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.
