disconfirmation, Mrs. Keech
received another message instructing her to publicize the explanation. She reached
for the
telephone and began dialing the number of a newspaper. While she was waiting to be
connected, someone asked: "Marian, is this the first time you have called the
newspaper yourself?" Her reply was immediate: "Oh yes, this is the first time I have
ever
called them. I have never had anything to tell them before, but now I feel it is
urgent." The whole group could have echoed her feelings, for they all felt a sense of
urgency. As soon as Marian had finished her call, the other members took turns
telephoning newspapers, wire service, radio stations, and national magazines to
spread the explanation of the failure of the flood. In their desire to spread the word
quickly and resoundingly, the believers now opened for public attention matters that
had been thus far utterly secret. Where only hours earlier they had shunned
newspaper reporters and felt that the attention they were getting in the press was
painful, they now became avid seekers for publicity. (Festinger et al., 1964, p. 170)
Not only had the long-standing policies concerning secrecy and publicity done an
about-face, so too had the group's attitude toward potential converts. Whereas likely
recruits who previously visited the house had been mostly ignored, turned away, or
treated with casual attention, the day following the disconfirmation saw a different
story. All callers were admitted, all questions were answered, attempts were made to
proselyte all such visitors. The members' unprecedented willingness to accommodate
new recruits was perhaps best demonstrated when nine high-school students arrived
on the following night to speak with Mrs. Keech.
They found her at the telephone deep in a discussion of flying saucers with a caller
whom, it later turned out, she believed to be a spaceman. Eager to continue talking
to him and at the same time anxious to keep her new guests, Marian simply included
them in the conversation and, for more than an hour, chatted alternately with her
guests in the living room and the "spaceman " on the other end of the telephone. So
intent was she on proselyting that she seemed unable to let any opportunity go by.
(Festinger et al., 1964, p. 178)
To what can we attribute the believers' radical turnabout? Within a few hours, they
had moved from clannish and taciturn hoarders of the Word to expansive and eager
110 Chapter 4
disseminators of it. What could have possessed them to choose such an ill-timed
instant—when the failure of the flood was likely to cause nonbelievers to view the
group and its dogma as laughable?
The crucial event occurred sometime during "the night of the flood" when it became
increasingly clear that the prophecy would not be fulfilled. Oddly, it was not their prior
certainty that drove the members to propagate the faith, it was an encroaching
sense of uncertainty. It was the dawning realization that if the spaceship and flood
predictions were wrong, so might be the entire belief system on which they rested.
For those huddled in the Keech living room, that growing possibility must have
seemed hideous.
The group members had gone too far, given up too much for their beliefs to see them
destroyed; the shame, the economic cost, the mockery would be too great to bear.
The overarching need of the cultists to cling to those beliefs seeps poignantly from
their own words. From a young woman with a 3-year-old child:
/ have to believe the flood is coming on the twenty-first because I've spent all my
money. I quit my job, I quit computer school. . . . I have to believe, (p. 168)
From Dr. Armstrong to one of the researchers four hours after the failure of the
saucermen to arrive:
I've had to go a long way. I've given up just about everything. I've cut every tie. I've
burned every bridge. I've turned my back on the world. I can't afford to doubt. I have
to believe. And there isn't any other truth, (p. 168)
Imagine the corner in which Dr. Armstrong and his followers found themselves as
morning approached. So massive was the commitment to their beliefs that no other
truth was tolerable. Yet that set of beliefs had just taken a merciless pounding from
physical reality: No saucer had landed, no spacemen had knocked, no flood had
come, nothing had happened as prophesied. Since the only acceptable form of truth
had been undercut by physical proof, there was but one way out of the corner for the
group.
It had to establish another type of proof for the validity of its beliefs: social proof.
This, then, explains their sudden shift from secretive conspirators to zealous
missionaries. It also explains the curious timing of the shift—precisely when a direct
disconfirmation of their beliefs had rendered them least convincing to outsiders. It
was necessary to risk the scorn and derision of the nonbelievers because publicity and
recruitment efforts provided the only remaining hope. If they could spread the Word,
if they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and
if, by so doing, they could win new converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs
would become truer. The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of
people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the
idea to be
Social Proof 111
4
correct. The group's assignment was clear; since the physical evidence could not be
changed, the social evidence had to be. Convince and ye shall be convinced.
CAUSE OF DEATH: UNCERTAIN(TY)
All the weapons of influence discussed in this book work better under some conditions
than under others. If we are to defend ourselves adequately against any such
weapon, it is vital that we know its optimal operating conditions in order to recognize
when we are most vulnerable to its influence. We have already had a hint of one time
when the principle of social proof worked best with the Chicago believers. It was a
sense of shaken confidence that triggered their craving for converts. In general,
when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when
uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as
correct (Tesser, Campbell, & Mickler, 1983; Woolen & Reed, 1998).
In the process of examining the reactions of other people to resolve our uncertainty,
however, we are likely to overlook a subtle, but important fact: Those people are
probably examining the social evidence, too. Especially in an ambiguous situation,
the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead
to a fascinating phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance. A thorough understanding of
the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon helps explain a regular occurrence in our
country that has been termed both a riddle and a national disgrace: the failure of
entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in agonizing need of help.
The classic example of such bystander inaction and the one that has produced the
most debate in journalistic, political, and scientific circles began as an ordinary
homicide case in New York City's borough of Queens. A woman in her late twenties,
Perhaps because of the quality of ragged desperation with which they approached
their task, the believers were wholly unsuccessful at enlarging their number. Not a
single convert was gained. At that point, in the face of the dual failures of physical
and social proof, the cult quickly disintegrated. Less than three weeks after the date
of the predicted flood, group members were scattered and maintained only sporadic
communication with one another. In one final—and ironic—disconfirmation of
prediction, it was the movement that perished in the flood.
Ruin has not always been the fate of doomsday groups whose predictions proved
unsound, however. When such groups have been able to build social proof for their
beliefs through effective recruitment efforts, they have grown and prospered. For
example,
when the Dutch Anabaptists saw their prophesied year of destruction, 1533, pass
uneventfully, they became rabid seekers after converts, pouring unprecedented
amounts of energy into the cause. One extraordinarily eloquent missionary, Jakob
van Kampen,
is reported to have baptized 100 persons in a single day. So powerful was the
snowballing social evidence in support of the Anabaptist position that it rapidly
overwhelmed the disconfirming physical evidence and turned two-thirds of the
population of
Holland's great cities into adherents.
112 Chapter 4
Catherine Genovese, was killed in a late-night attack on her street as she returned
from work. Murder is never an act to be passed off lightly, but in a city the size and
tenor of New York, the Genovese incident warranted no more space than a fraction
of a column in the New York Times. Catherine Genovese's story would have died with
her on that day in March 1964 if it hadn't been for a mistake.
The metropolitan editor of the Times, A. M. Rosenthal, happened to be having lunch
with the city police commissioner a week later. Rosenthal asked the commissioner
about a different Queens-based homicide, and the commissioner, thinking he was
being
questioned about the Genovese case, revealed something staggering that had been
uncovered by the police investigation. It was something that left everyone who heard
it, the commissioner included, aghast and grasping for explanations. Catherine
Genovese
had not experienced a quick, muffled death. It had been a long, loud, tortured, public
event. Her assailant had chased and attacked her in the street three times over a
period of 35 minutes before his knife finally silenced her cries for help.
Incredibly, 38 of her neighbors watched from the safety of their apartment windows
without so much as lifting a finger to call the police.
Rosenthal, a former Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, knew a story when he heard one.
On the day of his lunch with the commissioner, he assigned a reporter to investigate
the "bystander angle" of the Genovese incident. Within a week, the Times published
a long, front-page article that was to create a swirl of controversy and speculation.
The initial paragraphs of that report provided the tone and focus of the story:
For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a
killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights
interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and
stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one
witness
called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen, in
charge of the borough's detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide
investigations, is still shocked.
He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens
slaying baffles him—not because it is a murder, but because "good people" failed to
call the police. (Ganzberg, 1964, p. 7)
As with Assistant Chief Inspector Lussen, shock and bafflement were the standard
reactions of almost everyone who learned the story's details. The shock struck first,
leaving the police, the newspeople, and the reading public stunned. The bafflement
followed quickly. How could 38 "good people" fail to act under those circumstances?
No one could understand it. Even the murder witnesses themselves were
Social Proof 113
bewildered. "I don't know," they answered one after another. "I just don't know." A
few offered weak reasons for their inaction. For example, two or three people
explained that they were "afraid" or "did not want to get involved." These reasons,
however, do not stand up to close scrutiny: A simple anonymous call to the police
could have saved Catherine Genovese without threatening the witnesses' future
safety or free time. No, it wasn't the observers' fear or reluctance to complicate their
lives that explained their lack of action; something else was going on there that even
they could not fathom.
Confusion, though, does not make for good news copy. So the press as well as the
other media—several papers, TV stations, and magazines that were pursuing follow-
up stories—emphasized the only explanation available at the time: The witnesses, no
different from the rest of us, hadn't cared enough to get involved. Americans were
becoming a nation of selfish, insensitive people. The rigors of modern life, especially
city life, were hardening them. They were becoming "The Cold Society," unfeeling
and indifferent to the plight of their fellow citizens.
In support of this interpretation, news stories began appearing regularly in which
various kinds of public apathy were detailed. Also supporting such an interpretation
were the remarks of a range of armchair social commentators, who. as a breed, seem
never to admit to bafflement when speaking to the press. They, too, saw the
Genovese case as having large-scale social significance. All used the word apathy,
which, it is interesting to note, had been in the headline of the Times's front-page
story,
although they accounted for the apathy differently. One attributed it to the effects of
TV violence, another to repressed aggressiveness, but most implicated the "deper-
sonalization" of urban life with its "megalopolitan societies" and its "alienation
of the individual from the group." Even Rosenthal, the newsman who first broke the
story and who ultimately made it the subject of a book, subscribed to the city-caused
apathy theory.
Nobody can say why the 38 did not lift the phone while Miss Genovese was being
attacked, since they cannot say themselves. It can be assumed, however, that their
apathy was indeed one of the big-city variety. It is almost a matter of psychological
survival, if one is surrounded and pressed by millions of people, to prevent them from
constantly impinging on you, and the only way to do this is to ignore them as often as
possible. Indifference to one's neighbor and his troubles is a conditioned
reflex in life in New York as it is in other big cities. (A. M. Rosenthal, 1964, pp. 82-83)
As the Genovese story grew—aside from Rosenthal's book, it became the focus of
numerous newspaper and magazine pieces, several television news documentaries,
and an off-Broadway play—it attracted the professional attention of a pair of New
York-based
psychology professors, Bibb Latane and John Darley (1968b). They examined the
reports of the Genovese incident and, on the basis of their knowledge of
114 chapter 4
social psychology, hit on what had seemed like the most unlikely explanation of all—
the fact that 38 witnesses were present. Previous accounts of the story had invariably
emphasized that no action was taken, even though 38 individuals had looked on.
Latane and Darley suggested that no one had helped precisely because there were so
many observers.
The psychologists speculated that, for at least two reasons, a bystander to an
emergency will be unlikely to help when there are a number of other bystanders
present. The first reason is fairly straightforward. With several potential helpers
around,
the personal responsibility of each individual is reduced: "Perhaps someone else will
give or call for aid, perhaps someone else already has." So with everyone thinking
that someone else will help or has helped, no one does. The second reason is the
more psychologically intriguing one; it is founded on the principle of social proof and
involves the pluralistic ignorance effect Very often an emergency is not obviously an
emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk
sleeping one off? Is the commotion next door an assault requiring the police or an
especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and
unwelcome? What is going on? In times of such uncertainty, the natural tendency is
to look
around at the actions of others for clues. We can learn from the way the other
witnesses are reacting whether the event is or is not an emergency.
What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the event is likely to
be looking for social evidence, too. Because we all prefer to appear poised and
unflustered among others, we are likely to search for that evidence placidly, with
brief, camouflaged glances at those around us. Therefore everyone is likely to see
everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of
social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a nonemergency. This,
according to Latane and Darley (1968b) is the state of pluralistic ignorance "in which
each person decided that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile,
the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by
5
the seeming calm of others, would react."
5The potentially tragic consequences of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon are
starkly illustrated in a UPI news release from Chicago:
A university coed was beaten and strangled in daylight hours near one of the most
popular tourist attractions in the city, police said Saturday.
The nude body of Lee Alexis Wilson, 23, was found Friday in dense shrubbery
alongside the wall of the Art Institute by a 12-year-old boy playing in the bushes.
Police theorized she may have been sitting or standing by a fountain in the Art
Institute's south plaza when she was attacked. The assailant apparently then dragged
her into the bushes. She apparently was sexually assaulted, police said.
Police said thousands of persons must have passed the site and one man told them
he heard a scream about 2 P.M. but did not investigate because no one else seemed
to be paying attention.
Social Proof 115
A Scientific Approach
The fascinating upshot of Latane and Darley's reasoning is that, for an emergency
victim, the idea of "safety in numbers" may often be completely wrong. It might be
that someone in need of emergency aid would have a better chance of survival if a
single bystander, rather than a crowd, were present. To test this unusual thesis,
Darley, Latane, their students, and colleagues performed a systematic and impressive
program of research that produced a clear set of findings (for a review, see Latane &
Nida, 1981). Their basic procedure was to stage emergency events that were
observed
4_Social_Proof-4.jpg
116 Chapter 4
by a single individual or by a group of people. They then recorded the number of
times the emergency victim received help under those circumstances. In their first
experiment (Darley & Latane, 1968), a New York college student who appeared to be
having
an epileptic seizure received help 85 percent of the time when there was a single
bystander present but only 31 percent of time with five bystanders present. With
almost all the single bystanders helping, it becomes difficult to argue that ours is "The
Cold Society" where no one cares for suffering others. Obviously it was something
about the presence of other bystanders that reduced helping to shameful levels.
Other studies have examined the importance of social proof in causing widespread
witness "apathy." They have done so by planting within a group of witnesses to a
possible emergency people who are rehearsed to act as if no emergency were
occurring. For
instance, in another New York-based experiment (Latane & Darley, 1968a), 75
percent of lone individuals who observed smoke seeping from under a door reported
the leak; however, when similar leaks were observed by three-person groups, the
smoke was
reported only 38 percent of the time. The smallest number of bystanders took action,
though, when the three-person groups included two individuals who had been
coached to ignore the smoke; under those conditions, the leaks were reported only
10 percent
of time. In a similar study conducted in Toronto (A. S. Ross, 1971), single bystanders
provided emergency aid 90 percent of the time, whereas such aid occurred in only 16
percent of the cases when a bystander was in the presence of two passive
bystanders.
Social scientists now have a good idea of when bystanders will offer emergency aid.
First, and contrary to the view that we have become a society of callous, uncaring
people, once witnesses are convinced that an emergency situation exists, aid is very
likely. Under these conditions, the number of bystanders who either intervene
themselves or summon help is quite comforting. For example, in four separate
experiments done in Florida (R. D. Clark & Word, 1972, 1974), accident scenes
involving a
maintenance man were staged. When it was clear that the man was hurt and required
assistance, he was helped 100 percent of the time in two of the experiments. In the
other two experiments, where helping involved contact with potentially dangerous
electric wires, the victim still received bystander aid in 90 percent of the instances. In
addition, these extremely high levels of assistance occurred whether the witnesses
observed the event singly or in groups.
The situation becomes very different when, as in many cases, bystanders cannot be
sure that the event they are witnessing is an emergency. Then a victim is much more
likely to be helped by a lone bystander than by a group, especially if the people in
the group are strangers to one another (Latane & Rodin, 1969). It seems that the
pluralistic ignorance effect is strongest among strangers: Because we like to look
graceful and sophisticated in public and because we are unfamiliar with the reactions
of
those we do not know, we are unlikely to give off or correctly read expressions of
concern when in a group of strangers. Therefore, a possible emergency is viewed as a
nonemergency and a victim suffers.
Social Proof 117
A close look at this set of research findings reveals an enlightening pattern. All the
conditions that decrease an emergency victim's chances for bystander aid exist
normally and innocently in the city, in contrast to rural areas:
1. Cities are more clamorous, distracting, rapidly changing places where it is difficult
to be certain of the nature of the events one encounters.
2. Urban environments are more populous; consequently, people are more likely to
be with others when witnessing a potential emergency situation.
3. City dwellers know a much smaller percentage of fellow residents than do people
who live in small towns; therefore, city dwellers are more likely to find themselves in
a group of strangers when observing an emergency.
These three natural characteristics of urban environments—their confusion, their
populousness, and their low levels of acquaintanceship—fit in very well with the
factors shown by research to decrease bystander aid. Without ever having to resort to
such
sinister concepts as "urban depersonalization" and "megalopolitan alienation," then,
we can explain why so many instances of bystander inaction occur in our cities.
Devictimizing Yourself
Explaining the dangers of modern urban life in less ominous terms does not dispel
them. Furthermore, as the world's populations move increasingly to the cities—half of
all humanity will be city dwellers within a decade—there will be a growing need to
reduce those dangers. Fortunately, our newfound understanding of the bystander
"apathy" process offers real hope. Armed with this scientific knowledge, an
emergency victim can increase enormously the chances of receiving aid from others.
The key is the
realization that groups of bystanders fail to help because the bystanders are unsure
rather than unkind. They don't help because they are unsure an emergency actually
exists and whether they are responsible for taking action. When they are sure of
their responsibilities for intervening in a clear emergency, people are exceedingly
responsive! Once it is understood that the enemy is the simple state of uncertainty, it
becomes possible for emergency victims to reduce this uncertainty, thereby
protecting themselves. Imagine, for example, you are spending a summer afternoon
at a music concert in a park. As the concert ends and people begin leaving, you notice
a slight numbness in one arm but dismiss it as nothing to be alarmed about. Yet,
while moving with the crowd to the distant parking areas, you feel the numbness
spreading down to your hand and up one side of your face. Feeling disoriented, you
decide to sit against a tree for a moment to rest. Soon you realize that something is
drastically wrong. Sitting down has not helped; in fact, the control and coordination of
your muscles has worsened, and you are starting to have difficulty moving your
mouth and tongue to speak. You try to get up but can't. A terrifying thought rushes
to mind: "Oh, God, I'm having a stroke!" Groups of people are passing by and most
are paying no attention. The few who notice the odd way you are slumped against the
tree or the
118 Chapter 4
strange look on your face check the social evidence around them and, seeing that no
one else is reacting with concern, walk on convinced that nothing is wrong.
Were you to find yourself in such a predicament, what could you do to overcome the
odds against receiving help? Because your physical abilities would be deteriorating,
time would be crucial. If, before you could summon aid, you lost your speech or
mobility or consciousness, your chances for assistance and for recovery would plunge
drastically. It would be essential to try to request help quickly. What would be the
most effective form of that request? Moans, groans, or outcries probably would not
do. They might bring you some attention, but they would not provide enough
information to assure passersby that a true emergency existed.
If mere outcries are unlikely to produce help from the passing crowd, perhaps you
should be more specific. Indeed, you need to do more than try to gain attention; you
should call out clearly your need for assistance. You must not allow bystanders to
define your situation as a nonemergency. Use the word "Help" to show your need for
emergency aid, and don't worry about being wrong. Embarrassment is a villain to be
crushed. If you think you are having a stroke, you cannot afford to be worried about
the possibility of overestimating your problem. The difference is that between a
moment of embarrassment and possible death or lifelong paralysis.
Even a resounding call for help is not your most effective tactic. Although it may
reduce bystanders' doubts that a real emergency exists, it will not remove several
other important uncertainties within each onlooker's mind: What kind of aid is
required? Should I be the one to provide the aid, or should someone more qualified
do it? Has someone else akeady gone to get professional help, or is it my
responsibility? While the bystanders stand gawking at you and grappling with these
questions,
time vital to your survival could he slipping away.
Clearly, then, as a victim you must do more than alert bystanders to your need for
emergency assistance; you must also remove their uncertainties about how that
assistance should be provided and who should provide it. What would be the most
efficient
and reliable way to do so?
Based on the research findings we have seen, my advice would be to isolate one
individual from the crowd: Stare, speak, and point directly at that person and no one
else: "You, sir, in the blue jacket, I need help. Call an ambulance." With that one
utterance you would dispel all the uncertainties that might prevent or delay help. With
that one statement you will have put the man in the blue jacket in the role of
"rescuer." He should now understand that emergency aid is needed; he should
understand that he, not someone else, is responsible for providing the aid; and,
finally, he should understand exactly how to provide it. All the scientific evidence
indicates that the result should be quick, effective assistance.
In general, then, your best strategy when in need of emergency help is to reduce the
uncertainties of those around you concerning your condition and their responsibilities.
Be as precise as possible about your need for aid. Do not allow bystanders to
come to their own conclusions because, especially in a crowd, the principle of social
proof and the consequent pluralistic ignorance effect might well cause them to
A,
Social Proof 119
view your situation as a nonemergency. Of all the techniques in this book designed to
produce compliance with a request, this one is the most important to remember.
After all, the failure of your request for emergency aid could mean your life.
READER'S REPORT 4.1
From a Woman Living in Wroclaw, Poland
I was going through a well-lighted road crossing when I thought I saw somebody fall
into a ditch left by workers. The ditch was well protected, and I was not sure if I
really saw it—maybe it was just imagination. One year ago, I would continue on my
way, believing that people who had been closer saw better. But I had read your book.
So, I stopped and returned to check if it was true. And it was. A man fell into this hole
and was lying there shocked. The ditch was quite deep, so people walking
nearby couldn't see anything. When I tried to do something, two guys walking on this
street stopped to help me pull the man out.
Today, the newspapers wrote that during the last three weeks of winter, 120 people
died in Poland, frozen. This guy could have been 121—that night the temperature was
-21C.
He should be grateful to your book that he is alive.
Author's note: Several years ago, I was involved in a rather serious automobile
accident that occurred at an intersection. Both I and the other driver were hurt: He
was slumped, unconscious, over his steering wheel while I had staggered, bloody,
from
behind mine. Cars began to roll slowly past us; their drivers gawked but did not stop.
Like the Polish woman, I had read the book, too; so, I knew what to do. I pointed
directly at the driver of one car: "Call the police." To a second and third driver:
"Pull over, we need help." Not only was their aid rapid, it was infectious. More drivers
began stopping—spontaneously—to tend to the other victim. The principle of social
proof was working for us now. The trick had been to get the ball rolling in the
direction of help. Once that was accomplished, social proof's natural momentum did
the rest.
MONKEY ME, MONKEY DO
A bit earlier I stated that the principle of social proof, like all other weapons of
influence, works better under some conditions than under others. We have already
explored one of those conditions: uncertainty. Without question, when people are
uncertain, they are more likely to use others' actions to decide how they themselves
should act. In addition, there is another important working condition: similarity. The
principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the
behavior of people just like us (Festinger, 1954). It is the conduct of such people that
gives us the greatest insight into what constitutes correct behavior for ourselves.
Therefore,
120 Chapter 4
we are more inclined to follow the lead of a similar individual than a dissimilar one
(Abrams, Wetherell, Cochrane, Hogg, & Turner, 1990; Burn, 1991; Schultz, 1999).
That is why I believe we are seeing an increasing number of average-person-on-the-
street testimonials on TV these days. Advertisers now know that one successful way
to sell a product to ordinary viewers (who compose the largest potential market) is to
demonstrate that other "ordinary" people like and use it. Whether the product is a
brand of soft drink or a pain reliever or a laundry detergent, we hear volleys of praise
from John or Mary Everyperson.
More compelling evidence for the importance of similarity in determining whether we
will imitate another's behavior comes from scientific research. An especially apt
illustration can be found in a study done by psychologists at Columbia University
(Hornstein, Fisch, & Holmes, 1968). The researchers placed wallets on the ground in
various locations around midtown Manhattan to observe what would happen when
they were found. Each wallet contained $2.00 in cash, a $26.30 check, and various
information providing the name and address of the wallet's "owner." In addition to
these items, the wallet also contained a letter making it evident that the wallet had
been lost not once, but twice. The letter was written to the wallet's owner from a
man who had found it earlier and whose intention was to return it. The finder
indicated in his letter that he was happy to help and that the chance to be of service
in this way had made him feel good.
It was evident to anyone who found one of these wallets that this well-intentioned
individual had then lost the wallet himself on the way to the mailbox—the wallet was
wrapped in an envelope addressed to the owner. The researchers wanted to know
how
many people finding such a wallet would follow the lead of the first finder and mail it,
intact, to the original owner. Before they dropped the wallets, however, the
researchers varied one feature of the letter it contained. Some of the letters were
written in standard English by someone who seemed to be an average American,
while the other letters were written in broken English by the first finder, who
identified himself as a recently arrived foreigner. In other words, the person who had
initially found the wallet and had tried to return it was depicted by the letter as being
either similar or dissimilar to most Americans.
The interesting question was whether the people who found the wallet and letter
would be more influenced to mail the wallet if the first person who had tried to do so
were similar to them. The answer was plain: Only 33 percent of the wallets were
returned when the first finder was seen to be dissimilar, but 70 percent were returned
when he was thought to be a similar other. These results suggest an important
qualification of the principle of social proof. We will use the actions of others to
decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others to be
similar to ourselves.
This tendency applies not only to adults but to children as well. Health researchers
have found, for example, that a school-based antismoking program had lasting
effects only when it used same-age peer leaders as teachers (Murray, Leup-ker,
Johnson, &
Mittlemark, 1984). Another study found that children who saw a
Social Proof 121
film depicting a child's positive visit to the dentist lowered their own dental anxieties
principally when they were the same age as the child in the film (Melamed,
Yurcheson, Fleece, Hutcherson, & Hawes, 1978). I wish I had known about this
second
study when, a few years before it was published, I was trying to reduce a different
kind of anxiety in my son, Chris.
I live in Arizona where backyard swimming pools abound. Regrettably, each year,
several young children drown after falling into an unattended pool. I was determined,
therefore, to teach Chris how to swim at an early age. The problem was not that he
was
afraid of the water; he loved it, but he would not get into the pool without wearing his
inflatable inner tube, no matter how I tried to coax, talk, or shame him out of it. After
getting nowhere for two months, I hired a graduate student of mine to
help. Despite his background as a lifeguard and swimming instructor, he failed as I
had. He couldn't persuade Chris to attempt even a stroke outside of his plastic ring.
About this time, Chris was attending a day camp that provided a number of
activities to its group, including the use of a large pool, which he scrupulously
avoided. One day, shortly after the graduate student incident, I went to get Chris
from camp and, with my mouth agape, watched him run down the diving board and
jump into
the deepest part of the pool. Panicked, I began pulling off my shoes to jump in to his
rescue when I saw him bob to the surface and paddle safely to the side of the pool—
where I dashed, shoes in hand, to meet him.
"Chris, you can swim!" I said excitedly. "You can swim!" "Yes," he responded
casually, "I learned how today."
"This is terrific! This is just terrific," I burbled, gesturing expansively to convey my
enthusiasm. "But, how come you didn't need your plastic ring today?"
Looking somewhat embarrassed because his father seemed to be raving while
inexplicably soaking his socks in a small puddle and waving his shoes around, Chris
explained:
"Well, I'm 3 years old, and Tommy is 3 years old. And Tommy can swim without a
ring, so that means I can, too."
I could have kicked myself. Of course it would be to little Tommy, not to a 6'2"
graduate student, that Chris would look for the most relevant information about what
he could or should do. Had I been more thoughtful about solving Chris' swimming
problem, I could have employed Tommy's good example earlier and, perhaps, saved
myself a couple of frustrating months. I could have simply noted at the day camp that
Tommy was a swimmer and then arranged with his parents for the boys to spend a
weekend
afternoon swimming in our pool. My guess is that Chris' plastic ring would have been
abandoned by the end of the day.
Monkey Die
Any factor that can spur 70 percent of New Yorkers to return a wallet, with all its
contents included, must be considered impressive. Yet the outcome of the lost-wallet
study offers just a hint of the immense impact that the conduct of similar others
has
122 Chapter 4
on human behavior. More powerful examples exist in addition to this one. To my
mind, the most telling illustration of this impact starts with a seemingly nonsensical
statistic: After a suicide has made front-page news, airplanes—private planes,
corporate jets, airliners—begin falling out of the sky at an alarming rate.
For example, it has been shown (Phillips, 1979) that immediately following certain
kinds of highly publicized suicide stories, the number of people who die in
commercial-airline crashes increases by 1,000 percent! Even more alarming: The
increase is
not limited to airplane deaths. The number of automobile fatalities shoots up as well
(Phillips, 1980). What could possibly be responsible?
One explanation suggests itself immediately: The same social conditions that cause
some people to commit suicide cause others to die accidentally. For instance, certain
individuals, the suicide-prone, may react to stressful societal events (economic
downturns, rising crime rates, international tensions) by ending it all. Others will react
differently to these same events; they might become angry, impatient, nervous, or
distracted. To the degree that such people operate or maintain the cars and
planes of our society, the vehicles will be less safe, and consequently, we will see a
sharp increase in the number of automobile and air fatalities.
According to this "social conditions" interpretation, then, some of the same societal
factors that cause intentional deaths also cause accidental ones, and that is why we
find so strong a connection between suicide stories and fatal crashes. Another
fascinating statistic indicates that this is not the correct explanation: Fatal crashes
increase dramatically only in those regions where the suicide has been highly
publicized. Other places, existing under similar social conditions, whose newspapers
have not publicized the story, have shown no comparable jump in such fatalities.
Furthermore, within those areas where newspaper space has been allotted, the wider
the publicity given the suicide, the greater has been the rise in subsequent crashes.
Thus, it is not some set of common societal events that stimulates suicides on the one
hand and fatal accidents on the other. Instead, it is the publicized suicide story itself
that produces the car and plane wrecks.
To explain the strong association between suicide-story publicity and subsequent
crashes, a "bereavement" account has been suggested. Because, it has been argued,
front-page suicides often involve well-known and respected public figures, perhaps
their
highly publicized deaths throw many people into states of shocked sadness. Stunned
and preoccupied, these individuals become careless around cars and planes. The
consequence is the sharp increase in deadly accidents involving such vehicles that we
see
after front-page suicide stories. Although the bereavement theory can account for the
connection between the degree of publicity given a story and subsequent crash
fatalities—the more people who learn of the suicide, the larger will be the number of
bereaved and careless individuals—it cannot explain another startling fact: Newspaper
stories reporting suicide victims who died alone produce an increase in the frequency
of single-fatality wrecks only, whereas stories reporting suicide-plus-murder
incidents produce an increase in multiple-fatality wrecks only. Simple bereavement
could not cause such a pattern.
Social Proof 123
4_Social_Proof-5.jpg
The influence of suicide stories on car and plane crashes, then, is fantastically
specific. Stories of pure suicides, in which only one person dies, generate wrecks in
which only one person dies; stories of suicide-murder combination, in which there
are multiple deaths, generate wrecks in which there are multiple deaths. If neither
social conditions" nor "bereavement" can make sense of this bewildering array of
tacts, what can? There is a sociologist at the University of California in San Diego
who thinks he has found the answer. His name is David Phillips, and he points a
convincing finger at something called the "Werther effect."
The story of the Werther effect is both chilling and intriguing. More than two centuries
ago, the great man of German literature, Johann von Goethe, published a
124 Chapter 4
novel entitled Die Leiden desjungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Wertherj. The
book, in which the hero, named Werther, commits suicide, had a remarkable impact.
Not only did it provide Goethe with immediate fame, but it also sparked a wave of
emulative suicides across Europe. So powerful was this effect that authorities in
several countries banned the novel.
Phillips's own work has traced the Werther effect to modern times (Phillips, 1974). His
research has demonstrated that, immediately following a front-page suicide story, the
suicide rate increases dramatically in those geographical areas where the
story has been highly publicized. It is Phillips's argument that certain troubled people
who read of another's self-inflicted death kill themselves in imitation. In a morbid
illustration of the principle of social proof, these people decide how they
should act on the basis of how some other troubled person has acted.
Phillips derived his evidence for the modern-day Werther effect from examining the
suicide statistics in the United States between 1947 and 1968. He found that, within
two months after every front-page suicide story, an average of 58 more people than
usual killed themselves. In a sense, each suicide story killed 58 people who otherwise
would have gone on living. Phillips also found that this tendency for suicides to beget
suicides occurred principally in those parts of the country where the first
suicide was highly publicized. He observed that the wider the publicity given the first
suicide, the greater the number of later suicides (see Figure 4.1).
If the facts surrounding the Werther effect seem to you suspiciously like those
surrounding the influence of suicide stories on air and traffic fatalities, the similarities
have not been lost on Phillips, either. In fact, he contends that all the
excess deaths following a front-page suicide incident can be explained as the same
thing: copycat suicides. Upon learning of another's suicide, an uncomfortably large
number of people decide that suicide is an appropriate action for themselves as well.
Some of these individuals then proceed to commit the act in a straightforward, no-
bones-about-it fashion, causing the suicide rate to jump.
Others, however, are less direct. For any of several reasons—to protect their
reputations, to spare their families the shame and hurt, to allow their dependents to
collect on insurance policies—they do not want to appear to have killed themselves.
They
would rather seem to have died accidentally. So, purposively but furtively, they cause
the wreck of a car or a plane they are operating or are simply riding in. This can be
accomplished in a variety of all-too-familiar-sounding ways. A commercial
airline pilot can dip the nose of the aircraft at a crucial point of takeoff or can
inexplicably land on an already occupied runway against the instructions from the
control tower; the driver of a car can suddenly swerve into a tree or into oncoming
traffic; a passenger in an automobile or corporate jet can incapacitate the operator,
causing the deadly crash; the pilot of a private plane can, despite all radio warnings,
plow into another aircraft. Thus, the alarming climb in crash fatalities that
we find following front-page suicides is, according to Phillips, most likely due to the
Werther effect secretly applied. I consider this insight brilliant. First, it explains all of
the data beautifully. If these wrecks really are hidden instances of
imitative suicide, it makes sense that we
Social Proof 125
should see an increase in the wrecks after suicide stories appear. It makes sense that
the greatest rise in wrecks should occur after the suicide stories that have been most
widely publicized and have, consequently, reached the most people. It also
makes sense that the number of crashes should jump appreciably only in those
geographical areas where the suicide stories were publicized. It even makes sense
that single-
4_Social_Proof-6.jpg
126 Chapter 4
victim suicides should lead only to single-victim crashes, whereas multiple-victim
suicide incidents should lead only to multiple-victim crashes. Imitation is the key.
In addition, there is a second valuable feature of Phillips's insight. Not only does it
allow us to explain the existing facts, it also allows us to predict new facts that had
never been uncovered before. For example, if the abnormally frequent crashes
following publicized suicides are genuinely the result of imitative rather than
accidental actions, they should be more deadly as a result. That is, people trying to
kill themselves will likely arrange (with a foot on the accelerator instead of the
brake, with the nose of the plane down instead of up) for the impact to be as lethal as
possible. The consequence should be quick and sure death. When Phillips examined
the records to check on this prediction, he found that the average number of people
killed in a fatal crash of a commercial airliner is more than three times greater if the
crash happened one week after a front-page suicide story than if it happened one
week before. A similar phenomenon can be found in traffic statistics, where there
is evidence for the deadly efficiency of post-suicide-story auto crashes. Victims of
fatal car wrecks that follow front-page suicide stories die four times more quickly than
normal (Phillips, 1980).
Still another fascinating prediction flows from Phillips's idea. If the increase in wrecks
following suicide stories truly represents a set of copycat deaths, then the imitators
should be most likely to copy the suicides of people who are similar to
them. The principle of social proof states that we use information about the way
others have behaved to help us determine proper conduct for ourselves. As the
dropped-wallet experiment showed, we are most influenced in this fashion by the
actions of
people who are like us.
Therefore, Phillips reasoned, if the principle of social proof is behind the phenomenon,
there should be some clear similarity between the victim of the highly publicized
suicide and those who cause subsequent wrecks. Realizing that the clearest test
of this possibility would come from the records of automobile crashes involving a
single car and a lone driver, Phillips compared the age of the suicide-story victim with
the ages of the lone drivers killed in single-car crashes immediately after the
story appeared in print. Once again the predictions were strikingly accurate: When
the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young drivers who then
piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal results; but when the
news story concerned an older person's suicide, older drivers died in such crashes
(Phillips, 1980). This last statistic is the clincher for me. I am left wholly convinced
and, simultaneously, wholly amazed by it. Evidently, the principle of social
proof is so wide-ranging and powerful that its domain extends to the fundamental
decision for life or death. Phillips's findings illustrate a distressing tendency for suicide
publicity to motivate certain people who are similar to the victim to kill
themselves—because they now find the idea of suicide more legitimate. Truly
frightening are the data indicating that many innocent people die in the bargain (see
Figure 4.2).
As if the frightening features of Phillips's suicide data weren't enough, his additional
research (Phillips, 1983) brings more cause for alarm: Homicides in this
4_Social_Proof-7.jpg
127
128 Chapter 4
country have a simulated, copycat character after highly publicized acts of violence.
Heavyweight championship prize fights that receive coverage on network evening
news appear to produce measurable increases in the United States homicide rate.
This
analysis of heavyweight championship fights (between 1973 and 1978) is perhaps
most compelling in its demonstration of the remarkably specific nature of the
imitative aggression that is generated. When such a match was lost by a black
fighter, the
homicide rate during the following 10 days rose significantly for young black male
victims but not young white males. On the other hand, when a white fighter lost a
match, it was young white men, but not young black men, who were killed more
frequently
in the next 10 days. When these results are combined with the parallel findings in
Phillips's suicide data, it is clear that widely publicized aggression has the nasty
tendency to spread to similar victims, no matter whether the aggression is inflicted
on the self or on another.
Perhaps nowhere are we brought into more dramatic contact with the unsettling side
of the principle of social proof than in the realm of copycat crime. Back in the 1970s,
our attention was brought to the phenomenon in the form of airplane hijackings,
which seemed to spread like airborne viruses. In the 1980s, our focus shifted to
product tamperings, such as the famous cases of Tylenol capsules injected with
cyanide and Gerber baby food products laced with glass. According to FBI forensic
experts,
each nationally publicized incident of this sort spawned an average of 30 more
incidents (Toufexis, 1993). More recently, we've been jolted by the specter of
contagious mass murders, occurring first in workplace settings and then, incredibly, in
the
schools of our nation. For instance, immediately following the bloody rampage by two
Littleton, Colorado, high-school students on April 20, 1999, police responded to
scores of similar threats, plots, and attempts by troubled students. Two of those
attempts proved "successful": A 14-year-old in Taber, Alberta, and a 15-year-old in
Conyers, Georgia, killed or wounded a total of eight classmates within 10 days of the
Littleton massacre.
Events of this magnitude demand analysis and explanation. Some common thread
needs to be identified to make sense of it all. In the case of the workplace murders,
observers noticed how often the killing fields were the backrooms of U.S. post offices.
So, the finger of blame was pointed at the "intolerable strains" of the U.S. postal
environment. As for the school-based slaughter, commentators remarked on an odd
commonality: All the affected schools were located in rural or suburban communities
rather than in the ever-simmering cauldrons of inner-city neighborhoods. So, the
media instructed us as to the "intolerable strains" of growing up in small town or
suburban America. By these accounts, the stressors of U.S. post office environments
and
of small town American life created the explosive reactions of those who worked and
lived there. The explanation is straightforward: Similar social conditions beget similar
responses.
But you and I have been down the "similar social conditions" road before in trying to
understand anomalous patterns of fatalities. Recall how Phillips (1979) considered the
possibility that a set of common social conditions in a particular en-
Social Proof 129
4_Social_Proof-8.jpg
vironment might explain a rash of suicides there? It wasn't a satisfactory explanation
for the suicides; and I don't think it is a satisfactory account for the murder sprees,
either. Let's see if we can locate a better alternative by first trying to
regain contact with reality: The "intolerable strains" of working at the post office or of
living in rural/suburban America!? Come on. Compared to working in the coal mines
or compared to living on the gang-ruled, mean streets of inner cities? Come on.
