In this video I discuss compliance and persuasion, which are direct social pressures to comply with requests or modify attitudes or behavior. First I discuss the distinction between the central route and peripheral routes to persuasion, then describe several compliance techniques. These include the foot-in-the-door technique, the door-in-the-face technique, the not-so-free sample, and the that’s-not-all technique.
Recommended reading: Robert Cialdini – Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion : http://amzn.to/2FIhNcE
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In the previous video we considered conformity, which refers to an indirect social pressure to go along with the group’s attitudes or groups behaviors. In this video we’re going to consider compliance and persuasion and these are more direct social pressures because these refer to situations where people ask us to comply with a specific request. Or which they attempt to persuade us to modify particular attitudes or particular behaviors. When we think about being persuaded, we can think of two routes to persuasion; a central route and a peripheral route. And this should remind you of the idea of system 1 and system 2 dual processing that I’ve talked about in previous videos.
So the central route to persuasion refers to using careful consideration, conscious effort, weighing the pros and cons in order to make a decision. This is similar to the idea of system 2 (*note, I mistakenly said 1 here but it should be 2) conscious process. Then we also have a peripheral route to persuasion which relies more on unconscious processing and making snap judgments rather than careful decisions.
So we can think about attempts to persuade us like advertising and whether they’re appealing more to this central route to persuasion or this peripheral route to persuasion. So we might think about an advertisement for a particular model of car and if the advertisement is telling us about the fuel efficiency of the car or the safety ratings then it’s appealing to this central route to persuasion. If, however, the ad consists of the sleek look of the car driving through a beautiful landscape, and the sounds of the engine revving, then it’s appealing more to the peripheral route to persuasion. And it probably won’t surprise you to consider that most advertising is using this peripheral route to persuasion. This is why we see bikini-clad women selling us beer, which really has nothing to do with the taste of the beer.
We can also think about compliance techniques and these are techniques that attempt to increase our willingness to comply with a particular request. Now one of these is called the foot in the door technique and this is a technique where we start with a very small request that’s likely to be accepted, and then we move to a larger request. This is the one we actually are interested in, the one we want somebody to comply with. And so if they’ve already accepted this small request they’re actually more likely to accept the larger request.
Now this was demonstrated in a classic study in the 1960s by Freedman and Fraser where they asked people to put this ugly “drive carefully” sign in front of their house. And they found most people didn’t really want to do this, but they were able to increase the acceptance of this request if they previously asked people to sign a petition that they support safe driving. So somebody comes to your house and says will you sign this petition saying that you support safe driving, and you agree, that’s a very small harmless request. And then when they come back with this “drive carefully” sign you’re more likely to accept then if they have just started with the drive carefully sign. So why does this work? Well, it seems to me that people like consistency; we want to avoid cognitive dissonance. And so if we’ve already expressed that we support safe driving, we want to be consistent with our attitudes and our behaviors. that means we’re going to be more likely to accept putting up this sign.
Now we can also see the opposite technique which is called the door in the face technique. And in this case we start with a very large request, an overly large request, that we know is going to be rejected and then we follow this with a smaller request that’s now more likely to be accepted. So a study on this was conducted by Robert Cialdini, who’s written a number of popular books on persuasion and I’ll put some links in the video description, and he did a study where researchers went out and they asked people to volunteer their time. So they went up to people on the street and said “would you be willing to help juvenile delinquents, two hours a week for the next two years?”. Not surprisingly, they didn’t get any volunteers for this. This was the large request that they knew would be rejected.
But then they asked about a smaller request, which was actually still a fairly large request, which was would you be willing to take these juvenile delinquents on a trip to the zoo next weekend for a few hours, just one time. Now, if they started with the zoo request initially they found that only about 17% of people accepted this request and said “yeah I’d be willing to volunteer my time to go to the zoo with these juvenile delinquents and be a chaperone”. But if they started with the very, very large request of two hours a week for two years and then they asked about the zoo trip they found that 50% of participants were willing to go on this trip to the zoo. So this showed that the door in the face technique was able to increase the acceptance of this request.
Now we’ll get to the reason why that might be after we look at this next technique called the not-so free sample. This is one you’ve certainly experienced in your daily life; you’re in the grocery store and somebody offers you a free sample of a snack or a taste of yogurt or fruit juice or something like this. You might wonder what what, why is this happening, right? It is are these food companies just so charitable they want to make sure that I don’t get hungry while I’m shopping? Well, probably that’s not the case. the reason they do this is because it increases sales of the products. And this is because the sample is not really free. That’s why we call the not-so free sample technique because there is a cost and the cost is increased pressure to buy the product. You’ve probably felt this yourself when you’ve gotten a free sample, you feel like you kind of have to buy the product now that you’ve taken this free sample.
So the reason that this works is the norm of reciprocity. This refers to the social norm that we feel we should return favors. If somebody does you a favor, you feel that you owe them something, right? You have to reciprocate, right? It’s a sense of obligation that we feel when somebody has done something for us. Now in the case of the not so free sample, they’ve given us this free sample, this free thing, and we feel like we should do something for them. And luckily for them they have just the right request in mind, which is buy this product and that’s how we can relieve this sense of obligation. They’ve given us something free, we want to do something nice back, and so we are more likely to buy the product.
Now this norm of reciprocity can also be applied to understanding the door in the face technique because in the door in the face technique with this very large request, that’s now been reduced. We get the sense that the other person is willing to negotiate; they’re willing to compromise, right? They’re doing something for us. They’re saying “ok, well if you can’t do this really large request, I’m willing to lower my request. I’m willing to ask less of you”. And what you should then feel, because of this norm of reciprocity, is that you should increase what you’re willing to do. They’re willing to compromise and negotiate, so you should be willing to compromise and negotiate as well. You should be willing to increase what you’re willing to do because they’ve reduced their request.
And we can also see this norm of reciprocity in understanding what’s called the “that’s not all technique” and this is where the seller will offer some additional bonus or additional incentives. They’re giving us something for free, right? They’re throwing in an additional thing to persuade us. This was demonstrated by Jerry Burger in 1986, where he looked at two different sales of the same products. He sold a cupcake and a small bag of cookies for 75 cents, and then he sold the same products for the same price but he framed it as an additional bonus, as an incentive like you see on late-night infomercials, right? This is where the name comes from: that’s not all. You don’t just get the product, we’ll also give you this additional thing. In this case he sold a cupcake for 75 cents but then he threw in a small bag of cookies as a free gift and what he showed was that when he framed things this way, that there was a free gift, an additional incentive, he actually was able to increase sales.
Alright, so these are just a few compliance techniques and in the next video we’ll look at even more direct social pressures; we’ll look at obedience to authority. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
