I hope that you enjoyed the guest lecture by Bob Cialdini and Steve Martin. In this video, we'll talk further about Professor Cialdini's research, as well as other studies on the ins and outs of social influence—that is, efforts by an individual or a group to have an influence on another individual or group, whether it might be to donate money, or buy a product, support a political cause or a candidate, comply with a request, and so forth. To take just one example, several years ago, Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona tried to discourage theft by posting a sign intended to have a social influence. The sign said, "Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time." The park thought that by helping visitors understand how small thefts add up to a large problem, stealing would be reduced, but the problem continued, and eventually they turned to Professor Cialdini and asked if he could help. Professor Cialdini's solution is described in a short article that I've assigned as part of this week's reading, so I'm not going to give away the full story, but one problem Professor Cialdini pointed out is that the park was unintentionally signaling that theft is normative, or normal behavior. If 14 tons of petrified wood are removed each year, a tiny piece at a time, that means thousands of visitors are doing it, and in fact, when Professor Cialdini had the park remove the anti-theft message, stealing actually fell by almost 80%. So you have to be careful. Yes, it's important to convey the seriousness of a problem, but if you announce, for example, that in a particular country a woman is raped every few minutes, or most people cheat or steal, you're normalizing the very behavior that you want to change. And even though we know that consensus information doesn't always have an effect on causal attributions, it often has a large effect when it comes to persuasion and social influence. Psychologists have studied a wide variety of social influence techniques. For instance, research suggests that people are more likely to do something when you get them to imagine doing it or to predict that they'll do it in the future (say, voting in an upcoming election). Other research has found that mentioning your name before making a request can increase the chances that the other person will say yes by 50 to 100%— something as simple as "Hi, my name is Scott, and I'm wondering whether you might do me a small favor?" Engaging people in a dialogue also leads to greater compliance with a request, presumably because dialogue resembles friendship more than a monologue does. The idea is to talk with people rather than at people. One very effective technique pioneered by Professor Cialdini is the "Even a penny will help" technique. The original study on this technique was very simple. Students went door-to-door raising money for the American Cancer Society, and they said one of two things. Half the time, they said: "I'm collecting money for the American Cancer Society. Would you be willing to help by giving a donation?" And the other half of the time, they said exactly the same thing but added, "Even a penny will help." The idea here was not only to make it affordable to comply but to make it hard to say no to such a minimal request. And lo and behold, by tacking on this extra sentence (just five words: "Even a penny will help"), compliance jumped from 29% to 50% with no significant difference in the average amount people gave—a very simple technique to keep in mind the next time that you're fundraising. Anyway, these are just a few findings related to social influence, which, like persuasion, has received just a huge amount of research attention. So, to avoid spreading ourselves too thin, I'd like to focus on three of the most famous techniques: first, the foot-in-the-door technique; second, the door-in-the-face technique; and third, the low-ball technique, which car dealers are notorious for using. Let's begin with the foot-in-the-door technique, which was briefly mentioned in the guest lecture and was first studied experimentally by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser in the 1960s. The premise is that people are more likely to comply with a large request once they've already complied with a smaller one—a foot in the door of the larger request. Freedman and Fraser conducted two experiments. The one I'd like to walk through—and the one that's most famous—is Experiment 2. The participants were 112 innocent residents of Palo Alto, California, who just happened to be home between 1:30 and 4:30 one weekday afternoon when a member of Freedman and Fraser's research team knocked on their door. Every third or fourth home on certain blocks was randomly assigned to one of five conditions: four in which a relatively small request preceded a larger request, and one in which the larger request was made without any prior contact. Four different small requests were used. In one condition, the person at the door introduced herself or himself as a member of the Community Committee for Traffic Safety and asked people whether they'd post a small sign, three inches square, in their window or car that simply said "Be a Safe Driver." Professor Freedman was kind enough to loan me some materials from the original study to share with our class, and as you can see, the sign was printed in black block letters on a white background and generally looked mildly unattractive. If people agreed to the request, they were given a sign and thanked; otherwise, they were simply thanked for their time. In another condition, residents were asked by a member of the Keep California Beautiful Committee whether they would post an equally unattractive sign that said "Keep California Beautiful." In the third condition, residents were asked to sign a petition that supported legislation on safe driving. And in a fourth condition, people were asked to sign a petition in support of legislation to keep California beautiful. So, these were the four small requests: two involving a three-inch sign, and two involving a petition. Then, about two weeks later, a different member of the research team revisited these households to make a much larger request. This time, residents were approached by a member of Citizens for Safe Driving to see whether they would post a very large sign on safe driving in their front yard for a week or a week and a half. This photo, from Professor Freedman, shows a sign smaller than the one eventually used, which completely concealed the front door. And once again, the sign was deliberately designed to look a bit ugly. If people agreed to the request, they were told that more names than necessary were being gathered, and that they'd be contacted in a few weeks if their home were to be used. That way, people didn't actually have to have a sign installed in their front yard. So, in two conditions, the small request concerned the same issue as the large request: safe driving as opposed to keeping California beautiful. And in two conditions, the small request was of the same kind as the large request: posting a sign as opposed to signing a petition. Freedman and Fraser wanted to see whether the small request had to resemble the large request in order to be effective, and if so, whether it was more important to match the large request by issue or by kind of request. What do you think they found? Before I share the results, take a guess. Many people are surprised by the answer. The correct answer is that compliance with a small request increased compliance with a large request, regardless of whether the requests were of the same type or on the same topic. When people were asked to post a large sign without first being asked to comply with a small request, only 