Certainly the
130 Chapter 4
environments where the mass slaying occurred have their tensions. But they appear
no more severe (and often appear less severe) than many other environments where
such incidents have not taken place. No, the similar social conditions theory doesn't
offer a plausible account.
Then what does? I'd nod right at the principle of social proof, which asserts that
people, especially when they are unsure of themselves, follow the lead of similar
others. Who is more similar to a disgruntled postal employee than another disgruntled
postal employee? And who is more similar to troubled small town American teenagers
than other troubled small town American teenagers? It is a regrettable constant of
modern life that many people live their lives in psychological pain. How they deal
with the pain depends on numerous factors, one of which is a recognition of how
others just like them have chosen to deal with it. As we saw in Phillips's data, a highly
publicized suicide prompts copycat suicides from similar others—from copies of the
cat. I believe the same can be said for a highly publicized multiple murder. As is the
case for suicide stories, media officials need to think deeply about how and how
prominently to present reports of killing sprees. Such reports are not only
riveting, sensational, and newsworthy, they are malignant.
Monkey Island
Work like Phillips's helps us appreciate the awesome influence of the behavior of
similar others. Once the enormity of that force is recognized, it becomes possible to
understand perhaps the most spectacular act of compliance of our time—the mass
suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. Certain crucial features of the event deserve
review.
The People's Temple was a cultlike organization that was based in San Francisco and
drew its recruits from the poor of that city. In 1977, the Reverend Jim Jones—who
was the group's undisputed political, social, and spiritual leader— moved the bulk of
the membership with him to a jungle settlement in Guyana, South America. There,
the People's Temple existed in relative obscurity until November 18, 1978, when
Congressmen Leo R. Ryan of California (who had gone to Guyana to investigate the
cult),
three members of Ryan's fact-finding party, and a cult defector were murdered as
they tried to leave Jonestown by plane. Convinced that he would be arrested and
implicated in the killings and that the demise of the People's Temple would result,
Jones
sought to control the end of the Temple in his own way. He gathered the entire
community around him and issued a call for each person's death to be done in a
unified act of self-destruction.
The first response was that of a young woman who calmly approached the now
famous vat of strawberry-flavored poison, administered one dose to her baby, one to
herself, and then sat down in a field, where she and her child died in convulsions
within
four minutes. Others followed steadily in turn. Although a handful of Jones-towners
escaped and a few others are reported to have resisted, the survivors claim that the
great majority of the 910 people who died did so in an orderly, willful fashion.
Social Proof 131
News of the event shocked us. The broadcast media and the papers provided a
barrage of reports, updates, and analyses. For days, our conversations were full of
the topic, "How many have they found dead now?" "A guy who escaped said they
were drinking
the poison like they were hypnotized or something." "What were they doing down in
South America, anyway?" "It's so hard to believe. What caused it?"
Yes, "What caused it?"—the critical question. How are we to account for this most
astounding of compliant acts? Various explanations have been offered. Some have
focused on the charisma of Jim Jones, a man whose style allowed him to be loved like
a
savior, trusted like a father, and treated like an emperor. Other explanations have
pointed to the kind of people who were attracted to the People's Temple. They were
mostly poor and uneducated individuals who were willing to give up their freedoms of
thought and action for the safety of a place where all decisions would be made for
them. Still other explanations have emphasized the quasi-religious nature of the
People's Temple, in which unquestioned faith in the cult's leader was assigned highest
priority.
No doubt each of these features of Jonestown has merit in explaining what happened
there, but I do not find them sufficient. After all, the world abounds with cults
populated by dependent people who are led by a charismatic figure. What's more,
there
has never been a shortage of this combination of circumstances in the past. Yet
virtually nowhere do we find evidence of an event even approximating the Jonestown
incident among such groups. There must be something else that was critical.
One especially revealing question gives us a clue: "If the community had remained in
San Francisco, would Reverend Jones's suicide command have been obeyed?" A
highly speculative question to be sure, but the expert most familiar with the People's
Temple had no doubt about the answer. Dr. Louis Job/on West, then chairman of
psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA and director of its neuro-psychiatric
unit, was an authority on cults who had observed the People's Temple for eight years
prior
to the Jonestown deaths. When interviewed in the immediate aftermath, he made
what strikes me as an inordinately instructive statement: "This wouldn't have
happened in California. But they lived in total alienation from the rest of the world in
a
jungle situation in a hostile country."
Although lost in the welter of commentary following the tragedy, West's observation,
together with what we know about the principle of social proof, seems to me quite
important to a satisfactory understanding of the compliant suicides. To my mind, the
single act in the history of the People's Temple that most contributed to the members'
mindless compliance that day occurred a year earlier with the relocation of the
Temple to a jungled country of unfamiliar customs and people. If we are to believe
the stories of Jim Jones's malevolent genius, he realized fully the massive
psychological impact such a move would have on his followers. All at once, they found
themselves in a place they knew nothing about. South America, and the rain forests
of
Guyana, especially, were unlike anything they had experienced in San Francisco. The
environment—both physical and social—into which they were dropped must have
seemed dreadfully uncertain.
132 Chapter 4
4_Social_Proof-9.jpg
Ah, uncertainty—the right-hand man of the principle of social proof. We have already
seen that when people are uncertain, they look to the actions of others to guide their
own actions. In the alien, Guyanese environment, then, Temple members were very
ready to follow the lead of others. As we have also seen, it is others of a special kind
whose behavior will be most unquestioningly followed: similar others. Therein lies the
awful beauty of Reverend Jones's relocation strategy. In a country like
Guyana, there were no similar others for a Jonestown resident but the people of
Jonestown itself.
What was right for a member of the community was determined to a disproportionate
degree by what other community members—influenced heavily by Jones— did and
believed. When viewed in this light, the terrible orderliness, the lack of panic, the
sense of
calm with which these people moved to the vat of poison and to their deaths seems
more comprehensible. They hadn't been hypnotized by Jones; they had been
convinced—partly by him but, more importantly, by the principle of social proof—that
suicide was
the correct conduct. The uncertainty they surely felt upon
Social Proof 133
first hearing the death command must have caused them to look around them for a
definition of the appropriate response.
It is worth particular note that they found two impressive pieces of social evidence,
each pointing in the same direction. The first was the initial set of their compatriots,
who quickly and willingly took the poison drafts. There will always be a few
such fanatically obedient individuals in any strong leader-dominated group. Whether,
in this instance, they had been specially instructed beforehand to serve as examples
or whether they were just naturally the most compliant with Jones's wishes is
difficult to know. No matter; the psychological effect of the actions of those
individuals must have been potent. If the suicides of similar others in news stories
can influence total strangers to kill themselves, imagine how enormously more
compelling
such an act would be when performed without hesitation by one's neighbors in a
place like Jonestown. The second source of social evidence came from the reactions of
the crowd itself. Given the conditions, I suspect that what occurred was a large-scale
instance of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon. Each Jonestowner looked to the
actions of surrounding individuals to assess the situation and—finding calmness
because everyone else, too, was surreptitiously assessing rather than reacting—
"learned"
that patient turntaking was the correct behavior. Such misinterpreted, but
nonetheless convincing, social evidence, would be expected to result precisely in the
ghastly composure of the assemblage that waited in the tropics of Guyana for
businesslike
death.
From my own perspective, most attempts to analyze the Jonestown incident have
focused too much on the personal qualities of Jim Jones. Although he was without
question a man of rare dynamism, the power he wielded strikes me as coming less
from his
remarkable personal style than from his understanding of fundamental psychological
principles. His real genius as a leader was his realization of the limitations of
individual leadership. No leader can hope to persuade, regularly and single-handedly,
all the members of the group. A forceful leader can reasonably expect, however, to
persuade some sizable proportion of group members. Then the raw information that a
substantial number of group members has been convinced can, by itself, convince the
rest. Thus, the most influential leaders are those who know how to arrange group
conditions to allow the principle of social proof to work in their favor. It is in this that
Jones appears to have been inspired. His masterstroke was the decision to move
the People's Temple community from urban San Francisco to the remoteness of
equatorial South America, where the conditions of uncertainty and ex-lusive similarity
would make the principle of social proof operate for him as perhaps nowhere else.
There a
settlement of a thousand people, much too large to be held
ersistent sway by the force of one man's personality, could be changed from a
following into a herd. As slaughterhouse operators have long known, the mentality of
a
1 makes it easy to manage. Simply get some members moving in the desired
direction and the others—responding not so much to the lead animal as to those
immediately surrounding them—will peacefully and mechanically go along. The
powers the amazing
Reverend Jones, then, are probably best understood not in terms of his dramatic
personal style but in his profound knowledge of the art of social jujitsu.
134 Chapter 4
DEFENSE
I began this chapter with an account of the relatively harmless practice of laugh
tracking and moved on to stories of murder and suicide—all explained by the principle
of social proof. How can we expect to defend ourselves against a weapon of influence
that pervades such a vast range of behavior? The difficulty is compounded by the
realization that, most of the time, we don't want to guard against the information that
social proof provides. The evidence it offers about the way we should act is
usually valid and valuable (Hill, 1982; Laughlin, 1980; Warnik & Sanders, 1980). With
it we can cruise confidently through countless decisions without having to investigate
the detailed pros and cons of each. In this sense, the principle of social
proof equips us with a wonderful kind of automatic pilot device not unlike that aboard
most aircraft.
Yet there are occasional, but real, problems with automatic pilots. Those problems
appear whenever the flight information locked into the control mechanism is wrong.
In these instances, we will be taken off course. Depending on the size of the error,
the consequences can be severe; but, because the automatic pilot afforded by the
principle of social proof is more often an ally than an enemy, we can't be expected to
want simply to disconnect it. Thus, we are faced with a classic problem: how to make
use of a piece of equipment that simultaneously benefits and imperils our welfare.
Fortunately, there is a way out of the dilemma. Because the disadvantages of
automatic pilots arise principally when incorrect data have been put into the control
system, our best defense against these disadvantages is to recognize when the data
are in
error. If we can become sensitive to situations in which the social proof automatic
pilot is working with inaccurate information, we can disengage the mechanism and
grasp the controls when we need to.
Sabotage
There are two types of situations in which incorrect data cause the principle of social
proof to give us poor counsel. The first occurs when the social evidence has been
purposely falsified. Invariably these situations are manufactured by exploiters
intent on creating the impression—reality be damned—that a multitude is performing
the way the exploiters want us to perform. The canned laughter of TV comedy shows
is one variety of faked data of this sort, but there is a great deal more, and much of
the fakery is strikingly obvious.
For instance, canned responses are not unique to the electronic media or even to the
electronic age. In fact, the heavy-handed exploitation of the principle of social proof
can be traced through the history of grand opera, one of our most venerable art
forms. This is the phenomenon called claquing, said to have begun in 1820 by a pair
of Paris opera-house habitues named Sauton and Porcher. The men were more than
opera-goers, though. They were businessmen whose product was applause.
Social Proof 135
Organizing under the title L'Assurance des Succes Dramatiques, they leased
themselves and their employees to singers and opera managers who wished to be
assured of an appreciative audience response. So effective were Sauton and Porcher
in stimulating
genuine audience reaction with their rigged reactions that, before long, claques
(usually consisting of a leader—chef de claque—and several individual claqueurs) had
become an established and persistent tradition throughout the world of opera. As
music
historian Robert Sabin (1964) notes, "By 1830 the claque was a full-bloom institution,
collecting by day, applauding by night, all in the honest open.... But it is altogether
probable that neither Sauton, nor his ally Porcher, had a notion of the
extent to which their scheme of paid applause would be adopted and applied
wherever opera is sung."
As claquing grew and developed, its practitioners offered an array of styles and
strengths. In the same way that laugh-track producers hire individuals who excel in
titters, chuckles, or belly laughs, the claques spawned their own specialists—the
pleureuse, chosen for her ability to weep on cue; the bisseur, who called "bis"
(repeat) and "encore" in ecstatic tones; and, in direct kinship with today's laugh-track
performer, the rieur, selected for the infectious quality of his laugh.
For our purposes, though, the most instructive parallel to modern forms of canned
response is the conspicuous character of the fakery. No special need was seen to
disguise or vary the claque, who often sat in the same seats, performance after
performance, year after year, led by a chefde claque two decades into his position.
Even the monetary transactions were not hidden from the public. Indeed, one
hundred years after the birth of claquing, a reader of the London Musical Times could
scan
the advertised rates of the Italian claqueurs (see Figure 4.3). Whether in the world
ofRigoletto or TV sit-coms, then, audiences have been successfully manipulated by
those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.
4_Social_Proof-10.jpg
136 Chapter 4
What Sauton and Porcher realized about the mechanical way that we abide by the
principle of social proof is understood as well by a variety of today's profiteers. They
see no need to hide the manufactured nature of the social evidence they provide—
witness the amateurish quality of the average TV laugh track. They seem almost
smug in the recognition of our predicament: Either we must allow them to fool us or
we must abandon the precious automatic pilots that make us so vulnerable to their
tricks.
In their certainty that they have us trapped, however, such exploiters have made a
crucial mistake. The laxity with which they construct phony social evidence gives us a
way to fight back.
Because automatic pilots can be engaged and disengaged at will, we can cruise along
trusting in the course steered by the principle of social proof until we recognize that
inaccurate data are being used. Then we can take the controls, make the
necessary correction for the misinformation, and reset the automatic pilot. The
transparency of the rigged social proof we get these days provides us with exactly the
cue we need for knowing when to perform this simple maneuver. With no more cost
than
a bit of vigilance for plainly counterfeit social evidence, then, we can protect ourselves
nicely.
Let's take an example. A bit earlier, I noted the proliferation of average person-on-
the-street ads, in which a number of ordinary people speak glowingly of a product,
often without knowing that their words are being recorded. As would be expected
according to the principle of social proof, these testimonials from "average people like
you and me" make for quite effective advertising campaigns. They have always
included a relatively subtle kind of distortion: We hear only from those who like the
product; as a result, we get an understandably biased picture of the amount of social
support for it. More recently, though, a cruder and more unethical sort of falsification
has been introduced. Commercial producers often don't bother to get genuine
testimonials. They merely hire actors to play the roles of average people testifying in
an unrehearsed fashion to an interviewer. It is amazing how bald-faced these
"unrehearsed interview" commercials can be. The situations are obviously staged, the
participants are clearly actors, and the dialogue is unmistakably prewritten.
I know that whenever I encounter an influence attempt of this sort, it sets off in me a
kind of alarm with a clear directive: Attention! Attention! Bad social proof in this
situation. Temporarily disconnect automatic pilot. It's so easy to do. We need
only make a conscious decision to be alert to counterfeit social evidence. We can
relax until the exploiters' evident fakery is spotted, at which time we can pounce.
And we should pounce with a vengeance. I am speaking of more than simply ignoring
the misinformation, although this defensive tactic is certainly called for. I am
speaking of aggressive counterattack. Whenever possible we ought to sting those
responsible for the rigging of social evidence. We should purchase no products
featured in phony "unrehearsed interview" commercials. Moreover, each
manufacturer of the items should receive a letter explaining our response and
recommending that they
discontinue use of the advertising agency that produced so deceptive a presentation
of their product.
Social Proof 137
4_Social_Proof-11.jpg
Of course, we don't always want to trust the actions of others to direct our conduct—
especially in a situation important enough to warrant our personal investigation of the
pros and cons, or one in which we are experts—but we do want to be able to
count on others' behavior as a source of valid information in a wide range of settings.
If we find in such settings that we cannot trust the information to be valid because
someone has tampered with the evidence, we ought to be ready to strike back. In
such instances, I personally feel driven by more than an aversion to being duped. I
bristle at the thought of being pushed into an unacceptable corner by those who
would use one of my hedges against the decisional overload of modern life against
me.
And I get a genuine sense of righteousness by lashing out when they try. If you are
like me, so should you.
Looking Up
In addition to the times when social evidence is deliberately faked, there is another
time when the principle of social proof will regularly steer us wrong. In such an
138 Chapter 4
4_Social_Proof-12.jpg
instance, an innocent, natural error will produce snowballing social proof that pushes
us to an incorrect decision. The pluralistic ignorance phenomenon, in which everyone
at an emergency sees no cause for alarm, is one example of this process. The
best illustration I know, however, comes from Singapore, where a few years ago, for
no good reason, customers of a local bank began drawing out their money in a
frenzy. The run on this respected bank remained a mystery until much later, when
researchers interviewing participants discovered its peculiar cause: An unexpected
bus strike had created an abnormally large crowd waiting at the bus stop in front of
the bank that day. Mistaking the gathering for a crush of customers poised to
withdraw their funds from a failing bank, passersby panicked and got in line to
withdraw their deposits, which led more passersby to do the same. Soon after
opening its doors, the bank was forced to close to prevent a complete crash ("News,"
1988).
Social Proof 139
This account provides certain insights into the way we respond to social proof. First,
we seem to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know
something we don't. Especially when we are uncertain, we are willing to place an
enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd. Second, quite
frequently the crowd is mistaken because its members are not acting on the basis of
any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social
proof.
There is a lesson here: An automatic pilot device, like social proof, should never be
trusted fully; even when no saboteur has slipped information into the mechanism, it
can sometimes go haywire by itself. We need to check the machine from time to time
to be sure that it hasn't worked itself out of sync with the other sources of evidence in
the situation—the objective facts, our prior experiences, our own judgments.
Fortunately, this precaution requires neither much effort nor much time. A quick
glance around is all that is needed. And this little precaution is well worth it. The
consequences of single-minded reliance on social evidence can be frightening. For
instance, a serious international incident developed in 1983 when a Korean Airlines
jet strayed deep into Soviet airspace and was shot down by Russian fighters.
Subsequent analysis determined that during the flight, the jetliner's crew had never
checked their progress manually, relying entirely on their autopilot, which had been
fed
the wrong magnetic heading at the flight's outset (Staff, 1993).
Certainly, a flier whose plane is locked into automatic pilot would be wise to glance
occasionally at the instrument panel and out the window. In the same way, we need
to look up and around periodically whenever we are locked into the evidence of the
crowd. Without this simple safeguard against misguided social proof, our outcomes
might well run parallel to those of the Korean Airliner and the Singapore bank: crash.
READER'S REPORT 4.2
From a Former Racetrack Employee
I became aware of one method of faking social evidence to one's advantage while
working at a racetrack. In order to lower the odds and make more money, some
bettors are able to sway the public to bet on bad horses.
Odds at a racetrack are based on where the money is being bet. The more money on
a horse, the better the odds. Many people who play the horses have surprisingly little
knowledge of racing or betting strategy. Thus, especially when they don't know much
about the horses in a particular race, a lot of times they'll simply bet the favorite.
Because tote boards display up-to-the-minute odds, the public can always tell who
the current favorite is. The system that a high roller can use to alter the odds is
actually quite simple. The guy has in mind a horse he feels has a good chance of
winning. Next he chooses a horse that has long odds (say, 15 to 1) and doesn't have
a realistic chance to win. The minute the mutual windows open, the guy puts down
$100
on the inferior horse, creating an instant favorite whose odds on the board drop to
about 2 to 1.
140 Chapter 4
Now the elements of social proof begin to work. People who are uncertain of how to
bet the race look to the tote board to see which horse the early bettors have decided
is a favorite, and they follow. A snowballing effect now occurs as other people
continue to bet the favorite. At this point, the high roller can go back to the window
and bet heavily on his true favorite, which will have better odds now because the
"new favorite" has been pushed down the board. If the guy wins, the initial $100
investment will have been worth it many times over.
I've seen this happen myself. I remember one time a person put down $100 on a pre-
race 10 to 1 shot, making it the early favorite. The rumors started circulating around
the track—the early bettors knew something. Next thing you know, everyone (myself
included) was betting on this horse. It ended up running last and had a bad leg. Many
people lost a lot of money. Somebody came out ahead, though. We'll never know
who. But he is the one with all the money. He understood the theory of social proof.
Author's note: Once again we can see that social proof is most telling for those who
feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look
outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.
SUMMARY
• The principle of social proof states that one important means that people use to
decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to look at what other people are
believing or doing there. Powerful imitative effects have been found among both
children and adults and in such diverse activities as purchase decisions, charity
donations, and phobia remission. The principle of social proof can be used to
stimulate a person's compliance with a request by informing the person that many
other
individuals (the more, the better) are or have been complying with it.
• Social proof is most influential under two conditions. The first is uncertainty. When
people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more likely to attend to
the actions of others and to accept those actions as correct. In ambiguous
situations, for instance, the decisions of bystanders to help are much more influenced
by the actions of other bystanders than when the situation is a clear-cut emergency.
The second condition under which social proof is most influential is similarity:
People are more inclined to follow the lead of similar others. Evidence for the powerful
effect of the actions of similar others on human behavior can be readily seen in the
suicide statistics compiled by sociologist David Phillips. Those statistics
indicate that after highly publicized suicide stories other troubled individuals, who are
similar to the suicide-story victim, decide to kill themselves. An analysis of the mass
suicide incident at Jonestown, Guyana, suggests that the group's leader,
Reverend Jim Jones, used both of the
Social Proof 141
factors of uncertainty and similarity to induce a herdlike suicide response from the
majority of the Jonestown population.
Recommendations to reduce our susceptibility to faulty social proof include a
sensitivity to clearly counterfeit evidence of what similar others are doing and a
recognition that the actions of similar others should not form the sole basis for our
decisions.
STUDY QUESTIONS Content Mastery
1. Describe the principle of social proof and how it can explain the effect of canned
laughter on an audience's reaction to comedy material.
2. In the Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter study of the end-of-the-world cult, group
members pushed to win new converts only after their doomsday predictions proved
false. Why?
3. Which two factors maximize the influence of social proof on an individual? What
was it about the Jonestown, Guyana, situation that allowed these two factors to
operate forcefully?
4. What is pluralistic ignorance? How does it influence bystander intervention in
emergencies?
5. Which naturally occurring conditions of city life reduce the chance of bystander
intervention in an emergency?
6. What is the Werther effect? How does it explain the puzzling relationship between
highly publicized suicide stories and startling increases in the number of airplane and
automobile fatalities following publication of the stories?
Critical Thinking
1. If you had to deliver a lecture to heart patients concerning the best way to secure
help should they experience heart trouble in a public place, which steps would you tell
them to take?
2. In early 1986, someone injected cyanide into Tylenol capsules on store shelves,
creating widespread publicity and a national furor after a New York woman died from
ingesting one of the capsules. The weeks that followed saw a rash of product
tampering incidents. Three other popular over-the-counter medications were found
laced with poison; pieces of glass were inserted in packages of cereal and ice cream;
even bathroom tissue was not immune— in one office building, the toilet paper in the
public restrooms was sprayed with Mace. Although the Tylenol incident itself could not
have been foreseen, explain why, after reading this chapter, you might have
predicted the aftermath.
3. Suppose you were a TV producer given the delicate job of creating a series of
public service programs designed to reduce teenage suicide. Knowing that research
suggests that
142 Chapter 4
previous programming may have inadvertently increased teen suicides via the
principle of social proof, what would you do to use the same principle to make it likely
that your shows would reduce the problem among those who watched? Who would
you
interview on-camera? Would any of them be troubled teenagers? Which questions
would you ask them?
4. Describe a situation in your past in which you were tricked into compliance by
someone who counterfeited the principle of social proof. How would you handle a
similar situation today?
5. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
CHAPTER
5
Liking
The Friendly Thief
5_Liking-1.jpg
The main work of a trial attorney is to make a jury like his client.
—CLARENCE DARROW
Few of us would be surprised to learn that, as a rule, we most prefer to say yes to the
requests of people we know and like. What might be startling to note, however, is
that this simple rule is used in hundreds of ways by total strangers to get us to
comply with their requests.
The clearest illustration I know of the professional exploitation of the liking rule is the
Tupperware party, which I consider a classic compliance setting. Anybody familiar
with the workings of a Tupperware party will recognize the use of the various
weapons of influence we have examined so far:
• Reciprocity. To start, games are played and prizes won by the party goers; anyone
who doesn't win a prize gets to choose one from a grab bag so that everyone has
received a gift before the buying begins.
• Commitment. Participants are urged to describe publicly the uses and benefits they
have found for the Tupperware they already own.
• Social proof. Once the buying begins, each purchase builds the idea that other,
similar people want the products; therefore, it must be good.
All the weapons of influence are present to help things along, but the real power of
the Tupperware party comes from a particular arrangement that trades on the liking
rule. Despite the entertaining and persuasive selling skills of the Tupperware
demonstrator, the true request to purchase the product does not come from this
stranger; it comes from a friend to every person in the room. Oh, the Tupperware
representative may physically ask for each party goer's order, all right; but the more
psychologically compelling requester is sitting off to the side, smiling, chatting, and
serving refreshments. She is the party hostess, who has called her friends together
for the demonstration in her home and who, everyone knows, makes a profit from
each piece sold at the party.
By providing the hostess with a percentage of the take, the Tupperware Home Parties
Corporation arranges for its customers to buy from and for a friend rather than from
an unknown salesperson. In this way, the attraction, the warmth, the security, and
the obligation of friendship are brought to bear on the sales setting (Taylor, 1978). In
fact, consumer researchers who have examined the social ties between the hostess
and the party goers in home party sales settings have affirmed the power of the
company's approach: The strength of that social bond is twice as likely to determine
product purchase as is preference for the product itself (Frenzen & Davis, 1990). The
results have been remarkable. It was recently estimated that Tupperware sales now
exceed 2.5 million dollars a day! Indeed, Tupperware's success has spread around the
world to societies in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, where one's place in a network
of friends and family is more socially significant than in the United States
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1995). As a result, now less than a quarter of
Tupperware sales take place in North America.
144
Liking 145
What is interesting is that the customers appear to be fully aware of the liking and
friendship pressures embodied in the Tupperware party. Some don't seem to mind;
others do, but don't seem to know how to avoid these pressures. One woman I spoke
with
described her reactions with more than a bit of frustration in her voice.
It's gotten to the point now where I hate to be invited to Tupperware parties. I've got
all the containers I need; and if I wanted any more, I could buy another brand
cheaper in the store. But when a friend calls up, I feel like I have to go. And when
I get there, I feel like I have to buy something. What can I do? It's for one of my
friends.
With so irresistible an ally as friendship, it is little wonder that the Tupperware
Corporation has abandoned retail sales outlets and is pushing the home party
concept. Statistics reveal that a Tupperware party now starts somewhere every 2.7
seconds.
Of course, all sorts of other compliance professionals recognize the pressure to say
yes to someone we know and like. Take, for instance, the growing number of charity
organizations that recruit volunteers to canvass for donations close to their own
5_Liking-2.jpg
146 Chapters
homes. They understand perfectly how much more difficult it is for us to turn down a
charity request when it comes from a friend or neighbor.
Other compliance professionals have found that the friend doesn't even have to be
present to be effective; often, just the mention of the friends' name is enough. The
Shaklee Corporation, which specializes in door-to-door sales of various home-related
products, advises its salespeople to use the "endless chain" method for finding new
customers. Once a customer admits that he or she likes a product, that customer can
be pressed for the names of friends who would also appreciate learning about it. The
individuals on that list can then be approached for sales and a list of their friends,
who can serve as sources for still other potential customers, and so on in an endless
chain.
The key to the success of this method is that each new prospect is visited by a
salesperson armed with the name of a friend "who suggested I call on you." Turning
the salesperson away under those circumstances is difficult; it's almost like rejecting
the friend. The Shaklee sales manual insists that employees use this system: "It
would be impossible to overestimate its value. Phoning or calling on a prospect and
5_Liking-3.jpg
Liking 147
being able to say that Mr. So-and-so, a friend of his, felt he would benefit by giving
you a few moments of his time is virtually as good as a sale 50 percent made before
you enter."
READER'S REPORT 5.1 From a Chicago Man
Although I've never been to a Tupperware Party, I recognized the same kind of
friendship pressures recently when I got a call from a long distance phone company
saleswoman. She told me that one of my buddies had placed my name on something
called the
"MCI Friends and Family Calling Circle."
This friend of mine, Brad, is a guy I grew up with but who moved to New Jersey last
year for a job. He still calls me pretty regularly to get the news on the guys we used
to hang out with. The saleswoman told me that he could save 20 percent on all the
calls he made to the people on his Calling-Circle list, provided they are MCI phone
company subscribers. Then she asked me if I wanted to switch to MCI to get all the
blah, blah, blah benefits of MCI service, and so that Brad could save 20 percent on
his calls to me.
Well, I couldn't have cared less about the benefits of MCI service; I was perfectly
happy with the long distance company I had. But the part about wanting to save Brad
money on our calls really got to me. For me to say that I didn't want to be in his
Calling Circle and didn't care about saving him money would have sounded like a real
affront to our friendship when he heard about it. So, to avoid insulting him, I told her
to switch me to MCI.
I used to wonder why women would go to a Tupperware Party just because a friend
was holding it, and then buy stuff they didn't want once they were there. I don't
wonder anymore.
Author's note: This reader is not alone in being able to testify to the power of the
pressures embodied in MCI's Calling Circle idea. When Consumer Reports magazine
inquired into the practice, the MCI salesperson they interviewed was quite succinct:
"It works 9 out of 10 times," he said.
MAKING FRIENDS TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE
Compliance practitioners' widespread use of the liking bond between friends tells us
much about the power of the liking rule to produce assent. In fact, we find that such
professionals seek to benefit from the rule even when already formed friendships
are not present for them to employ. Under these circumstances, the professionals still
make use of the liking bond by employing a compliance strategy that is quite direct:
They first get us to like them.
There is a man in Detroit, Joe Girard, who specialized in using the liking rule to sell
Chevrolets. He became wealthy in the process, making over $200,000 a year.
5_Liking-4.jpg
148 Chapters
With such a salary, we might guess that he was a high-level GM executive or perhaps
the owner of a Chevrolet dealership. But no. He made his money as a salesman on
the showroom floor. He was phenomenal at what he did. For twelve years straight, he
won
the title of "Number One Car Salesman"; he averaged more than five cars and trucks
sold every day he worked; and he has been called the world's "greatest car salesman"
by the Guinness Book of World Records.
For all his success, the formula he employed was surprisingly simple. It consisted of
offering people just two things: a fair price and someone they liked to buy from. "And
that's it," he claimed in an interview. "Finding the salesman you like, plus
the price. Put them both together, and you get a deal."
Fine. The Joe Girard formula tells us how vital the liking rule is to his business, but it
doesn't tell us nearly enough. For one thing, it doesn't tell us why customers liked
him more than some other salesperson who offered a fair price. There is a
crucial—and fascinating—general question that Joe's formula leaves unanswered.
What are the factors that cause one person to like another? If we knew that answer,
we would be a long way toward understanding how people such as Joe can so
successfully
arrange to have us like them and, conversely, how we might successfully arrange to
have others like us. Fortunately, social scientists have been asking this question for
decades. Their accumulated evidence has allowed them to identify a number of
factors that reliably cause liking. As we will see, each is cleverly used by compliance
professionals to urge us along the road to "yes."
WHY DO I LIKE YOU? LET ME LIST THE REASONS Physical Attractiveness
Although it is generally acknowledged that good-looking people have an advantage in
social interaction, recent findings indicate that we may have sorely underestimated
the size and reach of that advantage. There seems to be a click, whirr response to
attractive people. Like all click, whirr reactions, it happens automatically, without
forethought. The response itself falls into a category that social scientists call halo
effects. A halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person
dominates the way that person is viewed by others. The evidence is now clear that
physical attractiveness is often such a characteristic.
Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such
favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence (for a review of this
evidence, see Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991). Furthermore, we make
these
judgments without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the
process. Some consequences of this unconscious assumption that "good-looking
equals good" scare me. For example, a study of the 1974 Canadian federal elections
found that
attractive candidates received more than two and a half times as many votes as
unattractive candidates (Efran & Patterson, 1976). Despite such evidence of
favoritism toward handsome politicians, follow-up research demon-
Liking 149
strated that voters did not realize their bias. In fact, 73 percent of Canadian voters
surveyed denied in the strongest possible terms that their votes had been influenced
by physical appearance; only 14 percent even allowed for the possibility of such
influence (Efran & Patterson, 1976). Voters can deny the impact of attractiveness on
electability all they want, but evidence has continued to confirm its troubling presence
(Budesheim & DePaola, 1994).
A similar effect has been found in hiring situations. In one study, good grooming of
applicants in a simulated employment interview accounted for more favorable hiring
decisions than did job qualifications—this, even though the interviewers claimed
that appearance played a small role in their choices (Mack & Rainey, 1990). The
advantage given to attractive workers extends past hiring day to payday. Economists
examining U.S. and Canadian samples have found that attractive individuals get paid
an
average of 12-14 percent more than their unattractive coworkers (Ham-mermesh &
Biddle, 1994).
Equally unsettling research indicates that our judicial process is similarly susceptible
to the influences of body dimensions and bone structure. It now appears that good-
looking people are likely to receive highly favorable treatment in the legal
system (see Castellow, Wuensch, & Moore, 1991; and Downs & Lyons, 1990, for
reviews). For example, in a Pennsylvania study (Stewart, 1980), researchers rated
the physical attractiveness of 74 separate male defendants at the start of their
criminal
trials. When, much later, the researchers checked court records for the results of
these cases, they found that the handsome men had received significantly lighter
sentences. In fact, attractive defendants were twice as likely to avoid jail as
unattractive defendants.1 In another study—this one on the damages awarded in a
staged negligence trial—a defendant who was better looking than his victim was
assessed an average amount of $5,623; but when the victim was more attractive of
the two,
'This finding—that attractive defendants, even when they are found guilty, are less
likely to be sentenced to prison—helps explain one fascinating experiment in
criminology (Kurtzburg, Safar, & Cavior, 1968). Some New York City jail inmates with
facial
disfigurements underwent plastic surgery while incarcerated; other inmates with
similar disfigurements did not. Furthermore, some members of each group received
services (such as counseling, training, etc.) designed to rehabilitate them to society.
One
year after the inmates had been released from jail, a check of the records revealed
that (except for heroin addicts) criminals given the cosmetic surgery were
significantly less likely to have returned to jail. The most interesting feature of this
finding was that it was equally true for those inmates who had not received the
traditional rehabilitative services and for those who had. Apparently, some
criminologists then argued that when it comes to ugly inmates, prisons would be
better off to
abandon the costly rehabilitation services they typically provide and offer plastic
surgery instead; the surgery seems to be at least as effective and decidedly less
expensive.
The importance of the Pennsylvania data (Stewart, 1980) is that it suggests that the
argument for surgery as a means of rehabilitation may be faulty. Making ugly
criminals more attractive may not reduce the chances that they will commit another
crime;
it may only reduce their chances of being sent to jail for it.
150 Chapter 5
the average compensation was $10,051. What's more, both male and female jurors
exhibited the attractiveness-based favoritism (Kulka & Kessler, 1978).
Other experiments have demonstrated that attractive people are more likely to obtain
help when in need (Benson, Karabenic, & Lerner, 1976) and are more persuasive in
changing the opinions of an audience (Chaiken, 1979). Here, too, both sexes respond
in
the same way. In the Benson et al. study on helping, for instance, the better-looking
men and women received aid more often, even from members of their own sex. A
major exception to this rule might be expected to occur, of course, if the attractive
person is viewed as a direct competitor, especially a romantic rival. Short of this
qualification, though, it is apparent that good-looking people enjoy an enormous
social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more
frequently helped, and seen as possessing more desirable personality traits and
greater intellectual capacities. It appears that the social benefits of good looks begin
to accumulate quite early. Research on elementary school children shows that adults
view aggressive acts as less naughty when performed by an attractive child (Dion,
1972) and that teachers presume good-looking children to be more intelligent than
their less attractive classmates (Ritts, Patterson, & Tubbs, 1992).
It is hardly any wonder, then, that the halo of physical attractiveness is regularly
exploited by compliance professionals. Because we like attractive people, and because
we tend to comply with those we like, it makes sense that sales training programs
2
include grooming hints, fashionable clothiers select their floor staffs from among the
good-looking candidates, and con men and women are attractive.
Similarity
What if physical appearance is not much at issue? After all, most people possess
average looks. Are there other factors that can be used to produce liking? As both
researchers and compliance professionals know, there are several, and one of the
most
influential is similarity.
We like people who are similar to us (Byrne, 1971). This fact seems to hold true
whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background, or
lifestyle. Consequently, those who want us to like them so that we will comply with
2Have you ever noticed that despite their good looks, many attractive people don't
seem to share the positive impressions of their personalities and abilities that
observers have? Research has not only confirmed the tenuous and inconsistent
relationship between attractiveness and self-esteem (see Adams, 1977), it has also
offered a possible explanation. One set of authors has produced evidence suggesting
that good-looking people are aware that other people's positive evaluations of them
are not based on their actual traits and abilities but are often caused by an
attractiveness "halo" (Major, Carrington, & Carnevale, 1984). Consequently, many
attractive people who are exposed to this confusing information may be left with an
uncertain
self-concept.
Liking 151
them can accomplish that purpose by appearing similar to us in a wide variety of
ways.
Dress is a good example. Several studies have demonstrated that we are more likely
to help those who dress like us. In one study, done in the early 1970s when young
people tended to dress in either "hippie" or "straight" fashion, experimenters donned
hippie or straight attire and asked college students on campus for a dime to make a
phone call. When the experimenter was dressed in the same way as the student, the
request was granted in more than two-thirds of the instances; when the student and
requester were dissimilarly dressed, the dime was provided less than half the time
(Emswiller, Deaux, & Willits, 1971). Another experiment showed how automatic our
positive response to similar others can be. Marchers in an antiwar demonstration
were
found to be more likely to sign the petition of a similarly dressed requester and to do
so without bothering to read it first (Suedfeld, Bochner, & Matas, 1971). Click, whirr.
Another way requesters can manipulate similarity to increase liking and compliance is
to claim that they have backgrounds and interests similar to ours. Car salespeople,
for example, are trained to look for evidence of such things while examining a
customer's trade-in. If there is camping gear in the trunk, the salespeople might
mention, later on, how they love to get away from the city whenever they can; if
there are golf balls on the back seat, they might remark that they hope the rain will
hold off until they can play the eighteen holes they scheduled for later in the day; if
they notice that the car was purchased out of state, they might ask where a customer
is from and report—with surprise—that they (or their spouse) were born there,
too.
As trivial as these similarities may seem, they appear to work (Brewer, 1979; Tajfel,
1981). One researcher who examined the sales records of insurance companies found
that customers were more likely to buy insurance when a salesperson was like them
in
age, religion, politics, and cigarette-smoking habits (Evans, 1963). Another
researcher was able to significantly increase the percentage of people who responded
to a mailed survey by changing one small feature of the request: On a cover letter,
he
modified the name of the survey-taker to be similar to that of the survey recipient.
Thus, Robert Greer received the survey from a survey center official named Bob
Gregar while Cynthia Johnston received hers from a survey center official named
Cindy
Johanson. In two separate studies, adding this little bit of similarity to the exchange
nearly doubled survey compliance (Garner, 1999). These seemingly minor
commonalties can affect decisions that go well beyond whose insurance to purchase
or whose
survey to complete. They can affect the decision of whose life to save. When asked to
rank-order a waiting list of patients suffering from kidney disorder as to their
deservingness for the next available treatment, people chose those whose political
party preference matched their own (Furnham, 1996).
Because even small similarities can be effective in producing a positive response to
another and because a veneer of similarity can be so easily manufactured, I would
152 Chapters
advise special caution in the presence of requesters who claim to be "just like you."3
Indeed, it would be wise these days to be careful around salespeople who just seem
to be just like you. Many sales training programs now urge trainees to "mirror and
match" the customer's body posture, mood, and verbal style, as similarities along
each of these dimensions have been shown to lead to positive results (Chartrand &
Bargh, 1999; Locke & Horowitz, 1990; Woodside & Davenport, 1974).
Compliments
Actor McLean Stevenson once described how his wife tricked him into marriage: "She
said she liked me." Although designed for a laugh, the remark is as instructive as it is
humorous. The information that someone fancies us can be a bewitchingly
effective device for producing return liking and willing compliance (Berscheid &
Walster, 1978; Howard, Gengler, & Jain, 1995, 1997). So, often when people flatter
us or claim affinity for us, they want something from us.
