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Influence
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Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert B. Cialdini,
Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, has spent over fifteen
years in the scientific investigation of the processes whereby people are
persuaded and reach their decisions. He enumerates six fundamental social and
psychological principles underlying the thousands of individual tactics that
successful persuaders or compliance practitioners use every day to get us to say
yes.
*These principles are:
Rule of Reciprocity
According to sociologists and anthropologists, one of the most widespread and
basic norms of human culture is embodied in the rule of reciprocity. The rule
requires that one person try to repay, in kind, what another person has
provided. By obligating the recipient of an act to repayment in the future, the
rule for reciprocation allows one individual to give something to another with
confidence that it is not being lost. This sense of future obligation within the
rule makes possible the development of various kinds of continuing
relationships, transactions, and exchanges that are beneficial to the society.
Consequently, all members of the society are trained from childhood to abide by
the rule or suffer serious social disapproval. The decision to comply with
another's request is frequently influenced by the reciprocity rule. One favorite
and profitable tactic of certain compliance professionals is to give something
to another before asking for a return favor. The exploitability of this tactic
is due to three characteristics of the rule for reciprocation:
- the rule is extremely powerful, often overwhelming
the influence of other factors that normally determine compliance with a
request;
- the rule applies even to uninvited first favors,
thereby reducing our ability to decide whom we wish to owe and putting the
choice in the hands of others;
- the rule can spur unequal exchanges; to be rid of the
uncomfortable feeling of indebtedness, an individual will often agree to a
request for a substantially larger favor than the one he or she received.
Another way that the rule for reciprocity can increase compliance involves a
simple variation on the basic theme: instead of providing a first favor that
stimulates a return favor, an individual can make an initial concession that
stimulates a return concession. One compliance procedure, called the
rejection-then-retreat technique, or door-in-the-face technique, relies
heavily on the pressure to reciprocate concessions. By starting with an
extreme request that is sure to be rejected, a requester can then profitably
retreat to a smaller request (the one that was desired all along), which is
likely to be accepted because it appears to be a concession. Research
indicates that, aside from increasing the likelihood that a person will say
yes to a request, the rejection-then-retreat technique also increases the
likelihood that the person will carry out the request a will agree to future
such requests. Our best defense against the use of reciprocity pressure to
gain compliance is not systematic rejection of the initial offers of others.
Rather, we should accept initial favors or concessions in good faith, but be
ready to redefine them as tricks should they later be proved as such. Once
they are redefined in this way, we will no longer feel a need to respond with
a favor or concession of our own.
Commitment and Consistency
People have a desire to look consistent within their words, beliefs, attitudes
and deeds...this tendency is fed from three sources:
- good personal consistency is highly valued by
society;
- consistent conduct provides a beneficial approach to
daily life;
- 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 respond consistently with it. The key to using consistency
pressures for profit is the initial commitment: 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. 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.
Commitments are most effective when they are active, public, effortful, and
viewed as internally motivated (uncoerced). Once a stand is taken, there is a
natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the
stand. 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 interests. 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. 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. Heart of heart signs 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?"
Social Proof
One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people
think is correct. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the
degree that we see other performing it. 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, the more "famous" the better)
are or have been complying with it. This weapon of influence provides us with a
shortcut for determining how to behave, but, as the same time, makes one who
uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along
its path (introduction seminars or guest dinners, retreats to recruit cult
members--provide the models of the behavior the group wants to produce in the
new recruit) Social proof is most influential under two conditions:
- 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);
- similarity (people are more inclined to follow the
lead of similar others) Recommendations on how 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.
Liking
People prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like. This simple rules
enables us to learn about factors that influence the liking process by examining
which factors compliance professionals emphasize to increase their overall
attractiveness and their consequent effectiveness. Compliance practitioners
regularly use several such factors. One feature of a person that influences
overall attractiveness 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 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 general enhance liking, and thus, compliance.
Increased familiarity through repeated contact with a person or thing is yet
another factor that normally facilitates liking. But 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 like is mere
association. By connecting themselves or their products with positive things,
merchants of influence frequently seek to share in the positivity through the
process of association. Other individuals as well 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
Authority
In the Milgram studies of obedience, we can see evidence of a strong pressure in
our society for compliance with the requests of an authority. The strength of
this tendency to obey legitimate authorities comes from systematic socialization
practices designed to instill in society members 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;
- 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, those 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 here? 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 a
communicator first provides some mildly negative information about him- or
herself. Through this strategy the person creates a perception of honesty that
makes all subsequent information seem even more credible to observers.
Scarcity
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 true for two
reasons:
- 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;
- 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 interesting. 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.
("We" have the truth....we have special knowledge).
The scarcity principle is most likely to hold true under
two optimizing conditions
- scarce items are heightened in value when they are
newly scarce (we value those things that have become recently restricted more
than those that were restricted all along);
- 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 so alerted, we can take steps
to calm the arousal and assess the merits of the opportunity in terms of why
we want it.
*Taken from
Influence. Science and Practice, Robert B. Cialdini,
Scott, Foresman and Company, 1985; Summary notes.
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