17% said yes, but if we average across all four of the other conditions, including everyone who received a small request, whether or not they said yes, compliance jumped to 56%—over three times higher. And what's especially interesting is that compliance was nearly as high, 47%, even when the small request was of a different type and on a different issue. This is fairly dramatic. What we have is more than double the rate of compliance found in the large request only condition, even though the two requests are of a different type (signing a petition versus posting a sign) on a different topic (keeping California beautiful versus safe driving), asked by two different people, and separated in time by roughly two weeks. How would you explain this? Freedman and Fraser concluded that once people agree to a request, they become in their own eyes "the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who cooperates with good causes." In other words, their explanation was very consistent with Daryl Bem's self-perception theory. People watch themselves behave a certain way and conclude that they hold values and attitudes that match their behavior. Since the time of Freedman and Fraser's study, more than a hundred experiments have examined the foot-in-the-door technique, and the bottom line is that its effectiveness really depends on the details of how it's used. For example, the technique is most effective when you explicitly label the person as helpful or as a supporter, saying something like "I really appreciate you supporting this effort," which strengthens the person's self-perception as a supporter. And the effect is strongest when the large request is presented as a continuation of the smaller request, something that builds on the person's prior commitment—"You did X last month; can you do a little bit more?" But what happens when you ask people for something large without a small request first, and they say no? Does that make them more likely to continue saying no if you come back with a smaller request? This question was posed in the Snapshot Quiz, and you can see your answer here. The correct answer, based on the best available research evidence, is that when people reject a large request, they often become more likely to comply with smaller requests down the road— smaller, not equally large. That's key here. When a large request is scaled back, it has the appearance of a concession, and because there are strong social norms encouraging reciprocity, people often feel obligated to make a concession of their own—to reciprocate and meet the other person somewhere in the middle. In fact, this rejection-then-moderation procedure is so effective that Professor Cialdini and his colleagues, who conducted pioneering research on the topic, gave it a name: the door-in-the-face technique. In one experiment, for example, a member of Professor Cialdini's research team would walk up to students on campus and ask them if they'd like to work two hours per week as an unpaid volunteer at a juvenile detention center for at least two years! Can you imagine? None of the students ever agreed to this, but then, after students had refused the large request, the researcher made a smaller request, like volunteering only once for about two hours. What Professor Cialdini found is that compliance with a small request is much higher if you can first get someone to "slam a door in your face" with a larger request. In Professor Cialdini's research, this technique doubled the rate of compliance, and a later meta-analysis of 87 different paired requests found that the door-in-the-face technique is especially effective when the same person makes both requests, the two requests are made face-to-face with no delay between them, and the requests are prosocial with the same beneficiary—that is, the requests are for the good of others, and the ones who benefit are the same in both requests. Under these conditions, norms of reciprocity and generosity are quite strong, and as long as the initial request isn't so large as to seem unreasonable or greedy, people find it hard to say no. One last social influence technique that I'd like to discuss is known as the "low-ball" technique, and once again, Professor Cialdini and his colleagues conducted ground-breaking studies on the topic. Let me describe just one typical experiment. I think you'll find it very useful to know about. The participants were 63 college students enrolled in a psychology course, and they were randomly assigned to either a control condition or an experimental condition. In both conditions, a research assistant telephoned students and introduced herself as follows: "I'm calling for the Psychology Department to schedule Psychology 100 students for an experiment on thinking processes. The experiment concerns the way people organize facts. We can give you one hour of credit for your participation in this experiment." If students were in the control condition, the assistant told them that the experiment was being run at 7:00 am Wednesday and Friday morning and asked whether they might be able to make it then. Not surprisingly, only 9 of 29 students, or 31%, were willing to make an appointment that early in the morning, and only 24% showed up. In the experimental condition (the low-ball condition), students were informed of the 7:00 am time only after they had already agreed to participate in the experiment; this was the low-ball, thrown at the last moment. When all was said and done, 56% of these students made an appointment, and 53% actually showed up for the 7:00 am experiment. So, although there are obviously limits, it seems that once people commit themselves to honoring a request, the request can often be increased without them withdrawing from the commitment, just as car dealers often throw a low-ball by adding conveyance fees and other charges after people have agreed to buy a car for a particular price. Let's pause for a pop-up question on social influence techniques, and then I'll make a few concluding remarks. Now, what's the value of knowing about these techniques? Well, it's not so that you can go out and low-ball other people, I hope, but rather, that you can protect yourself when other people try to low-ball you. The social influence techniques discussed in this video are very powerful tools, but once you realize that a low-ball has been thrown, or that someone stuck a foot in your door, or gotten you to slam a door in their face, you'll be in a better position to step back and decide whether or not you want to comply with a request. Maybe you'll say yes, or maybe you'll say no, but at the very least, you'll understand the psychological dynamics of the situation and be less likely to be manipulated. Well, with this video you've completed two weeks of the course. Bravo! I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Before we end, let me just offer a friendly reminder to complete this week's assignment, entitled "What Social Impression Do You Make?" For the assignment, you can either join Social Psychology Network and create your own page if you haven't already, or you can complete the assignment by submitting a CV or résumé. Personally, I would love to have you as a member of the Network, so I very much hope that you will join if it doesn't present a financial hardship, but either way will work just fine for the assignment. What's most important is that you actively engage the course material. If you can spare the time, don't just watch the videos—do the readings and complete the assignments. We're heading into very interesting waters next week, so if you can complete the readings and the assignments for each week, you'll get more out of the course, because it will set up the next week. Until then!