Remember Joe Girard, the world's "greatest car salesman," who says the secret of his
success was getting customers to like him? He did something that, on the face of it,
seems foolish and costly. Each month he sent every one of his more than 13,000
former customers a holiday greeting card containing a printed message. The holiday
greeting card changed from month to month (Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's
Day, Happy Thanksgiving, and so on), but the message printed on the face of the
card never
varied. It read, "I like you." As Joe explained it, "There's nothing else on the card,
nothin' but my name. I'm just telling 'em that I like 'em."
"I like you." It came in the mail every year, 12 times a year, like clockwork. "I like
you," on a printed card that went to 13,000 other people, too. Could a statement of
liking so impersonal, obviously designed to sell cars, really work: Joe Girard
thought so, and a man as successful as he was at what he did deserves our attention.
Joe understood an important fact about human nature: we are phenomenal suckers
for flattery. Although there are limits to our gullibility—especially when we can be
sure that the flatterer is trying to manipulate us (Jones & Wortman, 1973)—we tend,
as a rule, to believe praise and to like those who provide it, often when it is probably
untrue (Byrne, Rasche, & Kelley, 1974).
An experiment done on a group of men in North Carolina shows how helpless we can
be in the face of praise. The men in the study received comments about themselves
from another person who needed a favor from them. Some of the men got only
positive
comments, some got only negative comments, and some got a mixture of good and
bad. There were three interesting findings. First, the evaluator who provided only
praise was liked best by the men. Second, this tendency held true even when
Additional work suggests yet another reason for caution when dealing with similar
requesters: we typically underestimate the degree to which similarity affects our
liking for another (Gon-zales, Davis, Loney, Lukens, & Junghans, 1983).
Liking 153
5_Liking-5.jpg
the men fully realized that the flatterer stood to gain from their liking him. Finally,
unlike the other types of comments, pure praise did not have to be accurate to work.
Positive comments produced just as much liking for the flatterer when they were
untrue as when they were true (Drachman, deCarufel, & Insko, 1978).
Apparently we have such an automatically positive reaction to compliments that we
can fall victim to someone who uses them in an obvious attempt to win our favor.
Click, whirr. When seen in this light, the expense of printing and mailing well over
150,000 "I like you" cards each year seems neither as foolish nor as costly as before.
154 Chapters
Contact and Cooperation
For the most part, we like things that are familiar to us (Zajonc, 1968). To prove the
point to yourself, try a little experiment. Get the negative of an old photograph that
shows a front view of your face and have it developed into a pair of pictures—
one that shows you as you actually look and one that shows a reverse image (so that
the right and left sides of your face are interchanged). Now decide which version of
your face you like better and ask a good friend to make the choice, too. If you are
at all like the group of Milwaukee women on whom this procedure was tried, you
should notice something odd: Your friend will prefer the true print, but you will prefer
the reverse image. Why? Because you both will be responding favorably to the more
familiar face—your friend to the one the world sees and you to the transposed one
you find in the mirror every day (Mita, Dernier, & Knight, 1977).
Because of its effect on liking, familiarity plays a role in decisions about all sorts of
things, including the politicians we elect (Grush, 1980; Grush, McKeough, & Ahlering,
1978). It appears that in an election booth voters often choose a candidate
merely because the name seems familiar. In one controversial Ohio election a few
years ago, a man given little chance of winning the state attorney-general race swept
to victory when, shortly before the election, he changed his name to Brown—a family
name of much Ohio political tradition.
How could such a thing happen? The answer lies partially in the unconscious way that
familiarity affects liking. Often we don't realize that our attitude toward something
has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the
past. For example, in one experiment, the faces of several individuals were flashed on
a screen so quickly that, later on, the subjects who were exposed to the faces in this
manner couldn't recall having seen any of them before. Yet, the more
frequently a person's face was flashed on the screen, the more these subjects came
to like that person when they met in a subsequent interaction. And because greater
liking leads to greater social influence, these subjects were also more persuaded by
the opinion statements of the individuals whose faces had appeared on the screen
most frequently (Bornstein, Leone, & Galley, 1987).
On the basis of evidence that we are more favorably disposed toward the things we
have had contact with, some people have recommended a "contact" approach to
improving race relations. They argue that, simply by providing individuals of different
ethnic
backgrounds with more exposure to one another as equals, those individuals will
naturally come to like each other better. However, when scientists have examined
school integration—the area offering the single best test of the contact approach—
they have
discovered quite the opposite pattern. School desegregation is more likely to increase
prejudice between blacks and whites than to decrease it (Stephan, 1978).
Let's stay with the issue of school desegregation for a while. However well in-
tentioned the proponents of interracial harmony through simple contact are, their
approach is unlikely to bear fruit because the argument on which it is based is terribly
misinformed (Gerard, 1983; Maruyama, Miller, & Holtz, 1986). First of all, research
Liking 155
has shown that the school setting is not a melting pot where children interact as
readily with members of other ethnic groups as they do with their own. Years after
formal school integration, there is little social integration. The students clot
together ethnically, separating themselves, for the most part, from other groups
(Rogers, Hen-nigan, Bowman, & Miller, 1984; Oskamp & Schultz, 1998). Second,
even if there were much more interethnic interaction, research shows that becoming
familiar
with something through repeated contact doesn't necessarily cause greater liking
(Gaert-ner et al., 1999). In fact, continued exposure to a person or object under
unpleasant conditions such as frustration, conflict, or competition leads to less liking
(Burgess & Sales, 1971; Swap, 1977; Zajonc, Markus, & Wilson, 1974). The typical
American classroom fosters precisely these unpleasant conditions.
Consider the illuminating report of psychologist Elliot Aronson, called in to consult
with school authorities on problems in the Austin, Texas, schools. His description of
the way he found education proceeding in the standard classroom could apply to
nearly any public school in the United States:
In general, here is how it works: The teacher stands in front of the class and asks a
question. Six to ten children strain in their seats and wave their hands in the
teacher's face, eager to be called on and show how smart they are. Several others sit
quietly with eyes averted, trying to become invisible. When the teacher calls on one
child, you see looks of disappointment and dismay on the faces of the eager students,
who missed a chance to get the teacher's approval; and you will see relief on the
faces of the others who didn't know the answer.... This game is fiercely competitive
and the stakes are high, because the kids are competing for the love and approval of
one of the two or three most important people in their world.
Further, this teaching process guarantees that the children will not learn to like and
understand each other. Conjure up your own experience. If you knew the right
answer and the teacher called on someone else, you probably hoped that he or she
would
make a mistake so that you would have a chance to display your knowledge. If you
were called on and failed, or if you didn 't even raise your hand to compete, you
probably envied and resented your classmates who knew the answer. Children who
fail in
this system become jealous and resentful of the successes, putting them down as
teacher's pets or even resorting to violence against them in the school yard. The
successful students, for their part, often hold the unsuccessful children in contempt,
calling them "dumb" or "stupid." (Aronson, 1975, pp. 44, 47)
Should we wonder, then, why strict school desegregation—whether by enforced
busing, district rezoning, or school closures—so frequently produces increased rather
than decreased prejudice? When our children find their pleasant social and friendship
contacts within their ethnic boundaries and get repeated exposure to other groups
only in the competitive cauldron of the classroom, we might expect as much.
156 Chapters
Are there available solutions to this problem? One possibility might be to end our
attempts at school integration, but that hardly seems workable. Even if we were to
ignore the inevitable legal and constitutional challenges and the disruptive societal
wrangle such a retreat would provide, there are solid reasons for pursuing classroom
integration. For instance, although white students' achievement levels remain steady,
it is 10 times more likely that the academic performance of minority students
will significantly increase rather than significantly decline after desegregation
(Stephan, 1978).
We must be cautious in our approach to school desegregation so that we do not throw
out the baby with the bath water. The idea, of course, is to jettison just the water,
leaving the baby shining from the bath. Right now, though, our baby is soaking in
the Schmutzwasser of increased racial hostility. Fortunately, real hope for draining
away that hostility is emerging from the research of education specialists into the
concept of "cooperative learning." Because much of the heightened prejudice from
classroom desegregation seems to stem from increased exposure to outside group
members as rivals, these educators have experimented with forms of learning in
which cooperation rather than competition with classmates is central.
Off to Camp
To understand the logic of the cooperative approach, it helps to reexamine the
fascinating, four-decade-old research program of Turkish-born social scientist Muzafer
Sherif and his colleagues (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961). Intrigued
with the issue of intergroup conflict, the research team decided to investigate the
process as it developed in boys' summer camps. Although the boys never realized
that they were participants in an experiment, Sherif and his associates consistently
engaged in artful manipulations of the camp's social environment to observe the
effects on group relations.
What the researchers learned is that it didn't take much to bring on certain kinds of ill
will. Simply separating the boys into two residence cabins was enough to stimulate a
"we versus they" feeling between the groups; letting the boys assign names to
the two groups (the Eagles and the Rattlers) accelerated the sense of rivalry. The
boys soon began to demean the qualities and accomplishments of the other group;
however, these forms of hostility were minor compared to what occurred when the
experimenters purposely introduced competitive activities into the groups' meetings
with one another. Cabin-against-cabin treasure hunts, tugs-of-war, and athletic
contests produced name-calling and confrontations. During the competitions,
members of
the opposing team were labeled "cheaters," "sneaks," and "stinkers." Afterward,
cabins were raided, rival banners were stolen and burned, threatening signs were
posted, and lunchroom scuffles were commonplace.
At this point, it was evident to Sherif that the recipe for disharmony was quick and
easy: just separate the participants into groups and let them sit for a while in their
own juices. Then mix together over the flame of continued competition. And there
you have it: Cross-group hatred at a rolling boil.
A more challenging issue then faced the experimenters: how to remove the now
entrenched hostility. They first tried the contact approach of bringing the bands
together more often. Even when the joint activities were pleasant, such as movies
and
Liking 157
social events, the results were disastrous. Picnics produced food fights, entertainment
programs gave way to shouting contests, dining-hall lines degenerated into shoving
matches. Sherif and his research team began to worry that, in Dr. Frankenstein
fashion, they might have created a monster they could no longer control. Then, at the
height of the strife, they tried a strategy that was at once simple and effective.
They constructed a series of situations in which competition between the groups
would have harmed everyone's interest; instead, cooperation was necessary for
mutual benefit. On a day-long outing, the single truck available to go into town for
food was
"found" to be stuck. The boys were assembled and all pulled and pushed together
until the vehicle was on its way. In another instance, the researchers arranged for an
interruption of the camp's water supply, which came through pipes from a distant
tank. Presented with the common crisis and realizing the need for unified action, the
boys organized themselves harmoniously to find and fix the problem before day's
end. In yet another circumstance requiring cooperation, the campers were informed
that
a desirable movie was available for rental but that the camp could not afford it. Aware
that the only solution was to combine resources, the boys pooled their money for the
film and spent a very congenial evening together enjoying it.
The consequences of these cooperative ventures though not instantaneous, were
nonetheless striking. Successful joint efforts toward common goals steadily bridged
the rift between the two groups. Before long, the verbal baiting had died, the jostling
in
lines had ended, and the boys had begun to intermix at the meal tables. Further,
when asked to list their best friends, significant numbers changed from an earlier
exclusive naming of in-group chums to a listing that included boys in the other group.
Some even thanked the researchers for the opportunity to rate their friends again
because they had changed their minds since the earlier evaluation. In one revealing
episode, the boys were returning from a campfire on a single bus—something that
would
have produced bedlam before but, at that point, was specifically requested by the
boys. When the bus stopped at a refreshment stand, the boys of one group, with $5
left in their treasury, decided to treat their former bitter adversaries to milkshakes!
We can trace the roots of this surprising turnabout to those times when the boys had
to view one another as allies instead of opponents. The crucial procedure was the
experimenters' imposition of common goals on the groups. It was the cooperation
required to achieve these goals that finally allowed the rival group members to
experience one another as reasonable fellows, valued helpers, friends, and friends of
friends (Wright, Aaron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997). When success resulted
from
the mutual efforts, it became especially difficult to maintain feelings of hostility
toward those who had been teammates in the triumph.4
You should not assume from these descriptions that successful cooperation works to
reduce intergroup hostility only among school-age children. Subsequent research has
found similar results of similar procedures in college groups (Worchel, 1979) and
business organizations (Blake & Mouton, 1979). In these and most all groups,
cooperation not only leads to greater liking but to greater group success (Stanne, D.
W. Johnson, & R. T. Johnson, 1999).
158 Chapters
Back to School
In the welter of racial tensions that followed school desegregation, certain educational
psychologists began to see the relevance to the classroom in Sherif et al.'s findings. If
only the learning experience there could be modified to include at least
occasional interethnic cooperation toward mutual successes, perhaps cross-group
friendships would have a place to grow. Although similar projects have been under
way in various states (S. W. Cook, 1990, DeVries & Slavin, 1978; D. W. Johnson & R.
T
Johnson, 1983; Oskamp & Schultz, 1998), an especially interesting approach in this
direction—termed the jigsaw classroom—was developed by Elliot Aronson and his
colleagues in Texas and California (Aronson, Stephan, Sikes, Blaney, & Snapp, 1978).
The essence of the jigsaw route to learning is to require that students work together
to master the material to be tested on an upcoming examination. This end is
accomplished by grouping students into cooperating teams and giving each student
only part
of the information—one piece of the puzzle—necessary to pass the test. Under this
system the students must take turns teaching and helping one another. Everyone
needs everyone else to do well. Like Sherif's campers working on tasks that could be
successfully accomplished only jointly, the students become allies rather than
enemies.
When tried in newly desegregated classrooms, the jigsaw approach has generated
impressive results. Studies have shown that, compared to other classrooms in the
same school using the traditional competitive method, jigsaw learning stimulated
significantly more friendship and less prejudice among ethnic groups. Besides this
vital reduction in hostility, there were other advantages: minority students' self-
esteem, liking for school, and test scores improved. The white students benefited,
too. Their self-esteem and liking for school went up, and their test performance was
at least as high as that of whites in traditional classes (Aronson, Bridgeman, &
Geffner, 1978a, 1978b).
There is a tendency when faced with positive results like those from the jigsaw
classroom to become overly enthusiastic about a single, simple solution to a difficult
problem. Experience should tell us that such problems rarely yield to a simple
remedy. That is no doubt true in this case as well. Even within the boundaries of
cooperative learning procedures, the issues are complex (Rosenfield & Stephan,
1981; Slavin, 1983). Before we can feel truly comfortable with the jigsaw, or any
similar
approach to learning and liking, much more research is needed to determine how
frequently, in what size doses, at which ages, and in which sorts of groups
cooperative strategies will work. We also need to know the best way for teachers to
institute new
methods—provided they will institute them at all. After all, not only are cooperative
learning techniques a radical departure from the traditional, familiar routine of most
teachers, but they may also threaten a teacher's sense of importance in the
classroom by turning over much of the instruction to the students. Finally, we must
realize that competition has its place, too. It can serve as a valuable motivator of
desirable action and an important builder of self-concept. The task, then, is not
to eliminate aca-
Liking 159
5_Liking-6.jpg
demic competition but to break its monopoly in the classroom by introducing regular
cooperative techniques that include members of all ethnic groups and lead to
successful outcomes.
Despite these qualifications, I cannot help but be encouraged by the evidence to date.
When I talk to my students, or even my neighbors and friends, about the prospects
for cooperative learning approaches, I can feel the optimism rise in me. The
bhc schools have for so long been sources of discouraging news—sinking test scores,
teacher burnout, increasing crime, and of course, racial conflict. Now there is at least
one crack in the gloom, and I find myself genuinely excited about it.
What's the point of this digression into the effects of school desegregation in race
relations? The point is to make two points. First, although the familiarity pro-luced by
contact usually leads to greater liking, the opposite occurs if the contact
ties distasteful experiences with it. Therefore, when children of different racial groups
are thrown into the incessant, harsh competition of the standard American classroom,
we ought to—and do—see hostilities worsen. Second, the evidence that team-
oriented learning is an antidote to this disorder tells us about the heavy im-Pact of
cooperation on the liking process.
160 Chapters
Before we assume that cooperation is a powerful cause of liking, we should first pass
it through what, to my mind, is the acid test: Do compliance practitioners
systematically use cooperation to get us to like them so that we will say yes to their
requests? Do they point it out when it exists naturally in a situation? Do they try to
amplify it when it exists only weakly? And, most instructive of all, do they
manufacture it when it isn't there at all?
As it turns out, cooperation passes the test with flying colors. Compliance
professionals are forever attempting to establish that we and they are working for the
same goals, that we must "pull together" for mutual benefit, that they are, in
essence,
5
our teammates. A host of examples is possible. Most are familiar, such as the new-car
salespeople who take our side and "do battle" with their bosses to secure us a good
deal. One rather spectacular illustration occurs in a setting few of us would
recognize firsthand, because the professionals are police interrogators whose job is to
induce suspects to confess to crime.
In recent years, the courts have imposed a variety of restrictions on the way police
must behave in handling suspected criminals, especially in seeking confessions. Many
procedures that, in the past, led to admissions of guilt can no longer be employed
for fear that they will result in cases being dismissed. As yet, however, the courts
have found nothing illegal in the police's use of subtle psychology. For this reason,
criminal interrogations have taken increasingly to the use of such ploys as the
one they call Good Cop/Bad Cop.
Good Cop/Bad Cop works as follows: A young robbery suspect, for example, who has
been advised of his rights and is maintaining his innocence, is brought to a room to
be questioned by a pair of officers. One of the officers, either because the part
suits him or because it is merely his turn, plays the role of Bad Cop. Before the
suspect even sits down, Bad Cop curses "the-son-of-a-bitch" for the robbery. For the
rest of the session his words come only with snarls and growls. He kicks the
prisoner's chair to emphasize his points. When he looks at the suspect, he seems to
see a mound of garbage. If the suspect challenges Bad Cop's accusations or just
refuses to answer them, Bad Cop becomes livid. His rage soars. He swears he will do
everything possible to assure a maximum sentence. He says he has friends in the
district attorney's office who will hear from him of the suspect's noncooperative
attitude and will prosecute the case hard.
At the outset of Bad Cop's performance, his partner, Good Cop, sits in the
background. Then, slowly, Good Cop starts to chip in. First he speaks only to Bad
Cop,
5In truth, little in the way of combat takes place when the salesman enters the
manager's office under such circumstances. Often, because the salesman knows
exactly the price below which he cannot go, he and the boss don't even speak. In one
car
dealership I infiltrated while researching this book, it was common for a salesman to
have a soft drink or cigarette in silence while the boss continued working. After a
seemly time, the salesman would loosen his tie and return to his customers,
looking weary but carrying the deal he had just "hammered out" for them—the same
deal he had in mind before entering the boss' office.
Liking 161
trying to temper the burgeoning anger. "Calm down, Frank, calm down." But Bad Cop
shouts back, "Don't tell me to calm down when he's lying right to my face! I hate
these lying bastards!" A bit later, Good Cop actually says something in the suspect's
behalf. "Take it easy, Frank, he's only a kid." Not much in the way of support, but
compared to the rantings of Bad Cop, the words fall like music on the prisoner's ears.
Still, Bad Cop is unconvinced. "Kid? He's no kid. He's a punk. That's what he is,
a punk. And I'll tell you something else. He's over 18, and that's all I need to get his
ass sent so far behind bars they'll need a flashlight to find him."
Now Good Cop begins to speak directly to the suspect, calling him by his first name
and pointing out any positive details of the case. "I'll tell you, Kenny, you're lucky
that nobody was hurt and you weren't armed. When you come up for sentencing,
that'll look good." If the suspect persists in claiming innocence, Bad Cop launches into
another tirade of curses and threats. This time Good Cop stops him, "Okay, Frank,"
handing Bad Cop some money, "I think we could all use some coffee. How about
getting us three cups?"
When Bad Cop is gone, it's time for Good Cop's big scene: "Look, man, I don't know
why, but my partner doesn't like you, and he's gonna try to get you. And he's gonna
be able to do it, because we've got enough evidence right now. And he's right about
the D.A.'s office going hard on guys who don't cooperate. You're looking at five years,
man, five years! Now, I don't want to see that happen to you. So if you admit you
robbed that place right now, before he gets back, I'll take charge of your case
and put in a good word for you to the D. A. If we work together on this, we can cut
that five years down to two, maybe one. Do us both a favor, Kenny. Just tell me how
you did it, and let's start working on getting you through this." A full confession
frequently follows.
Good Cop/Bad Cop works as well as it does for several reasons: The fear of long
incarceration is quickly instilled by Bad Cop's threats; the perceptual contrast
principle (see Chapter 1) ensures that compared to the raving, venomous Bad Cop,
the
interrogator playing Good Cop will seem like an especially reasonable and kind person
(Kamisar, 1980); and because Good Cop has intervened repeatedly on the suspect's
behalf—has even spent his own money for a cup of coffee—the reciprocity rule
pressures for a return favor (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1991). The main reason that the
technique is effective, though, is that it gives the suspect the idea that there is
someone on his side, someone with his welfare in mind, someone working together
with
him, for him. In most situations, such a person would be viewed very favorably, but
in the deep trouble our robbery suspect finds himself, that person takes on the
character of a savior. And from savior, it is but a short step to trusted father
confessor.
CONDITIONING AND ASSOCIATION_________________
e
'Why do they blame me, Doc?" It was the shaky telephone voice of a local TV weath-
rman. He had been given my number when he called the psychology department at
162 Chapter 5
my university to find someone who could answer his question—a question that had
always puzzled him but had recently begun to bother and depress him.
"I mean, it's crazy, isn't it? Everybody knows that I just report the weather, that I
don't order it, right? So how come I get so much flak when the weather's bad? During
the floods last year, I got hate mail! One guy threatened to shoot me if it
didn't stop raining. Christ, I'm still looking over my shoulder from that one. And the
people I work with at the station do it, too! Sometimes, right on the air, they'll zing
me about a heat wave or something. They have to know that I'm not
responsible, but that doesn't seem to stop them. Can you help me understand this,
Doc? It's really getting me down."
We made an appointment to talk in my office, where I tried to explain that he was the
victim of an ages-old click, whirr response that people have to things they perceive as
merely connected to one another. Instances of this response abound in modern
life. I felt that the example most likely to help the distressed weatherman would
require a bit of ancient history. I asked him to consider the precarious fate of the
imperial messengers of old Persia. Any such messenger assigned the role of military
courier had special cause to hope mightily for Persian battlefield successes. With news
of victory in his pouch, he would be treated as a hero upon his arrival at the palace.
The food, drink, and women of his choice were provided gladly and
sumptuously. Should his message tell of military disaster, though, the reception
would be quite different: He was summarily slain.
I hoped that the point of this story would not be lost on the weatherman. I wanted
him to be aware of a fact that is as true today as it was in the time of ancient Persia:
The nature of bad news infects the teller. There is a natural human tendency to
dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not
cause the bad news. The simple association with it is enough to stimulate our dislike
(Manis, Cornell, & Moore, 1974).
There was something else I hoped the weatherman would get from the historical
example. Not only was he joined in his predicament by centuries of other "tellers,"
but also, compared to some (such as the Persian messengers), he was very well-off.
At the
end of our session, he said something to convince me that he appreciated this point
quite clearly. "Doc," he said on his way out, "I feel a lot better about my job now. I
mean, I'm in Phoenix where the sun shines 300 days a year, right? Thank God I
don't do the weather in Buffalo."
The weatherman's parting comment reveals that he understood more than I had told
him about the principle that was influencing his viewers' liking for him. Being
connected with bad weather does have a negative effect, but being connected with
sunshine
should do wonders for his popularity. And he was right. The principle of association is
a general one, governing both negative and positive connections. An innocent
association with either bad things or good things will influence how people feel about
us (Lott & Lott, 1965).
Our instruction about the way negative association works seems to have been
primarily undertaken by our parents. Remember how they are always warning us
against
Liking 163
5_Liking-7.jpg
164 Chapters
playing with the bad kids down the street? Remember how they said it didn't matter if
we did nothing bad ourselves because, in the eyes of the neighborhood, we would be
"known by the company we kept." Our parents were teaching us about guilt by
association—and they were giving us a lesson in the negative side of the principle of
association. And they were right. People do assume that we have the same
personality traits as our friends (Miller, Campbell, Twedt, & O'Connell, 1966).
As for the positive associations, it is the compliance professionals who teach the
lesson. They are incessantly trying to connect themselves or their products with the
things we like. Did you ever wonder what all those good-looking models are doing
standing around in the automobile ads? What the advertiser hopes they are doing is
lending their positive traits—beauty and desirability—to the cars. The advertiser is
betting that we will respond to the product in the same ways we respond to the
attractive models merely associated with it—and we do.
In one study, men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive female model
rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking, and better-designed
than did men who viewed the same ad without the model. Yet when asked later, the
men
refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their
judgments (Smith & Engel, 1968).
Although there are other examples (Bierley, McSweeney, & Vannieuwkerk, 1985;
Gorn, 1982), perhaps the most intriguing evidence of the way the association
principle can unconsciously stimulate us to part with our money comes from a series
of
investigations on credit cards and spending (Feinberg, 1986). Within modern life,
credit cards are a relatively new device with a psychologically noteworthy
characteristic: They allow us to get the immediate benefits of goods and services
while
deferring the costs weeks into the future. Consequently, we are more likely to
associate credit cards and the insignias, symbols, and logos that represent them with
the positive rather than the negative aspects of spending.
Consumer researcher Richard Feinberg wondered what effects the presence of such
credit cards and credit card materials had on our tendencies to spend. In a set of
studies done in West Lafayette, Indiana, he got some fascinating—and disturbing—
results.
First, restaurant patrons gave larger tips when paying with a credit card instead of
cash. In a second study, college students were willing to spend an average of 29
percent more money for mail-order catalog items when they examined the items in a
room
that contained some MasterCard insignias; moreover, they had no awareness that the
credit card insignias were part of the experiment. A final study showed that when
asked to contribute to charity (the United Way), college students were markedly more
likely to give money if the room they were in contained MasterCard insignias than if it
did not (87 percent versus 33 percent). This last finding is simultaneously the most
unsettling and instructive concerning the power of the association principle to
generate compliance. Even though credit cards themselves were not used for the
charity donation, the mere presence of their symbol (with its attendant positive
associations) spurred people to spend more cash. This last phenomenon has been
replicated in
a pair of restaurant studies in which patrons received their bills on tip trays that
either did or
Liking 165
did not contain a credit card insignia. The diners tipped significantly more in the
presence of the insignia, even when they paid with cash (McCall and Belmont,
1996).6
Because the association principle works so well—and so unconsciously—
manufacturers regularly rush to connect their products with the current cultural rage.
During the days of the first American moon shot, everything from breakfast drink to
deodorant
was sold with allusions to the American space program. In Olympiad years, we are
told precisely the official hair sprays and facial tissue of our Olympic teams.7 During
the 1970s, when the magic cultural concept appeared to be "naturalness," the
"natural" bandwagon was crowded to capacity. Sometimes the connections to
naturalness didn't even make sense: "Change your hair color naturally" urged one
popular TV commercial. Similarly, although it made great sense that sales of Mars
Rover toys
would jump after a U.S. Pathfinder rocket landed the real thing on the red planet in
1997, it made little sense that the same would happen for the sales of Mars Candy
Bars, which have nothing to do with the space project but are named after the candy
company's founder, Franklin Mars (White, 1997).
The linking of celebrities to products is another way advertisers cash in on the
association principle. Professional athletes are paid to connect themselves to things
that can be directly relevant to their roles (sports shoes, tennis racquets, golf
balls) or wholly irrelevant (soft drinks, popcorn poppers, panty hose). The important
thing for the advertiser is to establish the connection; it doesn't have to be a logical
one, just a positive one.
Of course, popular entertainers provide another form of desirability that
manufacturers have always paid dearly to tie to their goods. Recently, politicians have
recognized the ability of a celebrity linkage to sway voters. According to Democratic
Party consultant Tom Yamuda, who prepared a report titled "Celebrities = Sell-
Ebrities," movie star endorsement is "the very best way to get your wish to become
law" (Glass, 1997). Presidential candidates assemble stables of well-known nonpo-
litical
figures who either actively participate in, or merely lend their names to, a campaign.
Even at state and local levels, a similar game is played. Take as evidence
Subsequent research by Feinberg (1990) strengthens the association explanation for
his results. He has found that the presence of credit card insignias in a room only
facilitates spending by people who have had a positive history with credit cards.
Those who have had a negative history with credit cards—because they've paid an
above-average number of interest charges in the previous year—do not show the
facilitation effect. In fact, these individuals are more conservative in their spending
tendencies when in the mere presence of credit card logos.
The rights to such associations do not come cheaply. Corporate contributors spend
millions to win sponsorships for the Olympics. But this amount pales in comparison to
the many millions more these companies then spend to advertise their connection to
the event. Yet it may he that the largest dollar figure of all for the corporate sponsors
is the one on the profit line. A survey by Advertising Age magazine found that one-
third of all consumers interviewed said they would be more likely to purchase
an item if it were linked to the Olympics.
166 Chapters
5_Liking-8.jpg
the comment of a Los Angeles woman I heard expressing her conflicting feelings over
a California referendum to limit smoking in public places. "It's a real tough decision.
They've got big stars speaking for it, and big stars speaking against it. You
don't know how to vote."
If politicians are relative newcomers to the use of celebrity endorsements, they are
old hands at exploiting the association principle in other ways. For example,
congressional representatives invariably announce to the press the start of federal
pro-
Liking 167
jects that will bring new jobs or benefits to their home states; this tradition continues
even when the representative has had nothing to do with advancing the project or
has, in some cases, voted against it.
Does the Name Pavlov Ring a Bell?
While politicians have long strained to associate themselves with the values of
motherhood, country, and apple pie, it may be in the last of these connections—to
food— that they have been most clever. For instance, it is White House tradition to
try to
sway the votes of balking legislators over a meal. It can be a picnic lunch, a
sumptuous breakfast, or an elegant dinner; but when an important bill is up for
grabs, out comes the silverware. Political fund-raising these days regularly involves
the
presentation of food. Notice, too, that at the typical fund-raising dinner the speeches
and the appeals for further contributions and heightened effort never come before the
meal is served, only during or after. There are several advantages to this
technique. For example, time is saved and the reciprocity rule is engaged. The least
recognized benefit, however, may be the one uncovered in research conducted in the
1930s by the distinguished psychologist Gregory Razran (1938).
Using what he termed the "luncheon technique," he found that his subjects become
fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating. In the
example most relevant for our purposes (Razran, 1940), subjects were presented
with some
political statements they had rated once before. At the end of the experiment, after
all the political statements had been presented, Razran found that only certain of
them had gained in approval—those that had been shown while food was being eaten.
These changes in liking seem to have occurred unconsciously, since the subjects
could not remember which of the statements they had seen while the food was being
served.8
How did Razran come up with the luncheon technique? What made him think it would
work? The answer may lie in the dual scholarly roles he played during his career. Not
only was he a respected independent researcher, he was also one of the earliest
translators into English of the pioneering psychological literature of Russia. It was a
literature dedicated to the study of the association principle and dominated by the
thinking of a brilliant man, Ivan Pavlov.
Although a scientist of broad and varied talent—he had, for instance, won a Nobel
Prize years earlier for his work on the digestive system—Pavlov's most important
experimental demonstration was simplicity itself. He showed that he could get an
animal's
typical response to food (salivation) to be directed toward something
To demonstrate that the principle of association also works for unpleasant
experiences, Razran (1940) included in his experiment a condition in which certain
participants had putrid odors Piped into the room while they were shown the political
slogans.
In this case, approval ratings for the slogans declined.
168 Chapters
irrelevant to food (a bell) merely by connecting the two things in the animal's
experience. If the presentation of food to a dog was always accompanied by the
sound of a bell, soon the dog would salivate to the bell alone, even when there was
no food
to be had.
It is not a long step from Pavlov's classic demonstration to Razran's luncheon
technique. Obviously, a normal reaction to food can be transferred to some other
thing through the process of raw association. Razran's insight was that there are
many
normal responses to food besides salivation, one of them being a good and favorable
feeling. Therefore, it is possible to attach this pleasant feeling, this positive attitude,
to anything (political statements being only an example) that is closely
associated with good food.
Nor is there a long step from the luncheon technique to the compliance professionals'
realization that all kinds of desirable things can substitute for food in lending their
likable qualities to the ideas, products, and people artificially linked to
them. In the final analysis, then, that is why those good-looking models stand around
in the magazine ads. That is why radio programmers are instructed to insert the
station's call-letters jingle immediately before a big hit song is played. And that is
even why the women playing Barnyard Bingo at a Tupperware party must yell the
word Tupper-ware rather than Bingo before they can rush to the center of the floor
for a prize. It may be Tupperware for the players, but it's Bingo! for the company.
Just because we are often unaware victims of compliance practitioners' use of the
association principle doesn't mean that we don't understand how it works or don't use
it ourselves. There is ample evidence, for instance, that we understand fully the
predicament of a Persian imperial messenger or modern-day weatherman announcing
the bad news. In fact, we can be counted on to take steps to avoid putting ourselves
in any similar positions. Research done at the University of Georgia shows just how
we
operate when faced with the task of communicating good or bad news (Rosen &
Tesser, 1970). Students waiting for an experiment to begin were given the job of
informing a fellow student that an important phone call had come in for him. Half the
time the
call was supposed to bring good news and half the time, bad news. The researchers
found that the students conveyed the information very differently depending on its
quality. When the news was positive, the tellers were sure to mention that feature:
"You just got a phone call with great news. Better see the experimenter for the
details." When the news was unfavorable, they kept themselves apart from it: "You
just got a phone call. Better see the experimenter for the details." Obviously, the
students had previously learned that, to be liked, they should connect themselves to
good news but not bad news.
From the News and Weather to the Sports
A lot of strange behavior can be explained by the fact that people understand the
association principle well enough to try to link themselves to positive events and
separate themselves from negative events—even when they have not caused the
events.
Liking 169
Some of the strangest of such behavior takes place in the great arena of sports. The
actions of the athletes are not the issue, though. After all, in the heated contact of
the game, they are entitled to an occasional eccentric outburst. Instead, it is
the often raging, irrational, boundless fervor of sports fans that seems, on its face, so
puzzling. How can we account for wild sports riots in Europe, or the murder of players
and referees by South American soccer crowds gone berserk, or the
unnecessary lavish-ness of gifts provided by local fans to already wealthy American
ballplayers on the special "day" set aside to honor them? Rationally, none of this
makes sense. It's just a game! Isn't it?
Hardly. The relationship between sport and earnest fan is anything but game-like. It
is serious, intense, and highly personal. An apt illustration comes from one of my
favorite anecdotes. It concerns a World War II soldier who returned to his home in
the Balkans after the war and shortly thereafter stopped speaking. Medical
examinations could find no physical cause for the problem. There was no wound, no
brain damage, no vocal impairment. He could read, write, understand a conversation,
and follow
orders. Yet he would not talk—not for his doctors, not for his friends, not even for his
pleading family.
Perplexed and exasperated, his doctors moved him to another city and placed him in
a veterans' hospital where he remained for 30 years, never breaking his self-imposed
silence and sinking into a life of social isolation. Then one day, a radio in his
ward happened to be tuned to a soccer match between his hometown team and a
traditional rival. When at a crucial point of play the referee called a foul against a
player from the mute veteran's home team, he jumped from his chair, glared at the
radio,
and spoke his first words in more than three decades: "You dumb ass!" he cried. "Are
you trying to give them the match?" With that, he returned to his chair and to a
silence he never again violated.
There are two important lessons to be derived from this true story. The first concerns
the sheer power of the phenomenon. The veteran's desire to have his hometown
team succeed was so strong that it alone produced a deviation from his solidly
entrenched way of life. The second lesson reveals much about the nature of the union
of sports and sports fans, something crucial to its basic character: It is a personal
thing. Whatever fragment of an identity that ravaged, mute man still possessed
was engaged by soccer play. No matter how weakened his ego may have become
after 30 years of wordless stagnation in a hospital ward, it was involved in the
outcome of the match. Why? Because he, personally, would be diminished by a
hometown defeat, and
he, personally, would be enhanced by a hometown victory. How? Through the
principle of association. The mere connection of birthplace hooked him, wrapped him,
tied him to the approaching triumph or failure.
This phenomenon helps explain the tragic event that befell tennis superstar Monica
Seles in April of 1993. In the midst of a match at the Citizen Cup Tournament in
Hamburg, Germany, a spectator lunged out of the stands and buried a boning knife m
her
back. In one sense, Seles and the tournament security crew had been worried about
just such an occurrence. It happened at the time of the brutal civil war in Bosnia
170 Chapters
between the Serbs and the Croats when accusations of Serbian atrocities were
making worldwide headlines. Seles, Serbian by birth, had been the subject of various
death threats and political attacks for months before the incident, causing her to
travel
frequently under another name, to make multiple plane reservations, and even to
wear a disguise. When her assailant struck, everyone assumed that his act was
connected to the bloody strife in Seles' homeland. But, no; her attacker, an
unemployed lathe
operator from eastern Germany, was not a political or ethnic terrorist. He was a
sports
fan. His intent was not to kill Seles but only to injure her so that her rival__and his
countrywoman—Steffi Graf could regain the No. 1 ranking that she had previously lost
to Seles. What centuries-old ethnic hatreds and a raging war had not been able to do
to Monica Seles, the power of sports accomplished.
As distinguished author Isaac Asimov (1975) put it in describing our reactions to the
contests we view, "All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own
culture, your own locality ... and what you want to prove is that you are better than
the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he [or she] wins,
you win." When viewed in this light, the passion of a sports fan begins to make sense.
The game is no light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent form and artistry.
The self is at stake. That is why hometown crowds are so adoring and, more tellingly,
so grateful toward those regularly responsible for home-team victories. That is also
why the same crowds are often ferocious in their treatment of players, coaches,
and officials implicated in athletic failures.9
So we want our affiliated sports teams to win to prove our own superiority, but to
whom are we trying to prove it? Ourselves, certainly, but to everyone else, too.
According to the association principle, if we can surround ourselves with success that
we are connected with in even a superficial way (for example, place of residence), our
public prestige will rise.
All this tells me is that we purposefully manipulate the visibility of our connections
with winners and losers in order to make ourselves look good to anyone who views
these connections. By showcasing the positive associations and burying the negative
ones, we are trying to get observers to think more highly of us and to like us more.
There are many ways we go about this, but one of the simplest and most pervasive is
in the pronouns we use. Have you noticed for example, how often after a home-team
victory fans crowd into the range of a TV camera, thrust their index fingers high, and
shout, "We're number one! We're number one!" Note that the call is not "They're
number one" or even "Our team is number one." The pronoun is we, designed to
imply
the closest possible identity with the team.
9Take, for example, the case of Andres Escobar who, as a member of the Colombian
national team, accidentally tipped a ball into his own team's net during a World Cup
soccer match in 1994. The "auto-goal" led to a U.S. team victory and to the
elimination of the favored Colombians from the competition. Back home two weeks
later, Escobar was executed in a restaurant by two gunmen, who shot him 12 times
for his mistake.
Liking 171
5_Liking-9.jpg
172 Chapters
5_Liking-10.jpg
Note also that nothing similar occurs in the case of failure. No television viewer will
ever hear the chant, "We're in last place! We're in last place!" Home-team defeats are
the times for distancing oneself. Here we is not nearly as preferred as the
insulating pronoun they. To prove the point, I once did a small experiment in which
students at Arizona State University were phoned and asked to describe the outcome
of a football game their school team had played a few weeks earlier (Cialdini et al.,
1976). Some of the students were asked the outcome of a certain game their team
had lost; the other students were asked the outcome of a different game—one their
team had won. My fellow researcher, Avril Thorne, and I simply listened to what was
said
and recorded the percentage of students who used the word we in their descriptions.
When the results were tabulated, it was obvious that the students had tried to
connect themselves to success by using the pronoun we to describe their school-team
victory—"We beat Houston, 17 to 14," or "We won." In the case of the lost game,
however, we was rarely used. Instead, the students used terms designed to keep
themselves separate from their defeated team—"They lost to Missouri, 30 to 20," or
"I don't
know the score, but Arizona State got beat." Perhaps the twin desires to connect
ourselves to winners and to distance ourselves from losers were combined
consummately in the remarks of one particular student. After dryly recounting the
score of the
home-team defeat—"Arizona State lost it, 30 to 20"—he blurted in anguish, "They
threw away our chance for a national championship!"
Liking 173
Although the desire to bask in reflected glory exists to a degree in all of us, there
seems to be something special about people who would take this normal tendency too
far. Just what kind of people are they? Unless I miss my guess, they are not merely
great sports aficionados; they are individuals with hidden personality flaws: poor self-
concepts. Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth that directs them to seek
prestige not from the generation or promotion of their own attainments but from the
generation or promotion of their associations with others' attainments. There are
several varieties of this species that bloom throughout our culture. The persistent
name-dropper is a classic example. So, too, is the rock-music groupie, who trades
sexual favors for the right to tell friends that she or he was "with" a famous musician
for a time. No matter which form it takes, the behavior of such individuals shares a
similar theme—the rather tragic view of accomplishment as deriving from outside
the self.
Certain of these people work the association principle in a slightly different way.
Instead of striving to inflate their visible connections to others of success, they strive
to inflate the success of others they are visibly connected to. The clearest
illustration is the notorious "stage mother," obsessed with securing stardom for her
child. Of course, women are not alone in this regard. In 1991, a Davenport, Iowa,
obstetrician cut off service to the wives of three school officials, reportedly
because his son had not been given enough playing time in school basketball games.
One of the wives was eight months pregnant at the time.
READER'S REPORT 5.2
From a Los Angeles Movie Studio Employee
Because I work in the industry, I'm a huge film buff. The biggest night of the year for
me is the night of the Academy Awards. I even tape the shows so I can replay the
acceptance speeches of the artists I really admire. One of my favorite speeches was
what Kevin Costner said after his film Dances with Wolves won best picture in 1991.1
liked it because he was responding to critics who say that the movies aren't
important. In fact, I liked it so much that I copied it down. But there is one thing
about
the speech that I never understood before. Here's what he said about winning the
best picture award:
"While it may not be as important as the rest of the world situation, it will always be
important to us. My family will never forget what happened here; my Native American
brothers and sisters, especially the Lakota Sioux, will never forget, and the
people I went to high school with will never forget."
OK, I get why Kevin Costner would never forget this enormous honor. And I also get
why his family would never forget it. And I even get why Native Americans would
remember it, since the film is about them. But I never understood why he mentioned
the
people he went to high school with. Then, I read about how sports fans think they can
"bask in the reflected glory" of their hometown stars and teams. And, I realized that
it's the same thing. Everyone who went to school with Kevin Costner would be
telling everyone about their connection the day after he won the Oscar, thinking that
174 Chapters
they would get some prestige out of it even though they had zero to do with the film.
They would be right, too, because that's how it works. You don't have to be a star to
get the glory. Sometimes you only have to be associated with the star somehow.
How interesting.
Author's note: I've seen this sort of thing work in my own life when I've told architect
friends that I was bom in the same place as the great Frank Lloyd Wright. Please
understand, I can't even draw a straight line; but I can see the favorable
reaction in my friends' eyes. "Wow," they seem to say, "You and Frank Lloyd Wright?"
DEFENSE
Because liking can be increased by many means, a list of the defenses against
compliance professionals who employ the liking rule must, oddly enough, be a short
one. It would be pointless to construct a horde of specific countertactics to combat
each
of the countless versions of the various ways to influence liking. There are simply too
many routes to be blocked effectively with such a one-on-one strategy. Besides,
several of the factors leading to liking—physical attractiveness, familiarity,
association— have been shown to work unconsciously to produce their effects on us,
making it unlikely that we could muster a timely protection against them anyway.
Instead we need to consider a general approach, one that can be applied to any of
the liking-related factors to neutralize their unwelcome influence on our compliance
decisions. The secret to such an approach may lie in its timing. Rather than trying
to recognize and prevent the action of liking factors before they have a chance to
work on us, we might be well advised to let them work. Our vigilance should be
directed not toward the things that may produce undue liking for a compliance
practitioner
but toward the fact that undue liking has been produced. The time to call out the
defense is when we feel ourselves liking the practitioner more than we should under
the circumstances.
By concentrating our attention on the effects rather than the causes, we can avoid
the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many
psychological influences on liking. Instead, we have to be sensitive to only one thing
related to liking in our contacts with compliance practitioners: the feeling that we
have come to like the practitioner more quickly or more deeply than we would have
expected. Once we notice this feeling, we will have been tipped off that there is
probably some tactic being used, and we can start taking the necessary
countermeasures. Note that the strategy I am suggesting borrows much from the
jujitsu style favored by the compliance professionals themselves. We don't attempt to
restrain the
influence of the factors that cause liking. Quite the contrary. We allow those factors to
exert their force, and then we use that force in our campaign against those who
would profit by them. The stronger the force, the more conspicuous it becomes and,
consequently, the more subject to our alerted defenses.
Liking 175
Suppose, for example, we find ourselves bargaining on the price of a new car with
Dealin' Dan, a candidate for Joe Girard's vacated "Greatest Car Salesman" title. After
talking a while and negotiating a bit, Dan wants to close the deal: he wants us to
decide to buy the car. Before any such decision is made, we should ask ourselves the
crucial question, "In the 25 minutes I've known this guy, have I come to like him
more than I would have expected?" If the answer is yes, we might want to reflect on
the ways Dan behaved during those few minutes. We might recall that he has fed us
(coffee and doughnuts), complimented us on our choice of options and color
combinations, made us laugh, and cooperated with us against the sales manager to
get us a
better deal.
Although such a review of events might be informative, it is not a necessary step in
protecting ourselves from the liking rule. Once we discover that we have come to like
Dan more than we would have expected, we don't have to know why. The simple
recognition of unwarranted liking should be enough to get us to react against it. One
possible reaction would be to reverse the process and actively dislike Dan, but that
might be unfair to him and contrary to our own interests. After all, some
individuals are naturally likeable, and Dan might just be one of them. It wouldn't be
right to turn automatically against those compliance professionals who happen to be
most likeable. Besides, for our own sakes, we wouldn't want to shut ourselves off
from business interactions with such nice people, especially when they may be
offering us the best available deal.
I recommend a different reaction. If our answer to the crucial question is "Yes, under
the circumstances, I like this guy peculiarly well," this should be the signal that the
time has come for a quick countermaneuver: Mentally separate Dan from that
Chevy or Toyota he's trying to sell. It is vital to remember at this point that, should
we choose Dan's car, we will be driving it, not him, off the dealership lot. It is
irrelevant to a wise automobile purchase that we find Dan likeable because he is
good-looking, claims an interest in our favorite hobby, is funny, or has relatives living
where we grew up.
Our proper response, then, is a conscious effort to concentrate exclusively on the
merits of the deal and the car Dan has for us. Of course, when we make a compliance
decision, it is always a good idea to separate our feelings about the requester from
the request. Once immersed in even a brief personal and sociable contact with a
requester, however, we may easily forget that distinction. In those instances when we
don't care one way or the other about a requester, forgetting to make the distinction
won't steer us very far wrong. The big mistakes are likely to come when we like the
person making the request.
That's why it is so important to be alert to a sense of undue liking for a compliance
practitioner. The recognition of that feeling can serve as our reminder to separate the
dealer from the merits of the deal and to make our decision based on
considerations related only to the latter. Were we all to follow this procedure, I am
certain we would be much more pleased with the results of our exchanges with
compliance professionals—though I suspect that Dealin' Dan would not.
176 Chapters
SUMMARY
People prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like. Recognizing this rule,
compliance professionals commonly increase their effectiveness by emphasizing
several factors that increase their overall attractiveness and likability. One feature of
a
person that influences overall liking is physical attractiveness. Although it has long
been suspected that physical beauty provides an advantage in social interaction,
research indicates that the advantage may be greater than supposed. Physical
attractiveness seems to engender a halo effect that extends to favorable impressions
of other traits such as talent, kindness, and intelligence. As a result, attractive people
are more persuasive both in terms of getting what they request and in
changing others' attitudes.
A second factor that influences liking and compliance is similarity. We like people who
are like us, and we are more willing to say yes to their requests, often in an
unthinking manner. Another factor that produces liking is praise. Although they can
sometimes backfire when crudely transparent, compliments generally enhance liking
and, thus, compliance.
Increased familiarity through repeated contact with a person or thing is yet another
factor that normally facilitates liking. This relationship holds true principally when the
contact takes place under positive rather than negative circumstances. One
positive circumstance that works especially well is mutual and successful cooperation.
A fifth factor linked to liking is association. By connecting themselves or their
products with positive things, advertisers, politicians, and merchandisers
frequently seek to share in the positivity through the process of association. Other
individuals as well (sports fans, for example) appear to recognize the effect of simple
connections and try to associate themselves with favorable events and distance
themselves from unfavorable events in the eyes of observers.
A potentially effective strategy for reducing the unwanted influence of liking on
compliance decisions requires a special sensitivity to the experience of undue liking
for a requester. Upon recognizing that we like a requester inordinately well under
the circumstances, we should step back from the social interaction, mentally separate
the requester from his or her offer, and make any compliance decision based solely
on the merits of the offer.
STUDY QUESTIONS_____________________________________
Content Mastery
1. To what does the term halo effect refer? How can it help explain the relationship
between a person's physical attractiveness and that person's general attractiveness in
the eyes of others?
Liking 177
2. We tend to like people who say they like us (that is, who give us compliments). We
also tend to like people who say they are like us (that is, similar to us). In the latter
case, what is the evidence that we tend to say yes to similar others in an
automatic fashion?
3. A series of studies on the creation and reduction of hostility between groups was
conducted at boys' summer camps. After hostility was generated, which procedures
successfully reduced the hostility? Which were unsuccessful?
4. To what does the tendency to bask in reflected glory refer? Under which conditions
and for which kind of person is this tendency most likely to appear?
Critical Thinking
1. In a letter to her sister, Jane Austen wrote, "I do not want people to be very
agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." To which trouble
associated with liking people could she have been referring?
2. Will Rogers, who boasted, "I never met a man I didn't like," obviously felt
differently than Austen about the advantages of liking others. What would be the
consequences of Rogers's more expansive approach to interpersonal relations? Think
about
your own interpersonal style. Is it closer to Rogers's or Austen's? Why?
3. What parallels can you see between the findings of the boys' camp studies and
those of studies on the effects of (a) school desegregation and (b) cooperative
learning in the classroom?
4. Suppose you wanted the person sitting next to you in class to like you more. Using
the factors discussed in this chapter, describe how you would arrange your next
encounter to accomplish your goal.
5. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
CHAPTER
6
Authority
Directed Deference
6_Authority-1.jpg
Follow an expert.
—VIRGIL
Suppose while leafing through your local newspaper, you notice an ad for volunteers
to take part in a "study of memory" being done in the psychology department of a
nearby university. Suppose further that, finding the idea of such an experiment
intriguing, you contact the director of the study, Professor Stanley Mil-gram, and
make arrangements to participate in an hour-long session. When you arrive at the
laboratory suite, you meet two men. One is the researcher in charge of the
experiment,
clearly evidenced by the grey lab coat he wears and the clipboard he carries. The
other is a volunteer like yourself who seems quite average in all respects.
After initial greetings and pleasantries are exchanged, the researcher begins to
explain the procedures to be followed. He says that the experiment is a study of how
punishment affects learning and memory. Therefore, one participant will have the
task
of learning pairs of words in a long list until each pair can be recalled perfectly; this
person is to be called the Learner. The other participant's job will be to test the
Learner's memory and to deliver increasingly strong electric shocks for every
mistake; this person will be designated the Teacher.
Naturally, you get a bit nervous at this news. Your apprehension increases when,
after drawing lots with your partner, you find that you are assigned the Learner role.
You hadn't expected the possibility of pain as part of the study, so you briefly
consider leaving. But no, you think, there's plenty of time for that if need be and,
besides how strong a shock could it be?
After you have had a chance to study the list of word pairs, the researcher straps you
into a chair and, with the Teacher looking on, attaches electrodes to your arm. More
worried now about the effect of the shock, you inquire into its severity. The
researcher's response is hardly comforting. He says that although the shocks can be
extremely painful, they will cause you "no permanent tissue damage." With that, the
researcher and Teacher leave you alone and go to the next room where the Teacher
asks you the test questions through an intercom system and delivers electric
punishment for every wrong response.
As the test proceeds, you quickly recognize the pattern that the Teacher follows: He
asks the question and waits for your answer over the intercom. Whenever you err, he
announces the voltage of the shock you are about to receive and pulls a lever to
deliver the punishment. The most troubling thing is that, with each error you make,
the shock increases by 15 volts.
The first part of the test progresses smoothly. The shocks are annoying but tolerable.
Later on, though, as you make more mistakes and the shock voltages climb, the
punishment begins to hurt enough to disrupt your concentration, which leads to more
errors and ever more disruptive shocks. At the 75-, 90-, and 105-volt levels, the Pain
makes you grunt audibly. At 120 volts, you exclaim into the intercom that the shocks
are really starting to hurt. You take one more punishment with a groan and
decide that you can't take much more pain. After the Teacher delivers the 150-volt
180 Chapter 6
shock, you shout back into the intercom "That's all. Get me out of here. Get me out of
here, please. Let me out."
Instead of the assurance you expect from the Teacher, that he and the researcher are
coming to release you, he merely gives you the next test question to answer.
Surprised and confused you mumble the first answer to come into your head. It's
wrong, of
course, and the Teacher delivers a 165-volt shock. You scream at the Teacher to
stop, to let you out. He responds only with the next test question—and with the next
slashing shock, when your frenzied answer is incorrect. You can't hold down the panic
any longer, the shocks are so strong now they make you writhe and shriek. You kick
the wall, demand to be released, and beg the Teacher to help you. However, the test
questions continue as before and so do the dreaded shocks—in searing jolts of 195,
210, 225, 240, 255, 270, 285, and 300 volts. You realize that you can't possibly
answer the questions correctly now, so you shout to the Teacher that you won't
answer his questions anymore. Nothing changes; the Teacher interprets your failure
to
respond as an incorrect response and sends another bolt. The ordeal continues in this
way until, finally, the power of the shocks stuns you into near-paralysis. You can no
longer cry out, no longer struggle. You can only feel each terrible electric
bite. Perhaps, you think, this total inactivity will cause the Teacher to stop. There can
be no reason to continue this experiment, but he proceeds relentlessly, calling out the
test questions, announcing the horrid shock levels (above 400 volts now),
and pulling the levers. What must this man be like, you wonder in confusion. Why
doesn't he help me? Why won't he stop?
THE POWER OF AUTHORITY PRESSURE
For most of us, the previous scenario reads like a bad dream. To recognize how
nightmarish it is, though, we should understand that, in most respects, it is real.
There was such an experiment—actually, a whole series—run by a psychology
professor named
Milgram (1974) in which participants in the Teacher role were willing to deliver
continued, intense, and dangerous levels of shock to a kicking, screeching, pleading
Learner. Only one major aspect of the experiment was not genuine. No real shock
was
delivered; the Learner, who repeatedly cried out in agony for mercy and release, was
not a true subject but an actor who only pretended to be shocked. The actual purpose
of Milgram's study, then, had nothing to do with the effects of punishment on
learning and memory. Rather, it involved an entirely different question: When it is
their job, how much suffering will ordinary people be willing to inflict on an entirely
innocent other person?
The answer is most unsettling. Under circumstances mirroring precisely the features
of the "bad dream," the typical Teacher was willing to deliver as much pain as was
available to give. Rather than yield to the pleas of the victim, about two-thirds of
the subjects in Milgram's experiment pulled every one of the 30 shock switches in
front of them and continued to engage the last switch (450 volts) until the re-
Authority 181
searcher ended the experiment. More alarming still, almost none of the 40 subjects in
this study quit his job as Teacher when the victim first began to demand his release,
nor later when he began to beg for it, nor even later when his reaction to each
shock had become, in Milgram's words, "definitely an agonized scream."
These results surprised everyone associated with the project, Milgram included. In
fact, before the study began, he asked groups of colleagues, graduate students, and
psychology majors at Yale University (where the experiment was performed) to read
a
copy of the experimental procedures and estimate how many subjects would go all
the way to the last (450-volt) shock. Invariably, the answers fell in the 1-2 percent
range. A separate group of 39 psychiatrists predicted that only about one person in a
thousand would be willing to continue to the end. No one, then, was prepared for the
behavior pattern that the experiment actually produced.
How can we explain that alarming pattern? Perhaps, as some have argued, it has to
do with the fact that the subjects were all males who are known as a group for
6_Authority-2.jpg
182 Chapter 6
their aggressive tendencies, or that the subjects didn't recognize the potential harm
that such high shock voltages could cause, or that the subjects were a freakish
collection of moral cretins who enjoyed the chance to inflict misery. There is good
evidence against each of these possibilities. First, a later experiment showed that the
subjects' sex was irrelevant to their willingness to give all the shocks to the victim;
female Teachers were just as likely to do so as were the males in Milgram's
initial study.
Another experiment investigated the explanation that subjects weren't aware of the
potential physical danger to the victim. In this experiment the victim was instructed
to announce that he had a heart condition and to declare that his heart was being
affected by the shock: "That's all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble.
My heart's starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out." Once again the
results were the same; 65 percent of the subjects carried out their duties
faithfully through to the maximum shock.
Finally, the explanation that Milgram's subjects were a twisted, sadistic bunch not at
all representative of average citizens has proven unsatisfactory as well. The people
who answered Milgram's newspaper ad to participate in his "memory" experiment
represented a standard cross section of ages, occupations, and educational levels
within our society. What's more, later on, a battery of personality scales showed
these people to be quite normal psychologically, with not a hint of psychosis as a
group. They were, in fact, just like you and me; or, as Milgram likes to term it, they
are you and me. If he is right that his studies implicate us in their grisly findings, the
unanswered question becomes an uncomfortably personal one, "What could
make us do such things?"
Milgram is sure he knows the answer. It has to do, he says, with a deep-seated sense
of duty to authority. According to Milgram, the real culprit in the experiments was his
subjects' inability to defy the wishes of the boss, the lab-coated researcher
who urged and, if necessary, directed the subjects to perform their duties, despite the
emotional and physical mayhem they were causing.
The evidence supporting Milgram's obedience-to-authority explanation is strong. First,
it is clear that, without the researcher's directives to continue, the subjects would
have ended the experiment quickly. They hated what they were doing and agonized
over their victim's anguish. They implored the researcher to let them stop. When he
refused, they went on, but in the process they trembled, they perspired, they shook,
they stammered protests and additional pleas for the victim's release. Their
fingernails dug into their own flesh; they bit their lips until they bled; they held their
heads in their hands; some fell into fits of uncontrollable nervous laughter. An outside
observer to Milgram's initial experiment described one subject.
/ observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and
confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching,
Authority 183
stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse. He
constantly pulled on his earlobe and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist
into his forehead and muttered: "Oh, God, let's stop it." And yet he continued to
respond to every word of the experimenter and obeyed to the end. (Milgram, 1963, p.
377)
In addition to these observations, Milgram has provided even more convincing
evidence for the obedience-to-authority interpretation of his subjects' behavior. In a
later experiment, for instance, he had the researcher and the victim switch scripts so
that the researcher told the Teacher to stop delivering shocks to the victim, while the
victim insisted bravely that the Teacher continue. The result couldn't have been
clearer; 100 percent of the subjects refused to give one additional shock when it
was merely the fellow subject who demanded it. The identical finding appeared in
another version of the experiment in which the researcher and fellow subject switched
roles so that it was the researcher who was strapped into the chair and the fellow
subject who ordered the Teacher to continue—over the protests of the researcher.
Again, not one subject touched another shock lever.
The extreme degree to which subjects in Milgram's studies obeyed the orders of
authority was documented in yet another variation of the basic experiments. In this
case, the Teacher faced two researchers who issued contradictory orders; one
ordered the
Teacher to terminate the shocks when the victim cried out for release, while the other
maintained that the experiment should go on. These conflicting instructions reliably
produced what may have been the project's only humor: In tragicomic be-
fuddlement and with eyes darting from one researcher to another, subjects would
beseech the pair to agree on a single command to follow, "Wait, wait. Which is it
going to be? One says stop, one says go.... Which is it!?" When the researchers
remained
at loggerheads, the subjects tried frantically to determine who was the bigger boss.
Failing this route to obedience with the authority, every subject finally followed his
better instincts and ended the shocks. As in the other experimental variations,
such a result would hardly be expected had the subjects' motivations involved some
form of sadism or neurotic aggressiveness.1
To Milgram's mind, evidence of a chilling phenomenon emerges repeatedly from his
accumulated data. "It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths
on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study"
(Milgram, 1974). There are sobering implications of this finding for those concerned
about the ability of another form of authority—government—to extract frightening
The basic experiment, as well as all these and other variations on it, is presented in
Milgram's highly readable Obedience to Authority, 1974. A review of much of the
subsequent research on obedience can be found in Blass (1991, 1999) and in Miller,
Collins, & Brief (1995).
184 Chapter 6
levels of obedience from ordinary citizens.2 Furthermore, the finding tells us
something about the sheer strength of authority pressures in controlling our behavior.
After witnessing Milgram's subjects squirming and sweating and suffering at their
task, could anyone doubt the power of the force that held them there?
For those whose doubts remain, the story of S. Brian Willson might prove instructive.
On September 1, 1987, to protest U.S. shipments of military equipment to Nicaragua,
Mr. Willson and two other men stretched their bodies across the railroad tracks
leading out of the Naval Weapons Station in Concord, California. The protesters were
confident that their act would halt the scheduled train's progress that day, as they
had notified navy and railroad officials of their intent three days before. But
the civilian crew, which had been given orders not to stop, never even slowed the
train, despite being able to see the protesters 600 feet ahead. Although two of the
men managed to scramble out of harm's way, Mr. Willson was not quick enough to
avoid
being struck and having both legs severed below the knee. Because navy medical
corpsmen at the scene refused to treat him or allow him to be taken to the hospital in
their ambulance, onlookers—including Mr. Willson's wife and son—were left to try to
staunch the flow of blood for 45 minutes until a private ambulance arrived.
Amazingly, Mr. Willson, who served four years in Vietnam, does not blame either the
crewmen or the corpsmen for his misfortune; he points his finger, instead, at a
system that constrained their actions through the pressure to obey. "They were just
doing what I did in 'Nam. They were following orders that are part of an insane policy.
They're the fall guys." Although the crew members shared Mr. Willson's assessment
of them as victims, they did not share his magnanimity. In what is perhaps the
most remarkable aspect of the incident, the train crew filed suit against him,
requesting punitive damages for the "humiliation, mental anguish, and physical
stress" they suffered because he hadn't allowed them to carry out their orders
without cutting
off his legs.
2In fact, Milgram first began his investigations in an attempt to understand how the
German citizenry could have participated in the concentration camp destruction of
millions of innocents during the years of Nazi ascendancy. After testing his
experimental procedures in the United States, he had planned to take them to
Germany, a country whose populace he was sure would provide enough obedience for
a full-flown scientific analysis of the concept. The first eye-opening experiment in New
Haven, Connecticut, however, make it clear that he could save his money and stay
close to home. "I found so much obedience," he said, "I hardly saw the need of taking
the experiment to Germany."
More telling evidence, perhaps, of a willingness to submit to authorized command
within the American character comes from a national survey taken after the trial of
Lieutenant William Galley, who ordered his soldiers to kill the inhabitants—infants and
toddlers as well as their parents and grandparents—of My Lai, Vietnam (Kelman &
Hamilton, 1989). A majority of Americans (51 percent) responded that if so ordered,
they too would shoot all the residents of a Vietnamese village. But Americans have no
monopoly on the need to obey authority. When Milgram's basic procedure was
eventually repeated in Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Jordan, the
results were similar (see Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986, for a review).
Authority 185
THE ALLURES AND DANGERS OF BLIND OBEDIENCE
Whenever we are faced with a potent motivator of human action, it is natural to
expect that good reasons exist for the motivation. In the case of obedience to
authority, even a brief consideration of human social organization offers justification
aplenty. A multilayered and widely accepted system of authority confers an immense
advantage upon a society. It allows the development of sophisticated structures for
production of resources, trade, defense, expansion, and social control that would
otherwise be impossible. At the opposite end, the alternative is anarchy, a state
hardly known for its beneficial effects on cultural groups and one that the social
philosopher Thomas Hobbes assures us would render life "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish,
and short." Consequently, we are trained from birth to believe that obedience to
proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong. This message fills the parental
lessons, the schoolhouse rhymes, stories, and songs of our childhood and is carried
forward in the legal, military, and political systems we encounter as adults. Notions of
submission and loyalty to legitimate rule are accorded much value in each.
Religious instruction contributes as well. The very first book of the Bible, for example,
describes how failure to obey the ultimate authority resulted in the loss of paradise
for Adam, Eve, and the rest of the human race. Should that particular
metaphor prove too subtle, just a bit further into the Old Testament, we can read—in
what might be the closest biblical representation of the Milgram experiment—the
respectful account of Abraham's willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of
his
young son because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn in this story
that the correctness of an action was not judged by such considerations as apparent
senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere
command of a higher authority. Abraham's tormented ordeal was a test of obedience,
and he—like Milgram's subjects, who perhaps had learned an early lesson from him—
passed.
Stories like those of Abraham and Milgram's subjects can tell us a great deal about
obedience's power and value in our culture. In another sense, however, the stories
may be misleading. We rarely agonize to such a degree over the pros and cons of
authority demands. In fact, our obedience frequently takes place in a click, whirr
fashion with little or no conscious deliberation. Information from a recognized
authority can provide us a valuable shortcut for deciding how to act in a situation.
After all, as Milgram suggests, conforming to the dictates of authority figures has
always had genuine practical advantages for us. Early on, these people (parents,
teachers) knew more than we did, and we found that taking their advice proved
beneficial—partly because of their greater wisdom and partly because they controlled
our rewards and punishments. As adults, the same benefits persist for the same
reasons, though the authority figures are now employers, judges, and government
leaders.
Because their positions speak of greater access to information and power, it makes
sense to comply with the wishes of properly constituted authorities. It makes so much
sense, in fact, that we often do so when it makes no sense at all.
186 Chapter 6
This paradox is, of course, the same one that attends all major weapons of influence.
In this instance, once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is
easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience. The
simultaneous blessing and curse of such blind obedience is its mechanical character.
We don't have to think, therefore we don't. Although such mindless obedience leads
us to appropriate action most of the time, there will be conspicuous exceptions
because we are reacting, not thinking.
Let's take an example from one facet of our lives in which authority pressures are
visible and strong: medicine. Health is enormously important to us. Thus, physicians,
who possess great knowledge and influence in this vital area, hold the position of
respected authorities. In addition, the medical establishment has a clearly terraced
power and prestige structure. The various kinds of health workers well understand the
level of their jobs in this structure, and they well understand, too, that M.D.s
sit at the top. No one may overrule a doctor's judgment in a case, except, perhaps,
another doctor of higher rank. Consequently, a long-established tradition of automatic
obedience to doctors' orders has developed among health care staffs.
The worrisome possibility arises, then, that when a physician makes a clear error, no
one lower in the hierarchy will think to question it—precisely because, once a
legitimate authority has given an order, subordinates stop thinking in the situation
and start reacting. Mix this kind of click, whirr response into a complex hospital
environment and mistakes are inevitable. Indeed, a study by the U.S. Health Care
Financing Administration shows that, for patient medication alone, the average
hospital
has a 12 percent daily error rate.
Errors in the medicine patients receive can occur for a variety of reasons. However, in
their book Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention (1981), Temple University
professors of pharmacy Michael Cohen and Neil Davis attribute much of the problem
to
the mindless deference given to the "boss" of a patient's case: the attending
physician. According to Cohen, "in case after case, patients, nurses, pharmacists, and
other physicians do not question the prescription." Take, for example, the strange
case
of the "rectal earache" reported by Cohen and Davis. A physician ordered ear drops to
be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there.
Instead of writing out completely the location "Right ear" on the prescription, the
doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read "place in R ear." Upon receiving the
prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the
patient's anus.
Obviously, rectal treatment of an earache made no sense, but neither the patient nor
the nurse questioned it. The important lesson of this story is that in many situations
in which a legitimate authority has spoken, what would otherwise make sense is
irrelevant. In these instances, we don't consider the situation as a whole but attend
and respond to only one aspect of it.
We are not the only species to give sometimes single-minded deference to those in
authority positions. In monkey colonies, where rigid dominance hierarchies exist,
beneficial innovations (for example, learning how to use a stick to bring food into
Authority 187
6_Authority-3.jpg
the cage area) do not spread quickly through the group unless they are taught first to
a dominant animal. When a lower animal is taught the new concept first, the rest of
the colony remains mostly oblivious to its value. One study, cited by Ardry
(1970), on the introduction of new food tastes to Japanese monkeys provides a nice
illustration. In one troop, a taste for caramels was developed by introducing this new
food into the diet of young peripherals, low on the status ladder. The taste for
caramels inched slowly up the ranks: A year and a half later, only 51 percent of the
colony had acquired it, but still none of the leaders. Contrast this with what happened
in a second troop where wheat was introduced first to the leader: Wheat eating—
to this point unknown to these monkeys—spread through the whole colony within four
hours. Very much the same thing happened in 1995 on the Chicago Bulls basketball
team when the acknowledged leader and star, Michael Jordan, began eating three
Energy
Booster bars before each game. According to substitute player Steve Kerr, "B. J.
Armstrong [another non-star player] and I were the only ones eating them before.
Then Michael eats some, and now everybody's eating them" (Shappell, 1995).
188 Chapter 6
Wherever our behaviors are governed in such an unthinking manner, we can be
confident that there will be compliance professionals trying to take advantage.
Returning to the field of medicine, we can see that advertisers have frequently
commissioned the
respect accorded doctors in our culture by hiring actors to play the roles of doctors
speaking on behalf of the product. My favorite example was a TV commercial
featuring the actor Robert Young warning people against the dangers of caffeine and
recommending caffeine-free Sanka brand coffee. The commercial was highly
successful, selling so much Sanka that it was played for years in several versions.
Why should this commercial prove so effective? Why on earth would we take Robert
Young's word
for the health consequences of decaffeinated coffee? Because— as the advertising
agency that hired him knew perfectly well—he was associated in the minds of the
American public with Marcus Welby, M.D., the role he played in an earlier long-
running
television series. Objectively, it doesn't make sense to be swayed by the comments of
a man we know to be just an actor who used to play a doctor; but, practically, that
man sold the Sanka.
CONNOTATION NOT CONTENT
From the first time I saw it, I found the most intriguing feature of Robert Young's
Sanka commercial to be its ability to use the influence of the authority principle
without ever providing a real authority. The appearance of authority was enough. This
tells us something important about unthinking reactions to authority figures. When in
a click, whirr mode, we are often as vulnerable to the symbols of authority as to the
substance.
Several of these symbols can reliably trigger our compliance in the absence of the
genuine substance of authority. Consequently, these symbols are employed
extensively by those compliance professionals who are short on substance. Con
artists, for
example, drape themselves with the titles, the clothes, and the trappings of authority.
They love nothing more than to emerge elegantly dressed from a fine automobile and
to introduce themselves to their prospective "marks" as Doctor or Judge or
Professor or Commissioner Someone. They understand that when they are so
adorned their chances for compliance are greatly increased. Each of these three types
of symbols of authority—titles, clothes, and trappings—has its own story and is worth
a
separate look.
Titles
Titles are simultaneously the most difficult and the easiest symbols of authority to
acquire. To earn a title normally takes years of work and achievement. Yet, it is
possible for somebody who has put in none of this effort to adopt the mere label and
receive a kind of automatic deference. As we have seen, actors in TV commercials
and con artists do it successfully all the time.
Authority 189
I recently talked with a friend—a faculty member at a well-known eastern university—
who provided a telling illustration of the way our actions are frequently more
influenced by a title than by the nature of the person claiming it. My friend travels
quite a bit and often finds himself chatting with strangers in bars, restaurants, and
airports. He says that he has learned through much experience during these
conversations never to use his title of professor. When he does, he finds that the
tenor of
the interaction changes immediately. People who have been spontaneous and
interesting conversation partners for the previous half hour become respectful,
accepting, and dull. His opinions that before may have produced a lively exchange
now generate
extended (and highly grammatical) statements of accord. Annoyed and slightly
bewildered by the phenomenon—because as he says, "I'm still the same guy they've
been talking to for the last 30 minutes, right?"—my friend now regularly lies about his
occupation in such situations.
What an eccentric shift from the more typical pattern in which certain compliance
practitioners lie about titles they don't truly have. Either way, however, such
practiced dishonesty makes the same point about the ability of a symbol of authority
to
influence behavior.
I wonder whether my professor friend—who is somewhat short—would be so eager to
hide his title if he knew that, besides making strangers more accommodating, it also
makes them see him as taller. Studies investigating the way in which authority status
affects perceptions of size have found that prestigious titles lead to height distortions.
In one experiment conducted on five classes of Australian college students, a man
was introduced as a visitor from Cambridge University in England. However, his
status at Cambridge was represented differently in each of the classes. To one class,
he was presented as a student; to a second class, a demonstrator; to another, a
lecturer; to yet another, a senior lecturer; to a fifth, a professor. After he left
the room, the class was asked to estimate his height. It was found that with each
increase in status, the same man grew in perceived height by an average of a half-
inch, so that as the "professor" he was seen as 2 1/2 inches taller than as the
"student" (P. R. Wilson, 1968). Another study found that after winning an election,
politicians become taller in the eyes of the citizenry (Higham & Garment, 1992).
It is worth the time for a small detour to pursue this interesting connection between
status and perceived size, as it shows up in a variety of ways. In one study in which
children were asked to judge the size of coins, for example, they most
overestimated the size of the more valuable coins (Bruner & Goodman, 1947). Adults
are just as guilty of such distortions. In a study by Dukes and Bevan (1952), college
students drew cards on which were printed monetary values ranging from $3.00 to -
$3.00; the students won or lost the amount shown on the cards they picked.
Afterward, they were asked to rate the size of each card. Although all the cards were
exactly the same size, those that had the extreme values—positive or negative—were
seen as
physically larger. Thus, it is not necessarily the pleasantness of a thing that makes it
seem bigger, it is its importance.
190 Chapter 6
Because we see size and status as related, it is possible for certain individuals to
benefit by substituting the former for the latter. In some animal societies, in which
the status of an animal is assigned on the basis of dominance, size is an
important factor in determining which animal will achieve which status level in the
group.3
Usually, in combat with a rival, the larger and more powerful animal wins. To avoid
the harmful effects to the group of such physical conflict, however, many species
employ methods that frequently involve more form than fracas. The two rivals
confront
each other with showy aggression displays that invariably include size-enhancing
tricks. Various mammals arch their backs and bristle their coats; fish extend their fins
and puff themselves up with water; birds unfurl and flutter their wings. Very
often, this exhibition alone is enough to send one of the histrionic warriors into retreat
leaving the contested status position to the seemingly larger and
stronger rival.
Fur, fins, and feathers. Isn't it interesting how these most delicate of parts can be
exploited to give the impression of substance and weight? There are two lessons for
us here. One is specific to the association between size and status: The
connection of those two features can be profitably employed by individuals who are
able to
6_Authority-4.jpg
3
Subhumans are not alone in this regard, even in modern times. For example, since
1900 the U.S. presidency has been won by the taller of the major party candidates in
nearly 90 percent of the elections. Research suggests that the height advantage may
also apply to candidates for affection in contests of the heart: women are significantly
more likely to respond to a man's published personal ad when he describes himself as
tall. Interestingly for female ad-runners, size works in the opposite
direction. Women who report being short and weighing less get more male/mail
action (Lynn & Shurgot, 1984; Shepperd & Strathman, 1989).
Authority 191
fake the first to gain the appearance of the second. This possibility is precisely why
con artists, even those of average or slightly above average height, commonly wear
lifts in their shoes. The other lesson is more general: The outward signs of power
and authority frequently may be counterfeited with the flimsiest of materials. Let's
return to the realm of titles for an example—an example that involves what, in
several ways, is the scariest experiment I know. A group of researchers, composed of
doctors and nurses with connections to three midwestern hospitals, became
increasingly concerned with the extent of mechanical obedience to doctors' orders on
the part of nurses. It seemed to the researchers that even highly trained and skilled
nurses
were not using that training or skill sufficiently to check on a doctor's judgment;
instead, when confronted with a physician's directives, they would simply defer.
We saw how this process accounted for the case of the rectally administered ear
drops, but the midwestern researchers took things several steps further. First, they
wanted to find out whether such cases were isolated incidents or representative of a
widespread phenomenon. Second, they wanted to examine the problem in the
context of a serious treatment error: the gross over-prescription of an unauthorized
drug to a hospital patient. Finally, they wanted to see what would happen if they
physically
removed the authority figure from the situation and substituted an unfamiliar voice on
the phone, offering only the frailest evidence of authority—the claimed title "doctor."
One of the researchers made an identical phone call to 22 separate nurses' stations
on various surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric wards. He identified himself as
a hospital physician and directed the answering nurse to give 20 milligrams of
a drug (Astrogen) to a specific ward patient. There were four excellent reasons for the
nurse's caution in response to this order: (1) the prescription was transmitted by
phone, in direct violation of hospital policy; (2) the medication itself was
unauthorized. Astrogen had not been cleared for use nor placed on the ward stock
list; (3) the prescribed dosage was obviously and dangerously excessive. The
medication containers clearly stated that the "maximum daily dose" was only 10
milligrams,
half of what had been ordered; (4) the directive was given by a man the nurse had
never met, seen, or even talked with before on the phone. Yet, in 95 percent of the
instances, the nurses went straight to the ward medicine cabinet where they secured
the ordered dosage of Astrogen and started for the patient's room to administer it. It
was at this point that they were stopped by a secret observer, who revealed the
nature of the experiment (Hofling, Brotzman, Dalrymple, Graves, & Pierce, 1966).
The results are frightening indeed. That 95 percent of regular staff nurses complied
unhesitatingly with a patently improper instruction of this sort must give us all as
potential hospital patients great reason for concern. Given the U.S. Health
Financing Care Administration estimate of a 12 percent daily medication error rate in
American hospitals, stays of longer than a week make it likely that we will be
recipients of such an error. What the midwestern study shows is that the mistakes
are
hardly limited to the trivial slips in the administration of harmless ear drops or the
like, but extend to grave and dangerous blunders.
192 Chapter 6
In interpreting their unsettling findings, the researchers came to an instructive
conclusion:
In a real-life situation corresponding to the experimental one, there would, in theory,
be two professional intelligences, the doctor's and the nurse's, working to ensure that
a given procedure be undertaken in a manner beneficial to the patient or, at
the very least, not detrimental to him [or her]. The experiment strongly suggests,
however, that one of these intelligences is, for all practical purposes, nonfunctioning.
(Hofling et al, 1966, p. 176)
It seems that, in the face of a physician's directives, the nurses unhooked their
"professional intelligences" and moved to a click, whirr form of responding. None of
their considerable medical training or knowledge was engaged in the decision about
what to do. Instead, because obedience to legitimate authority had always been the
most preferred and efficient action in their work setting, they were willing to err on
the side of automatic obedience. It is all the more instructive that they have
traveled so far in this direction that their error had come in response not to genuine
authority but to its most easily falsified symbol—a bare title.4
Perhaps as dismaying as the mechanical deference given to individuals whose titles
bespeak authority is the evidence for a mechanical resistance to the ideas of
individuals whose titles suggest a lack of authority. In the realm of scholarly
publication, a revealing study was done by psychologists Douglas Peters and Stephen
Ceci (1982). They took 12 articles that had been published 18 to 32 months earlier by
authors from prestigious universities and, changing nothing but the names and
affiliations of the authors to those of unknowns from "Tri-Valley Center for Human
Potential," they resubmitted the articles in manuscript form to the journals that had
already published them. Nine of the doctored articles went through the review
process undetected and, remarkably, eight were rejected, even though each had been
published shortly before by the same journal when it had been submitted by
researchers with more prestigious reputations and affiliations. A similar, but less
scientific, experiment was tried by a popular writer who typed word-for-word Jerzy
Kosinski's novel Steps and sent the manuscript to 28 literary agencies and publishing
houses 10 years after the book had sold nearly a half million copies and had won
the National Book Award. The manuscript, now carrying the name of an unknown,
was rejected as inadequate by all 28 organizations including Random House, the
novel's original publisher (C. Ross, 1979).
4
Additional data collected in the Hofling et al. study suggest that nurses may not be
conscious of the extent to which the title "doctor" sways their judgments and actions.
A separate group of 33 nurses and student nurses were asked what they would
have done in the experimental situation. Contrary to the actual findings, only two
predicted that they would have given the medication as ordered.
Authority 193
READER'S REPORT 6.1
From a Texas-Based University Professor
I grew up in an Italian ghetto in Warren, Pennsylvania. I occasionally return home to
visit family and the like. As in most places these days, most of the small Italian
specialty stores are gone, having been replaced by larger supermarkets. My mother
sent me supermarket shopping during a visit for a load of canned tomatoes, and I
noticed that nearly all the cans of Furmano Italian diced tomatoes were sold out.
Searching a bit on the shelf immediately beneath the almost empty shelf, I found a
full
shelf (loaded, even!) of Furman brand diced tomatoes. Looking closely at the labels, I
realized that Furmano is Furman. The company had just added an "o" to its name
when distributing some of its products. I guess it must be because, when selling
Italian-style foods, you're perceived as more of an authority if your name ends in a
vowel.
Author's note: The man who wrote this report also commented that the added letter
"o " was doing double duty as an influence trigger in that store. Not only did it lend
authority to the manufacturer, in an "Italian ghetto," it made the company appear
similar to its customers.
Clothes
A second kind of authority symbol that can trigger our mechanical compliance is
clothing. Though more tangible than a title, the cloak of authority is every bit as fake-
able. Police bunco files bulge with records of con artists whose methods include
the quick change. In chameleon style, they adopt the hospital whites, priestly black,
army green, or police blue that the situation requires for maximum advantage. Only
too late do their victims realize that the garb of authority is hardly its
guarantee.
A series of studies by social psychologist Leonard Bickman (1974) indicates how
difficult it can be to resist requests that come from figures in authority attire.
Bickman's basic procedure was to ask passersby on the street to comply with some
sort of
odd request (for example, to pick up a discarded paper bag or to stand on the other
side of a bus-stop sign). In half of the instances, the requester—a young man— was
dressed in ordinary street clothes: the rest of the time, he wore a security guard's
uniform. Regardless of the type of request, many more people obeyed the requester
when he was wearing the guard costume. Similar results have been obtained when
the uniformed requester was female (Bushman, 1988).
Especially revealing was one version of the experiment in which the requester
stopped pedestrians and pointed to a man standing by a parking meter 50 feet away.
The requester, whether dressed normally or as a security guard, always said the
same thing
to the pedestrian, "You see that guy over there by the meter? He's overparked but
doesn't have any change. Give him a dime!" The requester then turned a corner
194 Chapters
and walked away so that by the time the pedestrian reached the meter, the requester
was out of sight. The power of his uniform lasted, however, even after he was long
gone: Nearly all of the pedestrians complied with his directive when he wore the
5
guard costume, but fewer than half did so when he was dressed normally.
It is interesting to note that, later on, Bickman found college students guessed with
considerable accuracy the percentage of compliance that occurred in the experiment
when the requester wore street clothes (50 percent versus the actual 42 percent);
yet, the students greatly underestimated the percentage of compliance when he was
in uniform—63 percent versus the actual 92 percent (Bickman, 1974).
Less blatant in its connotation than a uniform, but nonetheless effective, is another
kind of attire that has traditionally indicated authority status in our culture: the well-
tailored business suit. It, too, can evoke a telling form of deference from
total strangers. In a study conducted in Texas, for instance, researchers arranged for
a 31-year-old man to violate the law by crossing the street against the traffic light on
a variety of occasions. In half of the cases, he was dressed in a freshly
pressed business suit and tie; on the other occasions, he wore a work shirt and
trousers. The researchers watched from a distance and counted the number of
pedestrians waiting at the corner who followed the man across the street. Like the
children of
Hamlin who crowded after the Pied Piper, 3'/2 times as many people swept into traffic
behind the suited jaywalker (Lefkowitz, Blake, & Mouton, 1955). In this case, though,
the magic came not from his pipe but from his pinstripes.
It is noteworthy that the two types of authority apparel shown by these studies to be
influential—the guard uniform and the business suit—are combined deftly by
confidence artists in a fraud called the bank examiner scheme. The target of the
swindle
can be anyone, but elderly persons living alone are preferred. The con begins when a
man dressed in a properly conservative three-piece business suit appears at the door
of a likely victim. Everything about the con man's clothing speaks of propriety
and respectability. The white shirt is starched; the wingtip shoes glow darkly. His suit
is not trendy but classic: the lapels are three inches wide—no more, no less; the cloth
is heavy and substantial, even in July; the tones are muted—business blue,
business gray, business black.
He explains to his intended victim—perhaps a widow he secretly followed home from
the bank a day or two earlier—that he is a professional bank examiner who, in the
course of auditing the books of her bank, has found some seeming irregularities. He
thinks he has spotted the culprit, a bank officer who is regularly doctoring reports of
transactions in certain accounts. He says that the widow's account may be one of
these, but he can't be sure until he has hard evidence; therefore, he has come to
ask
5A study by Mauro (1984) may explain why the requester in uniform was effective,
even after he had left the scene. Police officers dressed in their traditional uniforms,
versus more conventional clothing (blazers and slacks), were rated by observers as
more fair, helpful, intelligent, honest, and good.
Authority 195
for her cooperation. Would she help out by withdrawing her savings so a team of
examiners and responsible bank officials can trace the record of the transaction as it
passes across the suspect's desk?
Often, the appearance and presentation of "bank examiner" are so impressive that
the victim never thinks to check on their validity with even a simple phone call.
Instead, she drives to the bank, withdraws all her money, and returns home with it to
wait with the examiner for word on the success of the trap. When the message
comes, it is delivered by a uniformed "bank guard" who arrives after closing hours to
announce that all is well—apparently, the widow's account was not one of those being
tampered with. Greatly relieved, the examiner offers gracious thanks and, since the
bank is now conveniently closed, instructs the guard to return the widow's money to
the vault, to save her the trouble of doing so the next day. With smiles and
handshakes all around, the guard leaves with the funds while the examiner expresses
a few more minutes of thanks before he, too, exits. Naturally, as the victim
eventually discovers, the "guard" is no more a guard than the "examiner" is an
examiner.
What they are is a pair of bunco artists who have recognized the capacity of carefully
counterfeited uniforms to click us into mesmerized compliance with "authority."
Trappings
Aside from its function in uniforms, clothing can symbolize a more generalized type of
authority when it serves an ornamental purpose. Finely styled and expensive clothes
carry an aura of status and position, as do similar trappings such as jewelry and
cars. The last of these status symbols is particularly interesting in the United States
where "the American love affair with the automobile" gives it unusual significance.
According to the findings of a study done in the San Francisco Bay area, owners of
prestige autos receive a special kind of deference from others. The experimenters
discovered that motorists would wait significantly longer before honking their horns at
a new, luxury car stopped in front of a green traffic light than at an older, economy
model. The motorists had little patience with the economy-car driver: Nearly all
sounded their horns, and the majority of these did so more than once; two simply
rammed into the rear bumper. So intimidating was the aura of the prestige
automobile, however, that 50 percent of the motorists waited respectfully behind it,
never touching their horns until it moved on (Doob & Gross, 1968).
Later the researchers asked college students what they would have done in such
situations. Compared to the actual findings of the experiment, the students
consistently underestimated the time it would take them to honk at the luxury car.
The male
students were especially inaccurate, feeling that they would honk faster at the
prestige-than at the economy-car driver; of course, the study itself showed just the
opposite. Note the similarity of this pattern to much other research on authority
pressures. As in Milgram's research, the midwestern hospital nurses' study, and the
security guard
196 Chapter 6
uniform experiment, people were unable to predict correctly how they or others would
react to authority influence. In each instance, the effect of such influence was grossly
underestimated. This property of authority status may account for much of its
success as a compliance device. Not only does it work forcefully on us, but it does so
unexpectedly.
DEFENSE
One protective tactic we can use against authority status is. to remove its element of
surprise. Because we typically misperceive the profound impact of authority (and its
symbols) on our actions, we become insufficiently cautious about its presence in
compliance situations. A fundamental form of defense against this problem, therefore,
is a heightened awareness of authority power. When this awareness is coupled with a
recognition of how easily authority symbols can be faked, the benefit will be a
properly guarded approach to situations involving authority influence attempts.
Sounds simple, right? And in a way it is. A better understanding of the workings of
authority influence should help us resist it. Yet, there is a perverse complication— the
familiar one inherent in all weapons of influence: We shouldn't want to resist
authority altogether or even most of the time. Generally, authority figures know what
they are talking about. Physicians, judges, corporate executives, legislative leaders,
and the like have typically gained their positions through superior knowledge
and judgment. Thus, as a rule, their directives offer excellent counsel.
Authorities, then, are frequently experts; indeed, one dictionary definition of an
authority is an expert. In most cases, it would be foolish to try to substitute our less
informed judgments for those of an expert, an authority. At the same time, we
have seen in settings ranging from street corners to hospitals that it would be foolish
to rely on authority direction in all cases. The trick is to be able to recognize without
much strain or vigilance when authority directives are best followed and
when they are not.
Authoritative Authority
Posing two questions to ourselves can help enormously to determine when authority
directives should and should not be followed. The first question to ask when we are
confronted with what appears to be an authority figure's influence attempt is "Is this
authority truly an expert?" This question focuses our attention on two crucial pieces of
information: the authority's credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the
topic at hand. By turning in this simple way to the evidence for authority
status, we can avoid the major pitfalls of automatic deference. An illustration or two
is in order.
Let's examine the highly successful Robert Young Sanka commercial in this light. If,
rather than responding to his "Marcus Welby, M.D." association, people had
Authority 197
focused on Young's actual status as an authority, I am confident that the commercial
would not have had so long and productive a run. Obviously, Robert Young did not
possess a physician's training or knowledge. We all know that. What he did possess,
however, was a physician's title, "M.D." Now, clearly, it was an empty title, connected
to him in our minds through the device of playacting. We all know that, but isn't it
fascinating how, when we are whirring along, what is obvious often doesn't
matter unless we pay specific attention to it?
That is why the "Is this authority truly an expert?" question can be so valuable— it
brings our attention to the obvious. It moves us effortlessly away from a focus on
possibly meaningless symbols toward a consideration of genuine authority
credentials. What's more, the question forces us to distinguish between relevant
authorities and irrelevant authorities. This distinction is easy to forget when the push
of authority pressure is combined with the rush of modern life. The Texas
pedestrians who bustled into city traffic behind a business-suited jaywalker are prime
examples. Even if the man were the business authority his clothes suggested he
might be, he was unlikely to be a greater authority on crossing the street than those
who followed him into traffic.
Still, they did follow, as if his label, authority, overwhelmed the vital difference
between relevant and irrelevant forms. Had they bothered to ask themselves whether
he represented a true expert in the situation, someone whose actions indicated
superior knowledge, I expect the result would have been quite different. The same
process applies to Robert Young, a man who was not without expertise. He had a long
career with many achievements in a difficult business. However, his skills and
knowledge were as an actor, not a doctor. When, in viewing the famous coffee
commercial, we focus on his true credentials, we realize quickly that he should be no
more believed than would be any other successful actor who claims that Sanka is
healthful.
Sly Sincerity
Suppose, though, that we are confronted with an authority who we determine is a
relevant expert. Before submitting to authority influence, we should ask a second
simple question, "How truthful can we expect the expert to be?" Authorities, even the
best
informed, may not present their information honestly to us; therefore, we need to
consider their trustworthiness in the situation. Most of the time we do. We allow
ourselves to be swayed more by experts who seem to be impartial than by those who
have
something to gain by convincing us (Eagly, Wood, & Chaiken, 1978); research has
shown this to be true around the world (McGuinnies & Ward, 1980). By wondering
how an expert stands to benefit from our compliance, we give ourselves another
safety net
against undue and automatic influence. Even knowledgeable authorities in a field will
not persuade us until we are satisfied that their messages represent the facts
faithfully.
When asking ourselves about an authority's trustworthiness, we should keep in mind
a little tactic compliance practitioners often use to assure us of their sincerity: They
will argue somewhat against their own interests. Correctly practiced, this
198 Chapter 6
approach can be a subtle yet effective device for "proving" their honesty. Perhaps
they will mention a small shortcoming in their position or product ("Oh, the
disadvantages of Benson & Hedges"). Invariably though, the drawback will be a
secondary one
that is easily overcome by more significant advantages—"Listerine, the taste you hate
three times a day"; "Avis: We're number two, but we try harder"; "L'Oreal, a bit more
expensive and worth it." By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor
issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then be more believable
when stressing the important aspects of their argument (Hunt, Domzal, & Kernan,
1981; Settle & Gorden, 1974; Smith & Hunt, 1978).
I have seen this approach used with devastating effect in a place that few of us
recognize as a compliance setting—a restaurant. It is no secret that, because of
shamelessly low wages, servers in restaurants must supplement their earnings with
tips.
Leaving the sine qua non of good service aside, the most successful waiters and
waitresses know certain tricks for increasing tips. They also know that the larger a
customer's bill, the larger the amount of money they are likely to receive in a
standard gratuity. In these two regards, then—building the size of the customer's
charge and building the percentage of that charge that is given as a tip—servers
regularly act as compliance agents.
Hoping to find out how they operate, I applied for a position as a waiter at several
fairly expensive restaurants. Without experience, though, the best I could do was to
land a busboy job that, as things turned out, provided me a propitious vantage
point from which to watch and analyze the action. Before long, I realized what the
other employees already knew: that the most successful waiter in the place was
Vincent who somehow arranged for patrons to order more and tip higher. The other
servers
were not even close to him in weekly earnings.
So I began to linger in my duties around Vincent's tables to observe his technique. I
quickly learned that his style was to have no single style. He had a repertoire of
approaches, each ready to be used under the appropriate circumstances. When the
customers were a family, he was effervescent—even slightly clownish— directing his
remarks as often to the children as the adults. With a young couple on a date, he
became formal and a bit imperious in an attempt to intimidate the young man (to
whom he
spoke exclusively) into ordering and tipping lavishly. With an older, married couple,
he retained the formality but dropped the superior air in favor of a respectful
orientation to both members of the couple. Should the patron be dining alone,
Vincent
selected a friendly demeanor—cordial, conversational, and warm.
Vincent reserved the trick of seeming to argue against his own interests for large
parties of 8 to 12 people. His technique was veined with genius. When it was time for
the first person, normally a woman, to order, he went into his act. No matter what
she elected, Vincent reacted identically: His brow furrowed, his hand hovered above
his order pad, and after looking quickly over his shoulder for the manager, he leaned
conspiratorially toward the table to report for all to hear "I'm afraid that is
not as good
Authority 199
tonight as it normally is. Might I recommend instead the___or the___?" (At this
point, Vincent suggested a pair of menu items that were slightly less expensive than
the dish the patron had selected initially.) "They are both excellent tonight."
With this single maneuver, Vincent engaged several important principles of influence.
First, even those who did not take his suggestions felt that Vincent had done them a
favor by offering valuable information to help them order. Everyone felt
grateful, and consequently, the rule for reciprocity would work in his favor when it
came time for them to decide on his gratuity. Besides hiking the percentage of his tip,
Vincent's maneuver also placed him in a favorable position to increase the size
of the party's order. It established him as an authority on the current stores of the
house: he clearly knew what was and wasn't good that night. Moreover—and here is
where seeming to argue against his own interests comes in—it proved him to be a
trustworthy informant because he recommended dishes that were slightly less
expensive than the one originally ordered. Rather than trying to line his own pockets,
he seemed to have the customers' best interests at heart.
To all appearances, he was at once knowledgeable and honest, a combination that
gave him great credibility. Vincent was quick to exploit the advantage of this credible
image. When the party had finished giving their food orders, he would say, "Very
well, and would you like me to suggest or select wine to go with your meals?" As I
watched the scene repeated almost nightly, there was a notable consistency to the
customer's reaction—smiles, nods, and, for the most part, general assent.
Even from my vantage point, I could read their thoughts from their faces. "Sure," the
customers seemed to say, "You know what's good here, and you're obviously on our
side. Tell us what to get." Looking pleased, Vincent, who did know his vintages,
would respond with some excellent (and costly) choices. He was similarly persuasive
when it came time for dessert decisions. Patrons who otherwise would have passed
up the dessert course or shared with a friend were swayed to partake fully by
Vincent's
rapturous descriptions of the baked Alaska and chocolate mousse. Who, after all, is
more believable than a demonstrated expert of proven sincerity?
By combining the factors of reciprocity and credible authority into a single, elegant
maneuver, Vincent was able to inflate substantially both the percentage of his tip and
the base charge on which it was figured. His proceeds from this trick were
6
handsome indeed. Notice, though, that much of his profit came from an apparent lack
of concern for personal profit. Seeming to argue against his financial interests served
those interests extremely well.
This same strategy can be used effectively in a variety of other situations as well. For
example, one researcher found that letters of recommendation sent to the personnel
directors of major corporations produced the most favorable results for job
candidates when the letters contained one unflattering comment about the candidates
in an otherwise wholly positive set of specific remarks (Knouse, 1983).
READER'S REPORT 6.2 From a Young Businessman
About two years ago, I was trying to sell my old car. One day I passed a used car lot
with a sign reading, "We will sell your car for more." Just what I wanted, I thought;
so, I stopped in to talk with the owner. I told him I wanted to get about $3,000
for my old car, and he said he thought I should be asking for a lot more because it
was worth at least $3,500. This came as a real surprise to me because the way their
consignment system worked the larger my asking price for the car, the less money
was
left over for them to keep after they sold it to somebody. By telling me to ask for
more than $3,000, they were cutting off their own profits. Just like your Vincent the
waiter example, they were seeming to argue against their own interests so I'd see
them as trustworthy authorities, but I didn't realize this until much later. Anyway, I
went along with the owner's idea that my car was worth more than I'd first thought,
and set my asking price at $3,500.
After they'd had my car on their lot for a couple of days, they called saying that
someone was really interested in it but that the price was a little too high. Would I be
willing to drop my price by $200 to sell the car? Convinced that they had my
interests at heart, I agreed. The next day they called back to say the buyer's
financing had fallen through and that he couldn't buy the car. In the next two weeks,
I got two more calls from the dealership, each asking me to drop my price $200 to
seal
a sale to some customer. Both times I OK'd it because I still believed they were
trustworthy. But each time, the alleged deal fell through. I was suspicions enough to
call a friend whose family was in the car business. He said this was an old trick
designed to get sellers like me to reduce their asking prices to super low levels, giving
the dealership big profits when they finally sold the car.
So, I went over there and took my car. As I was leaving, they were still trying to
persuade me to let them keep it because they had a "hot prospect" they were sure
would buy it if I'd only knock off another $200.
Author's note: Once again, we see the influence of the contrast principle combining
with the principle of primary interest. In this case, after the $3,500 figure was set,
each $200 nick seemed small in comparison.
SUMMARY
• In the Milgram studies of obedience we can see evidence of strong pressure in our
society for compliance with the requests of an authority. Acting contrary to their own
preferences, many normal, psychologically healthy individuals were willing to
deliver dangerous and severe levels of pain to another person because they were
directed to do so by an authority figure. The strength of this tendency to obey
legitimate authorities comes from systematic socialization practices de-
Authority 201
signed to instill in members of society the perception that such obedience constitutes
correct conduct. In addition, it is frequently adaptive to obey the dictates of genuine
authorities because such individuals usually possess high levels of
knowledge, wisdom, and power. For these reasons, deference to authorities can occur
in a mindless fashion as a kind of decision-making shortcut.
• When reacting to authority in an automatic fashion, there is a tendency to do so in
response to the mere symbols of authority rather than to its substance. Three kinds
of symbols that have been shown by research to be effective in this regard are
titles, clothing, and automobiles. In separate studies investigating the influence of
these symbols, individuals possessing one or another of them (and no other
legitimizing credentials) were accorded more deference or obedience by those they
encountered. Moreover, in each instance, individuals who deferred or obeyed
underestimated the effect of authority pressures on their behaviors.
• It is possible to defend ourselves against the detrimental effects of authority
influence by asking two questions: Is this authority truly an expert? How truthful can
we expect this expert to be? The first question directs our attention away from
symbols and toward evidence for authority status. The second advises us to consider
not just the expert's knowledge in the situation but also his or her trustworthiness.
With regard to this second consideration, we should be alert to the trust-
enhancing tactic in which communicators first provide some mildly negative
information about themselves. Through this strategy they create a perception of
honesty that makes all subsequent information seem more credible to observers.
STUDY QUESTIONS Content Mastery
1. What, in your opinion, is Milgram's most persuasive evidence for his argument that
the willingness of subjects in his experiments to harm another results from a strong
tendency to obey authority figures?
2. What does the research indicate about our ability to recognize the influence of
authority pressures on our actions? Cite evidence to support your position.
3. Which are the three most influential symbols of authority, according to the
research discussed in the chapter? Give examples from your own experience of the
way you have seen at least two of these symbols work.
Critical Thinking
1- In Chapter 1, we came across a disturbing phenomenon called Captainitis, in which
junior members of a flight crew pay no attention to the captain's errors or are
reluctant to mention them. If you were an airplane captain what would you do to
reduce
this potentially disastrous tendency?
202 Chapter 6
2. Why do you suppose the relationship between size and status developed as it has
in human society? Do you see any reason why this relationship might change in the
future? If so, by what processes?
3. Suppose you held a position in an advertising agency in which your job was to
create a TV commercial for a product that had several good features and one weak
feature. If you wanted the audience to believe in the good features, would you
mention the
weak one? If you did mention it, would you do so at the beginning, middle, or end of
the commercial? What is the reason for your choice?
4. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
CHAPTER
7
Scarcity
The Rule of the Few
7_Scarcity-1.jpg
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
The city of Mesa, Arizona, is a suburb in the Phoenix area where I live. Perhaps the
most notable features of Mesa are its sizable Mormon population—next to Salt Lake
City, the largest in the world—and a huge Mormon temple located on exquisitely kept
grounds in the center of the city. Although I had appreciated the landscaping and
architecture from a distance, I had never been interested enough in the temple to go
inside, until the day I read a newspaper article that told of a special inner sector
of Mormon temples to which no one has access but faithful members of the church.
Even potential converts must not see it; however, there is one exception to the rule.
For a few days immediately after a temple is newly constructed, non-members are
allowed to tour the entire structure, including the otherwise restricted section.
The newspaper story reported that the Mesa temple had been recently refurbished
and that the renovations had been extensive enough to classify it as "new" by church
standards. Thus, for the next several days only, non-Mormon visitors could see the
temple area traditionally banned to them. I remember quite well the effect this article
had on me: I immediately resolved to take a tour; but when I phoned a friend to ask
if he wanted to come along, I came to understand something that changed my
decision just as quickly.
After declining the invitation, my friend wondered why / seemed so intent on a visit. I
was forced to admit that, no, I had never been inclined toward the idea of a temple
tour before, that I had no questions about the Mormon religion I wanted
answered, that I had no general interest in church architecture, and that I expected
to find nothing more spectacular or stirring than what I might see at a number of
other churches in the area. It became clear as I spoke that the special lure of the
temple had a sole cause: If I did not experience the restricted sector soon, I would
never again have the chance. Something that, on its own merits, held little appeal for
me had become decidedly more attractive merely because it was rapidly becoming
less available.
LESS IS BEST AND LOSS IS WORST________________________
I count myself far from alone in this weakness. Almost everyone is vulnerable to the
scarcity principle in some form. Take as evidence the experience of Florida State
University students who, like most undergraduates when surveyed, rated the quality
of
their campus cafeteria food unsatisfactory. Nine days later, according to a second
survey, they had changed their minds. Something had happened to make them like
their cafeteria's food significantly better than before. Interestingly, the event that
caused them to shift their opinions had nothing to do with the quality of the food
service, which had not changed a whit. But its availability had. On the day of the
second survey, the students had learned that, because of a fire, they could not eat at
the cafeteria for the next two weeks (West, 1975).
204
Scarcity 205
Collectors of everything from baseball cards to antiques are keenly aware of the
scarcity principle's influence in determining the worth of an item. As a rule, if an item
is rare or becoming rare, it is more valuable. Especially enlightening on the
importance of scarcity in the collectibles market is the phenomenon of the "precious
mistake." Flawed items—a blurred stamp or double-struck coin—are sometimes the
most valued of all, Thus, a stamp carrying a three-eyed likeness of George
Washington is
anatomically incorrect, aesthetically unappealing, and yet highly sought after. There
is instructive irony here: Imperfections that would otherwise make for rubbish make
for prized possessions when they bring along an abiding scarcity.
Since my own encounter with the scarcity principle—that opportunities seem more
valuable to us when they are less available—I have begun to notice its influence over
a whole range of my actions. For instance, I routinely will interrupt an interesting
face-to-face conversation to answer the ring of an unknown caller. In such a
situation, the caller possesses a compelling feature that my face-to-face partner does
not—potential unavailability. If I don't take the call, I might miss it (and the
information it carries) for good. Never mind that the present conversation may be
highly engaging or important—much more than I could reasonably expect an average
phone call to be. With each unanswered ring, the phone interaction becomes less
retrievable. For that reason and for that moment, I want it more than the other
conversation.
People seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the
thought of gaining something of equal value. For instance, college students
experienced much stronger emotions when asked to imagine losses as opposed to
gains in their
romantic relationships or in their grade point averages (Ketelaar, 1995). Especially
under conditions of risk and uncertainty, the threat of potential loss plays a powerful
role in human decision making (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; De Dreu & McCusker,
1997). Health researchers Alexander Rothman and Peter Salovey have applied this
insight to the medical arena, where individuals are frequently urged to undergo tests
to detect existing illnesses (e.g., mammography procedures, HIV screenings, cancer
self-examinations). Because such tests involve the risk that a disease will be found
and the uncertainty that it will be cured, messages stressing potential losses are most
effective (Rothman & Salovey, 1997; Rothman, Martino, Bedell, Detweiler, &
Salovey, 1999). For example, pamphlets advising young women to check for breast
cancer through self-examinations are significantly more successful if they state their
case in terms of what stands to be lost rather than gained (Mey-erwitz & Chaiken,
1987). In a similar vein, physicians' letters to smokers describing the number of years
of life that will be lost if they don't quit are more effective than letters describing the
number of years that will be gained if they do quit (Wilson, Kaplan, &
Schneiderman, 1987; Wilson, Purdon, & Wallston, 1988).
Limited Numbers
With the scarcity principle operating so powerfully on the worth we assign things, it is
natural that compliance professionals will do some similar operating of their
206 Chapter 7
own. Probably the most straightforward use of the scarcity principle occurs in the
"limited-number" tactic in which a customer is informed that a certain product is in
short supply that cannot be guaranteed to last long. During the time I was
researching compliance strategies by infiltrating various organizations, I saw the
limited-number tactic employed repeatedly in a range of situations: "There aren't
more than five convertibles with this engine left in the state. And when they're gone,
that's it, 'cause we're not making 'em anymore." "This is one of only two unsold
corner lots in the entire development. You wouldn't want the other one; it's got a
nasty east-west exposure." "You may want to think seriously about buying more than
one
case today because production is backed way up and there's no telling when we'll get
any more in."
Sometimes the limited-number information was true, sometimes it was wholly false.
In each instance, however, the intent was to convince customers of an item's scarcity
and thereby increase its immediate value in their eyes. I admit to developing a
grudging admiration for the practitioners who made this simple device work in a
multitude of ways and styles. I -was most impressed, however, with a particular
version that extended the basic approach to its logical extreme by selling a piece of
merchandise at its scarcest point—when it seemingly could no longer be had. The
tactic was played to perfection in one appliance store I investigated where 30 to 50
percent of the stock was regularly listed on sale. Suppose a couple in the store
seemed, from a distance, to be moderately interested in a certain sale item. There
are all sorts of cues that tip off such interest—closer-than-normal examination of the
appliance, a casual look at any instruction booklets associated with the
appliance, discussions held in front of the appliance, but no attempt to seek out a
salesperson for further information. After observing the couple so engaged, a
salesperson might approach and say, "I see you're interested in this model here, and
I can
understand why: it's a great machine at a great price. But, unfortunately, I sold it to
another couple not more than 20 minutes ago. And, if I'm not mistaken, it was the
last one we had."
The customers' disappointment registers unmistakably. Because of its lost availability,
the appliance suddenly becomes more attractive. Typically, one of the customers asks
if there is any chance that an unsold model still exists in the store's back
room or warehouse or other location. "Well," the salesperson allows, "that is possible,
and I'd be willing to check. But do I understand that this is the model you want and if
I can get it for you at this price, you'll take it?" Therein lies the beauty
of the technique. In accord with the scarcity principle the customers are asked to
commit to buying the appliance when it looks least available and therefore most
desirable. Many customers do agree to purchase at this singularly vulnerable time.
Thus,
when the salesperson (invariably) returns with the news that an additional supply of
the appliance has been found, it is also with a pen and sales contract in hand. The
information that the desired model is in good supply actually may make some
customers find it less attractive again (Schwarz, 1984), although by then the business
transaction has progressed too far for most people to renege. The purchase decision
made and committed to publicly at an earlier, crucial point still holds. They
buy.
Scarcity 207
7_Scarcity-2.jpg
Time Limits
Related to the limited-number technique is the "deadline" tactic in which some official
time limit is placed on the customer's opportunity to get what the compliance
professional is offering. Much like my experience with the Mormon temple's inner
sanctum, people frequently find themselves doing what they wouldn't much care to
do simply because the time to do so is running out. The adept merchandiser makes
this tendency pay off by arranging and publicizing customer deadlines that generate
interest where none may have existed before. Concentrated instances of this
approach often occur in movie advertising. In fact, I recently noticed that one theater
owner, with remarkable singleness of purpose, had managed to invoke the scarcity
principle three separate times in just five words of copy: "Exclusive, limited
engagement ends soon!" A variant of the deadline tactic is much favored by some
face-to-face, high-pressure sellers because it carries the ultimate decision deadline:
right
now. Customers
208 Chapter 7
are often told that unless they make an immediate decision to buy, they will have to
purchase the item at a higher price later or they will be unable to purchase it at all. A
prospective health-club member or automobile buyer might Learn that the deal
offered by the salesperson is good for that one time only; should the customer leave
the premises, the deal is off. One large child-portrait photography company urges
parents to buy as many poses and copies as they can afford because "stocking
limitations force us to burn the unsold pictures of your children within 24 hours." A
door-to-door magazine solicitor might say that salespeople are in the customer's area
for just a day; after that, they, and the customer's chance to buy their
magazine package, will be long gone. A home vacuum cleaner operation I infiltrated
instructed its sales trainees to claim that, "I have so many other people to see that I
have the time to visit a family only once. It's company policy that even if you
decide later that you want this machine, I can't come back and sell it to you." This, of
course, is nonsense; the company and its representatives are in the business of
making sales, and any customer who called for another visit would be accommodated
gladly. As the company sales manager impressed on his trainees, the true purpose of
the "can't come back" claim has nothing to do with reducing overburdened sales
schedules. It is to "keep the prospects from taking the time to think the deal over by
scaring them into believing they can't have it later, which makes them want it now."
PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE
The evidence, then, is clear. Compliance practitioners' reliance on scarcity as a
weapon of influence is frequent, wide-ranging, systematic, and diverse. Whenever
this is the case with a weapon of influence, we can be assured that the principle
involved has notable power in directing human action. With the scarcity principle, that
power comes from two major sources. The first is familiar. Like the other weapons of
influence, the scarcity principle trades on our weakness for shortcuts. The
weakness is, as before, an enlightened one. We know that the things that are difficult
to get are typically better than those that are easy to get (Lynn, 1989). As such, we
can often use an item's availability to help us quickly and correctly decide on
its quality. Thus, one reason for the potency of the scarcity principle is that, by
following it, we are usually and efficiently right.1 In addition, there is a unique,
secondary source of power within the scarcity principle: As opportunities become
less available, we lose freedoms. And we hate to lose the freedoms we already have.
This desire to preserve our established
'Without wishing to minimize the advantage of this type of shortcut or the dangers
associated with it, I should note that these advantages and dangers are essentially
the same ones that we have examined in previous chapters. Accordingly, I will not
focus on this theme in the remainder of the present chapter, except to say at this
point that the key to properly using the shortcut feature of scarcity is to be alert to
the distinction between naturally occurring, honest scarcity and the fabricated
variety favored by certain compliance practitioners.
Scarcity 209
7_Scarcity-3.jpg
prerogatives is the centerpiece of psychological reactance theory, developed by
psychologist Jack Brehm to explain the human response to diminishing personal
control '. W. Brehm, 1966; S. S. Brehm & J. W. Brehm, 1981). According to the
theory whenever
free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain our freedoms makes us want
them (as well as the goods and services associated with them) significantly ore than
before. Therefore, when increasing scarcity-or anything else—interferes with our
prior access to some item, we will react against the interference by wanting and
trying to possess the item more than we did before.
As simple as the kernel of the theory seems, its shoots and roots curl extensively
through much of the social environment. From the garden of young love to
210 Chapter 7
the jungle of armed revolution to the fruits of the marketplace, impressive amounts of
our behavior can be explained by examining the tendrils of psychological reactance.
Before beginning such an examination, though, it would be helpful to determine
when people first show the desire to fight against restrictions of their freedoms.
Child psychologists have traced the tendency back to the age of 2—a time identified
as a problem by parents and widely known to them as "the terrible twos." Most
parents attest to seeing more contrary behavior in their children around this period.
Two-
year-olds seem masters of the art of resistance to outside pressure, especially from
their parents. Tell them one thing, they do the opposite; give them one toy, they
want another; pick them up against their will, they wriggle and squirm to be put
down; put them down agains: their will, they claw and struggle to be carried.
One Virginia-based study nicely captured the style of terrible twos among boys who
averaged 24 months in age (S. S. Brehm & Weintraub, 1977). The boys accompanied
their mothers into a room containing two equally attractive toys. The toys were
always
arranged so that one stood next to a transparent Plexiglas barrier and the other stood
behind the barrier. For some of the boys, the Plexiglas sheet was only a foot high—
forming no real barrier to the toy behind it, since the boys could easily reach
over the top. For the other boys, however, the Plexiglas was 2 feet high, effectively
blocking their access to one toy unless they went around the barrier. The researchers
wanted to see how quickly the toddlers would make contact with the toys under
these conditions. Their findings were clear. When the barrier was too short to restrict
access to the toy behind it, the boys showed no special preference for either of the
toys; on the average, the toy next to the barrier was touched just as quickly
as the one behind it. When the barrier was high enough to be a true obstacle,
however, the boys went directly to the obstructed toy, making contact with it three
times faster than with the unobstructed toy. In all, the boys in this study
demonstrated
the classic terrible-twos response to a limitation of their freedom: outright defiance.2
Why should psychological reactance emerge at the age of 2? Perhaps the answer has
to do with a crucial change that most children go through about this time. It is then
that they first come to a recognition of themselves as individuals. No longer do
they view themselves as mere extensions of the social milieu but rather as
identifiable, singular, and separate beings (Levine, 1983; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn,
1979; Mahler. Pine, & Bergman, 1975). This developing concept of autonomy brings
naturally with
it the concept of freedom. An independent being is one with choices; a child with the
newfound realization that he or she is such a being will want to explore the length
and breadth of the options. Perhaps we should be neither surprised
2
www.Forbidden-Poker-Secrets.com
The Secret to Online Poker Success
Two-year-old girls in this study did not show the same resistant response to the large
barrier as did the boys. Another study suggested this to be the case not because girls
don't oppose attempts to limit their freedoms. Instead, it appears that they
are primarily reactant to restrictions that come from other persons rather than from
physical barriers (S. S. Brehm, 1981).
Scarcity 211
7_Scarcity-4.jpg
212 Chapter 7
nor distressed, then, when our 2-year-olds strain incessantly against our will. They
have come to a recent and exhilarating perspective of themselves: they are
freestanding human entities. Vital questions of choice, rights, and control now need to
be
asked and answered within their small minds. The tendency to fight for every liberty
and against every restriction might be best understood, then, as a quest for
information. By testing severely the limits of their freedoms (and, coincidentally, the
patience of their parents), the children are discovering where in their worlds they can
expect to be controlled and where to be in control. As we will see later, it is the wise
parent who provides highly consistent information.
Adult Reactance: Love, Guns, and Suds
Although the terrible twos may be the most noticeable age of psychological reactance,
we show the strong tendency to react against restrictions on our freedoms of action
throughout our lives. One other age does stand out, however, as a time when this
tendency takes an especially rebellious form: the teenage years. An enlightened
neighbor once advised me, "If you really want to get something done, you've got
three options: do it yourself, pay top dollar, or forbid your teenagers to do it." Like
the
twos, this period is characterized by an emerging sense of individuality. For
teenagers, the emergence is out of the role of child, with all of its attendant parental
control, and toward the role of adult, with all of its attendant rights and duties.
Not surprisingly, adolescents tend to focus less on the duties than on the rights they
feel they have as young adults. Not surprisingly, again, imposing traditional parental
authority at these times is often counterproductive; teenagers will sneak,
scheme, and fight to resist such attempts at control.
Nothing illustrates the boomerang quality of parental pressure on adolescent behavior
quite so clearly as a phenomenon known as the "Romeo and Juliet effect." As we
know, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet were the ill-fated Shakespearean
characters
whose love was doomed by a feud between their families. Defying all parental
attempts to keep them apart, the teenagers won a lasting union in their tragic act of
twin suicide, an ultimate assertion of free will.
The intensity of the couple's feelings and actions has always been a source of
wonderment and puzzlement to observers of the play. How could such inordinate
devotion develop so quickly in a pair so young? A romantic might suggest rare and
perfect love.
A social scientist, though, might point to the role of parental interference and the
psychological reactance it can produce. Perhaps the passion of Romeo and Juliet was
not initially so consuming that it transcended the extensive barriers erected by
the families. Perhaps, instead, it was fueled to a white heat by the placement of those
barriers. Could it be that had the youngsters been left to their own devices, their
inflamed devotion would have amounted to no more than a flicker of puppy love?
Because the story is a work of fiction, such questions are, of course, hypothetical and
any answer to them speculative. However, it is possible to ask and answer with more
certainty similar questions about modern-day Romeos and Juliets.
Scarcity 213
Do couples suffering parental interference react by committing themselves more
firmly to the partnership and falling more deeply in love? According to a study done
with 140 Colorado teenage couples, that is exactly what they do. The researchers in
this
study found that although parental interference was linked to some problems in the
relationship—the partners viewed one another more critically and reported a greater
number of negative behaviors in the other—that interference also made the pair feel
3
greater love for each other and desire for marriage. During the course of the study,
as parental interference intensified, so did the love experience. When the interference
weakened, romantic feelings actually cooled (Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz, 1972).
READER'S REPORT 7.1
From a Blacksburg, Virginia, Woman
Last Christmas I met a 27-year-old man. I was 19. Although he really wasn't my
type, I went out with him—probably because it was a status thing to date an older
man— but I really didn't become interested in him until my folks expressed their
concern
about his age. The more they got on my case about it, the more in love I became. It
only lasted five months, but this was about four months longer than it would have
lasted if my parents hadn't said anything.
Author's note: Although Romeo and Juliet have long since passed away, it appears
that the Romeo and Juliet effect is alive and well and making regular appearances in
places like Blacksburg, Virginia.
For twos and teens, then, psychological reactance flows across the broad surface of
experience, always turbulent and forceful. For most of the rest of us, the pool of
reactant energy lies quiet and covered, erupting geyserlike only on occasion (Ruback
& Juieng, 1997). Still, these eruptions manifest themselves in a variety of
3The occurrence of the Romeo and Juliet effect should not be interpreted as a
warning to parents to be always accepting of their teenagers' romantic choices. New
players at this delicate game are likely to err often and, consequently, would benefit
from the direction of an adult with greater perspective and experience. In providing
such direction, parents should recognize that teenagers, who see themselves as
young adults, will not respond well to control attempts that are typical of parent-child
relationships. Especially in the clearly adult arena of mating, adult tools of influence
(preference and persuasion) will be more effective than traditional forms of parental
control (prohibitions and punishments). Although the experience of the
Montague and Capulet families is an extreme example, heavy-handed restrictions on
a young romantic alliance may well turn it clandestine, torrid, and sad.
214 Chapter?
fascinating ways that are of interest not only to the student of human behavior but to
lawmakers and policymakers as well
Foe instance, there's the odd case of Kennesaw, Georgia, the town that enacted a law
requiring every adult resident to own a gun and ammunition, under penalty of six
months in jail and a $200 fine. A]l the features of the Kennesaw gun law make it a
prime target for psychological reactance. The freedom that the law restricts is an
important, longstanding one to which most American citizens feel entitled.
Furthermore, the law was passed by the Kennesaw City Council with a minimum of
public input.
Reactance theory would predict that under these circumstances few of the adults in
the town of 5.400 would obey. Yet, the newspaper reports testified that three to four
weeks after passage of the law, firearms sales in Kennesaw were—no pun intended—
booming.
How are we to make sense of this apparent contradiction of the reactance principle?
The answer is by looking a bit closer at those who were buying Kennesaw's guns.
Interviews with Kennesaw store owners revealed that the gun buyers were not town
residents at all, but visitors, many of them lured by publicity to purchase their initial
guns in Kennesaw. Donna Green, proprietor of a shop described in one newspaper
article as a virtual "grocery store of firearms," summed it up: "Business is great.
But they're almost all being bought up by people from out of town. We've only had
two or three local people buy a gun to comply with the law." After passage of the law,
then, gun buying had become a frequent activity in Kennesaw, but not among those it
was intended to cover; they were massively noncompliant. Only those individuals
whose freedom in the matter had not been restricted by the law had the inclination to
live by it.
A similar situation arose a decade earlier several hundred miles south of Kennesaw,
when, to protect the environment, Dade County (Miami), Florida, imposed an
antiphosphate ordinance prohibiting the use—and possession!—of laundry or cleaning
products
containing phosphates. A study done to determine the social impact of the law
discovered two parallel reactions on the part of Miami residents. First, in what seems
a Florida tradition, many Miarnians turned to smuggling. Sometimes with neighbors
and
friends in large "soap caravans," they drove to nearby counties to load up on
phosphate detergents. Hoarding quickly developed and, in the rush of obsession that
frequently characterizes hoarders, families boasted of having 20-year supplies of
phosphate cleaners.
The second reaction to the law was more subtle and more general than the deliberate
defiance of the smugglers and hoarders. Spurred by the tendency to want what they
could no longer have, the majority of Miami consumers came to see phosphate
cleaners
as better products than before. Compared to Tampa residents, who were not affected
by the Dade County ordinance, the citizens of Miami rated phosphate detergents
gentler, more effective in cold water, better whiteners and fresheners, and more
powerful
on stains. After passage of the law, they had even come to believe that phosphate
detergents poured more easily (Mazis, 1975; Mazis, Settle, & Leslie, 1973).
Scarcity 215
This sort of response is typical of individuals who have lost an established freedom;
and recognizing that it is typical is crucial to understanding how psychological
reactance and the principle of scarcity work. When something becomes less available
our freedom to have it is limited, and we experience an increased desire for it. We
rarely recognize, however, that psychological reactance has caused us to want the
item more; all we know is that we want it. To make sense of our heightened desire
for
the item, we begin to assign it positive qualities. In the case of the Dade County
antiphosphate law—and in other instances of newly restricted availability— assuming
a cause-and-effect relationship between desire and merit is a faulty supposition.
Phosphate detergents clean, whiten, and pour no better after they are banned than
they do before. We just assume they do because we find that we desire them more.
Censorship
The tendency to want what has been banned, and, therefore, to presume that it is
more worthwhile is not limited to commodities such as laundry soap; it also extends
to restrictions on information. In an age when the ability to acquire, store, and
manage information increasingly affects access to wealth and power, it is important to
understand how we typically react to attempts to censor or otherwise constrain our
access to information. Although much data exist concerning our reactions to
observing various kinds of potentially censorable material—media violence,
pornography, radical political rhetoric—there is surprisingly little evidence on our
reactions to the censoring of this material. Fortunately, the results of the few studies
that have been done on censorship are highly consistent. Almost invariably, our
response to banned information is to want to receive that information to a greater
extent and to become more favorable toward it than we were before the ban.
(Ashmore,
Ramchandra, & Jones, 1971; Wicklund & Brehm, 1974; Worchel & Arnold, 1973;
Worchel, Arnold, & Baker, 1975; Worchel, 1992).
The intriguing finding about the effects of censored information on an audience is not
that audience members want to have the information more than before; that seems
natural. Rather, it is that they come to believe in the information more, even though
they haven't received it. For example, when University of North Carolina students
learned that a speech opposing coed dorms on campus would be banned, they
became more opposed to the idea of coed dorms (Worchel, Arnold, & Baker, 1975).
Thus, without
ever hearing the speech, the students became more sympathetic to its argument.
This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak
or unpopular position on an issue can get us to agree with that position by arranging
to have their message restricted. The irony is that for such people—members of
fringe political groups, for example—the most effective strategy may not be to
publicize their unpopular views but to get those views officially censored and then to
publicize the censorship. Perhaps the authors of this country's Constitution were
acting as much as sophisticated social psychologists as staunch civil libertarians when
216 Chapter 7
they wrote the remarkably permissive free speech provision of the First Amendment.
By refusing to re&train freedom of speech, they may have been trying to minimize
the chance that new political notions would win support via the irrational course of
psychological reactance.4
Of course, political ideas are not the only kind that are susceptible to restriction.
Access to sexually oriented material is also frequently limited. Although not as
sensational as the occasional police crackdown on "adult" bookstores and theaters,
regular pressure is applied by parents and citizens groups to censor the sexual
content of educational material ranging from sex education and hygiene texts to
school library books. Both sides in the struggle seem to be well intentioned and the
issues
are not simple, as they involve such matters as morality, art, parental control over
the schools, and freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. From a purely
psychological point of view, however, those favoring strict censorship may wish to
examine
closely the results of a study done on Purdue University undergraduates (Zellinger,
Fromkin. Speller, & Kohn, 1974). In this study, students were shown some
advertisements for a novel. For half the students, the advertising copy included the
statement
"a book for adults only, restricted to those 21 years and over"; the other half of the
students read no such age restriction on the book. When the researcher later asked
the students to indicate their feelings toward the book, they discovered the same
pair of reactions we have noted with other bans: Those who learned of the age
restriction wanted to read the book more and believed that they would like the book
more than did those who thought their access to the book was unlimited.
It might be argued that, although these results may be true for a small sample of
sexually inclined college students, they would not apply to students in junior and
senior high schools, where the sex curricula battles are actually being waged. Two
factors make me doubt such an argument. First, developmental psychologists report
that the desire to oppose adult control generally begins quite early in adolescence,
around the start of the teenage years. Nonscientific observers have also noted the
early rise of these strong oppositional tendencies. Shakespeare, scholars tell us,
placed Romeo and Juliet at the ages of 15 and 13 years, respectively. Second, the
pattern of reactions exhibited by the Purdue students is not unique to the topic of sex
and thus can't be attributed to any great preoccupation with sex that college students
may have (Bushman & Stack, 1996). In fact, the pattern is common to externally
imposed restrictions in general. Limiting access to the book had the same effects as
did banning phosphate detergents in Florida or censoring a speech in North Carolina:
The people involved wanted the restricted item more and, as a result, felt more
favorable toward it.
Those who support the official banning of sexually relevant materials from school
curricula have the avowed goal of reducing the orientation of the society, es-
4Evidence that reactance can cause people to take political action they would
otherwise not have taken comes from a study by Heilman (1976). Supermarket
shoppers were most likely to sign a petition favoring federal price controls after they
had been
informed that a federal official had opposed the distribution of the petition.
Scarcity 217
pecially of its youth, toward eroticism. In the light of the Purdue study and in the
context of other research on the effects of imposed restraints, one must wonder
whether official censorship as a means may not be antithetical to the goal. If we are
to believe the implications of the research, then censorship is likely to increase the
desire of students for sexual material and, consequently, to cause them to view
themselves as the kind of individuals who like such material.
The term official censorship usually makes us think of bans on political or sexually
explicit material, yet there is another common sort of official censorship that we don't
think of in the same way, probably because it occurs after the fact. Often in
a jury trial, a piece of evidence or testimony will be introduced, only to be ruled
inadmissible by the presiding judge, who may then admonish the jurors to disregard
that evidence. From this perspective, the judge may be viewed as a censor, though
the
form of the censorship is odd. The presentation of the information to the jury is not
banned—too late for that—it's the jury's use of the information that is banned. How
effective are such instructions from a judge? Is it possible that, for jury
members who feel it is their right to consider all the available information,
declarations of inad-missibility may actually cause psychological reactance, leading
the jurors to use the evidence to a greater extent?
These were some of the questions asked in a large-scale jury research project
conducted by the University of Chicago Law School (Broeder, 1959). One reason the
results of the Chicago jury project are informative is that the participants were
individuals who were actually on jury duty at the time and who agreed to be
members of "experimental juries" formed by the researchers. These experimental
juries then heard tapes of evidence from previous trials and deliberated as if they
were deciding
the case. In the study most relevant to our interest in official censorship, 30 such
juries heard the case of a woman who was injured by a car driven by a careless male
defendant. The first finding of the study was no surprise: When the driver said he
had liability insurance, the jurors awarded his victim an average of $4,000 more than
when he said he had no insurance ($37,000 versus $33,000). Thus, as insurance
companies have long suspected, juries make larger awards to victims if an insurance
company will have to pay. The second finding of the study is the fascinating one,
though. If the driver said he was insured and the judge ruled that evidence
inadmissible (directing the jury to disregard it), the instruction to disregard had a
boomerang effect, causing an average award of $46,000. So, when certain juries
learned that the driver was insured, they increased the damage payment by $4,000.
When other juries were told officially that they must disregard the information, they
used
it still more, increasing the damage payment by $13,000. It appears, then, that even
the proper, official censorship of a courtroom setting creates problems for the censor.
We react to information restriction there, as we do in other areas, by valuing
the banned information more than ever (for additional evidence, see Wolf &
Montgomery, 1977). The realization that we value limited information allows us to
apply the scarcity principle to realms beyond material commodities. The principle
works for
messages, communications, and knowledge, too. Taking this perspective, we can see
that
21 a Chapter 7
information may not have to be censored for MS to value it more; it need only be
scarce. According to the scarcity principle, we will find a piece of information more
persuasive if we think that we can't get it elsewhere. This idea—that exclusive
information is mare persuasive information—is central to the thinking of two
psychologists, Timothy Brock and Howard Fromkin, who have developed a
"commodity theory" analysis of persuasion (Brock, 1968; Fromkin & Brock, 1971).
The strongest support I know for Brock and Fromkin's theory comes from a small
experiment done by a student of mine (Knishinsky, 1982). At the time, the student
was also a successful businessman, the owner of a beef-importing company, who had
returned
to school to get advanced training in marketing. After we talked in my office one day
about scarcity and exclusivity of information, he decided to do a study using his sales
staff. The company's customers—buyers for supermarkets and other retail food
outlets—were called on the phone as usual by a salesperson and asked for a purchase
in one of three ways. One set of customers heard a standard sales presentation
before being asked for their orders. Another set of customers heard the standard
sales
presentation plus information that the supply of imported beef was likely to be scarce
in the upcoming months. A third group received the standard sales presentation and
the information about a scarce supply of beef, too; however, they also learned
that the scarce supply news was not generally available information—it had come,
they were told, from certain exclusive contacts that the company had.5 Thus, the
customers who received this last sales presentation learned that not only was the
availability of the product limited, so too was the news concerning it—the scarcity
double-whammy.
The results of the experiment quickly became apparent when the company
salespeople began to urge the owner to buy more beef because there wasn't enough
in the inventory to keep up with all the orders they were receiving. Compared to the
customers who
got only the standard sales appeal, those who were also told about the future scarcity
of beef bought more than twice as much. The real boost in sales, however, occurred
among the customers who heard of the impending scarcity via "exclusive"
information. They purchased six times the amount that the customers who received
only the standard sales pitch did. Apparently, the fact that the news about the
scarcity information was itself scarce made it especially persuasive.
OPTIMAL CONDITIONS_______________________________
Much like the other effective weapons of influence, the scarcity principle is more
effective at some times than at others. An important practical defense, then, is to find
out when scarcity works best on us. A great deal can be learned from an
experiment
5For ethical reasons, the information provided to the customers was always true.
There was an impending foreign beef shortage and this news had, indeed, come to
the company through its exclusive sources.
Scarcity 219
devised by social psychologist Stephen Worchel and his colleagues (Worchel, Lee, &
Adewole, 1975). The basic procedure used by Worchel and his research team was
simple: Participants in a consumer preference study were given a chocolate chip
cookie from
a jar and asked to taste and rate its quality. For half of the raters, the jar contained
ten cookies; for the other half, it contained just two. As we might expect from the
scarcity principle, when the cookie was one of only two available, it was rated
more favorably than when it was one of ten. The cookie in short supply was rated as
more desirable to eat in the future, more attractive as a consumer item, and more
costly than the identical cookie in abundant supply.
Although this pattern of results provides a rather striking validation of the scarcity
principle, it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. Once again, we see that a
less available item is more desired and valued. The real worth of the cookie
study comes from two additional findings. Let's take them one at a time, as each
deserves thorough consideration.
New Scarcity: Costlier Cookies and Civil Conflict
The first of these noteworthy results involved a small variation in the experiment's
basic procedure. Rather than rating the cookies under conditions of constant scarcity,
some participants were first given ajar of ten cookies that was then replaced by
ajar of two cookies. Thus, before taking a bite, certain of the participants saw their
abundant supply of cookies reduced to a scarce supply. Other participants, however,
knew only scarcity of supply from the onset, as the number of cookies in their
jars was left at two. With this procedure, the researchers were seeking to answer a
question about types of scarcity: Do we value more those things that have become
recently less available to us or those things that have always been scarce? In the
cookie experiment, the answer was plain. The drop from abundance to scarcity
produced a decidedly more positive reaction to the cookies than did constant scarcity.
The idea that newly experienced scarcity is the more powerful kind applies to
situations well beyond the bounds of the cookie study. For example, social scientists
have determined that such scarcity is a primary cause of political turmoil and
violence.
Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this argument is James C. Davies (1962,
1969) who states that we are most likely to find revolutions at a time when a period
of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in
those conditions. Thus, it is not the traditionally most downtrodden people— those
who have come to see their deprivation as part of the natural order of things—who
are especially likely to revolt. Instead, revolutionaries are more likely to be those
who have been given at least some taste of a better life. When the economic and
social improvements they have experienced and come to expect suddenly become
less available, they desire them more than ever and often rise up violently to secure
them. For
instance, it is little recognized that at the time of the American Revolution, the
colonists had the highest standard of living and the lowest taxes in the Western
World. According to historian Thomas Fleming (1997), it wasn't until the
220 Chapter 7
British sought a cut of this widespread prosperity (by levying taxes) that the
Americans revolted.
Davies has gathered persuasive evidence for his novel thesis from a range of
revolutions, revolts, and internal wars, including the French, Russian, and Egyptian
revolutions, as well as such domestic uprisings as Dorr's Rebellion in nineteenth-
century
Rhode Island, the American Civil War, and the urban black riots of the 1960s. In each
case, a time of increasing well-being preceded a tight cluster of reversals that burst
into violence.
The racial conflict in America's cities during the mid-1960s represents a case in point
that many of us can recall. At the time, it was not uncommon to hear the question,
"Why now?" It didn't seem to make sense that within their 300-year history, most
of which had been spent in servitude and much of the rest in privation, American
blacks would choose the socially progressive sixties as the time to revolt. Indeed, as
Davies points out, the two decades after the start of World War II had brought
dramatic political and economic gains to the black population. In 1940, blacks faced
stringent legal restrictions in such areas as housing, transportation and education;
moreover, even when the amount of education was the same, the average black
family
earned only a bit more than half the amount its counterpart white family earned.
Fifteen years later, much had changed. Federal legislation had struck down as
unacceptable formal and informal attempts to segregate blacks in schools, public
places,
housing, and employment settings. Economic advances had been made, too; black
family income had risen from 56 to 80 percent of that of a comparably educated
white family.
Then, according to Davies' analysis of social conditions, this rapid progress was
stymied by events that soured the heady optimism of previous years. First, political
and legal change proved substantially easier to enact than social change. Despite all
the progressive legislation of the 1940s and 1950s, blacks perceived that most
neighborhoods, jobs, and schools remained segregated. Thus, the Washington-based
victories came to feel like defeats at home. For example, in the four years following
the
Supreme Court's 1954 decision to integrate all public schools, blacks were the targets
of 530 acts of violence (direct intimidation of black children and parents, bombings
and burnings) designed to prevent school integration. This violence generated
the perception of another sort of setback in black progress. For the first time since
well before World War II, when lynchings had occurred at an average rate of 78 per
year, blacks had to be concerned about the basic safety of their families. The new
violence was not limited to the education issue, either. Peaceful civil rights
demonstrations of the time were frequently confronted by hostile crowds—and police.
Still another type of downturn occurred within the black populace in economic
progress. In 1962, the income of a black family had slid back to 74 percent of that of
a similarly educated white family. By Davies's argument, the most illuminating aspect
of this 74 percent figure is not that it represented a long-term increase in prosperity
from prewar levels, but that it represented a short-term decline from the flush levels
of the mid-1950s. In 1963 came the Birmingham riots and, in staccato suc-
Scarcity 221
cession, scores of violent demonstrations, building toward the major upheavals of
Watts, Newark, and Detroit.
In keeping with a distinct historical pattern of revolution, blacks in the United
States were more rebellious when their prolonged progress was somewhat curtailed
than they were before it began. This pattern offers a valuable lesson for would-be
rulers: When it comes to freedoms, it is more dangerous to have given for a while
than
never to have given at all. The problem for a government that seeks to improve the
political and economic status of a traditionally oppressed group is that, in so doing, it
establishes freedoms for the group where none existed before. Should these now
established freedoms become less available, there will be an especially hot variety of
hell to pay.
We can look to more recent events in the former Soviet Union for evidence that this
basic rule still holds. After decades of repression, Mikhail Gorbachev began granting
the Soviet populace new liberties, privileges, and choices via the twin polices of
glasnost and perestroika. Alarmed by the direction their nation was taking, a small
group of government, military, and KGB officials staged a coup, placing Gorbachev
under house arrest and announcing on August 19, 1991, that they had assumed
power and
were moving to reinstate the old order. Most of the world imagined that the Soviet
people, known for their characteristic acquiescence to subjugation, would passively
yield as they had always done. Time magazine editor, Lance Morrow, described his
own
reaction similarly: "At first the coup seemed to confirm the norm. The news
administered a dark shock, followed immediately by a depressed sense of resignation:
of course, of course, the Russians must revert to their essential selves, to their own
history. Gorbachev and glasnost were an aberration; now we are back to fatal
normality" (1991).
But these were not to be normal times. For one thing, Gorbachev had not governed in
the tradition of the czars or Stalin or any of the line of oppressive post-War rulers
who had not allowed even a breath of freedom to the masses. He had ceded them
certain rights and choices. And when these now established freedoms were
threatened, the people lashed out the way a dog would if someone tried taking a
fresh bone from its mouth. Within hours of the junta's announcement, thousands
were in the streets
erecting barricades, confronting armed troops, surrounding tanks, and defying
curfews. The uprising was so swift, so massive, so unitary in its opposition to any
retreat from the gains of glasnost that after only three riotous days, the astonished
officials relented, surrendering their power and pleading for mercy from Chairman
Gorbachev. Had they been students of history—or of psychology—the failed plotters
would not have been so surprised by the tidal wave of popular resistance that
swallowed
their coup. From the vantage point of either discipline, they could have learned an
invariant lesson: Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.
The lesson applies to the politics of family as well as country. The parent who grants
privileges or enforces rules erratically invites rebellion by unwittingly establishing
freedoms for the child. The parent who only sometimes prohibits between-meal
sweets may create for the child the freedom to have such snacks. At that point,
222 Chapter 7
7_Scarcity-5.jpg
enforcing the rule becomes a much more difficult and explosive matter because the
child is no longer merely lacking a never-possessed right but is losing an established
one. As we have seen in the case of political freedoms and (especially pertinent to
the present discussion) chocolate chip cookies, people see a thing as more desirable
when it recently has become less available than when it has been scarce all along. We
should not be surprised, then, that research shows that parents who enforce and
6
discipline inconsistently produce generally rebellious children (Lytton, 1979; O'Leary,
1995).
^o avoid this problem, parents needn't be severe or unduly rigid rulekeepers. For
example, a child who unavoidably misses lunch can be given a before-dinner snack
because this would not violate the normal rule against such snacks and,
consequently,
would not establish a general freedom. The difficulty conies when the child is
capriciously allowed a treat on some days but not on others and can see no good
reason for the difference. It is this arbitrary approach that can build perceived
freedoms
and provoke rebellion.
Scarcity 223
READER'S REPORT 7.2
From a New York Investment Manager
I recently read a story in the Wall Street Journal that illustrates the scarcity principle
and how people want whatever is taken away from them. The article described how
Procter & Gamble tried an experiment in upstate New York by eliminating all
savings coupons for their products and replacing the coupons with lower everyday
prices. This produced a big consumer revolt—with boycotts, and protests, and a
firestorm of complaints—even though Procter & Gamble's data showed that only 2
percent of
coupons are used and that, on average during the no-coupon experiment, consumers
paid the same for P&G products with less inconvenience. According to the article, the
revolt happened because of something that P&G didn't recognize: "Coupons, to many
people, are practically an inalienable right." It is amazing how strongly people react
when you try to take things away, even if they never use them.
Author's note: Although Procter & Gamble executives may have been perplexed by
this seemingly irrational consumer response, they inadvertently contributed to it.
Discount coupons have been part of the American scene for over a century, and P&G
had
actively "couponed" its products for decades, thereby helping to establish coupons as
something consumers had a right to expect. And it's always the long-established
rights that people fight most ferociously to preserve.
Competition for Scarce Resources: Foolish Fury
Let's look back to the cookie study for another insight into the way we react to
scarcity. We've already seen from the results of that study that scarce cookies were
rated higher than abundant cookies and that newly scarce cookies were rated higher
still. Staying with the newly scarce cookies now, we find that certain cookies were the
highest rated of all—those that became less available because of a demand for them.
Remember that in the experiment the participants who experienced new scarcity
had been given a jar of ten cookies that was then replaced with a jar of only two
cookies. Actually, the researchers created this scarcity in one of two ways. Certain
participants were told that some of their cookies had to be given away to other
raters in order to supply the demand for cookies in the study. Another set of
participants was told that the number of their cookies had to be reduced because the
researcher had simply made a mistake and given them the wrong jar initially. The
results
showed that those whose cookies became scarce through the process of social
demand liked the cookies significantly more than did those whose cookies became
scarce by mistake. In fact, the cookies made less available through social demand
were rated the
most desirable of any in the study.
This finding highlights the importance of competition in the pursuit of limited
resources. Not only do we want the same item more when it is scarce, we want it
most when we are in competition for it. Advertisers often try to exploit this tendency
in
224 Chapter 7
us. In their ads, we learn that "popular demand" for an item is so great that we must
"hurry to buy"; we see a crowd pressing against the doors, of a store before the start
of a sale; we watch a flock of hands quickly deplete a supermarket shelf of a
product. There is more to such images than the idea of ordinary social proof. The-
message is not just that the product is good because other people think so. but also
that we are in direct competition with those people for it.
The feeling of being in competition for scarce resources has powerful motivating
properties. The ardor of an indifferent lover surges with the appearance of i. rival. It
is often for reasons of strategy, therefore, that romantic partners reveal (or
invent) the attentions of a new admirer. Salespeople are taught to play the same
game with indecisive customers. For example, a realtor who is trying to sell a house
to a "fence-sitting" prospect sometimes will call the prospect with news of another
potential buyer who has seen the house, liked it, and is scheduled to return the
following day to talk about terms. When wholly fabricated, the new bidder is
commonly described as an outsider with plenty of money: "an out-of-state investor
buying for
tax purposes" and "a physician and his wife moving into town" are favorites. The
tactic, called in some circles "goosing 'em off the fence," can work devastatingly well.
The thought of losing out to a rival frequently turns a buyer from hesitant to
zealous,
There is something almost physical about the desire to have a contested item.
Shoppers at big close-out or bargain sales report being caught up emotionally in the
event. Charged by the crush of competitors, they swarm and struggle to claim
merchandise
they would otherwise disdain. Such behavior brings to mind the "feeding frenzy"
phenomenon of wild, indiscriminate eating among animal groups. Commercial
fishermen exploit the phenomenon by throwing a quantity of loose bait to large
schools of certain
fish. Soon the water is a roiling expanse of thrashing fins and snapping mouths
competing for the food. At this point, the fishermen save time and money by dropping
unbated lines into the water, since the crazed fish will bite ferociously at anything,
including bare metal hooks.
There is a noticeable parallel between the ways that commercial fishermen and
department stores generate a competitive fury among those they wish to hook. To
attract and arouse the catch, fishermen scatter some loose bait called chum. For
similar
purposes, department stores holding a bargain sale toss out a few especially good
deals on prominently advertised items called loss leaders. If the bait—of either form—
has done its job, a large and eager crowd forms to snap it up. Soon, in the rush to
score, the group becomes agitated, nearly blinded, by the adversarial nature of the
situation. Human beings and fish alike lose perspective on what they want and begin
striking at whatever is being contested. One wonders whether the tuna flapping on a
dry deck with only a bare hook in its mouth shares the what-hit-me bewilderment of
the shopper arriving home with a load of department store bilge.
Lest we believe that the competition-for-limited-resources fever occurs only in such
unsophisticated forms of life as tuna and bargain basement shoppers, we should
examine the story behind a remarkable purchase decision made in 1973 by Barry
Diller,
who was vice president for prime-time programming of the American Broad-
Scarcity 225
7_Scarcity-6.jpg
casting Company and who went on to head Paramount Pictures and the Fox Televi-
sion Network. He agreed to pay $3.3 million for a single television showing of the
movie The Poseidon Adventure. The figure is noteworthy in that it greatly exceeded
the
highest price ever before paid for a one-time movie showing—$2 million for Pat-ton.
In fact, the payment was so excessive that ABC figured to lose $1 million on the
Poseidon showing. As NBC vice president for special programs, Bill Storke declared at
the tune, "There's no way they can get their money back, no way at all"
226 Chapter 7
How could an astute and experienced businessman like Diller go for a deal that would
produce an expected loss of $1 million"? The answer may lie in a second noteworthy
aspect of the sale: It was the first time that a motion picture had been offered to
the networks in an open-bid auction. Never before had the three networks been
forced to battle for a scarce resource in quite this way. The novel idea of a
competitive auction was the brainchild of the movie's flamboyant showman producer,
Irwin Allen,
and 20th Century-Fox vice president. William Self, who must have been ecstatic
about the outcome. How can we be sure that it was the auction format that generated
the spectacular sales price rather than the blockbluster quality of the movie itself?
Some comments from the auction participants provide impressive evidence. First
came a statement from the victor, Barry Diller, intended to set future policy for his
network. In language sounding like it could have escaped only from between clenched
teeth, he said, "ABC has decided regarding its policy for the future that it would never
again enter into an auction situation." Even more instructive are the remarks of
Diller's rival, Robert Wood, then president of CBS Television, who nearly lost his
head and outbid his competitors at ABC and NBC:
We were very rational at the start. We priced the movie out, in terms of what it could
bring in for us, then allowed a certain value on top of that for exploitation.
But then the bidding started. ABC opened with $2 million. I came back with $2.4. ABC
went $2.8. And the fever of the thing caught us. Like a guy who had lost his mind, I
kept bidding. Finally, 1 went to $3.2; and there came a moment when I said to
myself, "Good grief, if I get it, what the heck am I going to do with it?" When ABC
finally topped me, my main feeling was relief.
It's been very educational. (MacKenzie. 1974, p. 4)
According to interviewer Bob MacKenzie, when Wood said, "It's been very
educational," he was smiling. We can be sure that when ABC's Diller vowed "never
again," he was not. Both men had clearly learned a lesson from the "Great Poseidon
Auction." The
reason that both could not smile as a consequence was that, for one, there had been
a $ 1 million tuition charge. Fortunately, there is a valuable but drastically less
expensive lesson here for us, too. It is instructive to note that the smiling man
was the one who had lost the highly sought-after prize. As a general rule, when the
dust settles and we find losers looking and speaking like winners (and vice versa), we
should be especially wary of the conditions that kicked up the dust—in the
present case, open competition for a scarce resource. As the TV executives learned,
extreme caution is advised whenever we encounter the devilish construction of
scarcity plus rivalry.
Scarcity 227
7_Scarcity-7.jpg
228 Chapter 7
DEFENSE
It is easy enough to feel properly warned against scarcity pressures, but it is
substantially more difficult to act on that warning. Part of the problem is that our
typical reaction to scarcity hinders our ability to think. When we watch as something
we want becomes less available, a physical agitation sets in. Especially in those cases
involving direct competition, the blood comes up, the focus narrows, and emotions
rise. As this visceral current advances, the cognitive, rational side retreats. In
the rush of arousal, it is difficult to be calm and studied in our approach. As CBS-TV
president Robert Wood commented in the wake of his Poseidon adventure, "you get
caught up in the mania of the thing, the acceleration of it. Logic goes right out the
window" (MacKenzie, 1974).
Here's our predicament, then: Knowing the causes and workings of scarcity pressures
may not be sufficient to protect us from them because knowing is a cognitive act, and
cognitive processes are suppressed by our emotional reaction to scarcity
pressures. In fact, this may be the reason for the great effectiveness of scarcity
tactics. When they are employed properly, our first line of defense against foolish
behavior—a thoughtful analysis of the situation—becomes less likely.
If, because of brain-clouding arousal, we can't rely on our knowledge about the
scarcity principle to stimulate properly cautious behavior, what can we use? Perhaps,
in fine jujitsu style, we can use the arousal itself as our prime cue. In this way, we
can turn the enemy's strength to our advantage. Rather than relying on a considered,
cognitive analysis of the entire situation, we might well tune ourselves to just the
internal, visceral sweep for our warning. By learning to flag the experience of
heightening arousal in a compliance situation, we can alert ourselves to the possibility
of scarcity tactics there and to the need for caution.
Suppose, however, we accomplish this trick of using the rising tide of arousal as a
signal to calm ourselves and to proceed with care. What then? Is there any other
piece of information we can use to help make a proper decision in the face of
scarcity?
After all, merely recognizing that we ought to move carefully doesn't tell us the
direction in which to move; it only provides the necessary context for a thoughtful
decision.
Fortunately there is information available on which we can base thoughtful decisions
about scarce items. It comes, once again, from the chocolate chip cookie study,
where the researchers uncovered something that seems strange but rings true
regarding
scarcity: Even though the scarce cookies were rated as significantly more desirable,
they were not rated as any better-tasting than the abundant cookies. So, despite the
increased yearning that scarcity caused (the raters said they wanted to have more
of the scarce cookies in the future and would pay a greater price for them), it did not
make the cookies taste one whit better. Therein lies an important insight. The joy is
not in the experiencing of a scarce commodity but in the possessing of it. It
is important that we not confuse the two. Whenever we confront the scarcity
pressures surrounding some item, we must also confront the question of what it is we
Scarcity 229
want from the item. If the answer is that we want the thing for the social, economic,
or psychological benefits of possessing something rare, then, fine; scarcity pressures
will give us a good indication of how much we would want to pay for it—the less
available it is, the more valuable to us it will be. However, very often we don't want a
thing for the pure sake of owning it. We want it, instead, for its utility value; we want
to eat it or drink it or touch it or hear it or drive it or otherwise use
it. In such cases it is vital to remember that scarce things do not taste or feel or
sound or ride or work any better because of their limited availability.
Although this point is simple it can often escape us when we experience the
heightened desirability that scarce items naturally possess. I can cite a family
example. My brother Richard supported himself through school by employing a
compliance trick
that cashed in handsomely on the tendency of most people to miss that simple point.
In fact, his tactic was so effective in this regard that he had to work only a few hours
each weekend for his money, leaving the rest of the time free for his studies.
Richard sold cars, but not in a showroom or on a car lot. He would buy a couple of
used cars sold privately through the newspaper on one weekend, and adding nothing
but soap and water, would sell them at a decided profit through the newspaper on the
following weekend. To do this, he had to know three things. First, he had to know
enough about cars to buy those that were offered for sale at the bottom of their blue
book price range but that could be legitimately resold for a higher price. Second,
once he got the car, he had to know how to write a newspaper ad that would
stimulate substantial buyer interest. Third, once a buyer arrived, he had to know how
to use the scarcity principle to generate more desire for the car than it perhaps
deserved.
Richard knew how to do all three. For our purposes, though, we need to examine his
craft with just the third.
For a car he had purchased on the prior weekend, he would place an ad in the Sunday
paper. Because he knew how to write a good ad, he usually received an array of calls
from potential buyers on Sunday morning. Each prospect who was interested enough
to
want to see the car was given an appointment time—the same appointment time. So,
if six people were scheduled, they were all scheduled for, say, 2:00 that afternoon.
This little device of simultaneous scheduling paved the way for later compliance
because it created an atmosphere of competition for a limited resource.
Typically, the first prospect to arrive would begin a studied examination of the car and
would engage in standard car-buying behavior, such as pointing out any blemishes or
deficiencies and asking if the price were negotiable. The psychology of the
situation changed radically, however, when the second buyer drove up. The
availability of the car to either prospect suddenly became limited by the presence of
the other. Often the earlier arrival, inadvertently stoking the sense of rivalry, would
assert his right to primary consideration. "Just a minute now, I was here first." If he
didn't assert that right, Richard would do it for him. Addressing the second buyer, he
would say, "Excuse me, but this other gentleman was here before you. So, can
I ask you to wait
230 Chapter 7
on the other side of the driveway for a few minutes until he's finished looking at the
car? Then, if he decides he doesn't want it or if he can't make up his mind, I'll show it
to you."
Richard claims it was possible to watch the agitation grow on the first buyer's face.
His leisurely assessment of the car's pros and cons had suddenly become a now-or-
never, limited-time-only rush to a decision over a contested resource. If he didn't
decide for the car—at Richard's asking price—in the next few minutes, he might lose
it for good to that... that. .. lurking newcomer over there. The second buyer would be
equally agitated by the combination of rivalry and restricted availability. He
would pace about the periphery of things, visibly straining to get at this suddenly
more desirable hunk of metal. Should 2:00 appointment number one fail to buy or
even fail to decide quickly enough, 2:00 appointment number two was ready to
pounce.
If these conditions alone were not enough to secure a favorable purchase decision
immediately, the trap snapped securely shut as soon as the third 2:00 appointment
arrived on the scene. According to Richard, stacked-up competition was usually too
much
for the first prospect to bear. He would end the pressure quickly by either agreeing to
Richard's price or by leaving abruptly. In the latter instance, the second arrival would
strike at the chance to buy out of a sense of relief coupled with a new
feeling of rivalry with that... that... lurking newcomer over there.
All those buyers who contributed to my brother's college education failed to recognize
a fundamental fact about their purchases: The increased desire that spurred them to
buy had little to do with the merits of the car. The failure of recognition
occurred for two reasons. First, the situation that Richard arranged for them produced
an emotional reaction that made it difficult for them to think straight. Second, as a
consequence, they never stopped to think that the reason they wanted the car in
the first place was to use it, not merely to have it. The competition-for-a-scarce-
resource pressures Richard applied affected only their desire to have the car in the
sense of possessing it. Those pressures did not affect the value of the car in terms
of the real purpose for which they had wanted it.
Should we find ourselves beset by scarcity pressures in a compliance situation, then,
our best response would occur in a two-stage sequence. As soon as we feel the tide of
emotional arousal that flows from scarcity influences, we should use that rise
in arousal as a signal to stop short. Panicky, feverish reactions have no place in wise
compliance decisions. We need to calm ourselves and regain a rational perspective.
Once that is done, we can move to the second stage by asking ourselves why we
want the item under consideration. If the answer is that we want it primarily for the
purpose of owning it, then we should use its availability to help gauge how much we
would want to spend for it. However, if the answer is that we want it primarily
for its function (that is, we want something good to drive or drink or eat), then we
must remember that the item under consideration will function equally well whether
scarce or plentiful. Quite simply, we need to recall that the scarce cookies didn't
taste any better.
Scarcity 231
SUMMARY
• According to the scarcity principle, people assign more value to opportunities when
they are less available. The use of this principle for profit can be seen in such
compliance techniques as the "limited number" and "deadline" tactics, wherein
practitioners try to convince us that access to what they are offering is restricted by
amount or time.
• The scarcity principle holds for two reasons. First, because things that are difficult to
attain are typically more valuable, the availability of an item or experience can serve
as a shortcut cue to its quality. Second, as things become less
accessible, we lose freedoms. According to psychological reactance theory, we
respond to the loss of freedoms by wanting to have them (along with the goods and
services connected to them) more than before.
• As a motivator, psychological reactance is present throughout the great majority of
the life span. However, it is especially evident at a pair of ages: the terrible twos and
the teenage years. Both of these times are characterized by an emerging
sense of individuality, which brings to prominence such issues as control, rights, and
freedom. Consequently, individuals at these ages are especially sensitive to
restrictions.
• In addition to its effect on the valuation of commodities, the scarcity principle also
applies to the way that information is evaluated. Research indicates that the act of
limiting access to a message causes individuals to want to receive it more and
to become more favorable to it. The latter of these findings—that limited information
is more persuasive—seems the more surprising. In the case of censorship, this effect
occurs even when the message has not been received. When a message has been
received, it is more effective if it is perceived as consisting of exclusive information.
• The scarcity principle is most likely to hold true under two optimizing conditions.
First, scarce items are heightened in value when they are newly scarce. That is, we
value those things that have become recently restricted more than those that were
restricted all along. Second, we are most attracted to scarce resources when we
compete with others for them.
• It is difficult to steel ourselves cognitively against scarcity pressures because they
have an emotion-arousing quality that makes thinking difficult. In defense, we might
try to be alert to a rush of arousal in situations involving scarcity. Once
alerted, we can take steps to calm the arousal and assess the merits of the
opportunity in terms of why we want it.
STUDY QUESTIONS Content Mastery
1. What is the relationship between the scarcity principle and Brehm's theory of
psychological reactance?
232 Chapter 7
2. What makes the terrible twos and the teenage years especially susceptible to
reactance effects?
3. How might modern social science explain the deaths of Shakespeare's famous
characters, Romeo and Juliet?
4. What are the standard reactions of a potential audience to banned information?
5. What does the chocolate chip cookies study by Worchel, Lee, and Adewole (1975)
indicate about the circumstances that maximize the effects of the scarcity principle?
Critical Thinking
1. During the 1983 and 1984 Christmas holiday seasons, the most sought-after toy in
this country was the Cabbage Patch Kid doll, which was in very limited supply. From
what you know about the scarcity principle, explain why people are reported to have
spent as much as S~'QO at public auctions to secure a doll that cost $25 when
available in stores.
2. Ovid said, "Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting." Explain
his meaning in psychological terms.
3. Recall my brother Richard's approach to selling used cars. He never lied to anyone,
yet some of his friends accused him of questionable ethics. What do you think? Was
his technique ethically acceptable or objectionable? Why?
4. For more than a decade, the major message of a massive advertising campaign for
Virginia Slims cigarettes has been that modern women "have come a long way" from
the old days when they were required by social norms to be subdued, proper, and
obedient. No longer, imply these ads, should a woman have to feel bound by
chauvinistic and outmoded constraints on her independence. No matter what your
view of the basic message, use your knowledge of psychological reactance to help
explain the
following fact: During the lengthy duration of this campaign, the percentage of
cigarette smokers has risen in only one U.S. demographic group—teenage women.
5. How does the ad that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
CHAPTER
8
Instant Influence
Primitive Consent for an Automatic Age
8_Instant_Influence-1.jpg
Every day in every way, I'm getting better.
—EMILE COUE
Every day in every way, I'm getting busier.
—ROBERT CIALDINI
Back in the 1960s a man named Joe Pine hosted a rather remarkable TV talk show
that was syndicated from California. The program was made distinctive by Pine's
caustic and confrontational style with his guests—for the most part, a collection of
exposure-hungry entertainers, would-be celebrities, and representatives of fringe
political or social organizations. The host's abrasive approach was designed to
provoke his guests into arguments, to fluster them into embarrassing admissions, and
generally to make them look foolish. It was not uncommon for Pine to introduce a
visitor and launch immediately into an attack on the individual's beliefs, talent, or
appearance. Some people claimed that Pine's acid personal style was partially caused
by a leg amputation that had embittered him to life; others said, no, that he was just
vituperative by nature.
One evening rock musician Frank Zappa was a guest on the show. This was at a time
in the 1960s when very long hair on men was still unusual and controversial. As soon
as Zappa had been introduced and seated, the following exchange occurred:
Pine: I guess your long hair makes you a girl. Zappa: I guess your wooden leg makes
you a table.
PRIMITIVE AUTOMATICITY
Aside from containing what may be my favorite ad-lib, the dialogue between Pine and
Zappa illustrates a fundamental theme of this book: Very often when we make a
decision about someone or something we don't use all of the relevant available
information. We use, instead, only a single, highly representative piece of the total.
An isolated piece of information, even though it normally counsels us correctly, can
lead us to clearly stupid mistakes—mistakes that, when exploited by clever
others, leave us looking silly or worse.
At the same time, a complicating companion theme has been present throughout this
book: Despite the susceptibility to stupid decisions that accompanies a reliance on a
single feature of the available data, the pace of modern life demands that we
frequently use this shortcut. Recall that early in Chapter 1, we compared this shortcut
to the automatic responding of lower animals, whose elaborate behavior patterns
could be triggered by the presence of a lone stimulus feature—a cheep-cheep sound,
a
shade of red breast feather, or a specific sequence of light flashes. The reason these
lower animals must often rely on such solitary stimulus features of their environments
is their restricted mental capacity. Their small brains cannot begin to
Instant Influence 235
register and process all of the relevant information in their environments. So these
species have evolved special sensitivities to certain aspects of the information.
Because those selected aspects of information are normally enough to cue a correct
response, the system is usually very efficient: Whenever a mother turkey hears
cheep, cheep, click, whirr, out rolls the proper maternal behavior in a mechanical
fashion that conserves much of her limited brainpower for dealing with the other
situations and choices she must face in her day.
We, of course, have vastly more effective brain mechanisms than do mother turkeys,
or any other animal group, for that matter. We are unchallenged in the ability to take
into account a multitude of relevant facts and, consequently, to make good
decisions. Indeed, it is this information-processing advantage over other species that
has helped make us the dominant form of life on the planet.
Still, we have our capacity limitations, too; and, for the sake of efficiency, we must
sometimes retreat from the time-consuming, sophisticated, fully informed brand of
decision making to a more automatic, primitive, single-feature type of responding.
For instance, in deciding whether to say yes or no to a requester, we frequently pay
attention to a single piece of the relevant information in the situation. In preceding
chapters, we have explored several of the most popular of the single pieces of
information that we use to prompt our compliance decisions. They are the most
popular prompts precisely because they are the most reliable ones, those that
normally point us toward the correct choice. That is why we employ the factors of
reciprocation,
consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity so often and so automatically
in making our compliance decisions. Each, by itself, provides a highly reliable cue as
to when we will be better off saying yes instead of no.
We are likely to use these lone cues when we don't have the inclination, time, energy,
or cognitive resources to undertake a complete analysis of the situation. When we are
rushed, stressed, uncertain, indifferent, distracted, or fatigued, we tend to
focus on less of the information available to us. When making decisions under these
circumstances, we often revert to the rather primitive but necessary single-piece-of-
good-evidence approach.1 All this leads to an unnerving insight: With the
sophisticated mental apparatus we have used to build world eminence as a species,
we have created an environment so complex, fast-paced, and information-laden that
we must increasingly deal with it in the fashion of the animals we long ago
transcended.
Sometimes the consequences can be calamitous. Remember the FBI's infamously
misguided assault on Branch Davidian Church headquarters in Waco, Texas?
According to an analysis by U.S. Justice Department consultants, during the
'For evidence of such perceptual and decisional narrowing, see Berkowitz and Buck
(1967); Bodenhausen (1960); Cohen (1978); Easterbrook (1959); Gilbert and
Osborne (1989); Hockey and Hamilton (1970); Keinan (1987); Kruglanski and Freund
(1983);
Mackworth (1965); Mil-gram (1970); Paulus, Martin, and Murphy (1992); Scammon
(1977); Tversky and Kahneman (1974); and Webster, Richter, and Kruglansk (1996).
236 Chapter 8
FBI's 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian's compound, the agency collected so much
information that it had to ignore the vast majority of it. Said Professor Robert Louden,
one of the Justice Department's consultants, "The FBI had such an intelligence
information overload that. .. they just fell back on past practice—and since they didn't
have any experience with religion, they treated it like a standard barricade"
("Overload of Advice," 1993). The disastrous outcome was that, when the FBI finally
attacked, more than 80 sect members died in an act of faith- and fear-fueled self-
emulation.
MODERN AUTOMATICITY
John Stuart Mill, the British economist, political thinker, and philosopher of science,
died over 125 years ago. The year of his death (1873) is important because he is
reputed to have been the last man to know everything there was to know in the
world. Today, the notion that one of us could be aware of all known facts is laughable.
After eons of slow accumulation, human knowledge has snowballed into an era of
momentum-fed, multiplicative, monstrous expansion. We now live in a world where
most
of the information is less than 15 years old. In certain fields of science alone (physics,
for example), knowledge is said to double every eight years. The scientific information
explosion is not limited to such arcane arenas as molecular chemistry or
quantum physics, but extends to everyday areas of knowledge where we strive to
keep ourselves current—health, child development, nutrition. What's more, this rapid
growth is likely to continue, since researchers are pumping their newest findings into
an estimated 400,000 scientific journals worldwide.
Apart from the streaking advance of science, things are quickly changing much closer
to home. According to yearly Gallup polls, the issues rated as most important on the
public agenda are becoming more diverse and are surviving on that agenda for a
shorter time (McCombs & Zhu, 1995). In addition, we travel more and faster; we
relocate more frequently to new residences, which are built and torn down more
quickly; we contact more people and have shorter relationships with them; in the
supermarket,
car showroom, and shopping mall, we are faced with an array of choices among styles
and products that were unheard-of last year and may well be obsolete or forgotten by
next year. Novelty, transience, diversity, and acceleration are acknowledged as
prime descriptors of civilized existence.
This avalanche of information and choices is made possible by burgeoning
technological progress. Leading the way are developments in our ability to collect,
store, retrieve, and communicate information. At first, the fruits of such advances
were
limited to large organizations—government agencies or powerful corporations. With
further developments in telecommunications and computer technology, access to
such staggering amounts of information is falling within the reach of individual
citizens.
Extensive cable and satellite systems provide one route for that information into the
average home.
Instant Influence 237
8_Instant_Influence-2.jpg
The other major route is the personal computer. In 1972, Norman Macrae, an editor
of the The Economist, speculated prophetically about a time in the future:
The prospect is, after all, that we are going to enter an age when any duffer sitting at
a computer terminal in his laboratory or office or public library or home can delve
through unimaginable increased mountains of information in mass-assembly data
banks with mechanical powers of concentration and calculation that will be greater by
a factor of tens of thousands than was ever available to the human brain of even an
Einstein. (Macrae, 1972)
Just one decade later, Time magazine signaled that Macrae's future age had arrived
by naming a machine, the personal computer, as its Man of the Year. Time's editors
defended their choice by citing the consumer "stampede" to purchase small
computers
and by arguing that "America [and], in a larger perspective, the entire world will
never be the same." Macrae's vision is presently being realized. Millions of ordinary
"duffers" are sitting in front of computers with the potential to present and
analyze enough data to bury an Einstein.
Modern day visionaries—like Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft—agree with Macrae,
asserting that we are creating an array of devices capable of delivering a universe of
information "to anyone, anywhere, anytime" (Davidson, 1999). But notice something
telling: Our modern era, often termed The Information Age, has never been called
The Knowledge Age. Information does not translate directly into knowledge. It must
first be processed—accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.
238 Chapter 8
SHORTCUTS SHALL BE SACRED
Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to
process information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the abundance of
change, choice, and the challenge that is characteristic of modern life. More and more
frequently, we will find ourselves in the position of lower animals—with a mental
apparatus that is unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the
outside environment. Unlike the lower animals, whose cognitive powers have always
teen relatively deficient, we have created our own deficiency by constructing a
radically more complex world. The consequence of our new deficiency is the same as
that of the animals' long-standing one: when making a decision, we will less
frequently
engage in a fully considered analysis of the total situation. In response to this
"paralysis of analysis," we will revert increasingly to a focus on a single, usually
reliable feature of the situation.
When those single features are truly reliable, there is nothing inherently wrong with
the- shortcut approach of narrowed attention and automatic responding to a
particular piece of information. The problem comes when something causes the
normally
trustworthy cues to counsel us poorly, to lead us to erroneous actions and
wrongheaded decisions. As we have seen, one such cause is the trickery of certain
compliance practitioners, who seek to profit from the mindless and mechanical nature
of
shortcut responding. If, as it seems, the frequency of shortcut responding is
increasing with the pace and form of modern life, we can be sure that the frequency
of this trickery is destined to increase as well.
What can we do about the expected intensified attack on our system of shortcuts?
More than evasive action, I urge forceful counterassault; however, there is an
important qualification. Compliance professionals who play fairly by the rules of
shortcut
responding are not to be considered the enemy; to the contrary, they are our allies in
an efficient and adaptive process of exchange. The proper targets for counter-
aggression are only those individuals who falsify, counterfeit, or misrepresent the
evidence that naturally cues our shortcut responses.
Let's take an illustration from what is perhaps our most frequently used shortcut.
According to the principle of social proof, we often decide to do what other people like
us are doing. It makes all kinds of sense since, most of the time, an action
that is popular in a given situation is also functional and appropriate. Thus, an
advertiser who, without using deceptive statistics, provides information that a brand
of toothpaste is the largest selling has offered us valuable evidence about the
quality of the product and the probability that we will like it. Provided that we are in
the market for a tube of good toothpaste, we might want to rely on that single piece
of information, popularity, to decide to try it. This strategy will likely
steer us right, will unlikely steer us far wrong, and will conserve our cognitive
energies for dealing with the rest of our increasingly information-laden, decision-
overloaded environment. The advertiser who allows us to use effectively this efficient
strategy is hardly our antagonist but rather our cooperating partner.
Instant Influence 239
The story becomes quite different, however, when a compliance practitioner tries to
stimulate a shortcut response by giving us a fraudulent signal for it. The enemy is an
advertiser who seeks to create an image of popularity for a brand of toothpaste
by, say, constructing a series of staged "unrehearsed interview" commercials in which
an array of actors posing as ordinary citizens praises the product. Here, where the
evidence of popularity is counterfeit, we, the principle of social proof, and our
shortcut response to it, are all being exploited. In an earlier chapter, I recommended
against the purchase of any product featured in a faked "unrehearsed interview" ad
and urged that we send the product manufacturers letters detailing the reason and
suggesting that they dismiss their advertising agency. I also recommended extending
this aggressive stance to any situation in which a compliance professional abuses the
principle of social proof (or any other weapon of influence) in this manner. We
should refuse to watch TV programs that use canned laughter. If we see a bartender
begin a shift by salting the tip jar with a bill or two, that bartender should get no tip
from us. If, after waiting in line outside a nightclub, we discover from the
amount of available space that the wait was designed to impress passersby with false
evidence of the club's popularity, we should leave immediately and announce our
reason to those still in line. In short, we should be willing to use boycott, threat,
confrontation, censure, tirade, nearly anything, to retaliate.
I don't consider myself pugnacious by nature, but I actively advocate such belligerent
actions because in a way I am at war with the exploiters. We all are. It is important to
recognize, however, that their motive for profit is not the cause for
hostilities; that motive, after all, is something we each share to an extent. The real
treachery, and what we cannot tolerate, is any attempt to make their profit in a way
that threatens the reliability of our shortcuts. The blitz of modern daily life
demands that we have faithful shortcuts, sound rules of thumb in order to handle it
all. These are no longer luxuries; they are out-and-out necessities that figure to
become increasingly vital as the pulse quickens. That is why we should want to
retaliate whenever we see someone betraying one of our rules of thumb for profit. We
want that rule to be as effective as possible. To the degree that its fitness for duty is
regularly undercut by the tricks of a profiteer, we naturally will use it
less and will be less able to cope efficiently with the decisional burdens of our day.
That we cannot allow without a fight. The stakes are far too high.
SUMMARY
• Modern life is different from any earlier time. Because of remarkable technological
advances, information is burgeoning, choices and alternatives are expanding,
knowledge is exploding. In this avalanche of change and choice, we have had to
adjust.
One fundamental adjustment has come in the way we make decisions. Although we
all wish to make the most thoughtful, fully considered decision possible in any
situation, the changing form and accelerating pace of
240 Chapter 8
modern life frequently deprive us of the proper conditions for such a careful analysis
of all the relevant pros and cons. More and more, we are forced to resort to another
decision-making approach—a shortcut approach in which the decision to comply (or
agree or believe or buy) is made on the basis of a single, usually reliable piece of
information. The most reliable and, therefore, most popular such single triggers for
compliance are those described throughout this book. They are commitments,
opportunities for reciprocation, the compliant behavior of similar others, feelings of
liking or friendship, authority directives, and scarcity information.
• Because of the increasing tendency for cognitive overload in our society, the
prevalence of shortcut decision making is likely to increase proportionately.
Compliance professionals who infuse their requests with one or another of the
triggers of
influence are more likely to be successful. The use of these triggers by practitioners is
not necessarily exploitative. It only becomes so when the trigger is not a natural
feature of the situation but is fabricated by the practitioner. In order to
retain the beneficial character of shortcut response, it is important to oppose such
fabrication by all appropriate means.
STUDY QUESTIONS Critical Thinking
1. Pick any three of the weapons of influence described in this book. Discuss in each
case how the weapon could be used to enhance compliance in what you would
consider an exploitative manner and in what you would consider a nonexploitative
manner.
2. For each of the three weapons of influence you choose, describe the way you would
defend yourself should the weapon be used against you in an exploitative fashion.
3. Describe the three most important lessons that you have learned about the
influence process from this book.
References
Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing brand equity. New York: Free Press.
Abrams, D., Wetherell, M., Cochrane, S., Hogg, M. A., & Turner, J. C. (1990).
Knowing what
to think by knowing who you are. British Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 97-119.
Adams, G. R. (1977). Physical attractiveness research: Toward a developmental
social psychology of beauty. Human Development, 20, 217-239.
Allgeier, A. R., Byrne, D., Brooks, B., & Revnes, D. (1979). The waffle phenomenon:
Negative evaluations of those who shift attitudinally. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 9, 170-182.
Allison, S. T., Mackie, D. M., Muller, M. M., & Worth, L. T. (1993). Sequential
correspondence biases and perceptions of change. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 19, 151-157.
Allison, S. T., & Messick, D. M. (1988). The feature-positive effect, attitude strength,
and degree of perceived concensus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14,
231-241. Altheide, D. L., & Johnson, J. M. (1977). Counting souls: A study of
counseling at evangelical crusades. Pacific Sociological Review, 20, 323-348.
Anderson, S. M., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1984). On resisting social influence. Cultic
Studies Journal, 1, 196-219.
Ardry, R. (1970). The social contract. New York; Atheneum. Aronson, E. (1975,
February). The jigsaw route to learning and liking. Psychology Today,
pp. 43-50.
Aronson, E., Bridgeman, D. L., & Geffner, R. (1978a). The effects of a cooperative
classroom structure on students' behavior and attitudes. In D. Bar-Tal & L. Saxe
(Eds.), Social psychology of education: Theory and research. New York: Halstead
Press.
Aronson, E., Bridgeman, D. L., & Geffner, R. (1978b). Interdependent interactions
and proso-
cial behavior. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 12, 16-27. Aronson,
E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181. Aronson, E., Stephan C.,
Sikes, J., Blaney, N., & Snapp, M. (1978). The jigsaw classroom.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Asch, S. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 41, 258-290.
Ashmore, R. D., Ramchandra, V., & Jones, R. A. (1971, April). Censorship as an
attitude change induction. Paper presented at the meeting of the Eastern
Psychological Association, New York.
Asimov, I. (1975, August 30). The Miss America pagent. TV Guide. Bachman, W., &
Katzev, R. (1982). The effects on noncontingent free bus tickets and personal
commitment on urban bus ridership. Transportation Research, 16A(2), 103-108.
Bandura, A., Grusec, J. E., & Menlove, F. L. (1967). Vicarious extinction of avoidance
behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 16-23.
Bandura, A., & Menlove, F. L. (1968). Factors determining vicarious extinction of
avoidance behavior through symbolic modeling. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 8, 99-108. Barker, J. (1998, May 10). Judges on junkets. The Arizona
Republic,
pp. Al, A6, A7.
242 Refetences
Benson, P L., Kai£benic, S. A., & Lerner, R. M. (1976). Pretty pleases: The effects of
physical attracth'eness on race, ses, and receiving help. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology: 12, 409-415.
Benton, A. A,, KeDey, H. H., & LieUing, B. (1972). Effects of extremity of offers and
concession rate on thg outcomes of bargaining. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 24, 73-83.
Berkowitz, L., & Buck, R. W. (1967). Impulsive aggression: Reactivity to aggressive
cues under emotional arousal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35,
415^-24.
Berry, S. H., & Kanouse, D. E. (1987). Physician response to a mailed survey: An
experiment in timing of payment. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51, 102-114.
Berscheid, E.,&Walster [Hatfield], E. (1978). Interpersonal attraction. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Bickman, L. (1974). The social power of a uniform. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 4, 47-61.
Bierley, C., McS weeney, F K.. & Vannieuwkerk, R. (1985). Ckssical conditioning
preferences of stimuli. Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 316-323.
Blake, R., & Mouton, I. (1979). Intergroup problem solving in organizations: From
theory to practice. In W. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.). The social psychology of
intergroup relations. Monrerey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 398^13.
Blass, T. (1999) The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know
about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 955-978.
Bodenhausen, G. V, (1990). Stereotypes as judgmental heuristics: Evidence of
circadian variations in discrimination. Psychological Science. 1, 319-322.
Bodenhausen, G. V., Macrae, C. N., & Sherman, J. W. (1999). On the dialectics of
discrimination: Dual processes in social sterotyping. In S, Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.),
Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp. 271-290). New York: Guilford.
Bollen, K. A., & Phillips, D. P (1982). Imitative suicides: A national study of the effects
of television news stories. American Sociological Review, 47, 802-809.
Bernstein, R. F, Leone, D. R., & Galley, D. J. (1987). The generalizability of subliminal
mere exposure effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1070-1079.
Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press.
Brehm, S. S. (1981). Psychological reactance and the attractiveness of unattainable
objects: Sex differences in children's responses to an elimination of freedom. Sex
Roles, 7, 937-949.
Brehm, S. S. & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance, New York: Academic
Press.
Brehm, S. S., & Weintraub, M. (1977). Physical barriers and psychological reactance:
Two-year-olds' responses to threats to freedom. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 35, 830-836.
Brewer, M. (1979). In-group bias in the minimal intergroup situation: A cognitive-
motivational analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 307-324.
Brock, T. C. (1968). Implications of commodity theory for value change. In A. G.
Greenwald, T. C. Brock, & T. M. Ostrom (Eds.) Psychological foundations of attitudes.
New York: Academic Press.
Brockner, J., & Rubin, J. Z. (1985). Entrapment in escalating conflicts: A social
psychological analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.
References 243
Breeder, D. (1959). The University of Chicago jury project. Nebraska Law Review, 38,
744-760.
Browns tein, R., & Katzev, R. (1985). The relative effectiveness of three compliance
techniques in eliciting donations to a cultural organization. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 15. 564-574.
Bruner, J. S., & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in
perception.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 42, 33^14.
Budesheim, T. L., & DePaola, S. J. (1994). Beauty or the beast? The effects of
appearance, personality, and issue information on evaluations of political candidates.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 339-348.
Burger, J. M., & Petty, R. E. (1981). The low-ball compliance technique: Task or
person commitment? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 492-500.
Burgess, T, & Sales, S. (1971). Attitudinal effects of "mere exposure": A reevaluation.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7, 461-472.
Burn, S. W. (1991). Social psychology and the stimulation of recycling behaviors: The
block leader approach. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, 611-629.
Bushman, B. J. (1988). The effects of apparel on compliance. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 14, 459-467.
Bushman, B. J., & Stack, A. D. (1996). Forbidden fruit versus tainted fruit: Effects of
warning labels on attraction to television violence. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Applied, 2, 207-226.
Buss, D. M., & Kenrich, D. T. (1998). Evolutionary social psychology. In D. T. Gilbert,
S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey, (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed.) (Vol. 2,
pp. 982-1026). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Byrne, D., Rasche, L., & Kelley, K. (1974). When "I like you" indicates disagreement.
Journal of Research in Personality, 8, 207-217.
Carducci, B. J., Deuser, P. S., Bauer, A., Large, M., & Ramaekers, M. (1989). An
application of the foot-in-the-door technique to organ donation. Journal of Business
and Psychology, 4, 245-249.
Castellow, W. A., Wuensch, K. L., & Moore, C. H. (1990). Effects of physical
attractiveness of the plaintiff and defendant in sexual harassment judgments. Journal
of Social Behavior and Personality, 5, 547-562.
Chaiken, S. (1979). Communicator physical attractiveness and persuasion. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1387-1397.
Chaiken, S. (1986). Physical appearance and social influence. In C. P. Herman, M. P.
Zanna, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Physical appearance, stigma, and social behavior: The
Ontario Symposium (Vol. 3, pp. 143-177). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chaiken, S., & Trope, Y. (Eds.) (1999). Dual-process theories in social psychology.
New York: Guilford.
Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-
behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76,
893-910.
Chen, S., & Chaiken, S. (1999). The heuristic-systematic model in its broader
context. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process theories in social psychology
(pp. 73-96). New York: Guilford.
Church, A. H. (1993). Estimating the effect of incentives on mail survey response
rates. Public Opinion Quarterly, 57, 62-79.
244 References
Cialdini, R. B., & Ascani, K. (1976). Test of a concession procedure for inducing
verbal, behavioral, and further compliance with a request to give blood. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 61, 295-300.
Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thome, A., Walker, M. R. Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R.
(1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 34, 366-375.
Cialdini, R. B., Cacioppo, J. T., Bassett, R., & Miller, J. A. (1978). Low-ball procedure
for producing compliance: Commitment then cost. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 36, 463^76.
Cialdini, R. B., Vincent, J. E., Lewis, S. K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B. L.
(1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-
face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 206-215.
Cioffi, D., & Garner, R. (1996). On doing the decision: The effects of active versus
passive choice on commitment and self-perception. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 22, 133-147.
Clark, M. S. (1984). Record keeping in two types of relationships. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 549-557.
Clark, M. S., & Mills. J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal
relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 12-24.
Clark, M. S., Mills, J. R,, & Corcoran, D. M. (1989). Keeping track of needs and inputs
of friends and strangers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 533-542.
Clark, M. S., Mills, J., & Powell, M. (1986). Keeping track of needs in communal and
exchange relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 333-338.
Clark, M. S., & Waddell, B. (1985). Perceptions of exploitation in communal and
exchange relationships. Journal of Personal and Social Relationships, 2, 403^18.
Clark, R. D., Ill, & Word, L. E. (1972). Why don't bystanders help? Because of
ambiguity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 392^-00.
Clark, R. D., Ill, & Word, L. E. (1974). Where is the apathetic bystander? Situational
characteristics of the emergency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29,
279-287.
Cohen, A. (1999, May 31). Special report: Troubled kids. Time, p. 38.
Cohen, M., & Davis, N. (1981). Medication errors: Causes and prevention.
Philadelphia: G. F. Stickley Co.
Cohen, S. (1978). Environmental load and the allocation of attention. In A. Baum, J.
E. Singer, & S. Valins (Eds.), Advances in environmental psychology (Vol. 1). New
York: Halstead Press.
Collins, J. (1998, November 9). Distinct? Or extinct? Time, p. 110.
Conway, M., & Ross M. (1984). Getting what you want by revising what you had.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 738-748.
Cook, D. (1984). Charles de Gaulle: A biography. New York: Putnam.
Cook, S. W. (1990). Toward a psychology of improving justice. Journal of Social
Issues, 46, 147-161.
Craig, K. D., & Prkachin, K. M. (1978). Social modeling influences on sensory decision
theory and psychophysiological indexes of pain. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 36, 805-815.
Darley, J. M., & Latane, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion
of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377-383.
Davidson, P. (1999, June 16). Gates speaks softly of antitrust laws. USA Today, p.
B2.
Davies, J. C. (1962). Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review,
27, 5-19.
References 245
Davies, J. C. (1969). The J-curve of rising and declining satisfactions as a cause of
some great revolutions and a contained rebellion. In H. D. Graham & T. R. Gurr
(Eds.), Violence in America. New York: Signet Books.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in
human behavior. New York: Plenum.
DeDreu, C. K. W., & McCusker, C. (1997). Gain-loss frames and cooperation in two-
person social dilemmas: A transformational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 72, 1093-1106
De Paulo, B. M., Nadler, A., & Fisher, J. D. (Eds.). (1983). New directions in helping:
Vol. 2, Help seeking. New York: Academic Press.
Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social
influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51,
629-636.
DeVries, D. L., & Slavin, R. E. (1978). Teams-games-toumaments (TGT): Review
often classroom experiments. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 12,
28-38.
Dion, K. K. (1972). Physical attractiveness and evaluation of children's
transgressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 207-213.
Doob, A. N., & Gross, A. E. (1968). Status of frustrator as an inhibitor of horn-
honking response. Journal of Social Psychology, 76, 213-218.
Downs, A. C., & Lyons, P. M. (1990). Natural observations of the links between
attractiveness and initial legal judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
17, 541-547.
Drachman, D., deCarufel, A., & Inkso, C. A. (1978). The extra credit effect in
interpersonal attraction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14, 458^67.
Driscoll, R., Davis, K. E., & Lipetz, M. E. (1972). Parental interference and romantic
love: The Romeo and Juliet effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24,
1-10.
Dukes, W. F., & Bevan, W. (1952). Accentuation and response variability in the
perception of personally relevant objects. Journal of Personality, 20, 457-465.
Eagly, A. H., Ashmore, R. D., Makhijani, M. G., & Longo, L. C. (1991). What is
beautiful is good, but... : A meta-analytic review of research on the physical
attractiveness stereotype. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 109-128.
Eagly, A. H., Wood, W, & Chaiken, S. (1978). Causal inferences about communicators
and their effect on opinion change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36,
424-435.
Easterbrook, J. A. (1959). The effects of emotion on cue utilization and the
organization of behavior. Psychological Review, 66, 183-201.
Efran, M. G., & Patterson, E. W. J. (1976). The politics of appearance. Unpublished
manuscript, University of Toronto.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1975). Ethology: The biology of behavior (2d ed.). New York: Holt,
Rine-hart & Winston.
Emswiller, T., Deaux, K., & Willits, J. E. (1971). Similarity, sex, and requests for small
favors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1, 284-291.
Eron, L. D., & Huesmann, L. R. (1985). The role of television in the development of
proso-cial and antisocial behavior. In D. Olweus, M. Radke-Yarrow, & J. Block (Eds.),
Development ofprosocial and antisocial behavior. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Evans, F. B. (1963). American Behavioral Scientists, 6(1), 76-79.
Fazio, R. H., Blascovich, J., & Driscoll, D. (1992). On the functional value of attitudes.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 388^01.
Fazio, R. H., Sherman, S. J., & Herr, P. M. (1982). The feature-positive effect in the
self-perception process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 404^11.
246 References
Feinberg, R. A. (1986). Credit cards as spending facilitating stimuli Journal of
Consumer Research, 13, 348-356. Feinberg, R. A. (1990). The social nature of the
classical conditioning phenomena in people.
Psychological Reports, 67, 331-334. Fenigstein. A., Scheier, M. F.. & Buss, A. H.
(1975). Public and private self-consciousness:
Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7,
117-140. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford
University Press. Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1964). When
prophecy fails. New York: Harper
&Row.
Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation:
Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P.
Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1-74). New
York:
Academic Press. Fleming, T. (1997, November 23). 13 things you never knew about
the American Revolution.
Parade, pp. 14-15.
For women, all's pheromones in love, war. (1999, March 7). The Arizona Republic, p.
E19. Foster, E. (1991, January 28). Lobbyists circle over capitol. The Arizona
Republic, pp. Al, A6. Foushee, M. C. (1984). Dyads and triads at 35,000 feet: Factors
affecting group process and
aircraft performance. American Psychologist, 39, 885-893.
Fox, M. W. (1974). Concepts in ethology: Animal and human behavior. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Freedman, J. L. (1965). Long-term behavioral effects of cognitive dissonance. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, I, 145-155. Freedman, J. L., & Eraser, S. C.
(1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the door
technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 195-203. Frenzen, J. R., &
Davis, H. L. (1990). Purchasing behavior in embedded markets. Journal of
Consumer Research, 17, 1-12.
Fromkin, H. L., & Brock, T. C. (1971). A commodity theory analysis of persuasion.
Representative Research in Social Psychology, 2, 47-57.
Fuller, R. G. C., & Sheehy-Skeffington, A. (1974). Effects of group laughter on
responses to humorous materials: A replication and extension. Psychological Reports,
35, 531-534. Furnham, A. (1996). Factors relating to the allocation of medical
resources. Journal of Social
Behavior and Personality, 11, 615-624.
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. R, Rust, M. C., Neir, J. A., Banker, B. S., Ward, C. M.,
Mottola, G. R., & Houlette, M. (1999). Reducing intergroup bias: Elements of
intergroup cooperation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 388^102.
Ganzberg, M. (1964, March 27). New York Times, p. 1. Garner, R. L. (1999). What's
in a name: Persuasion perhaps? Unpublished manuscript, Sam
Houston State University. George, W. H., Gournic, S. J., & McAfee, M. P (1988).
Perceptions of postdrinking female
sexuality. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 1295-1317. Gerard, H. B. (1983).
School segregation: The social science role. American Psychologist, 38,
869-877. Gerard, H. B., & Mathewson, G. C. (1966). The effects of severity of
initiation on liking for
a group: A replication. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 278-287.
Gergen, K., Ellsworth, P., Maslach, C., & Seipel, M. (1975). Obligation, donor
resources, and reactions to aid in three cultures. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 31, 390-400.
References 247
Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models
of bounded rationality. Psychological Review, 103, 650-669.
Gilbert, D. T., & Osborne, R. E. (1989). Thinking backward: Some curable and
incurable consequences of cognitive business. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 57, 940-949.
Glass, S. (1997, December). The Hollywood hustle. George, pp. 90-94.
Gleick, E. (1997, February 10). Marine blood sports. Time, p. 30.
Goethals, G. R., & Reckman, R, F. (1973). The perception of consistency in attitudes.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 9, 491-501.
Gonzales, M. H., Davis, J. M., Loney, G. L., Lukens, C. K., & Junghans, C. M. (1983).
Interactional approach to interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 44, 1192-1197.
Goodenough, U. W. (1991). Deception by pathogens. American Scientist, 79, 344-
355.
Gordon, R. E., & Gordon, K. (1963). The blight on the ivy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Gorn, G. J. (1982). The effects of music in advertising on choice behavior: A classical
conditioning approach. Journal of Marketing, 46, 94—101.
Gould, M. S., & Shaffer, D. (1985). The impact of suicide in television movies. The
New England Journal of Medicine, 315, 690-694.
Green, F. (1965). The "foot-in-the-door" technique. American Salesmen, 10, 14-16.
Greenberg, M. S., & Shapiro, S. P. (1971). Indebtedness: An adverse effect of asking
for and receiving help. Sociometry, 34, 290-301.
Greenwald, A. R, Carnot, C. G., Beach, R., & Young, B. (1987). Increasing voting
behavior by asking people if they expect to vote. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72,
315-318.
Gregory, S. W., & Webster, S. (1996). A nonverbal signal in voices of interview
partners effectively predicts communication accommodation and social status
perceptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1231-1240.
Gruner, S. J. (1996, November). Reward good consumers. Inc., p. 84.
Grush, J. E., (1980). Impact of candidate expenditures, regionality, and prior
outcomes on the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 38, 337-347.
Grush, J. E., McKeough, K. L., & Ahlering, R. F. (1978). Extrapolating laboratory
exposure experiments to actual political elections. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 36, 257-270.
Hammermesh, D., & Biddle, J. E. (1994). Beauty and the labor market. The American
Economic Review, 84, 1174-1194.
Harper, C. R., Kidera, C. J., & Cullen, J. F. (1971). Study of simulated airplane pilot
inca-pacitation: Phase II, subtle or partial loss of function. Aerospace Medicine, 42,
946-948.
Heider, F. (1946). Attitudes and cognitive organization. Journal of Psychology, 21,
107-112.
Heilman, M. E. (1976). Oppositional behavior as a function of influence attempt
intensity and retaliation threat. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 574-
578.
Higgins, E. T., Lee, J., Kwon, J., & Trope, Y. (1995). When combining intrinsic
motivations undermines interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68,
749-767.
Higham, P. A., & Garment, D. W. (1992). The rise and fall of politicians. Canadian
Journal of Behavioral Science, 404-409.
Hill, G. W. (1982). Group versus individual performance: Are N + 1 heads better than
one? Psychological Bulletin, 91, 517-539.
Hockey, G. R. J., & Hamilton, P. (1970). Arousal and information selection in short-
term memory. Nature, 226, 866-867.
248 References
Hofling, C. K., Brotzman, E., Dalrymple, S., Graves, N., & Pierce, C. M. (1966). An
experimental study of nurse-physician relationships. Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease, 143, 171-180.
Holldobler, B. (1971). Communication between ants and their guests. Scientific
American, 198, 68-76.
Hornstein, H. A., Fisch, E., & Holmes, M. (1968). Influence of a model's feeling about
his behavior and his relevance as a comparison other on observers' helping behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 222-226.
Howard, D, J. (1990). The influence of verbal responses to common greetings on
compliance behavior: The foot-in-the-mouth effect. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 20, 1185-1196.
Howard, D. J., Gengler, C., & Jain, A. (1995). What's in a nanle? A complimentary
means of persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research, 22, 200-211.
Howard, D. J., Gengler. C., & Jain, A. (1997). The name remembrance effect. Journal
of Social Behavior and Personality, 12, 801-810.
Hunt, J. M., Domzal, T. J., & Kernan, J, B. (1981). Causal attribution and persuasion:
The case of discontinued expectancies. In A. Mitchell (Ed.), Advances in consumer
research (Vol. 9). Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Consumer Research.
James, J. M., & Bolstein, R. (1992). Effect of monetary incentives and follow-up
mailings on the response rate and response quality in mail surveys. Public Opinion
Quarterly, 54, 442-453.
Johnson, C. S. (1972). Fraternities in our colleges. New York: National Interfraternity
Foundation.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1983). The socialization and achievement crisis:
Are cooperative learning experiences the solution? In L. Bickman (Ed.), Applied social
psychology annual (Vol. 4). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. E. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1-24.
Jones, E. E., & Wortman, C. (1973). Integration: An attributional approach.
Morristown, NJ: General Learning Corp.
Joule, R. V. (1987). Tobacco deprivation: The foot-in-the-door technique versus the
low-ball technique, European Journal of Social Psychology, 17, 361-365.
Kahn, B. E., & Baron, J. (1995). An exploratory study of choice rules favored for high-
stakes decisions. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 4, 305-328.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under uncertainty:
Heuristics and biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kamisar, Y. (1980). Police interrogation and confession: Essays in law and policy. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Katzev, R., & Johnson, T. (1984). Comparing the effects of monetary incentives and
foot-in-the-door strategies in promoting residential electricity conservation. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 14, 12-27.
Katzev, R., & Pardini, A. (1988). The comparative effectiveness of token reinforcers
and personal commitment in promoting recycling. Journal of Environmental Systems,
17, pp. 93-113.
Keinan, G. (1987). Decision making under stress: Scanning of alternatives under
controllable and uncontrollable threats. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
52, 639-644.
Kelman, H. C., & Hamilton, V. L. (1989). Crimes of obedience. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
References 249
Kenrick, D. T., Gutierres, S. E., & Goldberg, L. L. (1989). Influence of popular erotica
on judgments of strangers and mates. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25,
159-167.
Kenrick, D. T., & Keefe, R. C. (1992). Age preferences in mates reflect sex differences
in human reproductive strategies. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 15, 75-133.
Kerr, N. L., & MacCoun, R. J. (1985). The effects of jury size and polling method on
the process and product of jury deliberation. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 48, 349-363.
Ketelaar, T. (1995, June). Emotions as mental representations of gains and losses:
Translating prospect theory into positive and negative affect. Paper presented at the
meeting of the American Psychological Society, New York, NY.
Kissinger, H. (1982). Years of upheaval. Boston: Little, Brown.
Knishinsky, A. (1982). The effects of scarcity of material and exclusivity of
information on industrial buyer perceived risk in provoking a purchase decision.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Knouse, S. B. (1983). The letter of recommendation: Specificity and favorability
information. Personal Psychology, 36, 331-341.
Rnox, R. E., & Inkster, J. A. (1968). Postdecisional dissonance at post time. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 319-323.
Kraut, R. E. (1973). Effects of social labeling on giving to charity. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 9, 551-562.
Kruglanski, A. E., & Freund, T. (1983). The freezing and unfreezing of lay inferences:
Effects on impressional primacy, ethnic stereotyping, and numerical anchoring.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 448-468.
Kulka, R. A., & Kessler, J. R. (1978). Is justice really blind? The effect of litigant
physical attractiveness on judicial judgment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4,
336-381.
Kunz, P. R., & Woolcott, M. (1976). Season's greetings: From my status to yours.
Social Science Research, 5, 269-278.
Kurtzburg, R. L., Safar, H., & Cavior, N. (1968). Surgical and social rehabilitation of
adult offenders. Proceedings of the 76th Annual Convention of the American
Psychological Association, 3, 649-650.
Lack, D. (1943). The life of the robin. London: Cambridge University Press.
Langer, E. J. (1989). Minding matters. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in
experimental social psychology (Vol. 22). New York: Academic Press.
Langer, E., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly
thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 635-642.
Latan6, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968a). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in
emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 215-221.
Latan6, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968b). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he
help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Latane, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping.
Psychological Bulletin, 89, 308-324.
Latane, B., & Rodin, J. (1969). A lady in distress: Inhibiting effects of friends and
strangers on bystander intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 5,
189-202.
Laughlin, P. R. (1980). Social combination processes in cooperative problem-solving
groups in verbal intellective tasks. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Progress in social psychology.
Hills-dale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
250 References
Leakey, R., & Lewin, R. (1978). People of the lake. New York: Anchor
Press/Doubleday. Lefkowitz, M., Blake, R. R., & Mouton, J. S. (1955). Status factors
in pedestrian violation of
traffic signals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 704-706. Leippe, M.
R., & Elkin, R. A. (1987). When motives clash: Issue involvement and response
involvement as determinants of persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology,
52, 269-278.
Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. (Eds). (1978). The hidden costs of reward. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Levine, L. E. (1983). Mine: Self-definition in two-year-old boys. Developmental
Psychology, 79, 544-549.
Lewis, M., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1979). Social cognition and the acquisition of self. New
York: Plenum.
Liebert, R., & Baron, R. A. (1972). Some immediate effects of televised violence on
children's behavior. Developmental Psychology, 6, 469-475.
Lloyd, J. E. (1965). Aggressive mimicry in Photuris: Firefly femme fatales. Science,
149, 653-654.
Locke, K. S., & Horowitz, L. M. (1990). Satisfaction in interpersonal interactions as a
function of similarity in level of dysphoria. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 58, 823-831.
Lott, A. J., & Lott, B. E. (1965). Group cohesiveness as interpersonal attraction: A
review of relationships with antecedent and consequent variables. Psychological
Bulletin, 64, 259-309.
Lynn, M. (1989). Scarcity effect on value: Mediated by assumed expensiveness.
Journal of Economic Psychology, 10, 257-274.
Lynn, M., & McCall, M. (1998). Beyond gratitude and gratuity. Unpublished
manuscript, Cornell University, School of Hotel Administration, Ithaca, NY.
Lynn, M., & Shurgot, B. A. (1984). Responses to lonely hearts advertisements: Effects
of reported physical attractiveness, physique, and coloration. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 10, 349-357.
Lytton, J. (1979). Correlates of compliance and the rudiments of conscience in two-
year-old boys. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 9, 242-251.
Mack, D., & Rainey, D. (1990). Female applicants' grooming and personnel selection.
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 5, 399-407.
MacKenzie, B. (1974, June 22). When sober executives went on a bidding binge. TV
Guide.
Mackworth, N. H. (1965). Visual noise causes tunnel vision. Psychonomic Science, 3,
67-68.
Macrae, N. (1972, January 22). Multinational business. The Economist.
Magruder, J. S. (1974). An American life: One man's road to Watergate. New York:
Atheneum.
Mahler, M. S., Pine, F, & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the infant.
New York: Basic Books.
Major, B., Carrington, P. I., & Carnevale, P. J. D. (1984). Physical attractiveness and
self-esteem: Attributions for praise from an other-sex evaluator. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 43-50.
Manis, M., Cornell, S. D., & Moore, J. C. (1974). Transmission of attitude relevant
information through a communication chain. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 30, 81-94.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications of cognition,
emotion, and motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 224-253.
References 251
Maruyama, G., Miller, N., & Holtz, R. (1986). The relation between popularity and
achievement: A longitudinal test of the lateral transmission of value hypothesis.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 730-741.
Mauro, R. (1984). The constable's new clothes: Effects of uniforms on perceptions
and problems of police officers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 14, 42-56.
Mauss, M. (1954). The gift. (I. G. Cunnison, Trans.). London: Cohen and West.
Mazis, M. B. (1975). Antipollution measures and psychological reactance theory: A
field experiment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 654-666.
Mazis, M. B., Settle, R. B., & Leslie, D. C. (1973). Elimination of phosphate detergents
and psychological reactance. Journal of Marketing Research, 10, 390-395.
McCall, M., & Belmont, H. J. (1996). Credit card insignia and restaurant tipping:
Evidence for an associative link. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 609-613.
McCombs, M., & Zhu, J. (1995). Capacity, diversity, and volatility of the public
agenda. Public Opinion Quarterly, 59, 495-525.
McGuinnies, E., & Ward, C. D., (1980). Better liked than right: Trustworthiness and
expertise as factors in credibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 467-
472.
Meeus, W. H. J., & Raaijmakers, Q. A. W. (1986). Administrative obedience: Carrying
out orders to use psychological-administrative violence. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 16, 311-324.
Melamed, B. E, Yurcheson, E., Fleece, L., Hutcherson, S., & Hawes, R. (1978). Effects
of film modeling on the reduction of anxiety-related behaviors in individuals varying in
level of previous experience in the stress situation. Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology, 46, 1357-1374.
Meyerwitz, B. E., & Chaiken, S. (1987). The effect of message framing on breast self-
examination attitudes, intentions, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 52, 500-510.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 67, 371-378.
Milgram, S. (1970). The experience of living in cities. Science, 13, 1461-1468.
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority. New York: Harper & Row.
Milgram, S., Bickman, L., & Berkowitz, O. (1969). Note on the drawing power of
crowds of different size. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 79-82.
Milgram, S., & Sabini J. (1975). On maintaining norms: Afield experiment in the
subway. Unpublished manuscript, City University of New York.
Miller, A. G., Collins, B. E., Brief, D. E. (Eds.) (1995). Perspectives on obedience to
authority: The legacy of the Milgram experiments. Journal of Social Issues, 51 (3).
Miller, N., Campbell, D. T., Twedt, H., & O'Connell, E. J. (1966). Similarity, contrast,
and complementarity in friendship choice. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 3, 3-12.
Miller, R. L., Seligman, C., Clark, N. T., & Bush, M. (1976). Perceptual contrast versus
reci-•> procal concession as mediators of induced compliance. Canadian Journal of
Behavioral Science, 8, 401-409.
Mills, J., & Clark, M. S. (1982). Exchange and communal relationships. In L. Wheeler
(Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (Vol. 3). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Publications.
Mita, T. H., Dermer, M., & Knight, J. (1977). Reversed facial images and the mere
exposure hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 597-601.
252 References
Moriarty, T. (1975). Crime, commitment, and the responsive bystander. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 370-376.
Morrow, L. (1991, September 2). The Russian revolution. Time, p. 20.
Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition and awareness. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 723-739.
Murray, D. A., Leupker, R. V., Johnson, C. A., & Mittlemark, M. B. (1984). The
prevention of cigarette smoking in children: A comparison of four strategies. Journal
of Applied Social Psychology, 14, 274-288.
Newcomb, T. (1953). An approach to the study of communicative acts. Psychological
Review, 60, 393-404.
News. (1988). Stanford Business School Magazine, 56, 3.
Nosanchuk, T. A., & Lightstone, J. (1974). Canned laughter and public and private
conformity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 153-156.
O'Connor, R. D. (1972). Relative efficacy of modeling, shaping, and the combined
procedures for modification of social withdrawal. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 79,
327-334.
O'Leary, S. G. (1995). Parental discipline mistakes. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 4, 11-13.
Olson, J. C. (1977). Price as an informational cue: Effects of product evaluations. In
A. G. Woodside, J. N. Sheth, & P. D. Bennett (Eds.), Consumer and industrial buying
behavior. New York: North-Holland.
Oskamp, S., & Schultz, P. W. (1998). Applied Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Overload of advice likely misled FBI (1993, October 8). Arizona Republic, p. A13.
Packard, V. (1957). The hidden persuaders. New York: D. McKay Co.
Paese, P. W., & Gilin, D. A. (2000). When an adversary is caught telling the truth.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 75-90.
Pallak, M. S., Cook, D. A., & Sullivan, J. J. (1980). Commitment and energy
conservation. Applied Social Psychology Annual, 1, 235-253.
Pardini, A., & Katzev, R. (1983-1984). The effect of strength of commitment on
newspaper recycling. Journal of Environmental Systems, 13, 245-254.
Paulhus, D. L., Martin, C. L., & Murphy, G. K. (1992). Some effects of arousal sex
stereotyping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 325-330.
Peiponen, V. A. (1960). Verhaltensstudien am blaukehlchen [Behavior studies of the
blue-throat]. Ornis Fennica, 37, 69-83. Peters, D. P., & Ceci, S. J. (1982). Peer-
review practices of the psychological journals: The fate
of published articles, submitted again. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 187-
195. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T., & Goldman, R. (1981). Personal involvement as a
determinant of argument-based persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 41, 847-855. Petty, R. E., & Wegener, D. T. (1999). The elaboration
likelihood model: Current status and controversies. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.),
Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp. 41-72). New York: Guilford. Phalen, C.
W., Chairperson. (1951). [Panel discussion of N.I.C. Public Relations Committee].
Yearbook. New York: National Interfraternity Conference.
Phillips, D. P. (1974). The influence of suggestion on suicide: Substantive and
theoretical implications of the Werther effect. American Sociological Review, 39, 340-
354. Phillips, D. P. (1979). Suicide, motor vehicle fatalities, and the mass media:
Evidence toward a theory of suggestion. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 1150-
1174.
References 253
Phillips, D. P. (1980). Airplane accidents, murder, and the mass media: Towards a
theory of imitation and suggestion. Social Forces, 58, 1001-1024.
Phillips, D. P. (1983). The impact of mass media violence on U. S. homicides.
American Sociological Review, 48, 560-568.
Phillips, D. P., & Cartensen, L. L. (1986). Clustering of teenage suicides after
television news stories about suicide. The New England Journal of Medicine, 315, 685-
689.
Phillips, D. P., & Cartensen, L. L. (1988). The effect of suicide stories on various
demographic groups, 1968-1985. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 18, 100-
114.
Quote without comment. (1975, January). Consumer Reports, p. 62.
Rao, A. R., & Monroe, K. B. (1989). The effect of price, brand name, and store name
on buyer's perceptions of product quality. Journal of Marketing Research, 26, 351-
357.
Razran, G. H. S. (1938). Conditioning away social bias by the luncheon technique.
Psychological Bulletin, 35, 693.
Razran, G. H. S. (1940). Conditional response changes in rating and appraising
sociopolitical slogans. Psychological Bulletin, 37, 481.
Regan, D. T., & Kilduff, M. (1988). Optimism about elections: Dissonance reduction at
the ballot box. Political Psychology, 9, 101-107.
Regan, R. T. (1971). Effects of a favor and liking on compliance. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 7, 627-639.
Ridley, M. (1997). The origin of virtue: Human instincts and the evolution of
cooperation. London: Penguin Books.
Riley, D., & Eckenrode, J. (1986). Social ties: Subgroup differences in costs and
benefits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 770-778.
Ritts, V, Patterson, M. L., & Tubbs, M. E. (1992). Expectations, impressions, and
judgments of physically attractive students: A review. Review of Educational
Research, 62, 413-426.
Rogers, M., Hennigan, K., Bowman, C., & Miller, N. (1984). Intergroup acceptance in
classroom and playground settings. In N. Miller & M. B. Brewer (Eds.), Groups in
contact: The psychology of desegregation. New York: Academic Press.
Rosen, S., & Tesser, A. (1970). On the reluctance to communicate undesirable
information: The MUM effect. Sociometry, 33, 253-263.
Rosenfield, D., & Stephan, W. G. (1981). Intergroup relations among children. In S.
Brehm, S. Kassin, & F. Gibbons (Eds.), Developmental social psychology. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Rosenfeld, P., Kennedy, J. G., & Giacalone, R. A. (1986). Decision-making: A
demonstration of the postdecision dissonance effect. Journal of Social Psychology,
126, 663-665.
Rosenthal, A. M. (1964). Thirty-eight witnesses. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ross, A. S. (1971). Effects of increased responsibility on bystander intervention: The
presence of children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 19, 306-310.
Ross, C. (1979, February 12). Rejected. New West, pp. 39-43.
Rothman, A. J., Martino, S. C., Bedell, B. T., Detweiler, J. B., & Salovey, P. (1999).
The systematic influence of gain- and loss-framed messages on interest in and use of
different types of health behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
25, 1355-1369.
Rothman, A. J., & Salovey, P. (1997). Shaping perceptions to motivate healthy
behavior: The role of message framing. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 3-19.
Ruback, B. R., & Juieng, D. (1997). Territorial defense in parking lots: Retaliation
against waiting drivers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 821-834.
254 References
Rubinstein, S. (1985, January 30). What they teach used car salesmen. San Francisco
Chronicle.
Scammon. D. L. (1977). Information overload and consumers. Journal of Consumer
Research, 4, 148-155.
Schein, E (1956). The Chinese indoctrination program for prisoners of war: A study of
attempted "brainwashing." Psychiatry, 19, 149-172.
Schindler, R. M. (1998). Consequences of perceiving oneself as responsible for
obtaining a dis-coun:. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7, 371-392.
Schlenker. B. R., Dlugolecki, D. W., & Doherty, K. (1994). The impact of self-
presentations on self-appraisals and behavior. The power of public commitment.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 20-33.
Schmidtke, A., & Hafner, H. (1988). The Werther effect after television films: New
evidence for an old hypothesis. Psychological Medicine, 18, 665-676.
Schultz, P. W. (1999). Changing behavior with normative feedback interventions: A
field experiment on curbside recycling. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21, 25-
36.
Schwarz, N. (1984). When reactance effects persist despite restoration of freedom:
Investigations of time delay and vicarious control. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 14, 405-419.
Segal, H. A. (1954). Initial psychiatric findings of recently repatriated prisoners of
war. American Journal of Psychiatry, HI, 358-363.
Settle, R. B., & Gordon, L. L. (1974). Attribution theory and advertiser credibility.
Journal of Marketing Research, 11, 181-185.
Shappell, L. (1995, April 2). Injuries create havoc for Hornets. The Arizona Republic,
p. Cl 1.
Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R. M., Rawsthorne, L. J., & Ilardi, B. (1997). Trait self and true
self, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1380-1393.
Shepperd, J. A., & Strathman, A. J. (1989). Attractiveness and height. Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 617-627.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1961).
Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers' Cave experiment. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Institute of Intergroup Relations.
Sherman, S. J. (1980). On the self-erasing nature of errors of prediction. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 211-221.
Slavin, R. E. (1983). When does cooperative learning increase student achievement?
Psychological Bulletin, 94, 429-445.
Smith, G. H., & Engel, R. (1968). Influence of a female model on perceived
characteristics of an automobile. Proceedings of the 76th Annual Convention of the
American Psychological Association, 3, 681-682.
Smith, R. E., & Hunt, S. D. (1978). Attributional processes in promotional situations.
Journal of Consumer Research, 5, 149-158.
Smyth, M. M., & Fuller, R. G. C. (1972). Effects of group laughter on responses to
humorous materials. Psychological Reports, 30, 132-134.
Spangenberg, E. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2001). Self-prophesy as a method for
increasing participation in socially desirable behaviors. In W. Wosinska, R. B. Cialdini,
D. W. Barrett, and J. Reykowski (Eds.), The practice of social influence in multiple
cultures. Mah-wah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Staff. (1993). Analysis of flight data and cabin voice tapes for Korean Air Lines flight
KE-007. Aviation Week and Space Technology, 138 (25), 17.
Stanne, M. B., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Does competition enhance or
inhibit motor performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 133-154.
References 255
Stelfox, H. T, Chua, G., O'Rourke, K., & Detsky, A. S. (1998). Conflict of interest in
the debate over calcium-channel antagonists. New England Journal of Medicine, 333,
101-106.
Stephan, W. G. (1978). School desegregation: An evaluation of predictions made in
Brown vs. Board of Education. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 217-238.
Stewart, J. E., II. (1980). Defendant's attractiveness as a factor in the outcome of
trials. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 10, 348-361.
Stogdill, R. (1948). Personal factors associated with leadership. Journal of
Psychology, 25, 35-71.
Styron, W. (1977). A farewell to arms. New York Review of Books, 24, 3-4.
Suedfeld, P., Bochner, S., & Matas, C. (1971). Petitioner's attire and petition signing
by peace demonstrators: A field experiment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1,
278-283.
Swap, W. C. (1977). Interpersonal attraction and repeated exposure to rewards and
punishers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 248-251.
Tajfel, J. (1981). Human groups and social categories. London: Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, R. (1978). Marilyn's friends and Rita's customers: A study of party selling as
play and as work. Sociological Review, 26, 573-611.
Tedeschi, J. T., Schlenker, B. R., & Bonoma, T. V. (1971). Cognitive dissonance:
Private ratiocination or public spectacle? American Psychologist, 26, 685-695.
Teger, A. I. (1980). Too much invested to quit. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon.
Tesser, A., Campbell, J., & Mickler, S. (1983). The role of social pressure, attention to
the stimulus, and self-doubt in conformity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 13,
217-233.
Thompson, L. (1990). An examination of naive and experienced negotiators. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 82-90.
Tiger, L., & Fox, R. (1989). The imperial animal. New York: Holt.
Toufexis, A. (1993, June 28). A weird case, baby? Uh huh! Time, p. 41.
Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and
biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of
choice. Science, 211, 453^58.
Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1985). A theory of action. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Walker, M. G. (1967). Organizational type, rites of incorporation, and group
solidarity: A study of fraternity hell week. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of Washington, Seattle.
Warnick, D. H., & Sanders, G. S. (1980). The effects of group discussion on
eyewitness accuracy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 10, 249-259.
Warriner, K., Goyder, J., Gjertsen, H., Homer, P., & McSpurren, K. (1996). Charities,
no; lotteries, no; cash, yes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 60, 542-562.
Watson, T. J., Jr. (1990). Father, son, & Co. New York: Bantam Books.
Webster, D. W, Richter, L., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1996). On leaping to conclusions
when feeling tired. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 181-195.
West, S. G. (1975). Increasing the attractiveness of college cafeteria food: A
reactance theory perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 656-658.
White, M. (1997, July 12). Toy rover sales soar into orbit. Arizona Republic, pp. El,
E9.
Whiting, J. W. M., Kluckhohn, R., & Anthony A. (1958). The function of male initiation
ceremonies at puberty. In E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.),
Readings in social psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
256 References
Whitney, R. A., Hubin, T., & Murphy, J. D. (1965). The new psychology of persuasion
and motivation in selling. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Wicklund, R. A., & Brehm, J. C. (1974) cited in Wicklund, R. A. Freedom and
reactance. Hills-dale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wilson, D. K., Kaplan, R. M, & Schneiderman, L. J. (1987). Framing of decisions and
selection of alternatives in health care. Social Behaviour, 2, 51-59.
Wilson, D. K., Purdon, S. E., & Wallston, K. A. (1988). Compliance to health
recommendations: A theoretical overview of message framing. Health Education
Research, 3, 161-171.
Wilson, P. R. (1968). The perceptual distortion of height as a function of ascribed
academic status. Journal of Social Psychology, 74, 97-102.
Wilson, T. D., Dunn, D. S., Kraft, D., & Lisle, D. J. (1989). Introspection, attitude
change, and behavior consistency. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental
social psychology (Vol. 22). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Wolf, S., & Montgomery, D. A. (1977). Effects of inadmissible evidence and level of
judicial admonishment to disregard on the judgments of mock jurors. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 7, 205-219.
Woodside, A. G., & Davenport, J. W. (1974). Effects of salesman similarity and
expertise on consumer purchasing behavior. Journal of Marketing Research, 11, 198-
202.
Wooten, D. B., & Reed, A. (1998). Informational influence and the ambiguity of
product experience: Order effects on the weighting of evidence. Journal of Consumer
Research, 7, 79-99.
Worchel, S. (1979). Cooperation and the reduction of intergroup conflict: Some
determining factors. In W. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of
intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Worchel, S., & Arnold, S. E. (1973). The effects of censorship and the attractiveness
of the censor on attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 9, 365-
377.
Worchel, S., Arnold, S. E., & Baker, M. (1975). The effect of censorship on attitude
change: The influence of censor and communicator characteristics. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, 5, 222-239.
Worchel, S., Lee, J., & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of supply and demand on ratings
of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 906-914.
Wright, S. C., Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., & Ropp, S. A. (1997). The extended
contact effect: Knowledge of cross-group friendships and prejudice. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 73-90.
Young, F. W. (1965). Initiation ceremonies. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). The attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology Monographs, 9, (2, Part 2).
Zajonc, R. B., Markus, H., & Wilson, W. R. (1974). Exposure effects and associative
learning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 248-263.
Zellinger, D. A., Fromkin, H. L., Speller, D. E., & Kohn, C. A. (1974). A commodity
theory analysis of the effects of age restrictions on pornographic materials. (Paper
No. 440). Lafayette, IN: Purdue University, Institute for Research in the
Behavioral, Economic and Management Sciences.
Zimmatore, J. J. (1983). Consumer mindlessness: I believe it, but I don't see it.
Proceedings of the Division of Consumer Psychology, American Psychological
Association Convention, Anaheim, CA.
Index
ABC, 224-226
Abraham, 185
Abrams, Robert, 211
Adams, Scott, 190
Advertising, 101, 120, 136, 164-165, 188,
196-197, 207, 216, 223-224, 229, 239 Airline accidents, 9-10, 122, 124-127, 139
American Cancer Society, 62 American Disabled Veterans, 30 Amway Corporation,
28-29, 71 Animals, 2-5, 10-11, 100-101, 186-187, 190 Anthony, A., 75-76 Aronson,
Elliot, 79-
80, 155, 158 Asimov, Isaac, 170 Asking, 4, 74
Association principle, 161-174 Auctions, 224-227 Authority principle, 179-201
advertising and, 188, 196-197
blind obedience and, 185-188
clothes and, 193-195
con artists and, 188, 191, 193, 194-195
defenses against, 196-200
experts and, 8, 9-10
food and, 187, 188, 193, 196-197, 198-199
in medicine, 186, 188, 191-192, 196-197
obedience studies, 179-184, 185, 187, 191-192, 193-196
power of, 180-184
titles and, 8, 9-10, 188-193
trappings and, 195-196 Automaticity
consistency principle and, 55-61
fixed-action patterns, 3-6, 16-17
modern, 236-237
primitive, 234-236
of reciprocation rule, 20
of stereotypes, 6, 7, 11, 12 Automobile accidents, suicide and, 122,
124-127 Automobile sales
commitment principle and, 61-62
contrast principle, 16
liking principle and, 147-148, 152, 164, 175
low-ball technique in, 85-86
positive association and, 164
used-car tactics, 61-62, 229-230
Bandura, Albert, 101-102
Bank examiner scheme, 194—195
Bargain sales, 224
Baron, Robert, 103n
Barry, Dave, 137
Bassett, Rod, 86-87
Bickman, Leonard, 193-195
Blood donations, 44
Boiler-room operations, 211
Boot camp initiations, 80
Branch Davidian Church, 235-236
Brehm, Jack, 209
Brock, Timothy, 218
Brunswick, 43
BUG free sample device, 28-29
Butler, Samuel, 84
Bystander inaction, 111-119, 138-140
Cabbage Patch Kids, 61
Cacioppo, John, 86-87
Galley, William, 184n
Canned laughter, 99-100, 134
Captainitis, 9-10
Carter, Jimmy, 26
Castro, Fidel, 69
CBS Television, 226, 228
Ceci, Stephen, 192
Celebrities, 165-167, 169-174, 187-188, 196-197
Censorship, 215-218
Charitable organizations, 23-25, 30-33, 36-39, 44, 62-63, 65-67, 164
Children. See also Schools; Teenagers authority principle and, 189 camp experiences,
156-157 freedoms and, 221-222 reciprocation rule and, 36-37, 47 scarcity principle
and, 210-212 similarity principle and, 120-121 social proof and, 103-104, 120-121
stage parents and, 173
Chivas Regal Scotch Whiskey, 6n
Claquing, 134-136
Clinton, Bill, 26, 187
Close-outs, 224
Clothing, authority and, 193-195
Clothing industry, 12
Cohen, Michael, 186
Colgate Total, 207
258 Index
Commitment principle, 61-96
cults and, 106
defenses against, 90-95
extra effort and, 75-80
hazing practices and, 76-79, 81
inner change and, 84—87
inner choice and, 80-84
liking and, 144-146, 168
public commitments and, 72-74
public good and, 87-90
self-image and, 69-70, 84
written commitments and, 61-62, 63-65,
67-72
Commodity theory, 218 Compliments, liking principle and, 152-153 Con artists, 188,
191, 193-195, 211 Concentration camps, 184n Concessions, 36-46, 49 Consistency
principle, 53-96. See also
Commitment principle Contact, liking principle and, 154-157 Contrast principle, 12-
16, 40-43, 49,
160-161, 200
Controlled responding, 8-10 Cooperation, liking principle and, 154-157,
158-161
Copycat suicides, 122, 124-127 Costner, Kevin, 173-174 Courtship rituals, 3, 5, 10-
11, lln, 13n,
34-35, 53-54, 212-214, 216 Credit card use, 164-165 Cults, 23-25, 105-111, 235-
236
Dances with Wolves (movie), 173
Darley, John, 113-116
Davies, James C, 219, 220
Davis, Neil, 186
Deadline tactic, 207-208
Dean, John, 42
Defenses
against authority principle, 196-200 against commitment and consistency,
90-95
against liking principle, 174-175 against reciprocation rule, 46-49 against scarcity
principle, 228-230 against social proof, 134—140
DeOaulle, Charles, 74«
Desegregation, 154-156, 158, 220
Deutsch, Morton, 72-73
Diller, Barry, 224-226
Discount coupons, In, 223
Door-in-the-face technique, 38-46
Door-to-door sales
commitment procedures for charity drives,
62
endless chain technique in, 49, 146-147 foot-in-the-door technique, 65-68
reciprocation rule and, 28-29 rejection-then-retreat strategy in, 39-40 written
commitments and, 71
Drubeck brothers, 12
Eibesfeldt, Eibl, I., 29-30
Endless chain technique, 49, 146-147
Ent, Uzal, 10
Environmental issues, 87-90, 214
Escobar, Andres, 170n
Ethiopia, reciprocation rule and, 21
Ethology, 2-4
Exclusive information, 217-218
Expensive = good principle, 6, 8, 12
Experimental juries, 217
Experts, 8, 9-10
Faraday, Michael, 54
FBI, 235-236
"Feeding frenzy" phenomenon, 224—227
Feinberg, Richard, 164, 165n
Festinger, Leon, 54, 105, 107-110
First Amendment, 215-216
Fixed-action patterns, 3-6, 16-17
Flawed items, 205
Fleming, Thomas, 219-220
Food
association principle and, 164—165, 167 authority principle and, 187, 188, 193,
196-197, 198-199 free samples of, 27-28 restaurant reservations and, 74 restaurant
tips and, 25, 164-165, 198-199 scarcity principle and, 204, 218-219, 222, 223-224,
228-229
Foot-in-the-door technique, 65-68
Fox, M. W., 2
Fox, R., 20-21
Fraser, Scott, 65-67
Free choice, 209-212
Freedman, Jonathan, 65-67, 82-84
Free-information-and-inspection gambit, 47-49
Free samples, reciprocation rule and, 27-30
Free speech, 215-216
Fromkin, Howard, 218
Index 259
Gates, Bill, 237
General Foods, 71-72
Genovese, Catherine, 111-114
Gerard, Harold, 72-73
Gifts. See Reciprocation rule
Girard, Joe, 147-148, 152, 175
Glasnost, 221
Goethe, Johann von, 123-124
Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, 160-161
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 221, 222
Gore, Al, 166
Gouldner, Alvin, 20
Graf, Steffi, 170, 171
Graham, Billy, 101
Grammer, Karl, lln
Green, Donna, 214
Gun laws, 214
Hare Krishna Society, 23-25, 31-32
Harris, James, 69
Hazing practices, 76-79, 81
Health Care Financing Administration, U.S.,
186, 191 Heider, Fritz, 54
Hidden Persuaders (Packard), 27-28 Hiring situations, liking principle and, 149
Hoarding behavior, 214 Hobbes, Thomas, 185 Home party sales, 144-146, 168
Homicide, 126-129, 133 Howard, Daniel, 62-63
Impression management, 99-100, 134-136 Information, 47^9, 217-218, 237
Initiation rites, 75-80, 81 Instant influence, 234-240 Insurance, 151, 217
Jigsaw classroom, 158
Johnson, Lyndon, 26
Jones, Edward, 69
Jones, Jim, 30, 130-133
Jonestown mass suicide, 30, 130-133
Jordan, Michael, 187
Judgmental heuristics, 8
Juette, Astrid, 1 In
Jujitsu, 12-16, 27-30, 174
Jury trials, 62, 217
Justice Department, U.S., 235-236
Katzev, Richard, 90n Kelley, G. Warren, 43
Kerr, Peter, 211 King, Larry, 187 Kissinger, Henry, 70 Kluckhohn, R., 75-76 Kosinski,
Jerzy, 192
Labor negotiation, 39
Langer, Ellen, 4
Langford, David L., 163
Large-then-small-request sequence, 43^t4
LaRue, Frederick, 41, 42-43
Latane", Bibb, 113-116
Laugh tracks, 99-100, 134
Leakey, Richard, 20
Leno, Jay, 166
Liddy, G. Gordon, 41, 42, 43
Liebert, Robert, 104n
Liking principle, 22-23, 145-176
in automobile sales, 147-148,152,164,175 compliments and, 152-153 conditioning
and association in, 161-174 contact and cooperation in, 154—161, 174 defenses
against, 174—175 endless chain method of sales and, 49,
146-147
Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, 160-161 physical attractiveness and, 148-150, 174 in
race relations, 154-156, 158-159 similarity and, 150-152, 170 Tupperware parties
and, 144-146, 168
Limited-number tactic, 205-207
Lost-wallet study, 120, 121-122
Louden, Robert, 236
Louie, Diane, 30
Low-ball technique, 85-90
Luncheon technique, 167
MacKenzie, Bob, 226
Macrae, Norman, 237
Magic Writing Pad, 72-73
Magruder, Jeb Stuart, 41, 42
Mars, Franklin, 165
MasterCard, 164
Mating rituals, 3, 5, 10-11, lln
Mauss, Marcel, 31
MCI Friends and Family Calling Club, 147
Medication Errors (Cohen and Davis), 186
Medicine, 27, 186, 188, 191-192, 196-197,
205
Microsoft, 237 Mihaly, Orestes J., 211 Milgram, Stanley, 31n, 179-185, 195-196
260 Index
Miller, John, 86-87 Mills, Judson, 79-80 Mimicry, 10-11 Mitchell, John, 41,42
Monkeys, 186-187 Morrow, Lance, 221 Muskie, Edmund, 41 My Lai massacre, 184n
••.
Namedropping, 173 Nazis, 184n NBC, 225-226 Negotiation opponent, 45 Newcomb,
Theodore, 54 Nixon, Richard, 41-^3
Obedience studies, 179-184, 185, 187,
191-192, 193-196 O'Brien, Lawrence, 41, 42 O'Connor, Robert, 103-104 Olympics
sponsorships, 165, 165n
Packard, Vance, 27-28
Paralysis of analysis, 238
Pavlov, Ivan, 167-168
People's Temple mass suicide, 30, 130-133
Perceptual contrast principle. See Contrast principle
Perestroika, 221
Personal computers, 237
Pest exterminator companies, 48n
Peters, Douglas, 192
Phillips, David, 123-130
Physical attractiveness, lln, 13n, 148-150, 174
Pine, Joe, 234
Pluralistic ignorance phenomenon, 111-119, 138-140
Police, Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, 160-161
Political essay contests, 63-64, 67-72, 81-82
Politics
association principle and, 165-167 authority principle and, 187, 189, 190n liking
principle and, 154, 165, 166 reciprocation rule and, 26-27 revolutions and, 219-222
scarcity principle and, 215-216, 219-222
Porcher, 134-136
Poseidon Adventure, The (movie), 224-226, 228
Praise, liking principle and, 152-153
Precious mistakes, 205
Prisoner-of-war camps, collaboration in,
63-64, 67-72, 81-82 Procter & Gamble, 71-72, 223 Profiteers, 6, 8, 10-12
Psychological reactance, 208-218 Public commitments, 72-74
Race relations, 154-156, 158-159, 220-221 Razran, Gregory, 167-168 Reactance,
psychological, 208-218 Real estate market, 14-16, 224 Reciprocation rule, 20-50,
167
charitable organizations and, 23-25, 30, 31-33,36-39,44
concessions and, 36-46
defense against, 46-49
liking and, 144
power of, 22-30
in rejection-then-retreat strategy, 38-46, 49
tips and, 25, 198-199
unequal exchanges and, 33-36
uninvited debts and, 20-21, 30-33 Regan, Dennis, 22-23, 24, 31, 33 Rejection-then-
retreat strategy, 38-46, 49 Responsibility, 45, 82, 111-119, 138-140 Revolutions,
219-222 Reynolds, Joshua, 55 Riecken, Henry, 105, 107-110 Rites of passage, 75-80
Robert, Cavett, 101
Romeo and Juliet effect, 212-214, 216 Rosenthal, A. M., 112, 113 Rosten, Leo, 12
Rothman, Alexander, 205 Ryan, Leo R., 130
Sabin, Robert, 135
Sabini, John, 3 In
Sadat, Anwar, 70
Sales, 224
Sales motivation analysts, 13-16
Salovey, Peter, 205
Samples, reciprocation rule and, 27-30
Sanka, 188, 196-197
Satisfaction, in rejection-then-retreat, 45-46
Saturday Night Fever (movie), 227
Sauton, 134-136
Scarcity principle, 204-231
advertising and, 207, 216, 223-224, 229
auctions and, 224—227
censorship and, 215-218
defenses against, 228-230
Index 261
food and, 204, 218-219, 222, 223-224, 228-229
limited-number tactic, 205-207
in medicine, 205
optimal conditions for, 218-227
power of, 204-208
psychological reactance and, 208-218
revolutions and, 219-222
Romeo and Juliet effect, 212-214, 216
shortcuts and, 208-209
time deadline tactic, 207-208 Schachter, Stanley, 105, 107-110 Schein, Edgar, 63-64
Schools, 154-156, 158, 216-217, 220 Seasonal buying patterns, 58-61 Segal, Henry,
68 Seles, Monica, 169-170, 171 Self, William, 226 Self-image, 69-70, 84, 173 Sexual
attractiveness, lln, 13n Sexual obligation, 34-35 Shaklee Corporation, 146-147 Sherif,
Muzafer, 156-157, 158 Sherman, Steven J., 62 Shortcuts, 3-12, 16-17, 208-209,
234-236,
238-239
Similarity, 119-133, 150-152, 170 Sipress, David, 237 Smuggling, 214 Social proof,
99-141
in advertising, 101, 120, 136, 239
bystander inaction and, 111-119, 138-140
cults and, 105-111
defenses against, 134-140
homicide and, 126-129, 133
impression management and and, 99-100, 134-136
liking and, 144
lost-wallet study and, 120, 121-122
power of, 101-105
shortcuts and, 238-239
similarity and, 119-133
suicide and, 122, 124-133
uncertainty and, 111-119, 132-133 Solomon, Thomas (TJ), 129 Sorrows of Young
Werther, The (Goethe),
123-124
Soviet Union, former, 221, 222 Sports, 168-172, 187 Stanko, Jack, 61-62
Stereotypes, 6, 7, 11, 12 Storke, Bill, 225
Styron, William, 80
Suicide, 30, 122-127, 130-133
Supreme Court, 220
Surprise, 3 In, 196
Survey completion rates, 25, 151
Talking the top of the line strategy, 43-44
Tamraz, Roger, 26
Teenagers, 128, 129, 212-214, 216. See also
Children; Schools Telephone solicitation, 62-63 Television, 99-101, 103n, 120, 136,
224-226.
See also Advertising Testimonials, 71-72, 120, 136 Thonga people, 75-76, 79 Thorne,
Avril, 172 Tienanmen Square massacre, 81-82 Tiger, L., 20-21 Time-limit tactic, 207-
208 Tips, 25, 164-165, 198-199 Titles, authority principle and, 8,9-10,188-193 Toy
manufacturers, 58-61 Transcendental Meditation (TM), 55-58 Travolta, John, 227
Trigger feature, 3-6, 9 Tupperware Home Parties Corporation,
144-146, 168 Turkeys, 2-4, 100-101
Uncertainty, social proof and, 111-119,
132-133 Used-car sales, 61-62, 229-230
Van Kampen, Jakob, 11 In Vartan Bhanji, 20n
Watergate scandal, 41^13 Watson, John, Jr., 10 Weather reports, 161-162, 163
Weight-reduction clinics, 73-74 Werther effect, 123-124 West, Louis Jolyon, 131
Whiting, J. W. M., 75-76 Willson, S. Brian, 184 Wood, Robert, 226, 228 Worchel,
Stephen, 218-
219
Yamuda, Tom, 165
Young, Robert, 188, 196-197
Zappa, Frank, 234 Zero tolerance, 80
Credits
Text and Figure Credits
p. 125: Figure 4.1. From "The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and
Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect," by David E. Phillips, American
Sociological Review, Vol. 39, 1974, Figure 1, p. 343. Reprinted by permission of the
American Sociological Society and the author.
p. 127: Figure 4.2. Reprinted from Social Forces, Vol. 58, June 1980, pp. 1005, 1012.
"Airplanes, Accidents, Murder, and the Mass Media: Toward a Theory of Imitation and
Suggestion," by David E. Phillips. Copyright © 1980 by the University of North
Carolina Press.
p. 137: Figure 4.4. "Stay Tuned Folks: Consumers from Mars Are on Next," by Dave
Barry. From The Arizona Republic, May 12,1991. Reprinted by permission of Knight-
Ridder Tribune News Service.
p. 163: Figure 5.1. "Weathermen Pay Price for Nature's Curve Balls," by David L.
Langford. From The Arizona Republic, December 18, 1981. Reprinted by permission of
The Associated Press.
p. 211: Figure 7.1. "Officials Warn Public of Frauds by Phone," by Peter Kerr, The New
York Times, May 14, 1983. Copyright © 1983 by The New York Times Company.
Reprinted by permission.
Photo and Advertisement Credits
p. 1: Chapter 1 opener. Copyright © 1999. Advertisement reprinted by permission of
Palm Computing, Inc.; p. 5: © George Holton/ Photo Researchers; p. 19: Chapter 2
opener. Advertisement reprinted by permission of Life and Health Insurance
Foundation
for Education (LIFE); pp. 24, 129, 222, 225: © AP/ Wide World Photos; p. 28: © Alan
Carey/ The Image Works; p. 52: Chapter 3 opener. Copyright © 1999 General Motors
Corp. Used with permission of GM Media Archives; p. 60: © Ted Thai/ Time
Magazine; p.
66: © Mark Amman/ The Image Works; p. 77: (top) © Luuk Kramer; (bottom) ©
Deborah Copaken/ Liaison Agency; p. 98: Chapter 4 opener. Advertisement reprinted
by permission of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. and Tim Damon of Damon
Productions, Inc; p.
102: Advertisement reprinted by permission of The U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Savings Bonds Marketing Office, Washington, D.C.; p. 115: © Jan Halaskal/ Photo
Researchers; p. 123: © R. Kalman/ The Image Works; p. 132: © Philippe Ladrue/
CORBIS
Sygma; p. 143: Chapter 5 opener. Advertisement reprinted by permission of Jim
Petrillo, owner of Crew Restaurants; p. 145: © Pat Watson/ The Image Works; p.
159: © Cameramann/ The Image Works; p. 166: © AFP/ CORBIS; p. 171: (top) ©
Associated Press;
(bottom) © Liaison Agency; p. 172: © Otto Greule/ Focus West; p. 178: Chapter 6
opener. Advertisement reprinted by permission of Bozwell Worldwide, Inc., as agent
for the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board, copyright © 1999; p. 181: ©
1965
by Stanley Milgram. From the film "Obedience," distributed by Pennsylvania State
University, Audio Visual Services; p. 187: © Cynthia Johnson/ Liaison Agency; p.
203: Chapter 7 opener. Copyright © 1999, Nissan. Nissan and the Nissan logo are
registered
trademarks of Nissan. Reprinted by permission; p. 207: Advertisement reprinted by
permission of Colgate-Palmolive Company. Copyright © 1999, Colgate-Palmolive; p.
227: © Shooting Star; p. 233: Chapter 8 opener. This print advertisement is part of
the
"City of e" campaign to support SAP America's Internet strategy. Reprinted by
permission.
262
“How to get all the women you could ever want...”
Dear Friend,
Have you ever been…
•
Fed up with trying to pick up women in bars and clubs?
•
Disappointed in the morn ing when you realize the woman you
brought home was really ugly!?
•
Embarrassed to find that the women you’re after have boyfriends?
•
Embarrassed to even talk to girls in public?
•
Afraid that girls might reject you?
•
Ashamed of failing in front of your friends?
I have the solution for you…
American Singles
This is a discreet service that can match you up with potential girlfriends.
Why this is so much better than traditional methods…
•
You KNOW that they want to go out with you
•
You can see how attractive they are
•
It is embarrassment free!
•
It is SOOOO easy!
•
There is no fear of rejection!
I’ve met scores of women through Friend Finder and I really really
recommend it to you.
CLICK HERE for American Singles
Good luck guys,
Dave
